Value-Added Science

By: Mukul Sharma

In The Moral Landscape, author Sam Harris argues for the superiority of science over religion as a means of determining morality.

He adds that if we are going to build a global civilisation based on shared values, we need “to admit that questions about right and wrong and good and evil have answers, in the same way that questions about human health do”.

Now, historically, science has never had anything to say on the subject of good and bad, leaving it for philosophers and theologians instead. In fact, it’s even been conjectured that scientists’ failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science is probably the most common justification for religious faith. Like, someone’s gotta do it. Otherwise, life becomes a chance event in a random universe with no purpose.

Yet, here’s a neuroscientist, philosopher and a leading members of the new atheism movement tearing down the wall between scientific facts and human values.

In the process, he’s also arguing that most people are simply mistaken about the relationship between morality and the rest of human knowledge. Why is he doing this? Does he have an agenda? Actually, he does.

Harris doesn’t believe in moral relativism that happens because there are so many different religions espousing so many different values. But science is a singular edifice.

If it begins addressing questions of good and bad, there would be only singular answers to the most pressing questions of human life.

Or, as he says, “Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality.”