I’ve been following a debate between Sam Harris and Philip Ball, in which Harris takes Ball and Nature magazine to task over their capitulations to religion. In one passage I was reminded of one of many discussions I’ve had over the years with my mother about religion. In this particular discussion she became very distressed and responded to my irreligiousness thus:
But how can you not want to be with me after our time on Earth?
I wish I’d had Sam Harris’ words to quote at the time. This is for my mother:
I’m sure many people … hope that there is a God; they hope that they will see their friends and loved ones after death; they hope that their lives are aligned with some larger cosmic purpose; and they are disposed to make much of this hope — to celebrate it, and to gather with others who hope for these same things. [They] might say that this hope has enriched their lives or has in some way become indispensable to their functioning in the world. But if [they] are really religious — that is, really conforming to the doctrine of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. — they will have taken a further step toward delusion and mistaken this hope for a form of knowledge. They may have yanked their bootstraps this way: “How could I find this hope so consoling if it were not, in fact, well founded? Perhaps this feeling of hopefulness itself attests to the truth of thing hoped for… Praise be to God!” Of course there are many other ways to chase one’s tail under the aegis of religion. … It should be abundantly clear, however, that mere hope does not constitute knowledge, no matter how lovingly one tends it and props it up in the wind.