INSTANT REGRET: He Mocked God, then THIS Happened

Moral Claims, Human Flourishing, and the Limits of Atheistic Ethics

So this, I think, is what the world needs now. It needs people like ourselves to admit that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human flourishing. And morality relates to that domain of facts.

I mean, Hunter Biden, at that point, Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared.

Sam Harris is one of the most popular atheists today. Despite being an ardent, vocal atheist, however, at one point it seemed that Harris was relatively reasonable because he was willing to have deep, honest, civil discussions with religious people like Ben Shapiro about religion and morality.

Harris was one of the better atheists. However, that has all changed with a recent interview with Harris, and Harris has now completely destroyed his credibility and character. Let's walk through how this all happened.

Harris is particularly known for being an atheist who has a lot to say about morality, and who supposedly has a very sophisticated, scientific approach to morality. Harris even delivered a TED talk during which he explained how science can determine morality.

Now, it's often said that science cannot give us a foundation for morality and human values because science deals with facts, and facts and values seem to belong to different spheres.

Right. We argue that it's impossible to go from, this is what the world is like, to, this is what the world should be like. It's impossible to go from is to ought.

Values are a certain kind of fact. They are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

Immediately, Harris has a big problem that he's either ignoring or oblivious of. We can grant the argument that there are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures, as long as we ignore the question of where conscious creatures originated from in the first place.

Conscious creatures can be happy or sad. However, to go from these facts to the idea of values takes an enormous leap that Harris simply cannot justify. Harris never explains why something is good or bad.

Why is it good for conscious creatures to be happy? Why is it bad for conscious creatures to be sad? Unless Harris explains this, everything he says next simply has absolutely no logical or rational foundation.

And if we're more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects, as indeed we are, it's because we think they're exposed to a greater range of potential happiness and suffering.

The Problem of Is and Ought

But again, Sam, according to your worldview, why is it good to be concerned about anything? Why is it good to experience happiness and suffering if we're all just random results of evolutionary, chemical, biological processes?

Why is it bad for conscious creatures to suffer?

And just admitting this, just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish, will change the way we talk about morality.

Again, if we ignore questions about the origin of humans, rationality, and the concept of human flourishing, we can grant that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish.

However, according to your atheistic presuppositions, Sam, you again haven't yet answered the question of why it's good for humans to flourish. If we're just the results of random chemical and biological processes, why does it matter if we all suffer and die in an uncaring, random, cold universe?

What's the hidden assumption there that borrowed capital from Christianity? Human value and dignity, and that society should flourish? Because we must ask the unbeliever. We must ask them. Are we stardust?

And they say, oh yes, yes, we're stardust. Like Carl Sagan said, we are stardust, right? Neil deGrasse Tyson, he says we're stardust. Well, let me ask you a question. What makes you think stardust must flourish?

What if I want to kerosene the whole anthill? Who are you to argue with me? You're acting like stardust should flourish and should produce and should do well. I think there's actually a lot of human suffering in the world, and if we just ended it all, we would end a lot of human suffering, and there are actually a lot of people who think just like that.

And you have no argument with them, no objective basis for morality.

Scripture, Discipline, and Human Flourishing

The creator of the universe himself has told us not to spare the rod lest we spoil the child. This is in Proverbs 13 and 20, and I believe 23. But we can ask the obvious question, okay? Is it a good idea, generally speaking, to subject children to pain and violence and public humiliation as a way of encouraging healthy emotional development and good behavior?

Sam, your interpretation of the Bible is absolutely laughable. To go from not sparing the rod to subjecting children to pain, violence, and public humiliation is absolutely illogical for someone who prides himself on being a man of logic and reason.

If you like this video, subscribe to help spread the truth. Certainly, disciplining children involves exposing them to pain, but this should more properly be called discipline rather than violence, which has a negative connotation that should not be associated with properly disciplining children.

Also, where did public humiliation come from? When parents discipline children rightly, there's simply no public humiliation, but rather a loving desire to see the child act rightly.

So this, I think, is what the world needs now. It needs people like ourselves to admit that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human flourishing, and morality relates to that domain of facts.

And again, even if we grant your presupposition that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human flourishing, you still haven't answered the foundational question of why humans should flourish, why it's good for humans to flourish, and why it would be bad for humans to suffer and die.

We simply must converge on the answers we give to the most important questions in human life. And to do that, we have to admit that these questions have answers.

Well, we Christians are still waiting on your answers to the most important questions in life. You haven't answered them yet. So Harris clearly cares deeply about morality, and he wants to believe that he is a moral man, someone who is even more moral than Christians who obey the Bible's immoral teachings.

The Hunter Biden Laptop, Trump, and Suppressing the Truth

And for a time, Harris had about as much credibility as an atheist can have concerning questions of morality, but that all changed very recently. Very recently, Harris did an interview with Trigonometry, and a particular segment of this interview went viral and destroyed Harris's credibility and character.

I mean, Hunter Biden, at that point, Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared, right?

First, can we just agree that the argument that Trump is so bad that my side can literally do anything and it would still be better than Trump is, first of all, a deeply immoral argument, and second of all, the kind of logic that leads to tyranny, oppression, and ignoring the truth?

Right. It's like there's nothing.

First of all, it's Hunter Biden, right? It's not Joe Biden. But even if Joe Biden, like even whatever scope of Joe Biden's corruption is, like if we could just go down that rabbit hole endlessly and understand that he's getting kickbacks from Hunter Biden's deals in Ukraine or wherever else, right, or China, it is infinitesimal compared to the corruption we know Trump is involved in.

Well, receiving money from a hostile foreign power that influences the policies you enact as the president of the United States seems like an extremely serious problem. You would have to argue what Trump has specifically done that would be infinitesimally worse than this.

It's like a firefly to the sun, right? I mean, like there's just, it doesn't even, it doesn't even stack up against Trump University, right? Trump University as a story is worse than anything that could be in Hunter Biden's laptop, in my view, right?

Well, I'm not sure this kind of private corruption is on the level of international world leader corruption, if that was really what's happening with Joe and Hunter Biden.

Now that's not, that doesn't answer the people who say it's still completely unfair to not have looked at the laptop in a timely way and to have shut down the, you know, the New York Post's Twitter account like that.

That's just a conspiracy, that's a left-wing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump. Absolutely it was. Absolutely. Right. But I think it was warranted. Right. And I'm, and again, it's a coin toss as to whether or not.

Whoa, did Harris just say that shutting down the truth is warranted to stop Trump from becoming president? This is the kind of logic that leads to dictatorships, tyranny, and oppression of innocent people.

Hopefully people will push back against what Harris just said. I'm really sorry.

I was the one that said we should move on, but you've just said something I really struggle with that, which is you support. The kids in the basement? No, no, the kids in the basement. I'm interested in democracy.

You're saying you are content with a left-wing conspiracy to prevent somebody being democratically reelected as president.

Well, no, I'm content. Well, so it's, but the thing is, it's just not left-wing, right? So Liz Cheney is not left-wing, right? Liz Cheney is doing everything in her power.

You're content with a conspiracy to prevent somebody being democratically reelected?

No, but there's nothing, conspiracy, it's not, it was a conspiracy out in the open. It doesn't, but it doesn't matter if it was, it doesn't matter what part's conspiracy, what part's out in the open. I mean, I think it's like if people get together and talk and talk about what should we do about this phenomenon?

You know, if it's like, if there was an asteroid hurtling toward earth and we got in a room together with all of our friends and had a conversation about what we could do to deflect its course, right?

Is that a conspiracy? As you can expect, Harris has received justified criticism and pushback for the absolutely ridiculous things he said in this interview.

I mean, that's an amazing statement there from Sam Harris. So he openly says, okay, so there are people who are complaining that the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed by the media, right? So he's not even talking right now about election fraud.

He's talking about what sort of information could and should be suppressed in order to effectuate an election win for Joe Biden.

You can't claim to be an expert authority on morality if you're arguing that absolutely anything is justified, even the bodies of children in blatant dishonesty to stop Trump from becoming president again.

Harris’s Clarification and Why It Made Things Worse

Because of the pushback, Harris did issue a clarification statement.

Now, Sam Harris tried to then walk this back a little bit on Twitter, and I want to be fair to Sam by reading what he actually said here. He says, there's a podcast clip circulating that seems to be confusing many people about my views on Trump, which is understandable because I wasn't speaking very clearly.

So for what it's worth, here's what I was trying to say. I was essentially arguing for a principle of self-defense where there's a continuum of proportionate force that is appropriate and necessary to use.

I've always viewed Trump as a very dangerous person to elect as president of a fake university, let alone the United States. And when he became a sitting president who would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power, I viewed him as more dangerous still.

However, I've never been under any illusion that he's Orange Hitler. On the podcast, I was speaking narrowly about the wisdom and propriety of ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop story until after the election.

I've always thought that this was a very hard call ethically and journalistically, but given what happened with the Anthony Weiner laptop in the previous election, I think it was probably the right call.

But Harris's clarification really just made things even worse, because he essentially both doubled down and even furthered his original immoral remarks.

I mean, Sam is openly saying now that he, if he had a choice, would go back and have suppressed the Anthony Weiner laptop information. And that's 2016, before Trump has done any of this kind of stuff.

He says, nothing I said on the podcast was meant to suggest that Democrats would have been right to commit election fraud or to take other illegal measures to deny Trump the presidency, nor do I think they did that.

You're going to have to explain the principle. Why is Donald Trump so dangerous that you can shut down the ability of people to distribute true information about Joe Biden in order to prevent Joe Biden from losing?

But he's not dangerous enough that you're actually willing to stuff ballot boxes. Like, explain to me how that continuum works.

Sam clearly or simply, he's a very dangerous person. His sense of morality is deeply flawed and twisted, and you lack a full, proper understanding of God's perfect morality as revealed in the Bible. You need to repent of your mischaracterization of Christianity and turn to Christ alone for your salvation.

The Supremacy of Christ in Truth

As we walk through the highways and byways and look into the lifeless eyes of individuals who have bought a lie, let us rest assured that we possess the answer and we are possessed by the answer. The answer is Christ and his supremacy in truth.

Let us rest assured that those who walk aimlessly through this life will never be satisfied with the answers that our culture has seen fit to give. And the further we have run away from the supremacy of Christ, the further we have run away from the only thing that will ever satisfy and the only thing that will ever suffice.

Let us rest assured that the supremacy of Christ in truth also means the sufficiency of Christ in truth. We preach Jesus and him crucified, and I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ because it is the power of God unto salvation for those who believe, the Jew first and also to the Greek.

This is the supremacy of Christ in truth in a post-modern, pre-Christian, dying, rotting, decaying, and hurting world.