Mr. Sam Harris, Philosopher, Witt without Wisdom

Mr. Sam Harris, Witt without Wisdom!



There was an article today (3-27-2010) on CNN, the internet by John D. Sutter, about Sam Harris, Philosopher, the name of the article was: “Philosopher: Why we should ditch Religion” and he says for the most part, religion gets in the way, not philosophy, but religion. I’ve studied philosophy, theology, psychology, and was in a war, and I think perhaps I can help Mr. Harris out if indeed he is not above that: help him out a little and explain why we shouldn’t ditch religion, perhaps philosophy, or at least its intentions. But let me quote him: “For the world to tackle truly important problems, people have to stop looking to religion to guide their moral compasses…Religion causes people to fixate on issues of less moral importance…” and so forth and so on.
Much of our lives would be come meaningless, without God, kind of a self-canceling vacillation and futility. We strive in a world full of chaos, it is all around us and within us, but we need to believe there is something vital and significant to us, philosophy takes this away, as can psychology, pure psychology and pure philosophy is what I’m talking about, like Darwinism. Mr. Harris would have us deny our own souls, the very thing we are trying, have been trying, to understand. Religion—in its life form, transforms us into light, into the frame of light (the poet in me is talking I suppose, but you know what I mean).
Satan keeps man busy, and if we lived under philosophy, and got rid of God, which I think is Mr. Harris’ bottom line, the only thing that it would do would be for the devil to have fewer restrictions in his own backyard. He would take the little things, and the big things, and squish all of us under his heel, matter-of-fact; he would be laughing in our faces to our inevitable doom quicker.
The other element Mr. Harris misses here is man wants to be whole, and without God, he cannot be. The world appears to be for Mr. Harris one big political arena, with his logic and metaphysical training, to be a philosopher, a true philosopher, is to embrace wisdom. Plato would agree with Mr. Harris, but not his teacher, Socrates, who died for his one and true God, not believing in the many, or that politics would save his soul, and should rule man. He perhaps would have had Aristotle on his side also, but Aristotle was never overenthusiastic about anything, he was lacking something—God, he was never complete. His motto was: to admire or marvel at nothing. And that is how he lived, empty for the most part. I marvel at the power of God, and his creations, I fear Mr. Harris will never have that delight.