Chris Hedges Challenges Sam Harris

Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, engaged in a debate with atheist Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, about "Religion, Politics, and the End of the World." Truth Dig has published Hedges opening statement in the debate under the title "I Don't Believe in Atheists."

Hedges made a sweeping and insightful case for theism. Here are the opening paragraphs of Chris Hedges' statement:

Sam Harris has conflated faith with tribalism. His book is an attack not on faith but on a system of being and believing that is dangerous and incompatible with the open society. He attacks superstition, a belief in magic and the childish notion of an anthropomorphic God that is characteristic of the tribe, of the closed society. He calls this religion. I do not.

What he fails to grasp is not simply the meaning of faith — something I will address later — but the supreme importance of the monotheistic traditions in creating the concept of the individual. This individualism — the belief that we can exist as distinct beings from the tribe, or the crowd, and that we are called on as individuals to make moral decisions that at times defy the clamor of the tribe or the nation — is a gift of the Abrahamic faiths. This sense of individual responsibility is coupled with the constant injunctions in Islam, Judaism and Christianity for a deep altruism. And this laid the foundations for the open society. This individualism is the central doctrine and most important contribution of monotheism. We are enjoined, after all, to love our neighbor, not our tribe. This empowerment of individual conscience is the starting point of the great ethical systems of our civilization. The prophets — and here I would include Jesus — helped institutionalize dissent and criticism. They initiated the separation of powers. They reminded us that culture and society were not the sole prerogative of the powerful, that freedom and indeed the religious life required us to often oppose and defy those in authority. This is a distinctly anti-tribal outlook.