Sam Harris wants to design a neuroscience experiment that supposedly will reveal something about religious beliefs and the brain. Towards that goal, he has asked people to fill out surveys.
Each of the surveys begins by stating that an interested parties should participate only if one is either "a dedicated Christian" or "an atheist/nonbeliever". Those are the only two categories he cares about. He thus lumps together everyone who identifies with the Christian faith into one category, regardless of whether they are fundamentalists or moderates or progressives, whether they Pat Robertson or John Shelby Spong. Why am I not surprised by that?
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I am going to take them all - just to throw off his understanding of Christian faith ideals (since you and I know they are quite variant).
I took one. Ah well! Why does everyone have to be defined and categorized?
I took one, but some of the questions were very predictable. I think I threw them off a little bit, just because I'm not a "typical" dedicated Christian. . . . .
A lot of these questions were difficult to answer... "Jesus Christ probably did not rise from the dead" for example, depends on how you're defining things.
"Jesus Christ probably did not rise from the dead" for example, depends on how you're defining things
That is a really good point. Do they mean physically resuscitated? Do they mean that he was taken into a Divine presence after death but did not physically walk along the road to Emmaus? Do they mean that Jesus was risen metaphorically or in spirit by his disciples who experienced his presence after he died? Who knows? Maybe to the authors of the survey, all those positions are the same as far as they are concerned.
I did one of them, and I hope to do the others as well. The funny thing is, the Christians who are most likely to go along with it, or get involved with anything with Sam Harris's name attached to it, are probably not the ones he envisions. Which is funny.
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