Hari Seldon said:

I have no idea who Sam is, but I didn't like him. Another chickenhawk who wants other people to go to war for his ideas. He might as well be Bill Crystal.

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Hari Seldon said:

I have no idea who Sam is, but I didn't like him. Another chickenhawk who wants other people to go to war for his ideas. He might as well be Bill Crystal.

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Dr. Benton Quest said:

Even though we agree on several points, Sam has always seemed too far out for me. He is influenced heavily by his former use of hallucinogens.

He was the weakest "horseman" among the atheist community for his support of spirituality.

Fascinating and really sharp.

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entrement said:

He was one of the prominent New Atheists.

A few years ago him, Dawkins, Hitchens, and an academic by the name of Daniel Dennett, who all released books on atheism around the same time, condemning religion aggressively.

These books were more confrontational than most works before, in part due to Islamic terrorisms, so the authors took a hard line against religion.

I'm not an atheist, but I like Sam a lot. I don't agree with him on everything. His stuff on mediation is fantastic.

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Hari Seldon said:

The idea that we need to world police things around the world, first with twitter shaming (lol), and then with economics (i.e. starving out millions of people while the elite live fine), and then with war (that obviously me and mine will not be signing up for) is some Bill Crystal neocon level evilness. Maybe he has some other qualities which are good, but that line of thinking I detest.

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Atrophis said:

Read up on his recent spat with Chomsky. Harris has some pretty reprehensible ideas when it comes to war and showed himself to be quite the fool on the subject.

I'll give this a listen tomorrow, always up for more Dan Carlin.

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Atrophis said:

Read up on his recent spat with Chomsky. Harris has some pretty reprehensible ideas when it comes to war and showed himself to be quite the fool on the subject.

I'll give this a listen tomorrow, always up for more Dan Carlin.

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Arkeband said:

I couldn't get through Sam and Noam's published e-mail argument, a lot of it was arguing semantics and it was riddled with passive-aggressive bullshit.

Can you summarize what their particular stances were? I know a lot of people like to misrepresent Sam Harris's views as warlike but in the context of what he's said I didn't get that vibe... at all.

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Valhelm said:

Sam Harris is a joke. Dan Carlin did a disservice to podcast by associating with this man.

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Chairman Yang said:

What specific points in the podcast were a joke and unworthy of discussion?

Honestly, the more unsubstantiated hate I see for Sam Harris discussions or writings, the more sympathetic I am to his claims of being frequently misrepresented or shouted down.

If he's wrong (and I think he is in many ways), fine, address the areas he's wrong. If you think he's arguing in bad faith, show some evidence of that. If you think he's an idiot, talk about how. And if you're criticizing Sam's discussion in the podcast, it makes sense to stick to things he said in the podcast, rather than digging up things he's said elsewhere.

Basically, contribute something.

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Chairman Yang said:

What specific points in the podcast were a joke and unworthy of discussion?

Honestly, the more unsubstantiated hate I see for Sam Harris discussions or writings, the more sympathetic I am to his claims of being frequently misrepresented or shouted down.

If he's wrong (and I think he is in many ways), fine, address the areas he's wrong. If you think he's arguing in bad faith, show some evidence of that. If you think he's an idiot, talk about how. And if you're criticizing Sam's discussion in the podcast, it makes sense to stick to things he said in the podcast, rather than digging up things he's said elsewhere.

Basically, contribute something.

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Hari Seldon said:

I have no idea who Sam is, but I didn't like him. Another chickenhawk who wants other people to go to war for his ideas. He might as well be Bill Crystal.

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Two Words said:

He lost me once he started arguing that morals are objective.

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Two Words said:

He lost me once he started arguing that morals are objective.

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riskVSreward said:

Much of Gaf hates Sam Harris.

I remember when he was on Bill Maher (who much of Gaf also hates) he was going through great lengths to show that his disdain for Muslims was specifically for the extremists. He laid out a diagram of concentric circles, showing how most Muslims are moderate and non-violent, but in the smaller circles were dangerous extremists who hold certain violent beliefs as truth. Ben Affleck called him an Islamaphobe and much of Gaf cheered!

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Valhelm said:

Sam Harris might not think every Muslim is a terrorist, but believes every Muslim should be treated like one.

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Valhelm said:

stuff

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Meus Renaissance said:

Almost half-way into it, up till the point Harris describes Carlin's position as pacifism, and thus as an extension, immoral. Carlin seems out of his depth on this topic as of right now.

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Dr. Benton Quest said:

Even though we agree on several points, Sam has always seemed too far out for me. He is influenced heavily by his former use of hallucinogens.

He was the weakest "horseman" among the atheist community for his support of spirituality.

Fascinating and really sharp.

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Ty4on said:

I'm not a big fan of Sam (for reasons outlined above), but that makes me want to listen. I've not listened to a lot of Dan Carlin, but I always disliked his certainty that doing nothing was the right thing.

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Valhelm said:

Sam Harris is a joke. Dan Carlin did a disservice to podcast by associating with this man.

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Chairman Yang said:

Honestly, the more unsubstantiated hate I see for Sam Harris discussions or writings, the more sympathetic I am to his claims of being frequently misrepresented or shouted down.

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Dr. Benton Quest said:

Even though we agree on several points, Sam has always seemed too far out for me. He is influenced heavily by his former use of hallucinogens.

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Valhelm said:

Noted. I'll admit that I didn't pay enough attention to Harris' points to make any kind of intelligent critique, because I have a pretty strong aversion to Harris in any capacity. Sam Harris posits himself as a renaissance man, which I think is a laudable goal for personal improvement, but because he has his fingers in so many pies (biology, "New Atheism", history, philosophy, neuroscience, and politics) he hasn't been able to sufficiently study and understand any of those fields except neuroscience, and his contribution to any of them has generally been unoriginal and generally shallow. His basic ideas can be boiled down to some very simple points (religion = bad, Islam = mega bad, American founding fathers = good), and most of his bibliography has been his attempt to justify these positions (which are hardly controversial in American discourse) with cherry-picked examples, like "Wahhabist suppression of criticism is proof that Islam must destroyed". I don't pretend to have a much greater knowledge of continental philosophy or geopolitics than Harris does, but I don't run a pseudo-intellectual empire in which I tell hundreds of thousands of people that I'm an expert.

He's also a major asshole. Sam Harris honestly believes that it's acceptable for members of "dangerous groups" to be harassed by those with institutional power and loves to insist that Islamophobia is a valid sentiment to hold. Although Harris identifies as a liberal and holds some very soft progressive ideas like "gay people should be allowed to get married", his philosophy is uncomfortably compatible with Republican foreign policy. And most notoriously, Sam Harris thinks that "it may even be ethical to kill people" who have personal beliefs that clash with his own.

Beyond this, Sam Harris represents the intellectual dishonesty rife in the evangelical "New Atheist" movement in a way not at all unlike Richard Dawkins. He sees Christianity as a wholly evil movement that has "suppressed science" for the entirety of its existence, even though the intellectual contributions of medieval Christianity are very, very well-documented. He's also a major presentist, and as a history major this is one of my biggest beefs with him and his fans. Sam Harris does not realize that his own beliefs and worldview do not represent those of pre-modern and non-Western peoples, and routinely criticizes Christianity for being "implausible" without considering how ideas of faith have changed over the centuries. The faith of a 12th-century farmer in high Catholic theology is not really distinct from the faith of a 21st-century cashier in complex scientific ideas, but Harris refuses to recognize this. His characterization of pre-modern clergymen as mustache-twirling dastards who made an effort to "fool" laypeople is ignorant and childish, but because he's such a widely-read public figure, people all across the internet take his word for objective truth. And actually, fans of Harris represent the blind faith that he claims to despise in his discussions of Christianity. But Sam Harris probably doesn't even recognize this, because in his little worldview religion is the only reason for ignorance in the world.

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Amir0x said:

If it actually mattered to you his so-called "ignorant and childish" reductions of more complex realities, you would not have done essentially the same thing you accuse Harris of, reducing his points down to comically ridiculous levels and trying to posit it as his thesis (i.e. "religion = bad" comment). Yet Harris has actually spent great time elaborating on his positions, which go far deeper than you suggest here (though never without criticism, since no one is), and is not at all the black and white characterization you try to paint. This suggests the actual reason you dislike Harris is because he has criticized something important to you, and this has clouded your capacity to reason on this score.

Take your reading of Christian contributions. True, Christianity has contributed lots to the realms of architecture, art and even science. But it is also true that the way this happened is because the Vatican's version of faith became essentially the only game in town for many centuries, suppressing any alternative methods of thought. In essence, most of the European advances in science came from this venue during this period because of extreme threats of violence and domination to people who tried to posit alternatives.

What this means is that the "contributions" to science from this corner are actually viewed in a vacuum, because it is undeniable that had Christianity not been involved in brutally suppressing massive amounts of human expression that we would have almost certainly came upon many discoveries far sooner and at a greater rate.

But because there is no way to quantify what was lost by their abhorrent behavior, supporters of what these religions have contributed have a quaint and essentially unassailable way to hold these achievements up as a way of suggesting that they have provided something essential.

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Valhelm said:

If it matters, I'm not a religious person. I think that religion generally causes more harm than good in the modern world, and certainly has no place in politics. But Harris' arguments about the role of the Church before the modern era tend to be naive and uninformed.

What you say about Catholicism being "the only game in town" is really accurate, but you can't assume that a world without Christianity would have been somehow more intellectual. I don't really know what the Catholic church did suppress during the Middle Ages, given how interested many churchmen were in accumulating knowledge and studying the natural world.

As for suppression, the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages had little interest in suppressing any ideology that was not explicitly theological. There is the obvious example of Galileo, but this was post-medieval, and much more complicated than "science = bad". I am not aware of a single intellectual being limited for a non-theological reason, mostly because the Church was the only entity with enough resources to support the training and patronage of scholars. This hegemony is certainly unethical, but you can't suggest that there would have been just as much intellectual development otherwise. And you certainly can't claim that we would be "more advanced" today, as people like Sam Harris and yourself often do.

If, somehow, the Catholic Church was abolished in 1100, who would be able to promote intellectualism? You need to realize that there were no philosophical academies in the post-Roman era, and that all universities were somewhat ecclesiastical. Lay rulers didn't really have much interest in promoting intellectualism, and those that did (such as Charlemagne) were often mostly concerned with recording their own history and educating their children for political gain. Your suggestion that the Catholic church actually hampered the Whiggish idea of progress is unfounded and intellectually dishonest. Sam Harris' fervent conviction to that misconception is why I believe that Dan Carlin shouldn't have organized this dialogue.

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Sutton Dagger said:

His position is that once a standard of morality is arrived at, the wellbeing of conscious creatures, then we can make objective statements about morality. What is your issue with that?

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Amir0x said:

them to be made. We have no real way of quantifying how much better it would have been without them... but based on history, I'd say infinitely.

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Valhelm said:

This is what I don't understand. You mentioned that my argument isn't more than conjecture, but you're making an absurd claim not supported by anything, really.

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Valhelm said:

The culture of and economic circumstances of classical Greece (at least in certain cities) and, to a lesser degree, the Roman Empire, encouraged intellectual development in ways that wouldn't be possible in Europe until the Renaissance, really. If we imagine a post-Roman Europe in which Europe still practiced its indigenous religions, presumably with a strong Roman/Hellenic influence, we can't expect Roman-style academia to have existed. Post-Roman kingdoms were too loosely-organized to promote that kind of intellectual rigor.

The Catholic Church, as an institutional remnant (or revenant, really) of Roman stability and hegemony allowed for an international exchange of ideas that would not have been possible otherwise.

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Amir0x said:

This argument doesn't make sense. Again, we have no idea what would have actually replaced the structure of learning that collapsed when the Roman Empire disintegrated had Christianity not been around. Based on every past period of human development, your idea of what would have happened simply rings false.

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Hari Seldon said:

I have no idea who Sam is, but I didn't like him. Another chickenhawk who wants other people to go to war for his ideas. He might as well be Bill Crystal.

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Valhelm said:

Noted. I'll admit that I didn't pay enough attention to Harris' points to make any kind of intelligent critique, because I have a pretty strong aversion to Harris in any capacity. Sam Harris posits himself as a renaissance man, which I think is a laudable goal for personal improvement, but because he has his fingers in so many pies (biology, "New Atheism", history, philosophy, neuroscience, and politics) he hasn't been able to sufficiently study and understand any of those fields except neuroscience, and his contribution to any of them has generally been unoriginal and generally shallow. His basic ideas can be boiled down to some very simple points (religion = bad, Islam = mega bad, American founding fathers = good), and most of his bibliography has been his attempt to justify these positions (which are hardly controversial in American discourse) with cherry-picked examples, like "Wahhabist suppression of criticism is proof that Islam must destroyed". I don't pretend to have a much greater knowledge of continental philosophy or geopolitics than Harris does, but I don't run a pseudo-intellectual empire in which I tell hundreds of thousands of people that I'm an expert.

He's also a major asshole. Sam Harris honestly believes that it's acceptable for members of "dangerous groups" to be harassed by those with institutional power and loves to insist that Islamophobia is a valid sentiment to hold. Although Harris identifies as a liberal and holds some very soft progressive ideas like "gay people should be allowed to get married", his philosophy is uncomfortably compatible with Republican foreign policy. And most notoriously, Sam Harris thinks that "it may even be ethical to kill people" who have personal beliefs that clash with his own.

Beyond this, Sam Harris represents the intellectual dishonesty rife in the evangelical "New Atheist" movement in a way not at all unlike Richard Dawkins. He sees Christianity as a wholly evil movement that has "suppressed science" for the entirety of its existence, even though the intellectual contributions of medieval Christianity are very, very well-documented. He's also a major presentist, and as a history major this is one of my biggest beefs with him and his fans. Sam Harris does not realize that his own beliefs and worldview do not represent those of pre-modern and non-Western peoples, and routinely criticizes Christianity for being "implausible" without considering how ideas of faith have changed over the centuries. The faith of a 12th-century farmer in high Catholic theology is not really distinct from the faith of a 21st-century cashier in complex scientific ideas, but Harris refuses to recognize this. His characterization of pre-modern clergymen as mustache-twirling dastards who made an effort to "fool" laypeople is ignorant and childish, but because he's such a widely-read public figure, people all across the internet take his word for objective truth. And actually, fans of Harris represent the blind faith that he claims to despise in his discussions of Christianity. But Sam Harris probably doesn't even recognize this, because in his little worldview religion is the only reason for ignorance in the world.

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