If nothing is sacred, then everything is for sale

Lawrence Krauss tells us that we mustn’t trust anything he has to say.

I don’t think he meant to tell us that. Nor do I think he’s actually as mercenary and devoid of integrity as he insists that he is. I think he just doesn’t know what the word “sacred” means and thus, accidentally, winds up accusing himself of some awful things in the pages of The New Yorker.

Martin Longman (BooMan) summarizes:

In the process of defending “militant atheism,” physicist Lawrence Krauss writes something inadvertently revealing:

In science, of course, the very word “sacred” is profane. No ideas, religious or otherwise, get a free pass. The notion that some idea or concept is beyond question or attack is anathema to the entire scientific undertaking.

What a strange concept of “the sacred” this man has!

For him, something “sacred” is something that must not be questioned and that requires protection. It’s a word for something that must not be discussed. It’s like the only concept of the sacred he has is of the Holy Bible for people who believe it is the literal word of God.

I don’t want to get into a deep theological discussion here, but that’s a very pinched and truncated view of the sacred.

Fortunately, Krauss’ weird misuse of the word includes a clear definition of what he imagines it to mean. He believes that “sacred” means “some idea or concept is beyond question or attack.” That’s a serviceable definition of the word “dogma.”

In the sentences quoted above and throughout Krauss’ piece, that seems to be mainly what he’s talking about: Dogma. And if we read his essay as a lively rant against dogma, then it makes sense rather than nonsense, and Krauss comes across as he apparently intends — as a principled scientist, and a principled atheist, rather than as a hack-for-hire who would happily produce whatever data or results anyone paid him to produce just as long as the checks didn’t bounce.

Again, that’s not me saying that about him. That’s Krauss saying that about himself. Because everywhere he means to talk about dogma and dogmatic thinking, he instead insists on writing “sacred.”

And “sacred” does not mean that something “is beyond question.” It means that something is beyond price.

When we describe something as “priceless,” we usually don’t mean what that sounds like. When we say that some great work of art is “priceless” what we usually mean, rather, is that it has a very high price. Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger is a “priceless” masterpiece that sold for $179 million at auction this spring. You probably couldn’t afford its price, but it most definitely has one.

Sacred means more than that. It means we’re talking about something that cannot be bought and sold — something for which the very idea of price would be obscene.

To say that nothing is “sacred,” then, is to say that everything is for sale. This is not just a deeply cynical thing to say about the world, but a bitterly cynical thing to say about oneself.

To reject the idea of the sacred is to say that you will do anything for the right price. It means you would be willing to sell everything — including your integrity,  including your commitment to science or to reason or to whatever other principles you tenuously hold until such time as someone offers you enough money to abandon them.

That’s why Krauss’ repeated attacks on the word “sacred” would be a horrific example of self-slander if we couldn’t otherwise tell he was misunderstanding and misusing that word. Because if we took him at his word, then we would have to conclude that we cannot take him at his word. For someone who believes “the very word ‘sacred’ is profane,” everything is for sale — including their word, their integrity, their reasoning, etc. People who believe that everything has a price cannot be trusted. We can never be sure that they’re saying what they believe to be true or just saying whatever the highest bidder has asked them to say.

Fortunately for Lawrence Krauss, his essay otherwise makes it very clear that he doesn’t actually reject the idea of the sacred. He makes it quite clear throughout that he is devoted to science and to scientific integrity and that he would never put those principles up for sale.

He also tells us, repeatedly, that he is a committed atheist — feistily reclaiming and redeeming the epithet of “militant” atheist. It’s obvious from reading his piece that it would be pointless to offer Krauss any amount of money to convince him to abandon this “militant atheism.” If we offered him $50 to become a Mormon, he would refuse — insulted by the suggestion. He would do the same if we offered him $50 million, or $500 million, or $50 billion. There would be no point haggling over price, because the subject — Krauss’ principles and his commitment to his understanding of reason — is one that he regards as beyond price. Something, in other words, he regards as sacred.

Sacredness is not a threat to the practice of science. Sacredness is necessary for science. Science is trustworthy because it offers a way of pursuing truth that cannot be bought and sold — because its methods and its findings are not contingent on the price they can get on the auction block. If nothing is sacred, then science isn’t a possibility. If nothing is sacred, then everything has a price and you’re no longer a scientist, you’re a Merchant of Doubt and you’re going to wind up working for the Heartland Institute or some other euphemistically named “institute” of corporate hacks for hire.

Nor is sacredness anathema to atheism. Some of my favorite writers are atheists. They’re good writers because they are principled and trustworthy — because their words and ideas and reason and opinions are not for sale at any price. I’m a religious person — a Christian — and so I have a different perspective than they do on the sources and foundations of sacredness, but I trust these atheist writers because I can see that they have integrity, which is to say that they would never be willing to sell that integrity at any price.

The claim that nothing is sacred is incompatible with atheism. If nothing is beyond price, and therefore everything has a price, then price becomes God. And making price into a God doesn’t make you an atheist, it makes you a worshipper of Mammon.