A response to Sapiens

On one level, Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens reads as a fairly standard retelling of the commonly accepted version of human history from its earliest appearance in the paleontological record up to the present day. On another level, it reads as a vehicle for a number of radically destructive ideas, which if not properly responded to, jeopardize the positive future of humanity. It is the worst of these ideas that I primarily concern myself with in this review. Due to space constraints, all of the less damaging ideas and minor inaccuracies have to remain unchallenged.

Harari employs a mode of reasoning that is often subtly false. For example, in chapter two, when speaking of primitive societies,  he says, “rumour-mongers are the original fourth estate, journalists who inform society about and thus protect it from cheats and freeloaders.”^[1] But he has misused his term. A rumor-monger is one who spreads rumors without knowing whether they are true or not, with little or no concern for the consequences of their actions, but simply for the crude pleasure of trading in gossip. A modicum of life experience tells us that such a person is highly destructive to any social group, and has the barest resemblance to the fourth estate. The worthy job of exposing cheats and criminals should never be conflated with indiscriminate rumor-slinging. But this is exactly what Harari has done, and this kind of sloppy thinking can be seen throughout his work.

Harari takes it as an axiom so self-evident that no argumentation is needed to support it, that anything spiritual is a mental fiction. He places in this category God, gods, spirits, fairies, angels, demons, etc. – all these are merely mutually agreed-upon fictions, invented and persisting through the ages merely because of their social utility. What a convenient way to shut one’s mind off from consideration of anything that is not entirely material.

An image arises in my mind of an isolated group of people who were all born totally color blind – they can only see black, white, and shades of gray. Several normally-sighted people from the outside world arrive in their community and try to explain to them what colors are. The isolated group laughs at them, and calls them fools for believing in these “colors,” which are obviously nothing more than mental fictions, invented because they make the world seem more interesting.  The point of this analogy is that if we do not see something, say for example angels, there are two possible explanations for this: A, they really do not exist, or B, we do not all possess the faculties to perceive them. It would be foolish and provincial for us to assume A out of hand, given that serious people do claim and have claimed throughout history to have seen them.

Now this does not mean that we ought to glibly believe every strange tale that comes our way. But it is usually a mistake to dismiss anything out of hand without careful investigation. In the case of God, to take Harari’s biggest fiction, careful investigation makes the existence of it seem more likely, not less. But more on this later.

But Harari goes a step further, and extends his fictionality to things like nations, human rights, laws, and justice.^[2] These are all “imagined orders,” in his view. Does he deny the existence of anything that cannot be physically touched? This notion is patently absurd. You cannot physically touch “justice,” yet it no less real. For anyone with feeling and reason, a just or unjust action is perfectly recognizable. I wonder how far his fiction-theory extends – he does not expressly say. Is “friendship” a fiction? How about “integrity”?

Let’s take a closer look at laws, another class of things that Harari singles out for fictionality. Real things tend to have real effects on other real things in the real world. So are laws real? In the United States, there is a law that says I cannot operate a motor vehicle on a public road without a proper license. If I ignore this law, and get caught, unpleasant things will probably happen to me. So yes, this law is real. Ergo, many other laws are also probably real. “Not so fast,” Harari would probably object. “This law you speak of can only effect real things because everyone believes in it. If people ceased to believe in it, it would have no effect at all – therefore it is fiction.” “Yes Yuval,” I would reply. “It is true that laws only have power if a sufficient number of people assent to them; but you have not shown how this makes them any less real. A thing is not less real by virtue of being mutable, as opposed to immutable. A thing is not less real by virtue of being created by common agreement, as opposed to some other way. Lastly, a thing is not less real by virtue of being something that you cannot physically touch (think of gravity, etc.).”

Here we have stumbled here upon an amazing ability of humanity: we can co-create real things that exist in non-physical space but that affect real things in physical space. We can then uncreate them, or modify them in some other way. What an amazing power; we should celebrate it – and use it wisely. And certainly not dismiss it as imaginary.

I have found that it is incredibly difficult for atheists to be consistent. This is because ethical systems tend to fall apart without some kind of divine basis, and with atheism, there is none. For Harari, the inconsistency is turbo-charged. He mentions that archeological evidence of a high rate of violent deaths in several ancient preagricultural sites is depressing.^[3] But how? Human rights and justice are fictional. Surely Harari is not feeling depressed over the violation of fictions? Seriously, what remains for him to be depressed about? He would probably reply that he is merely playing out cultural programming instilled in him since birth; I think it is more likely that he does not truly believe his own doctrine.

A nearly identical inconsistency plays out in chapter four. It seems that most or all of the megafauna disappeared right around the time that humans first arrived in places like Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas. In describing these events, Harari uses terms like ‘tragedy,’ ‘menace,’ guilt,’ ‘ecological serial killer,’ and ‘disaster.’ Again, the nihilism that Harari proposes is absolutely inconsistent with anything like guilt or tragedy. Meanwhile, terms like ‘disaster’ and ‘serial killer’ become merely flat physical descriptors, with no further meaning.

In chapter six, Harari sets out to destroy the idea that all people are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. This idea is expressed in the American Bill of Rights, adopted in 1776. This idea is merely a myth, says Harari, existing only in our collective imagination, based upon the myth of God, which also exists only in our collective imagination. “…neither… is there any ‘Creator’ who ‘endows’ them with anything. There is only blind evolutionary process, devoid of any purpose.”^[4]

Whether intentionally or not, Harari has just clearly shown that without some kind of divine power, ethics collapses and meaning disappears. This is the most critical point: there is no basis for ethics, human rights, meaning, purpose, etc. without some kind of God. Both Harari, an avowed atheist, and deists around the world agree on this point. Thankfully, the evidence for the presence of God is much stronger than the evidence against, both on a scientific basis, and on a logical one. For the scientific evidence, see the work of Stephen C. Meyer. For the logical evidence, see here https://www.peterkreeft.com/featured-writing.htm.

Here are some further assertions that Harari makes: there is no happiness, only pleasure.^[5] If you tell your friend to ‘follow your heart.’ You are merely telling them to follow an inclination implanted in them by consumerist-romantic myth makers.^[6] If you tell your children that their lives have meaning, you are telling them a myth.^[7] Your personal desires are programmed by an imaginary order.^[8] And, “any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion.”^[9] Again, we are brought back to the question of atheism. As Harari correctly points out, this philosophy destroys all meaning. But as already said above, we have very good reasons for discounting it – let us do so at once.

One mark of a weak argument is that it uses implicit premises, instead of explicit ones. We see an example of this in chapter eight, where Harari highlights many of the great injustices throughout history. The implicit premise is that since there is so much injustice all through history, there is no justice. Yes, our forebears were very flawed beings, just as we are. But they were trying, just as we are. And we are getting better. The institution of slavery used to be accepted out of hand, by nearly everyone, nearly everywhere. Now, only the most fringe, deranged lunatics view it as acceptable. Again, time past, racial segregation and stratification was absolutely mainstream. Now this idea is extremely fringe and everyday gets more so. We are making progress, and we will continue to. We strive toward justice, ineptly, yes, but still our efforts bear fruit. If we look back over the last two thousand years or so, we see tremendous evidence that we are moving in the right direction.

Yuval Noah Harari is a very tortured soul. It is obvious from his writing that he truly cares about humans and animals and the planet. Yet he firmly avows a philosophy that denies human rights, animal rights, meaning, or purpose. Throughout Sapiens he criticizes humankind for falling short of a moral standard which he flatly denies the existence of! You can’t get more tortured than that! So he wallows forward, mired in a deep and painful inconsistency from which he sees no way out. I can identify with his condition on a personal level. As a former atheist of many years, I can attest that once one has climbed out of it, and taken some time to look around, one can see that atheism is the intellectual equivalent of a dark hole in the ground. I truly hope that Harari finds his way out, and I mean it. If I can ever help him, I will.

Sapiens represents an all-out attack on humanity, one that will destroy us if we are dumb enough to fall for it. But it also represents a necessary prompting. We are prompted, and urgently, to deeply consider exactly what we believe, and why – and exactly what the logical consequences of those beliefs are.

Postscript:

I know that I bring up atheism a lot in this piece. It’s really not that I want to pick a fight with atheism per se, but it keeps being brought forward, over and again, by Harari himself as the foundation for some incredibly destructive ideas. This is something that distinguishes him from many other atheists. He really is willing to follow out the premises of this philosophy to their logical conclusions – and I give him full credit for that.

When I call the ideas in Sapiens destructive, I want to affirm absolutely that I do not call for any form of censorship. In fact, I think this book should be more widely read. Only by confronting and fully understanding ideas of this kind can we be sure of moving in a better direction.

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^[1] Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari (2015: Harper Collins, New York, NY) 24.

^[2] Sapiens, 28.

^[3] Sapiens, 60.

^[4] Sapiens, 109.

^[5] Sapiens, 110.

^[6] Sapiens, 115.

^[7] Sapiens, 113.

^[8] Sapiens, 115.

^[9] Sapiens, 391.