Science+Can+Answer+Moral+Questions

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In the intellectually pornographic world of theistic debate, in which high-profile atheists and religious figures engage each other in debate usually to the advantage of the atheists, Sam Harris is Ron Jeremy. I will end this line of metaphor before it becomes graphic, but Harris is well known for his electric writing and speaking, and it was his name that seduced me away from the TED talks that had anything to do with education.

To my surprise, however, Harris discussed education at length. He brought up corporal punishment and the sexual philosophy of radical Islam, and argued that they were examples of educational philosophies that were clearly, simply wrong. Once we admit that a moral statement can be clearly correct or clearly incorrect, he says, our discourse on morality can be profoundly changed.

Speaking as an educator, though, I wish our discourse would become a little less accepting of black-and-white statements and not more. Education and pedagogy is incredibly weak as an empirical, academic field, but I know a strikingly high number of administrators and high-profile educators who believe this is not so. They usually follow one or two educational pundits and subscribe to an extreme variation of a well-known pedagogical theory such as multiple intelligences. It's gotten to where I wanted to bring a Randall-Munroe-style "Citation Needed" sign to meetings. I suspect that Harris's theory of empirical knowledge about morality will only be helpful in discourses that are already empirical in nature.