My Reaction to Yuval Noah Harari on The Late Late Show

Note: This article was originally written in April of 2020.

One thing that helps me find peace and quiet in this whirligig of a world is when I see or hear something that makes me think deeply about an issue. This happens sometimes when I read a book, watch a movie, or listen to a podcast. And strangely, it’s often when I hear something I disagree with. It’s those tensions and different perspectives that help us to dive deep into our inner world and examine our most deeply-rooted beliefs and most hardened assumptions about life. Without thoughtful disagreement, we’ll never truly understand ourselves. If we’re always just listening to things we agree with, we’ll never really learn or grow or challenge those beliefs and assumptions that stick in us like thorns.

Today, I’d like to talk about a video clip I saw recently where James Corden from the Late Late Show interviews historian and author Yuval Noah Harari. Now, I have read Harari’s book, Sapiens, and I found it to be an absolutely remarkable piece of writing and thinking. So clear. So imaginative. So thoughtful and unique. Of course, it isn’t without its flaws or cracks…at least in my opinion. But which of us is perfect? Watching Harari respond to Corden’s questions about the current Covid-19 epidemic really reminded me of those aspects of his work that got my wheels spinning in a critical direction.

The first thing that really struck me strangely was when he started speaking about religion. Here’s what he said…

“Churches all over the world are telling people, ‘stay away from the church.’ Why? Because the scientists said so. So even these religious establishments when it comes to a real emergency, they trust in science more than anything else. And that’s a good sign. I hope after the crisis is over people will remember who they really trusted in the moment of truth. And afterwards, when scientists warn us about things like ecological collapse or climate change, we take it with the same trust and the same seriousness.”

Ok. Let's take a step back, here, Yuval. My first critique is that churches aren’t shutting down. Churches are going online and finding new ways to reach out to their congregations and communities. Just from my personal experience with my own church and my conversations with friends and coworkers who attend other churches, people are just as engaged, just as worshipful, just as trusting in God as ever…if not more so. Harari calls upon a piece of data (churches are not meeting on Sunday mornings during this pandemic) and he takes it completely out of context and disengages it from what’s actually going on in reality in order to make his point. He simply ignores the fact that many many people are indeed turning to God during this crisis. They are not abandoning God at all – now of course I have no data to support that claim. My evidence is anecdotal. But his claim about science and God during this crisis does not resonate with my own personal observations. And for me…that’s my canary in a coal mine. If something I read or see or hear doesn’t ring true to me, then I feel a great need to dig deeper (although, ironically, that’s actually the exact opposite of what a canary is used for in coal mine. Haha. Lame metaphor, Gary!)

Secondly, churches aren’t necessarily closing because scientists said so. They’re closing, because the government is ordering them to, and they’re closing to protect their congregations and contribute to the overall health of everyone. He sets up a scenario which pits science against religion and religion against science. This seems kind of silly to me. Of course there are things about science that religious people often resist and there are things about religion that scientists abhor, but unless they’re Amish, a religious person is going to the doctor when they get sick. There are plenty of scientists who go to church, plenty of religious people who use technologies and rely on science for their work. There are many ways in which science and religion overlap. In fact, I’ve heard very plausible arguments that position science as a type of religion. That sort of idea seems to be impossible within Harari’s worldview.

I recently listened to an episode of Rupert Sheldrake’s podcast. Sheldrake is a biologist most notable for his theory of “Morphic Resonance.” And he is a member of the Angilcan church. Anyway, he provided his own critique of Harari’s work…

“He’s very like standard atheists. Standard atheists critique the religious worldview as fictions that other people need for consolation or they’re manipulated into believing this by controlling priests or power systems etc. They never criticize they’re own point of view, and what they can’t get is that their own materialist atheist worldview is itself a belief system. They don’t get that. They think somehow they’ve stepped outside belief systems.”

I think it’s interesting. Sheldrake’s point of view regarding science and religion is perhaps more postmodern, where he doesn’t see them as binaries. They overlap and intermingle. They aren’t black and white. Whereas, Harari’s view of science and religion is very modernistic – where the domain of science is objectivity and reason and the domain of religion is fiction and myth. He sets them up very much like binaries and cannot seem to grasp the fluidity of those terms. Some people see religion as the thing that stands outside of the muck and mire of life and looks out at it all with an objective lens. It seems to me that Harari believes science does the same thing. For him, I would contend, he has made science his religion.

One of Harari’s primary theses in Sapiens is that the fundamental aspect of humankind that has made us such a successful species is our ability to tell stories. Stories help large groups of humans rally around a common purpose or common understanding. He establishes religion of course as one of those stories. But also currencies and governments and corporations and teams – mostly any system that compels humans to act in a collective way. And these stories obviously have good aspects and evil aspects, but his point, I think, is to help us identify these stories, name them, examine them, and use them to help make a brighter future. Sheldrake seems to think Harari believes that science is not a story and stands outside of everything – that science is a cold, hard, objective fact in a world of fiction. And there is ample evidence for this in Harari’s work. He doesn’t seem to examine science with any sort of critical lens, and he does seem to swallow the scientific materialist point of view hook, line, and sinker. I would like to give Harari the benefit of the doubt here and say that of course he is smart enough to recognize science as a story, he just believes that science is the best story to help humans navigate into a better future. However, I do think that is a more difficult argument to make based on what I’ve read of his work.

Also, going back to Harari’s quote about science and religion, he talks about the deep reservoir of trust we as humans are developing in science and how that’s a good sign for our future. I don’t understand this trust in science. He talks about scientists warning us about ecological collapse. Well, what on Earth is causing this ecological collapse? Science has got to accept its role in this collapse and concede that perhaps it’s not the best way to contend with this crisis. Engineers designing machines that burn up fossil fuels. Farmers using chemistry to destroy the soil. Wifi signals casting radiation into the atmosphere. Factories polluting air and water. All of these projects that are destroying our environment have all been underwritten by science. How on Earth has science earned our trust regarding ecological collapse or climate change? Should we trust them if scientists say…”Hey look. All this stuff we’ve made possible over the last 200 years. All of our crowning achievements. They’re all killing us slowly. But this right now – this end of the world that we’re causing for you guys. This is important. This is true, and we don’t have any great ideas right now, but someday we’ll know exactly what to do.” That’s ridiculous. I’m not at all saying that ecological collapse isn’t real. I believe it is and we need to take it absolutely seriously, but don’t try to use that crisis as a ploy to get us to trust science when science is one of the primary contributing factors.

Another part of his talk on the Late Late Show where I think he fell flat was in his critique of the US response to the pandemic. He seemed to me to be bit out of his depth here. He didn’t seem as knowledgeable or to speak with as much weight as when he was speaking about history or culture. He didn’t seem very convincing or believable. But that didn’t stop him from sounding every bit as confident.

He said,

“And when you look at the actual response in the US in its own house to the epidemic maybe it’s not such a bad thing that it’s not responsible for the world, because it’s doing worse than almost any other country…Greece is doing an amazing job in containing this epidemic. If I had to choose between Greece and the United States who should be leading the world right now, giving us a plan of action, I would definitely choose Greece.”

But I don't believe that he is looking at the "actual response in the US." He doesn’t give a single example of what the US is doing that is so bad or what Greece is doing that is so right. He doesn’t talk at all about the “actual response in the US.” He is stating a thesis here, a value-based statement about the US and Greece, but he is presenting no supporting details, no evidence. Is he evaluating specific actions and legislations that governments are taking? Is he evaluating the information provided by scientists, doctors, and researchers from those countries? Is he evaluating the effectiveness of the hospitals? Is he looking at the response by corporations to provide essential supplies? Is he looking at humanitarian efforts in those countries?

Or is he looking strictly at numbers? We have no idea, because he provides zero evidence, but my gut tells me that he is strictly looking at numbers, because I would imagine all that other information is pretty difficult to get. But numbers can be deceiving! The US may have more infections and more deaths than most countries, but we also have a larger population than most countries. When you break it down by infections per million, we’re doing much better. And if you break it down by deaths per million, we are faring significantly better than many many countries. And we don’t even really know if we can trust the accuracy of any of the numbers you see floating around. I mean, where are the numbers coming from? Who is collecting the numbers and how are they doing it? Perhaps tests are far more easily accessible in the US than in other countries. Maybe every country is defining terms differently. For example a death resulting from Covid-19 – if someone comes to the hospital with the coronavirus and ends up dying from something else or from complications related or even unrelated to the disease, do you count that in the number?

Also…you can’t just take numbers out of context. I think you have to consider the government’s response, the medical response, the response from businesses and corporations, the response of local communities, or humanitarian efforts, and of the general population. And you have to look at reasons for those numbers. Is it possible that Americans travel outside of their own country more than most other nations? Is it possible that the US has more people entering the country than most other nations?

I think Harari believes that by indicting America’s response to the pandemic, he is indicting Trump, so he feels comfortable doing it. But he’s not just indicting Trump…he’s indicting all of America – the general public’s response, our doctors and nurses, our local leaders, our local communities, our businesses.

Frankly, I don’t know how he got away with making such a sweepingly negative claim against the very audience he was talking to without providing a single shred of evidence. Perhaps he had time restrictions on his answers and wasn’t able to expand on his claims. Maybe…but then you’re strategy going into a conversation like that can’t be to make big, sweeping claims without being able to defend them. That just seems kind of irresponsible to me.

So I’m not saying that he’s absolutely wrong on anything. I’m just disappointed with how he presented his ideas and his point of view on these issues. And I think that’s unfortunate from someone as smart, insightful, and creative as Yuval Noah Harari. I don’t know. What do you think?