Chris Hedges: Religious Extremism and New Atheism

[RationalWaves]

I agree with some of his attacks on the views of Hitchens and Harris, but some of the statements he makes are just idiotic. Basically everything from 8:58 to 9:54 is just utter bull crap. There's no reason that convictions that other people are wrong must be taken to the extremes he describes. He ignores the religious underpinnings of Hitler's actions.

I get the feeling that Hedges has no fucking clue what science is. It's not dogmatic. It has no agenda. It's a discovery process not a thing.

[ritchloui]

@RationalWaves Yes. I agree. Richard Carrier gives an exceptionally good explanation of the religious versus the scientific form of reasoning. He shows that the scientific approach is not only more fruitful and always has been but that it is also more morally coherent. Unfortunately Hedges' sympathies tend more toward those who 'answer to God/Allah alone than to those who concede ultimate authority to evidence and facts.

[RationalWaves]

I've agree with many things Hedges says politically, but this talk is very dishonest. He is straw-manning 'new' atheism, particularly when he says: "And what they've done is take evolutionary biology ... and use it as a kind of blueprint for human behavior. They have essentially created a definition of religion that embodies all evil" (11:39). This is just absurd. None of the new atheists advocate social Darwinism and all of them recognize religions' positive effects (except Hitchens arguably).

[freeshyne1234]

@RationalWaves

You missed the subtle point he was making. He wasn't saying that new athiests say "all evil comes from religion". He was alluding to the ideology that has driven past abuses of power, where people say "all our problems stem from x/y/z" and then use that as a justification to persecute that particular group. Likewise new athiests equally identify "religion" as the impediment to progress. Essentially arguing that our problems stem largely from religion. Hedges is dead-on

[RationalWaves]

@freeshyne1234 If he's talking about Hitchens' views, I agree. He did tend to think that way. Otherwise, he's building a straw-man. I think most atheists make it exceedingly clear that people are not the sum total of their religious identity and that it's the ideas of religion that deserve criticism, not the people themselves. Also, "religion" *is* a major impediment to progress, but not the sole one by any stretch of the imagination. This idea that new atheism advocates violence is incorrect.

[ritchloui]

@freeshyne1234 Unfortunately I think Hedges, as a Christian, at some level, has already rejected and fears scientific reasoning, hence his tendency to straw man the scientific approach, whilst keeping the door ajar for the Islamic cause. Check out Richard Carrier on religion and science. Like a lot of 'lefties' Hedges is dangerously naive about the Islamic project and still regards Islam to be essentially misunderstood and fundamentally benign. The banking debacle is useful to such people.

[JannahCaller]

So Hedges likes atheism but dislikes certain anti-Muslim people in the atheist camp? Yep, that's about my position. It's hard to like chickenhawks like Sam Harris who favour the attack on Afghanistan and seek a new war with Iran. Pure scumbags. Hitchens at least was funny.

[ExposingConservative]

I'm an ex-Muslim and I've always been struck by the sheer stupidity of some atheists regarding the mideast. They seem to think dropping bombs on Muslims for decades does not have anything to do with the motivations for 9/11 and that it's all due to religion. Listening to Sam Harris is like listening to Glenn Beck. No wonder he gets invited onto Fox News. He peddles the exact same fear-mongering they want to hear. The same old rightwing garbage packaged differently.

[JagjeetMann]

@ExposingConservative 100% correct. I feel great having found the intelligent side of youtube

[ritchloui]

@ExposingConservative Khomeini's first book was Kashf al-Asrar, aka Secrets Unveiled, was published in 1942 Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled and incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of [other] countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country in the world'.Ayatollah Khomeini

[ContraFascism]

Great speech. Atheism should not be represented by those who defend US military violence abroad and anti-Arab bigotry to advance the interests of the criminal actions of Israel. Hedges and Chomsky are greater intellectual models for leftwing atheists.

[ritchloui]

@ContraFascism Ayatollah Khomeini Kashf al-Asrar, aka Secrets Unveiled, 1942 But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world ... Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Ayatollah Khomeini

[freeshyne1234]

@ritchloui

I can never tell if people like you are actually serious. Are you really stupid enough to think quoting solitary obscure figures in the past explains/justifies your bigotry? One could quote pages and pages and pages of Jewish/Christian/Western-secul­ar individuals in history who made equally and far more insidious claims.

Of-course it is pointless to highlight that to people who are fundamentally racists and hypocrites at heart.

[ritchloui]

@freeshyne1234 LOL. If you think the Ayatollah Khomeini was a 'solitary obscure figure of the past' then you are sadly mistaken. It was he, if you remember, ensured that the 1979 Iranian 'revolution' turned into a theocratic tyranny that set about killing all the secularists who had put in him power. As for your idiotic and tiresome accusation of 'racism', time you grew up and realised that being critical of a supremacist ideology is far from racist.

[freeshyne1234]

@ritchloui

Please save your moron™ version of history for the bigotry echo chamber you got that fantasy from.

Iran was one of the most promising democracies under the highly popular president Mosadegh, who promised to remove BP's theft of Iranian oil. The British tried to organize a coup which failed, and so they got Wilson in the US to organize the CIA run coup which brought the hated dictator Shah to power. That is what resulted in the 1979 revolution. Fucking idiot

[ritchloui]

@freeshyne1234 Ah yes, you who are so expert that you didn't even know who Ayatollah Khomeini was. Well, sadly, nor did the Iranians until it was too late. As usual with revisionists, you seem to have a very ahistorical view of reality. If you weren't so naive and simplistic then you might perhaps notice that there is more than one player in the game.

[TenuredPhysicist]

I'm an atheist and I love this man's work in exposing the warmongering of both the evangelicals and certain atheists who posture as bold iconoclasts but are just the godless mask of American militarism.

[CorrectingReligion]

Hedges = Antiwar

Hitchens = Prowar

Hedges = Anti-Torture

Harris = Pro- Torture

Lesson of the day? Religious labels are meaningless. Values are what matter. And the values of Hedges are closer to the liberal ones held by most free thinkers. His writings on the War on Terror are vastly more intelligent than the Fox News propaganda of the big bad Muslims recycled by Hitchens and other such backers of the Pentagon. Harris supports the Israeli war on Arabs in The End of Faith. A Zionist fool.

[AtheistGallant]

Chris Hedges towers over the neocon frauds like Hitchens and Harris who share the same foreign policy objectives as the Christian Right on which Chris Hedges trains his artillery fire. He speaks in the tradition of Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan in exposing the corporate drive for profits and empire building in the true spirit of the Enlightenment. The new atheists would have been laughed at by the old atheists for their nationalism. Hedges belongs to the old atheism of opposing imperialism..

[Keldrath]

@AtheistGallant hitchens supported the war because it is a moral imperative for all good people to support the overthrow of oppressive totalitarian dictators. to not support it is to stand by and watch your fellow humans suffer and die under a brutal regime run by psychopathic leaders and to watch their misery and say you wont stand up for their rights. when people do things that promote suffering we lock them up to protect everyone. not let them rule uncontested. it is immoral

[JagjeetMann]

@Keldrath to get rid of a brutal dictator WE SUPPORTED through his major atrocities, the same people (Rumsfield,Powell) in 2003 kill 100,000 civilians, destroy the country and its critical infrastructure for hospital and aid, turn 40% of the children into orphans, install a democracy which is currently silencing journalists, and secure oil countracts for Exxon Mobil & Haliburton? Btw Iraq has second largest oil reserves in the world 90%of which is untapped.

[KarlRKaiser]

@Keldrath The Iraqis did not ask us to invade their country with guns blazing, to free them of a dictator, and leave millions dead or mangled or orphaned or widowed or childless or homeless. To make a macro-ethical claim that "the country is better off" today and therefore we had a right to play "God", deciding who lives or dies, and go in by violent force to make this change is immoral and arrogant to the point of racism.

[phildawe1]

I believe in love. I believe in equal rights for all human beings. and I'm proud to say I'm an atheist.

[re002]

If you criticize atheism, you must be an idiot!

[bayreuth79]

07:00

[BlizBob]

Everyone is ofcourse entitled to their opinnion and that includes Chris Hedges.

My opinnion is that Chris Hedges does speak a lot of bull in this video.

[Flyborg]

I just skipped to a random point to see if he had anything reasonable to say..

..And he somehow linked the enlightenment to the idea that unreasonable people must be killed. WTF Hedges, WTF. That's a non sequitur if I ever heard one.

[5555miles]

@Lennon4ever1 Listen to the speech. He's talking about certain new atheists (Hitchens, Harris etc) with their howling youtube fan base. Hedges doesn't believe in a personal god and says that all religion is a human invention.

[oudguitar]

I love that Hedges stands for intellectual truth above any "Utopian" club, and the conversation in here plays out this reality. His whole point is that a binary view externalizes evil and fails to deal with the real issue. The new atheists and the Dominionists embrace a simpleton view that morality is morally advancing and the fundamental defense of both religion and new atheism needs a non evidence based "Faith" if you will and relies on emotional character assassinations not facts.

[t11video]

its weird for me that he looks like Carl Rove

[johan3248]

I hate to say this about Chris, but he would't be a good christian if he did not demonise nonbelievers.

There is nothing wrong in attempts to explain human morality through biological or cultural evolution. Or in any other knowledge or science. Of course it would be completely another thing to build a religion on these theories.

[83169]

@johan3248 You sound like a bigot. Thanks for backing Chris' thesis. Incidentally, you don't hate to say it - Who do you think you're kidding?

[OppressedAnarchist]

Hedges, just like in all of his books, is exaggerating and misleading the audience with straight out lies !!!

[theshunzun]

@OppressedAnarchist what lies?

[OppressedAnarchist]

I haven't seen Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennet, or Harris blowing up buildings and violating individual rights with their "atheism"

[ludwigau1]

@OppressedAnarchist

You're right. They are moderates - although Harris does ask us to at least contemplate being 'forced' to obliterate the people of the Middle East. As moderates they provide ideological cover for radical atheists who would like to not just blow up buildings, but exterminate all their opponents.

[83169]

@OppressedAnarchist Never heard of Mao? Stalin? Pol Pot? Maybe Mussolini? You don't see Chris Hedges blowing up buildings with his Christianity either, but he almost does as good a job of supporting his thesis as you do... May you lead an interesting life... :)

[OppressedAnarchist]

@83169 I don't think Religion in itself leads to violence and I don't think Atheism in itself leads to violence... though I think humanity would be better off without embracing religion.

I just don't agree with Hedges in this case. He even wrote an entire book on "fascist christians" in the US. Then he turns around and says the new atheists could be worse.

He could be right. The Enlightenment was an attempt to embrace rationality, but unfortunately it seems don't understand what that means

[theshunzun]

@OppressedAnarchist what does he say that shows he lacks understanding?

[GodlessXVIII]

I was a follower of the Hitchens/Harris/Dawkins discourse for a time -- circa 2005-6.

By widening my sources of information, I came to realize that the political, economic and military violence that goes into creating religious extremisms and fascists movements has almost nothing to do with belief in god or ignorance of the sciences. The current Democratic administration, while wedded to the technocratic terminology of economics, is engaged in as much fanaticism than the Christian Right.

[masusomasuso]

this man is an idiot

[TheHerpaderpderp]

@masusomasuso Yes you are.

[masusomasuso]

@TheHerpaderpderp Don't be jealous. If you mainstream hard enough, someday somebody will want to broadcast your idiocy.

[TheHerpaderpderp]

@masusomasuso It seems you have already broadcast your own idiocy by calling Chris Hedges an idiot. He is superior in every way to Hitchens and Harris. You are just too emotionally tied to the New Atheism to see that.

[masusomasuso]

@TheHerpaderpderp i think you are talking about yourself. who is the jesusfinger for? the best way to get smarter is to actually read people you disagree with. please read harris, he writes with incredible clarity. hitchens might be a little to complicated for now, it is easy to miss the point if you are not on the same level. hedges slanderously misinterprets them both.

[TheHerpaderpderp]

@masusomasuso Yet again you demonstrate your idiocy by labeling Hitchen's work complicated reading. You have no arguments against what Hedges is saying because what he is saying is correct. The problem isn't religion per se, though when misused can have a devastating effect on civil society; the problem is human nature. Demagogues and tyrants will use any institution at their disposal if given the opportunity, even absent religious institutions. Disposing of religion will not lead to Utopia.

[masusomasuso]

@TheHerpaderpderp Hahaha, religion is a problem when used CORRECTLY. Human nature can also be a problem. Religion enforces the bad side of human nature. The good side of human nature spins religion into harmless niceness and harmfull idiocy. If you don't think Hedges it an idiot, but he also can't comprehend Hitchens, it must be complicated (but no, not in my opinion). Or Hedges is a liar. People should stop treating religious people like children who still believe in Santa. Ideas are equal.

[masusomasuso]

@TheHerpaderpderp So now for the arguments against Hedges. Basically everything Hedges says from 6:00 is wrong. The New Atheists (NA) do not replicate the radical fundamentalist beliefs of Christian conservatives in any way (for example the NA are not dogmatic). The NA do not externalise evil, they recognise want to investigate it thoroughly. And they do not idealise violence, it is a last resort. They just think it is okay to hit a rapist in order to stop him. ...

[masusomasuso]

@TheHerpaderpderp ... (2) And wtf is “the wisdom of original sin” Hedges talks about? Tell someone he is evil and he will often act upon it. The belief than science can create a more perfect world is not dangerous as Hedges states. Science has already improved our lives faster than anything before. The NA do not want to “eradicate” human beings that do not agree with them, that is ridiculous and slanderous. ...

[masusomasuso]

@TheHerpaderpderp ... (3) The “commy and nazi” link is total bs. We do advance morally (Hedges claims we do not), and we do have ethics because of biology, but we (as opposed to our genes) do not have to be slaves of our own evolution. Read The Moral Landscape by Harris for excellent clarification. The NA do not “ignore the complexities of fanaticism”, they look at them more honestly than Hedges: "terrorism is what you do when you DON'T have planes", wtf? ...

[masusomasuso]

@TheHerpaderpderp ... (4) And yes, the NA say that some people are more moral than others. Because they are. You can see thing in the people around you, and in history. We now think our ancestors did morally repulsive things. That is quite an amount of idiot things to say in 8 minutes. So there.

[masusomasuso]

@TheHerpaderpderp Oh and when I said "Ideas are ecual" I meant to the law of reason. Like people in a courtroom. And I am sorry I laughed. That was completely uncalled for. I used to think like you, my environment had steered me that way.

[mistacramer]

@Boodle545

A fetus does not think. Real human beings are more important than goop in a womb.

[redfoxkittle]

@Boodle545 Everybody wants to rule the world..

[AndrewMann552]

@pyparadigm Why? His points are pretty valid. Some people trash Hedges simply out of pure hatred towards the idea of religion instead of just having a rational discussion.