That's not even an accurate quotation of him.
Religion, what's the point?
- Thread starter TheRedFlag
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I did believe in god, up through around age 27/28 (some of the Caf members can testify to this) then I became agnostic. The last straw was the tidal wave that killed 200,000+, many of which were amongst the most religious persons on the plant. Their god allowed this - because their god doesn't exist. I had became an atheist. There is no evidence of a god. And Jesus is but a mere collaboration of prior persons and myths. He also wasn't the only man running around the ME in those days claiming to be a son of a god, or a god.
The only reason I ever believed was through indoctrination and society. Once I ventured away from my little bubble in Texas, I came to see different views, and education also enhanced my cognitive abilities. I finally came to realize that a loving god would not be as arrogant, cunning, demonstrative, manipulative, and vindictive as the one mentioned in the Abrahamic religion, nor would a loving god doom human souls to eternal damnation.
God has numerous human qualities - because man created him/it.
Have you visited the US? If not, or even if so, do spend some time in the south/southeastern US. You'll quickly see how religion influences EVERYTHING.
Well, the difference is that we at least have an idea what the flying spaghetti monster looks like... and some credible looking visual evidence as well.It could also be evidence for Him. And you can't disprove it.
Yes, because the people allow it to. The US is a pretty good example of how more forward thinking regions diminish the power of religion.
Never really believed in God myself. And it's for the reasoning you stated(And of course the amazingly lack of any evidence as well). As horrible as things such as natural disasters are(Or really any disasters in life) I've always found it easier to deal with knowing that it was simply bad luck or mother nature that these horrible things happen. Rather than some giant guy in the sky who either watches and does nothing or who actively has a role in these things happening.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29677779
God didn't fully accept gays yet but he'll have another think about it next year. He might yet open the gates of heaven to them. Fair play to him for at least now saying "discrimination against gays is to be avoided"
God didn't fully accept gays yet but he'll have another think about it next year. He might yet open the gates of heaven to them. Fair play to him for at least now saying "discrimination against gays is to be avoided"
But the gates are open for the child rapists that the church employs, internationally.
Harris still involved in his handbags with various detractors. Publishing an email exchange between him and CJ Werleman here....
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/email-exchange-between-sam-harris-and-c.j.-werleman
It's all very bitchy.
I miss the charisma of Hitchens.
The people going after Harris wouldn't even bother with the futility of going after Hitchens.
I've actually watched this unfold on Twitter these past few days. CJ Werleman has screwed up big-time, and was exposed as a plagiarist on Godless Spellchecker's blog a few days ago. This led to an embarrassing meltdown on his part, which culminated in him levelling the same charge at Harris under a pseudonym on a blog created specifically for that purpose (Harris has responsed to that accusation on his blog now, and unsurprisingly it seems it's nonsense). So what seemed to have started as a desperate cry for attention on Werleman's part has pretty much wrecked his career.
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Yeah Werleman seems like an absolute muppet seeking to exploit publicity out of the Harris/Affleck debacle, among other things. Glad he's being exposed.
He seems to have about as much self-awareness as Donald Trump, which makes it very difficult to have any sort of empathy with him. His apology for plagiarizing was addressed to his "fans and supporters", not the people he'd actually copied from, and was made all the more ridiculous by the fact that he deleted all critical comments to his apology.
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Oh man, this just keeps getting better and better. Now Werleman has retweeted someone trying to claim responsibility for the blog accusing Harris of plagiarism:An account that was dormant until very recently, doing almost nothing but endlessly praising CJ Werleman.
And if so, why would she ask herself to follow herself:
Not to mention that Werleman tweeted this several days before the blog post mysteriously appeared:
He just keeps digging that hole for himself
Absolutely eviscerated his own reputation in the space of a few days. Someone needs to protect him from himself (even if he provides great entertainment to the rest of us).
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An account that was dormant until very recently, doing almost nothing but endlessly praising CJ Werleman.
And if so, why would she ask herself to follow herself:
Not to mention that Werleman tweeted this several days before the blog post mysteriously appeared:
He just keeps digging that hole for himself
Isn't he a known plagiarist anyway? I'm sure a few places have actually expunged his work from their archives because of that.
He wasn't a known plagiarist before these last few days, was he?
But yeah, AlterNet have come public about this now, apologized and removed all his articles from their archives.
I'm sure I'd heard of him being caught out previously with not crediting original authors with stuff he'd put in his writings?
Perhaps, I wouldn't know. Haven't heard of him until these last few days. But he seems like a massive narcissist judging from the stuff he's put on his own official website:
Cringe.
And more and more of his colleagues and friends are distancing themselves from him. Even Dawkins has piled on:
Poor guy doesn't seem to realize how serious plagiarism is. But at least he got attention, even if it wasn't the kind he wanted.
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Someone's made a blog about this now, basically a compilation of Werleman's stupidity. Hilarious, what an absolute fecking plank.
http://somewhatmorecriticalcranson.wordpress.com/
http://somewhatmorecriticalcranson.wordpress.com/
I liked a lot of your post but I just wanted to take issue with this bit. I'm Muslim, I don't have any desire to impose a strict (or any other) interpretation of Sharia law on anyone, I don't think people should be killed, stoned, etc if they choose to convert from Islam to another religion, I don't have any particular issues with homosexuals and I think my views on women are rather progressive actually.
I don't come into this thread often but I just wanted to make that quick point. Please don't assume all Muslims subscribe to Saudi/Iranian etc policies. Thanks!
So's Wolverine I think, and he's not saying it's a mandatory trait of all Muslims but he is right. Thanks to various reasons (primarily lack of education in many Muslim countries) Muslims on aggregate are very conservative.
This is somewhat true, I can say that 90% of my relatives still living in Pakistan are not like that. However, most of that family is well educated (certainly by local standards) and it's true that generally the less educated and more impoverished the community, the more conservative and traditional the belief system.
I was more making the point about the millions of Muslims living in western countries to be honest. You won't find many second generation Muslims in Canada or the US who exhibit these characteristics.
I wouldn't assume that at all. I've always said it's important not to generalise not just for the sake of not generalising but because those generalisations are empirically untrue. Certain when it comes to Muslims living in western countries and countries better off.
I did say there are certain beliefs I find prevalent among British muslims who are educated that I find not conducive with a modern society. They might believe on or two things, or a few, or a lot that I mentioned and might be amenable to rational discourse and I certainly wouldn't regard them as "dangerous" as per Sam Harris. And despite many having conservative opinions that you wouldn't find equally in Catholics or other religious groups many are productive, well adjusted, apolitical members of society who want to live and let live. And indeed we are seeing remarkable progress in areas such as forced marriages, inter-faith dialogues etc.
He did plagiarise a few things, and apologised in unequivocal terms for the laziness but he is right on Islamic terrorism. Im not at all surprised the new atheists going after him after he essentially went after their raison d'etre.
The fact is that they now make a living out of amplifying the threat that Islam plays as a uniquely destructive force. That I take issue with. The majority of atheists in fact who don't necessarily identity as anti-theists according to a few polls any way might also take issue with.
The fact is that Harris has said he thinks pre-emptively nuking Muslims under the control of what he deems as an Islamist group if they were to acquire long range nuclear weapons. And he said "time is not on our side" meaning its imminent. Its that kind of neocon alarmist bullshit that many take issue with. Should we take people like ISIS seriously? Sure, should we say things like pre-emptively nuking as a hypothetical and provoking a nuclear war? No. Pakistan has had nuclear weapons but most of these countries have a self preservationist streak, suicide bombers and their ilk make up rebel arms and militia groups, in ISIS' case they have captured tanks (a few fighter jets allegedly) at most. To go from that and say we have to consider the possibility they'll have nukes is ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that most western countries would have I'd imagine pretty sophisticated anti-nuclear/ballistics defense systems in place. No mention of that whatsoever by Sam Harris and his ticking bomb scenarios.
And when this is pointed out to him and his fans he shows them an essay. Sam Harris doesn't understand that you can't polish a turd. He wants a clash of civilisation, or maybe he doesn't and its all talk, who knows.
After this Sam Harris was booked to come on MPR radio but cancelled last minute because they booked "known fraud" Reza Aslan on to appear with him despite of course Harris' debates with him previously.
I think Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are finding it difficult to contend with that there are dissenting voicing against them on issues. Being a liberal atheist doesn't preclude you from being dangerously bigoted and wrong on issues of national foreign policy and they don't like being called what they are (in harsh terms admittedly) but they have said some pretty strong stuff. And there will be pushback on it.
But of course Sam Harris has the twitter/reddit/youtube/blogosphere atheist contingent on his side armed with accusations of "intellectual dishonesty", "obscurantism", "ad hominem" ready to go at a moment's notice when their worldview is challenged with nuance.
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He's an absolute fecking tool. And he's certainly wrong on Islamic terrorism. He's the worst kind of apologist: the relativist who will write a book ceaselessly disparaging Christianity, and simultaneously make all sorts of excuses for Islam.
I don't see how any rational person can deny that Islam is uniquely destructive at this point in history. That's just a fact, whether you like it or not.
I don't see what's controversial about Harris' paragraph on a nuclear first strike. The only points he makes is that a belief in paradise and martyrdom destroys the logic of MAD and deterrence, and that the Muslim world must do everything they can to keep nukes out of the hands of jihadists. Again, very uncontroversial stuff. You're reading waaaaay too much into it.
And surely nobody takes Reza Aslan seriously at this point? The man is a habitual liar and a complete joke, and I'm not surprised Harris cancelled considering Aslan's behavior these last few weeks.
I don't see how any rational person can deny that Islam is uniquely destructive at this point in history. That's just a fact, whether you like it or not.
I don't see what's controversial about Harris' paragraph on a nuclear first strike. The only points he makes is that a belief in paradise and martyrdom destroys the logic of MAD and deterrence, and that the Muslim world must do everything they can to keep nukes out of the hands of jihadists. Again, very uncontroversial stuff. You're reading waaaaay too much into it.
And surely nobody takes Reza Aslan seriously at this point? The man is a habitual liar and a complete joke, and I'm not surprised Harris cancelled considering Aslan's behavior these last few weeks.
Christ...Aslan is really insufferable.
An absolute charlatan. There's a reason his day job is Professor of Creative Writing.
I find him a bit namby pamby on religion but he is right to call out Harris and the new atheist dogma that is going after Islam, not just islamic fundamentalism as an existential threat to our society.
Here's what scares me, I am an atheist Muslim. My family who are more liberal than your average ones yet we all identify as Muslims. It is a real concern to us, and indeed all Muslims that we are one major terror attack (i.e. more resembling the scope of 9/11) for there to be calls for us to be deported, marginalised, internment camped, profiled ever more and start seeing the rise of far right politics more than ever.
How true that might be is up for debate, I'd like to think Britain would be above that, we saw that in 7/7 and I am heartened by the responses in the aftermath of the Ottatwa shooting yesterday so hopefully it won't come to that.
But the people leading the charge for a clash against Islam, not Islamic extremism, Islam...me, my family, my friends, my mosques, my Imams, my fellow brothers and sisters, a quarter of humanity and this is based on hyperbolic bigotry, pure and simple. And with the internet, this bullshit is reinforced and is incredibly insidious.
You guys are calling CJ Werleman, Reza Aslan all sorts of things but he is not the one that calls for torture (despite the vast evidence to the contrary) of detainees, fascists' opinion on Islam, racial profiling, pre-emptive nuclear warfare based on who Sam Harris and the West decide are Islamists etc.
Suppose Jamat islamia wins the next election in Pakistan, they are an Islamist party and have never done well (neither have other Islamist parties in countries Harris cites polls from), but lets say somehow they win, Pakistan is a nuclear armed state, should we nuke the country of 180 million? Better to nuke the brown people we can decide we don't like just in case. Being a radical jihadi hellbent on martydom isn't a bloodtype that can identified and the person isolated. At any point any of the nuclear armed states could do something, of course mutually-assured destruction might not apply to ISIS but there is no evidence whatsoever they are close to doing so and Sam Harris not only raised it as a hypothetical but one that is very well possible and hence his sociopathic justification.
Meanwhile as a planet, we have climate change deniers, an obesity pandemic, antibiotic resistance, things that will cause havoc on a much bigger scale than Islam, but no Islam itself is the supreme bad idea. Like I said, for supposed rationalists such of the Harris fans are incredibly dogmatic. When people challenged the Catholic Church and catholicism recently in terms of the social ideas (gay marriage, abortion rights) it was not done through militarism but through words. With Islam though, atheists want neoconservative militarism. And then they call anyone who doesn't naiive despite plenty of evidence that our foreign policy is disastrously counter-productive.
Its a load of crock, and it's being challenged by other self identified liberals and thank feck for that. With the credibility new atheists are giving to right wingers and getting their pseudo-intellectual bigotry on chat shows, media outlets it's a very scary time to be a Muslim. Fortunately there are people who see through this nonsense, they might not be as erudite as Dawkins and co. But they certainly have a lot more humanity going for them.
Here's what scares me, I am an atheist Muslim. My family who are more liberal than your average ones yet we all identify as Muslims. It is a real concern to us, and indeed all Muslims that we are one major terror attack (i.e. more resembling the scope of 9/11) for there to be calls for us to be deported, marginalised, internment camped, profiled ever more and start seeing the rise of far right politics more than ever.
How true that might be is up for debate, I'd like to think Britain would be above that, we saw that in 7/7 and I am heartened by the responses in the aftermath of the Ottatwa shooting yesterday so hopefully it won't come to that.
But the people leading the charge for a clash against Islam, not Islamic extremism, Islam...me, my family, my friends, my mosques, my Imams, my fellow brothers and sisters, a quarter of humanity and this is based on hyperbolic bigotry, pure and simple. And with the internet, this bullshit is reinforced and is incredibly insidious.
You guys are calling CJ Werleman, Reza Aslan all sorts of things but he is not the one that calls for torture (despite the vast evidence to the contrary) of detainees, fascists' opinion on Islam, racial profiling, pre-emptive nuclear warfare based on who Sam Harris and the West decide are Islamists etc.
Suppose Jamat islamia wins the next election in Pakistan, they are an Islamist party and have never done well (neither have other Islamist parties in countries Harris cites polls from), but lets say somehow they win, Pakistan is a nuclear armed state, should we nuke the country of 180 million? Better to nuke the brown people we can decide we don't like just in case. Being a radical jihadi hellbent on martydom isn't a bloodtype that can identified and the person isolated. At any point any of the nuclear armed states could do something, of course mutually-assured destruction might not apply to ISIS but there is no evidence whatsoever they are close to doing so and Sam Harris not only raised it as a hypothetical but one that is very well possible and hence his sociopathic justification.
Meanwhile as a planet, we have climate change deniers, an obesity pandemic, antibiotic resistance, things that will cause havoc on a much bigger scale than Islam, but no Islam itself is the supreme bad idea. Like I said, for supposed rationalists such of the Harris fans are incredibly dogmatic. When people challenged the Catholic Church and catholicism recently in terms of the social ideas (gay marriage, abortion rights) it was not done through militarism but through words. With Islam though, atheists want neoconservative militarism. And then they call anyone who doesn't naiive despite plenty of evidence that our foreign policy is disastrously counter-productive.
Its a load of crock, and it's being challenged by other self identified liberals and thank feck for that. With the credibility new atheists are giving to right wingers and getting their pseudo-intellectual bigotry on chat shows, media outlets it's a very scary time to be a Muslim. Fortunately there are people who see through this nonsense, they might not be as erudite as Dawkins and co. But they certainly have a lot more humanity going for them.
I don't mind Aslan, but he's incredibly wooly on Islam. He doesn't even seem to believe it himself, but identifies with it almost because he feels like he should.
As for @Wolverine you seem very eager to categorise "atheists" or "new atheists" as a homogeneous group in much the same way you're complaining about. Followers of Harris or Dawkins, sure, but "atheists" are just people who don't believe in Gods. Their moral and political views aren't really relevant to the definition. Practice what you preach.
As for @Wolverine you seem very eager to categorise "atheists" or "new atheists" as a homogeneous group in much the same way you're complaining about. Followers of Harris or Dawkins, sure, but "atheists" are just people who don't believe in Gods. Their moral and political views aren't really relevant to the definition. Practice what you preach.
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I have not read his book on Islam "Koran curious", but he has said this about Islam
"As an ideology, Islam sucks balls. There I said it! Like all ideologies that pretend to hold the answers to all of life's questions, Islam, when practiced at the socioeconomic fringes, ultimately leads to fundamentalism - fundamentalism that inevitably leads to dangerous actions - such as gender and sexual discrimination, and so forth. I make no apologies for dangerous ideas."
He has an opinion on Islamic terrorism and there others, many of whom who actually have the temerity to publish papers on it come to different conclusions to Harris and co. But of course they all must not be debated with.
I still don't know why Harris pulled out with the debate with Aslan, he has debated people he'd differ much more widely on. It would have been pretty good. Despite me considering Harris as dangerous and more worthy of the lovely adjectives you folks have mentioned in your previous posts I would like his ideas challenged because they are important and they need to be exposed for the alarmist bollocks that a lot of it is.
I agree he's like that on religion in general but then again most theologians/religious apologists kinda are.
I find Harris a fascinating guy. I just finished his book Waking Up, which is about spirituality without religion. Or rather it says that on the tin, but then he spends much of the book talking about how great Buddhism is and explaining the concepts around Buddhism (grasping, suffering, non-existence of self, etc) in layman's terms. Suffice to say I was a little surprised, happily so, to find him covering such topics.
It feels a little incongruous then when I read and watch his views on Islam. In particular some part of me feels like I must be missing something, because trying to square the image of the author of that book with the chap arguing with Ben Affleck is really tough.
I honestly think he didn't do much wrong in that interview. He was repeatedly shouted down, which didn't allow him to get his point across but I'm sure it was essentially sound. He has a very slow, measured way of making his point which can take a long time and isn't suited to the to and fro of that scenario. Plus Maher was being such an obnoxious prat he painted Harris in a bad light by association. Then the whoops and hollers from the "Merica!" audience also helped portray him as a bit of a pantomime villain.
I quite like him. He's written a book on Free Will I really want to get my hands on. Heard him discussing it on the Joe Rogan podcast (of all places!) and it sounds fascinating.
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Harris and Aslan are two sides of the same coin, both contribute to the problem of understanding the role of religion in the modern world, but many people are naturally going to gravitate towards Harris since he comes across as, in my opinion, at least more honest and straight-talking than Aslan who's been pulled on so many things that anyone with a bit of knowledge will not be persuaded by him.
Harris overwhelmingly cites religion as the primary source of human morals and subsequently action, whereas Aslan wants to claim that religion has no influence whatsoever but is simply the tunnel through which human behavior is channeled (see here - http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/10/reza-aslan-on-what-the-new-atheists-get-wrong.html). Neither is interested in exploring the possibility that a whole range of factors (geography, economics, resources, demographics, history, etc.) combine and interact with each other and with religion to produce the dynamics that shape society and politics. That kind of nuance and complexity won't get you on talk shows or publishing bestsellers, most people want to hear easy answers.
Free Will is a very interesting book (got it on audio book). Definitely recommend it.
Good to know. Just got my audible credit through will stick it on the list.
I'm not sure that is possible to be honest. If you don't believe there is a god how on earth can you be a muslim,or have I got this all wrong?