Sam Harris brought up a good point about "white guilt". I find there are a lot of Liberal (and Conservative) White Americans who refuse to call out the wrongs of people in other cultures or countries, because they think they are being prejudiced or bigoted...it's a shame. Violence and cruelty are violence and cruelty in any country, in any language, in any aspect of the world.
'philosophy of harmony' = stupidity.....'confabutory' = speaking in a droll quiet voice to fool the masses into thinking gibberish is intelligence. Atran = a useful fool
@liverlee100 Yeah, that is probably why people took the time and effort to listen to what he had to say mostly during the late 80s and early 90s. The deficiency in his methods come from not critically examining the religious aspect of the phenomena. That is his limitation. It is mostly a self-imposed limitation, but at that time there was also a taboo against criticizing religion. Even in a free country you pay a price both socially and professionally. Sam Harris makes up for that deficiency.
@liverlee100 Scott Atran doesn't dare to speak his utter arrogant and ignorant bullshit, that religion has nothing to do with anything, when he is faced with someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or others who faced the oh so fantastic islam from birth.
He is right that religion is not the only problem or cause, but his extreme arrogance in denouncing and attacking people like Harris for saying religion IS a big part of the problem is disgusting and utterly ignorant.
@liverlee100 But then again, Scott thinks we can explain Jihad as by "young adults who are in transition stages in their lives: immigrants, students, those still in search of friends, mates or jobs." Or stop suicide bombers by creating a "21st-century version [...] the Boy Scouts and high school football teams" He never says the doctrines of Islam seriously play a part! Sam points this out very well.
Scott Atran just strikes me as an arrogant d-bag. He's completely unyielding in discussion and when challenged resorts to condescending remarks as if no one knows better than him. As if his experiences and his experiences alone entitle him to truth that only he can have reason.
I think that saying that Scott Atran has too much for respect for religion is suggesting that no atheist should know it or have familiarity with its concepts and what it means to people. This is naive. We're not all the same. If we're all on the same page, then there is no space to read.
@82abhilash through understanding and knowing religion, it is inevitable to have some kind of respect for it, but this also shows a bit of respect for the person and hence, empathy. from my own experience i'll be honest that I do have a certain respect for it, more to do with people close to me than myself though. i simply can't be as distant as you seem to be with it, given life and circumstance. i don't think there's anything wrong with the essential concepts people latch onto, but fact isfact
@82abhilash fuck religion. whether you believe in it or not, people are its generator. you may be confusing cause with effect or vice versa. it is the human tendency to dominate and aggress against people because they believe that their way is better than the other that is key in the spread of Islam and also part of the neo-conservative agenda.scott atran is one of the people who takes an interest in the evolution of religion.I also appreciate Dennetts approach.
@StrummingSparrow Liberals too have an agenda. The tendency to dominate and aggress does not divide according to political lines. What is your opinion on Sam Harris's approach by the way?
@82abhilash i'll be honest. most of what i've read from him are excerpts. i'm inclined not to like him but part of me does because of his openess to, as he has said before, ''spooky'' stuff. i'm not sure if liberals really have a cogent agenda as such in a political sense. In politics, the representatives of liberalism for the most part are watered-down. when i said ''dominate and agresss'', i was talking about military or militant agression against another.
@82abhilash someday, someday. just gotta get through a load of other books first. i am familiar with Harris's stance on a lot of things only through youtube and reading about him but I will eventually get to it. In regards Islam, he is worringly close to a neo-con viewpoint of it. yes, it is dangerous but there's still history.there was a fantastic 3-part documentary series by Adam Curtis called: 'The Power of Nightmares' from a couple ofyears ago you might want to check out in relation to this.
@StrummingSparrow I have already watched that documentary. I can fully sympathize with you. It has a captivating potential. I had seriously considered what was in it for a while. I did not realize that suddenly. There was lot of thinking and understanding taking place between 2004 and 2011. At worst it is propaganda. At best it is an interesting thought experiment. You can try it with holocaust denial if you want. Try watching the 'documentary' One third of a holocaust.
@82abhilash Northern Ireland would disagree. here's hoping Martin McGuiness isn't successful in becoming my states figurehead, though. surely it's never too late for dialogue. indeed, conflict should in itself express a need for it. John Hume held talks with extremists from both sides of that particular conflict, and it wasn't a popular move at the time and he was criticised for trying. look at now though, as a result of his efforts to bridge the gaps.
@StrummingSparrow Your mistake is in thinking that ideologies are interchangeable and so lessons are easily transferrable.It is an easy mistake to make, especially when the enemy is eager in deceiving you and add that to the fact that you are trying to use the known to understand the unknown.
@82abhilash that's why it was called, sometimes cynically, 'the peace process.' in regards to my mistake you belive i'm making, one should never underestimate institutions in their role as a divider to interchangeability. Armies, churches, dogmas and the demand to not question. you might not have seen 'The Trap', which dicusses the application of game theory in the Cold War. what was disturbing about it was a paranoid assumption of the opponent andbeing able to totally reconstruct them as evil.
@StrummingSparrow I saw it. If you think evil is a reconstruction, of one's opponent and that nothing is innately evil, then you can watch the other holocaust denial documentary 'Buchenwald, a dumb dumb portrayal of evil' made by the same guy with the ugly voice who made 'One Third of a holocaust'. Concepts aside, you need to think for yourself and make up your own mind on these. Instead of letting Adam Curtis, or Sam Harris, or Scot Atran or even me think for you.
@82abhilash absolutely i do think for myself. everyone should represent themselves individually and i always try to do that. i was worried you were gonna say something like that because i referenced Adam Curtis twice. i always found myself watching the documentaries by Curtis down the years before 'All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace' when I finally bothered to check who was behind them, though familar already. nature itself is harsh, but does that make it in and of itself- evil?
@StrummingSparrow Good and Evil are bipolar terms that have their origin in Christian theology. Western society is still culturally Christian, even atheists here believe in good and evil. Good vs Evil stories are the most popular. Anything that does not fit that category turns people off or confuses them. I do think there is good and evil. Nevertheless notwithstanding the usefulness of those concepts, they have limitations that must be appreciated.
@82abhilash bingo! i was just going to do a follow-up comment saying something along those lines. they arise out of the ancient habit of goal-setting in our species. however, sometimes evil is direct manipulation in pursuit of an acquisition or desire, meaning sometimes the bad guys will ally with the good guys if there are common goals, and sometimes there is no clear goal. senseless evil, that arises in the middle of things like war. blindness creeps in. pseudospeciation.
speaking of pseudospeciation, Atran accused Harris before of potraying a caricature of islam. i would be wary of any uniform negative view of a specific denomination of people. Harris was one of the people worried about the implications of building that complex being built near where the World Trade Center and it was on this issue where he identified with the conservative right. now, there are ugly roots to the religion but I would fear how out of control and the view could get.
that is: 'Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What it Means to Be Human'. I always shorten it for a lot of people. I found myself reading it one day and couldn't put it down. the title really caught my attention because I was thinking a lot about those 3 listed things.
I think there could be some sort of bad history between the two.I dont like Atran. He seems like a shifty bastard. Harris seems honest. I dont like shifty bastards.
While I would find such a debate as proposed interesting, I would prefer one with Sam Harris against someone of greater character, that is, someone who eschewed cheap shots and long-winded obfuscatory questions. A rare moment, however, for Sam Harris to depart from his usual centered, Zen-like demeanor.
This is not Sam Harris at his best since he eclipsed his own answer to the moral philosophy question by digressing to a seemingly unrelated difference he had with Scot Atran on Islam. By deflecting attention to the other issue, calling Atran's position on Islam irresponsible, he borders on an ad hominem attack relative to the pompously posed question on moral philosophy. Scot Atran, with his own direct, peevish ad hominem attack in response rather confirms that he, Atran, is irresponsible.
Perfectly said by Sam Harris. Attran is a dhimmi twat who keeps making excuses for muslims who are obeying the doctrines of sharia and jihad. People are getting tired of the bullshit and even the densest left-leaning ditto head now KNOWS that islamic religious teachings are the root of the problem. Attran represents a wasted education and a willful ignorance of what is perhaps the most important facet of our evolution: the ability to identify enemies/predators and deal with those threats.
@Swiley11780 ppffff, it can't even cross your mind that that's exactly what THEY are thinking: about americans and the western world, that we're the enemies
@PrincessDesert And they would be right. We, the free, enlightened West, are the enemies of theocratic islamist shit sticks who want to drag us back into the dark ages with such wonderful things as slavery, religious censorship, torture by the "morality police," polygamy, child brides, and of course the end of free speech. Yes, we are the enemies of all that backward bullshit. I only wish that we as a civilization were as fired up to kill these religitards as they are to kill us.
@Swiley11780 from a foreigner's perspective, I'm telling you: U.S. is hated upon by practically the rest of the world (but only the extreme muslims have the guts to go crazy against us)
besides, Muslims are the most respectful people I know (by far)
The teachings of Islam bring terrorists down, not the moronic war we're stuck with
@82abhilash there's definitely a ring of truth to that. Many people, both white and black, were largely motivated by the idea of getting a black man in the white house. True, it represents a milestone in racial relations in this country, but unfortunately that, in and of itself, is not good enough reason to base a vote on.
@82abhilash But that doens't mean it was the only reason - many things (other than whatever merits you attribute to Obama) put him in a position of favor: Not just white guilt, but also how sick everyone was of the Bush administration of the previous 8 years and were wooed by calls for "change." Also how hardcore rightist McCain came off as, and his selection of Palin as VP candidate. There were numerous reasons but I think white guilt played an appreciable part.
@44warjunkie What an uninformed opinion. Why is White guilt not responsible for Al Sharpton or Alan Keys becoming president? Thanks for disclosing the reason you voted for him.
The only people who should feel "white guilt", are those directly involved in the enslavement of the blacks. If all whites now should feel guilt for the black slave trade, so should the Arabs who equally butchered them, hell, I should be hating on blacks for what they did to my ancestors :D Just be careful, that's all.
@82abhilash You're not familiar with the millions of Europeans and American sailors sold into slavery by North African pirates? Also, Do the Barbary wars ring any bells?
@TurboDally I hate to be so prejudicial, but you sound like a moderate racist trying to justify the past and perpetuation of superficial social divisiveness using historical sophistry. And yeah, what did blacks do to your ancestors? Wore their chains? Fuck you, that's all. (Sorry, but I have no tolerance for intolerance, especially when cloaked in ignorance)
Are you retarded? You read my comment and you came to the conclusion that I'm some kind of a moderate racism? Read the comment again you fool. I'll make it clear since your English comprehension isn't all that good: if we're going to use white guilt, you may as well have Arab guilt also since Arabs too enslaved the blacks equally as the Europeans. Or how about Indians hate on all whites and Arabs? It's stupid to tar an entire race for what a few did in the past.
@TurboDally You also are forgetting that it was only with the help of other Africans, that Africans were enslaved. Similarly, when the African Americans went to Liberia, they themselves then went and enslaved and mistreated the local indigenous population.
The pan-african identity is a modern thought that actually came out of freed slaves in the Americas
@TurboDally There are many problems with feeling guilty for what your ancestors did to blacks, other than the fact that it makes no sense to feel guilty for what someone else did.
Just because you're white, doesn't mean your ancestors were slave owners. They could have been quite the opposite, they could have been abolitionists.
American blacks are more likely to have slave owner ancestors, than any random white person, so if someone should feel guilty, it's blacks. But they shouldn't either.
@TurboDally In a sense I disagree. We're still living in the wake of slavery/segregation. While people that are alive now didn't directly impoverish and exploit the black community, one of the reasons why the black community in the united states is disproportionately impoverished today is the racist attitudes of our ancestors and what that did fiscally and culturally to the black community. Segregation only ended in the 60's for f*ck sake. Also, there's still a kind of self imposed segregation.
@TurboDally not only that but if whites should feel guilt for black enslavement then so should blacks as many of them were sold or traded to whites by blacks from other local tribes
@TurboDally Should blacks feel quilt for mass murder and genocide in Africa such as Rwanda or Darfur? I just want to understand the framework of racial quilt theory. Can it work both ways?
Harris was supposed to answer a question on moral philosophy and instead opens up with both barrels on Atran. Then Atran practically says Harris is clueless. But all in a most gentlemanly manner! Hahaha...
“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi,” -Friendship among men makes one speak this way?
When it comes to economics in their region, Islam IS the problem. As it is for suicide bombing, oppression of women, poor mental health, poverty in general, overwhelming ignorance about reality, stupidity on an unimaginable scale and violence in general. They live and die for an after life that doesn't exist. Yeah, an enigma of the first order, lol.
Disappointing! Atran asks Harris a critical question about his ideology—"Can science guide us to choose which of competing moral models is the right one?"—and Harris does everything but answer. In his scenario in which doctors cannibalize one human to save five, he confronts the question, then sidesteps it, hops from point to point, starts a diatribe on Islam (?) throws out a couple of ten dollar words, then launches a personal attack on Atran. That question should've been in his wheelhouse.
@Kaath9 Yes, a lot of people in the comments are saying that Harris leaves Atran stumped here. I agree. Stumped by the sheer dishonesty and evasiveness of Harris's response. Instead of actually answering Atran's question, he seeks to discredit his position by claiming that it's "irresponsible", neatly avoiding the hassle of raising a coherent counter-argument. It's disappointing to see so many people duped by Harris's superficial intellectual posturing.
@lewicron I was impressed with Atran's poise—and also by the way he prefaced his remarks by praising Harris on another subject (he seems to make a habit of that). I couldn't help noticing that he was amused by Harris's response. And I'm not sure Harris caught the implication of Atran's last comment to the effect that the subject should be debated by someone who knew what they were talking about ... and that that wasn't happening here.
@Kaath9 Atran at first praises Harris for his talk on ethics and science. This means that he heard Sam say the following "the thing to notice is there are many peaks but also that there are many more ways not to be on a peak" something he's said at many of his presentations and has now written in his book The Moral Landscape. Science point towards one ethic? It was a stupid question on it's face, and was already answered at the presentation. I will believe what the jihadist says are his motives.
@Opposingforce77 Atran seems to use praise of his opponent before he gives negative critique as a matter of course—not just in this instance. I suspect it's a methodology. Psychologically, this tends to ameliorate the effects of the negative critique, thus softening antipathy. The question about science and morals wasn't stupid at all. If Harris proposes science is to be our moral guide, he must be able to explain how it can do so clearly. If he can't, the standard is unusable.
@Kaath9 If you're going to demonstrate your ignorance on what has transpired between these two, please do so with a little more subtlety. You suspect it's a methodology? Is this why Atran stood in front of an audience of people who study Islam, psychology, science, religion, and said "you all don't know what the hell you're talking about"? Very good way of ameliorating! Moral guidance was outlined over 15 times in his videos on youtube, his book, and many speeches. Clarity of thought eludes you
@Opposingforce77 Good tactic. Call your opponent ignorant. A lot of westerners don't know much about Islam besides what they read in comments like yours or from media outlets who are also passing along disinformation. I've been following the disagreement between these two for several years now, and I can understand Atran's frustration with Harris. Hey may have "outlined" moral guidance over 15 times, but he's yet to answer the question of how that's supposed to work on the streets where we live.
@Kaath9 God loves not the aggressor-That's all it says? I've had a copy for over 20 years and have read it more than once. There are no profound ethics in it whatsoever. Just reducing an imaginary entity's intellect to that of a spoiled boy-king who can do and know all things-except he built us to praise him a certain way for this perfect being has needs. Laughable! There are wicked things in it I have a feeling that you haven't read them though. Care to say just 1 bad thing about the Qu'ran?
@Opposingforce77 One bad thing? It was written for a very different time and for very different people. While there are ethics in it that are both profound and timeless, it's also dealing with issues that are not dominant in modern western culture—people burying their girl children alive, men who think nothing of gathering scores of concubines or wives, then cutting them loose to die, etc. It's easy to resort to presentism to critique history but is it reasonable to do so?
@Kaath9 You just said "call your opponent ignorant. A lot of westerners don't know" Hypocrite. If this is how you reason and interpret things, it's understandable why you side with an ignoramus like Atran. What is to be known about Islam is written in one unbelievably simplistic book that is accessible to anyone, even "westerners". Their primitive culture and meek minds are easily understood. "Allah Akbar!" right before dying was actually "All for soccer!" Who knew?
@Opposingforce77 No, sweetie. I didn't call you ignorant. I just commented that a lot of westerners (including me, once) get their ideas about Islam piecemeal. They read the Qur'an without understanding the culture it addressed or the issues it spoke to. While you've been attacking my intelligence and my thought processes since the beginning of this thread; all I've been trying to do is get you to realize that it's just not that simple. It's easier to hate people who seem alien, though.
@Kaath9 I never said you called me ignorant. There is a reason why you can psychologically profile people with a high degree of success without having met them, serial killers for example. People, their beliefs, nor their motives are anywhere near complex or difficult to understand. Culture is an organized system of beliefs and thought patterns always made manifest by a group, making that group distinctive from other groups. They are saying what motivates them on their videos. Harris is right.
@Opposingforce77 About the jahidist rationale. I agree: we should listen to what the (surviving) jihadists and their families and peers say about why they did what they did. That's Scott Atran's area of expertise. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's comments about suicide bombers being the weapon of people with no other weapons were apt, and make a lot more sense than the virgins in heaven theory which, I note, is only advanced by western commentators who've never interviewed any jihadists themselves.
@Kaath9 Is this why they've found dead suicide bombers with their genitals wrapped in protective cloth? Muslims don't think god inspired the Qu'ran, they think it is his word. The people who know, should not live by the whims and superstitions of the religious. If you read the Hadith you'd know that it is permissible to lie to gain an edge in the name of the faith. You can listen to the survivors if you want. Mein Kampf had nothing to do with Hitler's views about Jews, he was just babbling.
@Opposingforce77 So because Muslim men wrap their genitals in protective cloth we're supposed to infer what? That they think their narlies are going to heaven with them? And where did you get this information—just curious, because I've never heard it. About the Qur'an and Hadith. The Qur'an does not say a word about this type of "martyrdom". It says "God loves not the aggressor." And Hadith (which I have read) is the "alleged" sayings of Muhammad, not his direct teaching.
@Kaath9 Actually, Atran just returned with an astonishing conclusion- they weren't wrapped in protective cloth, it was a nut-cup they were wearing as they just finished a soccer game and had to wear some protection. We've deployed our best scientist and sociologists to study the anomaly as to why soccer is manifesting these strange results but only in combination with people who are Islamic. This is very perplexing as religion and soccer are normally benign except with Islam..what could it be?
@Opposingforce77 Yes, but to construct Sam's "peaks" you need to establish what "up" is. So what Scott sees as the problem is not trying to find the ONE WAY to be moral (Harris often addresses using his health analogy), but what measurement we should use for morality itself. For Sam it's Human Flourishing, for the Chinese Communists it's Harmony, and for the Nietsche followers Scott mentions it's perfection through suffering. This remains a problem, but I give Sam credit for working on it.
@lordabacu Since our minds and nature itself is quantitative in various ways, science may have something to say. If one were actually able to measure these approaches, one form could trump another. Suffering has an almost universal definition. Happiness, because of culture, has many. I, like Harris, believe that the truth about happiness, is culturally transcending. The idea that humanity could rid itself of tribalism, nationalism, and war, is too enticing to ignore, even in Harris's approach.
Informing one's self can only do so much. If you lack the ability to digest and extrapolate to any degree whatsoever, information does nothing, hence, Scott Atran is an educated moron. I know the videos are a few years old but watching Scott take on Sam is much like watching a broom stick attack an oak tree (intellectually speaking of course). The way he pronounces Al-Qaeda as if choking, is causing me to loose vast amounts of sleep at night. Some people specialize in annoying.
@Opposingforce77 As a good number of my friends speak Arabic or Farsi as a first language, I can tell you that Atran is pronouncing Al Qaida properly and not fragging it like most Westerners do. My take on the video was much different. Harris looked uncomfortable and he did not answer Atran's very pertinent question. In the end, he resorted to an ad hominem attack on Atran's character. In what way is that being an intellectual oak tree?
@Kaath9 There was nothing ad hominem about his attack. Atran is engaged in intellectual dishonesty and Harris is just pointing it out. He fits perfectly in with the types of people who think that 9/11 was an inside job, or that man never really landed on the moon. Yes, his conjectures are that far detached from reality. I've read his book and his thoughts are very disorganized and off base. He is a bona fide moron.
ad hominem: "(of an argument or reaction) arising from or appealing to the emotions and not reason or logic. • attacking an opponent’s motives or character rather than the policy or position they maintain" Atran asked a question about Harris' specific claims on science and morality—Harris responded by attacking Atran on Islam, a completely different subject. He called him irresponsible, and confabulatory, and he misstated Atran's position. (& you connect him with 9/11 conspiracists—good job!)
@Kaath9 Thanks for defining this for me. Argument A: Harris mentioned heuristics, rationality, and morality, in which case your ad hominem term was inappropriate. Argument B: Harris mentioned nothing about morality the first 90 seconds he responded in which case your term was appropriate. Atran:Sam, stop keeping the one true path science is suggesting us to take to yourself! Harris: No Atran! That secret stays with me!
@Opposingforce77 Yes, Harris mentioned all those things in a way that seemed disconnected from the question. It's as if Atran had asked how do you use a ruler to measure time and Harris said: "Well, you see, there are heuristics involved, and rationality and, of course, time and ... well, you use a ruler." Then he switched to an emotionally charged issue that had nothing to do with the question, attacked Atran's behavior, and deferred the debate. I think ad hominem covers it pretty well.
@Kaath9 I've read your pathetic rebuttals on the other videos and understand why you have such sloppy moral relativism. As a fan boy I will say "it is to excuse their actions to offer any other explanation except their own evil mullahs, their own filthy religion." You can type in "virgin martyr" on youtube or any other search engine and see some of the now dead suicide bomber's videos they choose to make before ceasing to exist. Warning: it may just be "westerners" in costumes acting.
@Opposingforce77 "... you and your pathetic band of rebels..." Oh, wait, that's Star Wars. Your comments really take me back. I haven't heard this sort of stuff since I left fourth grade. (Yeah, well...your moral relativism is SLOPPY! So there!) I'm not doubting that there are fundamentalist fanatics whose reasons for martyrdom are hard for us to grok. But that's not ultimately what's driving this phenomenon. These are desperate people who lack any weapons and have themselves become weapons.
Why does the rationale for suicide have to be binary—either all martyrs die for "pure companions" in heaven, or all die for other reasons? Is it possible that different people take this extreme option for different reasons—all of which, as I noted in another comment, come back to desperation and a sense of powerlessness? I'm not excusing anyone's actions, but I do want to understand their real motivations, not simply grasp at a simplistic but comforting dumbing down of those motivations.
@Kaath9 Your last sentence exposes your failed logic. They've made videos, watch them as they talk of paradise and rivers of honey and wine, how beautiful and obedient their women will be, and not about extra green soccer fields or how you don't get shin splints in heaven. They mention infidels, how great Allah is every two seconds, how great heaven will be, and Islam, Islam and more Islam . Atran is the pinnacle of stupid. We love death more than the infidel loves life...no soccer here either.
@Opposingforce77 I've never said anything about soccer fields. And what Scott Atran said about soccer was taken out of context. It doesn't serve any purpose to try to narrow this subject down to simplistic either / or thinking. Islam isn't the problem. Fanatical behavior has cropped up in other faiths, in politics, in economics, in race relations. And often these things are only the tools of radicalism and the disguise it wears not the reason for it. People are more complex than that.
@instereovideos I took that as a subtle dig at Harris. Yes, he felt the issues should be debated by someone who "knew what they were talking about" which he hadn't seen there. I don't think his feelings were hurt at all, but he clearly understood that Harris hadn't answered the question. I suspect that, as I watched, the video, I had the same expression on my face as he did on his—bemusement that his opponent opted for a personal attack instead of simply answering a very pertinent question.
i think he meant confabulatory in the psychiatric sense when referring to Atran's style, according to dictionary com: "confabulatory - the replacement of a gap in a person's memory by a falsification that he or she believes to be true." tbh i didn't know it was a word until i heard Sam say it :D
@jaylias It gets better... He then called his opponents facts a "blizzard of detail" which is "orthogonal" to the question at hand, which in mathematics means "perpendicular." It's a crazy way of saying that the guy's facts run in the opposite direction from the point of the argument. Love it.
WTF? "You have a blizzard of detail, much of which is orthogonal to the question at hand" he says, while completely ignoring the question at hand and attacking the questioner on orthogonal issues.
"The majority of suicide bombings are carried out by secular Marxist groups" really? On what evidence is this statement based? I would sincerely be interested to know.
@trapfish The LTTE in Sri-Lanka, which is secular but had long ago abandoned its marxist ideology have launched more suicide attacks than all other groups combined. They are the only organization I know that had a standing army of suicude bombers within their military hierarchy. You could argue that since most of these attacks were launched by suicide boats against Sri-Lankan navy targets, they don't conform to our normative definition of suicide bombing. PKK in Turkey also use suicide bombers
@londonbridge7 I had heard of the Sri Lankan suicide bombers, indeed Sam talks about them in End of Faith, but the idea that the "majority" of suicide bombers are secular seems a little out there to me, I still haven't seen any evidence that this is the case. I could be wrong but you would need to come up with some pretty startling stats to overcome the current numbers blowing themselves up in the sad situation that is currently Iraq and Afghanistan.
@trapfish sam harris' point, in basic terms, is that suicide bombing is fueled by individual + collective oppression rather than Religous Zeal. In all the holy books, it is clearly outlined that Suicide is one of the worst crimes on can comite
@bjl34565 That's why the suicide bombers don't think of it as "suicide". They think of it as martyrdom. and that they are dying in defense of their faith.
@Drgamedood potentialy. but the point im trying to make is that suicide bombing is more about oppression and socio-political status rather than just a religon that has been around for 1600 years that is only just becoming extremly fanatical at, strangly, the same time that the countries with the largest muslim comunity are undergoing radical political change and forgien oppression.
@bjl34565 Sam Harris deals with that in many of his debates on Islam and in his public articles. You should look up his article "Bombing our illusions" or watch his debates with Chris hedges/Reza Aslan.
@londonbridge7 More suicide attacks than all other groups combined? This seems highly unlikely, especially if you calculate only civillian targets. If you don't mind me asking where did you get your numbers? I ask because one can read about suicide attacks every other day in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also I have spent time in Sri Lanka.
Imagine Sam Harris as President...someone who can use the word "orthogonal" in a non-mathematical setting while also deploying multiple, multisyllabic words in the SAME sentence WITHOUT teleprompters. But we could never elect him because he doesn't believe in an imaginary sky-deadbeat dad who promises lots of ice cream and happiness you just have to DIE first. That's a great rule of thumb incidentally, be wary of any groups offering deals that require your death before you get your part.
@RozarSmacco A parrot can do that. I'm not implying that Harris is a parrot, merely that the pronunciation of words composed of multiple syllables is not a very good foundation for determining a person's level of intellect.
@Sleipnirrr All things being equal I think having a large vocabulary directly correlates to someone's relative intellect and is useful (especially if you have nothing else to go on)
@RozarSmacco The phrase is "all _else_ being equal", and you claim there is nothing else to go on? So what you are saying is, given you are uneducated in a particular subject, and you listen to a discussion between two people who are educated in that subject - you would support the one who uses the fanciest words?
@RozarSmacco - And you think Obama couldn't without a teleprompter? I've got news for you. When you're free to speak your mind and you spend all the time doing it and rehearsing your material, you can be as fluid and off the cuff and wax as prosaic as Sam does. Take it from me, I used to be that guy.
But when you're a politician or President, you've got measure every word, calculate every sentence, edit yourself mentally and verbally on the fly so as to not provide your enemies with ammo.
@RozarSmacco Sam Harris for President is an utterly terrifying thought. The man has openly mused about the possible necessity of extirpating large areas of the planet with nuclear weapons in order to stop Muslims from getting an atomic bomb.
@tiivc It's a futile idea, if taken seriously (which I think the original poster was not intending), since Sam Harris is neither a politician nor a diplomat, the latter often by his own admission. It would actually be a tremendous waste of his talents.
For a different perspective on the motivations for suicide bombing, search for Dr. Andy Thomson. He basically comes to the opposite conclusions of Altran. He also offers more compelling evidence than Altran of belief influencing behavior: (e.g., Altran argues that suicide bombers don't believe in 72 virgins in paradise, Thomson cites the practice of the protective-wrapping of the genitals by bombers to preserve them for the virgin-plowing paradise).
You should hear what this Scott Atran guy had to say during Beyond Belief 2006. He basically made a comment that everyone in the whole conference had no idea what they were talking about and nobody that spoke had any insight whatsoever into the issue of science as it relates to religion. It was both staggeringly arrogant and fatuous at the same time. Check it out in Session 6 of beyond belief (around the 15 minute mark).
If you watch the other videos from that conference you'd probably agree with what he said - that is that the other people had no idea about terrorism. And given that Atran is an acclaimed expert on this topic and the rest of the New Atheists generally aren't I'd say he was probably correct.
@turbozed It was arrogant, but he had a few legitimate points. A lot of the speakers really were ignorant about religion in general and Islam in specific. That's not to say everything Atran says is correct.
Atran looks puzzled at the utter lack of substance in Harris' response. Also, Harris seems unaware that the majority of suicide bombings are carried out by secular Marxist groups.
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism - Robert Pape. Social scientist and terrorism expert. Atran has also written extensively about the issue and agrees with Pape's findings. Atran has a new book out in October this year about the anthropology of terrorism.
@psycropticunt Oh the book says during the time of the cold war most suicide terrorists where communists. Welcome to the 21st century my friend. Where communists are no longer a threat to the free world while Islamists are. While we are on the subject the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka had more suicide bombers than Islamists. They did not directly threaten the free world either.
@psycropticunt To understand the capacity to Islamism to destroy the free world, it is not enough to simply count the number of suicide bombings that they do. There is so much more that goes towards the development of situational awareness. And if you leave Islam out of the equation, you are missing a big chunk of it. Try understanding Soviet policies without understanding Marxism, or German policies during WW2 without understanding Nazism. See what I am talking about?
Yeah, right. Q: "Do you think the original moral premises can be settled with scientific debate?"
A: I think science construed in a larger sense, there's something that's called "rationality" that we distinguish from "irrationality", so history is a part of that, the belief that the Japanese bombed pearl harbor is a factual belief and anyone who is going to argue that the people from Borneo did has a burden, it seems to me. And that's not science, it's history."cont
"But this is construing science in that larger sense, that larger footprint of certainties scaling with the evidence. Uh, yeah, science is the best we've got. There are consequentialist problems. Who among us wants to live in a society where you go to the doctor for a checkup and he realizes he's got five people who need organs...We can use various rational heuristics to discover we don't want to live in that society even though it's hard to do the moral arithmetic" ..cont
cont. "and say the integrity of one person's life will trump the five people who needs his organs, whether you use a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, I mean we can talk about these things and converge and we're probably not going to end up what the Chinese come up with."
Translated, it goes like this: Q."Do you think the original moral premises can be settled with scientific debate?" A."No. We'll settle it the way we always have, with history, rationality, and philosophy. But I'll call it science."
@geodgereturns Yeah, we have been watching him requalify his definition of science to include exactly what you say since the Moral Landscape came out, BUT there is a difference between more analytic and speculative forms of philosophy, history that uses Bayesian formulae, and empirically based "rationality." That's what he's getting at. The difference in all of them seems to imply some level of defeasibility.
from what i gather via reading the definitions, orthogonal means to miss the point completely, it basically means two vectors form a right angle, so i think Sam is saying the actual point is up here, and scott's point is orthogonal, or at a right angle with it, going the other direction.
@AndrewDewittBaker Orthogonal does not quiet mean miss the point completely. It means just touching on it while mostly going in a different (right angled) direction.
@82abhilash In mathematics orthogonal means two vectors whose product is zero. What Sam means is that Scotts points contradict themselves to a point of zero and are meaningless.
Doesn't this jackass (Atran) realize that the Hu regime's co-option of Confucian social harmony is a cheap ruse to suppress political dissent? Chinese society should not be harmonious, they should overthrow these repressive villain assholes, adopt a government worthy of their largely awesome culture, let Taiwan do whatever they want, and THEN worry about genuine harmony rather than laying down for a crap government.
@AndrewDewittBaker He completely comes across as an arrogant prick. However, he knows a lot about islam and the middle-east and in his talks provides evidential support for his views. Sam Harris wrote a book about the stupidity of religion (which, by the way, I haven't read) and that's it. I don't think Atran's smugness helps him get his views across.
@AndrewDewittBaker (by pretending to be arrogant) Atran is showing how arrogant everyone is because they don't understand anything about suicide bombers. He's telling everyone in the room (especially Harris) how their reason to what Islam is, is 100% shameful and ignorant
great video thanks
msjessypp 1 week ago
Sam Harris brought up a good point about "white guilt". I find there are a lot of Liberal (and Conservative) White Americans who refuse to call out the wrongs of people in other cultures or countries, because they think they are being prejudiced or bigoted...it's a shame. Violence and cruelty are violence and cruelty in any country, in any language, in any aspect of the world.
SpearofDestiny0 1 week ago
'philosophy of harmony' = stupidity.....'confabutory' = speaking in a droll quiet voice to fool the masses into thinking gibberish is intelligence. Atran = a useful fool
funcpl2741054 2 weeks ago
Harris FTW
rt36crazyfists 1 month ago
scott atran has spent decades studying the phenomenon in the field. Sam Harris has read the Koran.
liverlee100 2 months ago
@liverlee100 Yeah, that is probably why people took the time and effort to listen to what he had to say mostly during the late 80s and early 90s. The deficiency in his methods come from not critically examining the religious aspect of the phenomena. That is his limitation. It is mostly a self-imposed limitation, but at that time there was also a taboo against criticizing religion. Even in a free country you pay a price both socially and professionally. Sam Harris makes up for that deficiency.
82abhilash 2 months ago
@liverlee100 Scott Atran doesn't dare to speak his utter arrogant and ignorant bullshit, that religion has nothing to do with anything, when he is faced with someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or others who faced the oh so fantastic islam from birth.
He is right that religion is not the only problem or cause, but his extreme arrogance in denouncing and attacking people like Harris for saying religion IS a big part of the problem is disgusting and utterly ignorant.
Atran is biased as hell.
enlightendbel 1 month ago
@liverlee100 But then again, Scott thinks we can explain Jihad as by "young adults who are in transition stages in their lives: immigrants, students, those still in search of friends, mates or jobs." Or stop suicide bombers by creating a "21st-century version [...] the Boy Scouts and high school football teams" He never says the doctrines of Islam seriously play a part! Sam points this out very well.
flutterandwow 1 week ago
confabulate - unconsciously replace fact with fantasy in one's memory
baristha 2 months ago
Scott Atran just strikes me as an arrogant d-bag. He's completely unyielding in discussion and when challenged resorts to condescending remarks as if no one knows better than him. As if his experiences and his experiences alone entitle him to truth that only he can have reason.
sikViduser 3 months ago
I think that saying that Scott Atran has too much for respect for religion is suggesting that no atheist should know it or have familiarity with its concepts and what it means to people. This is naive. We're not all the same. If we're all on the same page, then there is no space to read.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow Knowing about religion and respecting it are not the same thing.
82abhilash 3 months ago
@82abhilash through understanding and knowing religion, it is inevitable to have some kind of respect for it, but this also shows a bit of respect for the person and hence, empathy. from my own experience i'll be honest that I do have a certain respect for it, more to do with people close to me than myself though. i simply can't be as distant as you seem to be with it, given life and circumstance. i don't think there's anything wrong with the essential concepts people latch onto, but fact isfact
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow You are confusing respect for persons with respect for their religion.
82abhilash 3 months ago
@82abhilash fuck religion. whether you believe in it or not, people are its generator. you may be confusing cause with effect or vice versa. it is the human tendency to dominate and aggress against people because they believe that their way is better than the other that is key in the spread of Islam and also part of the neo-conservative agenda.scott atran is one of the people who takes an interest in the evolution of religion.I also appreciate Dennetts approach.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow Liberals too have an agenda. The tendency to dominate and aggress does not divide according to political lines. What is your opinion on Sam Harris's approach by the way?
82abhilash 3 months ago
@82abhilash i'll be honest. most of what i've read from him are excerpts. i'm inclined not to like him but part of me does because of his openess to, as he has said before, ''spooky'' stuff. i'm not sure if liberals really have a cogent agenda as such in a political sense. In politics, the representatives of liberalism for the most part are watered-down. when i said ''dominate and agresss'', i was talking about military or militant agression against another.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow You ought to try Sam Harris's books. You might enjoy it.
82abhilash 3 months ago
@82abhilash someday, someday. just gotta get through a load of other books first. i am familiar with Harris's stance on a lot of things only through youtube and reading about him but I will eventually get to it. In regards Islam, he is worringly close to a neo-con viewpoint of it. yes, it is dangerous but there's still history.there was a fantastic 3-part documentary series by Adam Curtis called: 'The Power of Nightmares' from a couple ofyears ago you might want to check out in relation to this.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow I have already watched that documentary. I can fully sympathize with you. It has a captivating potential. I had seriously considered what was in it for a while. I did not realize that suddenly. There was lot of thinking and understanding taking place between 2004 and 2011. At worst it is propaganda. At best it is an interesting thought experiment. You can try it with holocaust denial if you want. Try watching the 'documentary' One third of a holocaust.
82abhilash 3 months ago
@82abhilash :) I love thought experiments. What did you think of Atrans 'Talking to the Enemy'?
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow I think the time for talking is long gone and Atran missed the boat.
82abhilash 3 months ago
@82abhilash Northern Ireland would disagree. here's hoping Martin McGuiness isn't successful in becoming my states figurehead, though. surely it's never too late for dialogue. indeed, conflict should in itself express a need for it. John Hume held talks with extremists from both sides of that particular conflict, and it wasn't a popular move at the time and he was criticised for trying. look at now though, as a result of his efforts to bridge the gaps.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow Your mistake is in thinking that ideologies are interchangeable and so lessons are easily transferrable.It is an easy mistake to make, especially when the enemy is eager in deceiving you and add that to the fact that you are trying to use the known to understand the unknown.
82abhilash 3 months ago
@82abhilash that's why it was called, sometimes cynically, 'the peace process.' in regards to my mistake you belive i'm making, one should never underestimate institutions in their role as a divider to interchangeability. Armies, churches, dogmas and the demand to not question. you might not have seen 'The Trap', which dicusses the application of game theory in the Cold War. what was disturbing about it was a paranoid assumption of the opponent andbeing able to totally reconstruct them as evil.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow I saw it. If you think evil is a reconstruction, of one's opponent and that nothing is innately evil, then you can watch the other holocaust denial documentary 'Buchenwald, a dumb dumb portrayal of evil' made by the same guy with the ugly voice who made 'One Third of a holocaust'. Concepts aside, you need to think for yourself and make up your own mind on these. Instead of letting Adam Curtis, or Sam Harris, or Scot Atran or even me think for you.
82abhilash 3 months ago
@82abhilash absolutely i do think for myself. everyone should represent themselves individually and i always try to do that. i was worried you were gonna say something like that because i referenced Adam Curtis twice. i always found myself watching the documentaries by Curtis down the years before 'All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace' when I finally bothered to check who was behind them, though familar already. nature itself is harsh, but does that make it in and of itself- evil?
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow Good and Evil are bipolar terms that have their origin in Christian theology. Western society is still culturally Christian, even atheists here believe in good and evil. Good vs Evil stories are the most popular. Anything that does not fit that category turns people off or confuses them. I do think there is good and evil. Nevertheless notwithstanding the usefulness of those concepts, they have limitations that must be appreciated.
82abhilash 3 months ago
@82abhilash bingo! i was just going to do a follow-up comment saying something along those lines. they arise out of the ancient habit of goal-setting in our species. however, sometimes evil is direct manipulation in pursuit of an acquisition or desire, meaning sometimes the bad guys will ally with the good guys if there are common goals, and sometimes there is no clear goal. senseless evil, that arises in the middle of things like war. blindness creeps in. pseudospeciation.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
speaking of pseudospeciation, Atran accused Harris before of potraying a caricature of islam. i would be wary of any uniform negative view of a specific denomination of people. Harris was one of the people worried about the implications of building that complex being built near where the World Trade Center and it was on this issue where he identified with the conservative right. now, there are ugly roots to the religion but I would fear how out of control and the view could get.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
also, rather than evil , maybe I should have said 'malevolent', though characteristic of it.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
that is: 'Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What it Means to Be Human'. I always shorten it for a lot of people. I found myself reading it one day and couldn't put it down. the title really caught my attention because I was thinking a lot about those 3 listed things.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
@StrummingSparrow sorry in regards to islam there. not is, but was. i'm not suggesing it's spreading now. lol.
StrummingSparrow 3 months ago
I think there could be some sort of bad history between the two.I dont like Atran. He seems like a shifty bastard. Harris seems honest. I dont like shifty bastards.
lambofpaul 4 months ago
Scott Atran = Moron
lyntonio 6 months ago in playlist religion
While I would find such a debate as proposed interesting, I would prefer one with Sam Harris against someone of greater character, that is, someone who eschewed cheap shots and long-winded obfuscatory questions. A rare moment, however, for Sam Harris to depart from his usual centered, Zen-like demeanor.
Doigt101 7 months ago
This is not Sam Harris at his best since he eclipsed his own answer to the moral philosophy question by digressing to a seemingly unrelated difference he had with Scot Atran on Islam. By deflecting attention to the other issue, calling Atran's position on Islam irresponsible, he borders on an ad hominem attack relative to the pompously posed question on moral philosophy. Scot Atran, with his own direct, peevish ad hominem attack in response rather confirms that he, Atran, is irresponsible.
Doigt101 7 months ago
Perfectly said by Sam Harris. Attran is a dhimmi twat who keeps making excuses for muslims who are obeying the doctrines of sharia and jihad. People are getting tired of the bullshit and even the densest left-leaning ditto head now KNOWS that islamic religious teachings are the root of the problem. Attran represents a wasted education and a willful ignorance of what is perhaps the most important facet of our evolution: the ability to identify enemies/predators and deal with those threats.
Swiley11780 7 months ago
@Swiley11780 ppffff, it can't even cross your mind that that's exactly what THEY are thinking: about americans and the western world, that we're the enemies
PrincessDesert 7 months ago
@PrincessDesert And they would be right. We, the free, enlightened West, are the enemies of theocratic islamist shit sticks who want to drag us back into the dark ages with such wonderful things as slavery, religious censorship, torture by the "morality police," polygamy, child brides, and of course the end of free speech. Yes, we are the enemies of all that backward bullshit. I only wish that we as a civilization were as fired up to kill these religitards as they are to kill us.
Swiley11780 7 months ago
@Swiley11780 from a foreigner's perspective, I'm telling you: U.S. is hated upon by practically the rest of the world (but only the extreme muslims have the guts to go crazy against us)
besides, Muslims are the most respectful people I know (by far)
The teachings of Islam bring terrorists down, not the moronic war we're stuck with
PrincessDesert 7 months ago
Wow Sam Harris pissed that guy off xD
FlipCoder 8 months ago
"Orthogonal"?!? That's my new word of the day! Thanks, Sam!
Gravija1980 9 months ago
I'm not personally against Obama, but i do believe that white guilt is vastly responsible for his election.
44warjunkie 9 months ago
@44warjunkie Come now. Millions of voters moved solely by guilt?! I am sure it is a factor. But a major factor?
82abhilash 9 months ago
@82abhilash i mean among the white voters.
44warjunkie 9 months ago
@44warjunkie Who are the majority voters.
82abhilash 9 months ago
@82abhilash there's definitely a ring of truth to that. Many people, both white and black, were largely motivated by the idea of getting a black man in the white house. True, it represents a milestone in racial relations in this country, but unfortunately that, in and of itself, is not good enough reason to base a vote on.
supahsekzy 6 months ago
@82abhilash But that doens't mean it was the only reason - many things (other than whatever merits you attribute to Obama) put him in a position of favor: Not just white guilt, but also how sick everyone was of the Bush administration of the previous 8 years and were wooed by calls for "change." Also how hardcore rightist McCain came off as, and his selection of Palin as VP candidate. There were numerous reasons but I think white guilt played an appreciable part.
supahsekzy 6 months ago
@44warjunkie What an uninformed opinion. Why is White guilt not responsible for Al Sharpton or Alan Keys becoming president? Thanks for disclosing the reason you voted for him.
scottdomek 8 months ago
The guy is holding the mic in a weird way
JOHNYOCHO 9 months ago
Wow, that is some seriously sniffy-nosed snip at the end.
Aeschylus 9 months ago
Is it just me or did Sam Harris not even attempt to answer the question whatsoever?
simon341 10 months ago
The only people who should feel "white guilt", are those directly involved in the enslavement of the blacks. If all whites now should feel guilt for the black slave trade, so should the Arabs who equally butchered them, hell, I should be hating on blacks for what they did to my ancestors :D Just be careful, that's all.
TurboDally 10 months ago 8
@TurboDally What blacks did to your ancestors?
82abhilash 10 months ago
@82abhilash You're not familiar with the millions of Europeans and American sailors sold into slavery by North African pirates? Also, Do the Barbary wars ring any bells?
preemptivestrike20 7 months ago
@TurboDally I hate to be so prejudicial, but you sound like a moderate racist trying to justify the past and perpetuation of superficial social divisiveness using historical sophistry. And yeah, what did blacks do to your ancestors? Wore their chains? Fuck you, that's all. (Sorry, but I have no tolerance for intolerance, especially when cloaked in ignorance)
ScottBrown666 10 months ago
@ScottBrown666
Are you retarded? You read my comment and you came to the conclusion that I'm some kind of a moderate racism? Read the comment again you fool. I'll make it clear since your English comprehension isn't all that good: if we're going to use white guilt, you may as well have Arab guilt also since Arabs too enslaved the blacks equally as the Europeans. Or how about Indians hate on all whites and Arabs? It's stupid to tar an entire race for what a few did in the past.
Now fuck off.
TurboDally 10 months ago 2
@TurboDally You also are forgetting that it was only with the help of other Africans, that Africans were enslaved. Similarly, when the African Americans went to Liberia, they themselves then went and enslaved and mistreated the local indigenous population.
The pan-african identity is a modern thought that actually came out of freed slaves in the Americas
cdsnjs 10 months ago
@TurboDally There are many problems with feeling guilty for what your ancestors did to blacks, other than the fact that it makes no sense to feel guilty for what someone else did.
Just because you're white, doesn't mean your ancestors were slave owners. They could have been quite the opposite, they could have been abolitionists.
American blacks are more likely to have slave owner ancestors, than any random white person, so if someone should feel guilty, it's blacks. But they shouldn't either.
ninjajesus81 9 months ago
@TurboDally In a sense I disagree. We're still living in the wake of slavery/segregation. While people that are alive now didn't directly impoverish and exploit the black community, one of the reasons why the black community in the united states is disproportionately impoverished today is the racist attitudes of our ancestors and what that did fiscally and culturally to the black community. Segregation only ended in the 60's for f*ck sake. Also, there's still a kind of self imposed segregation.
piccolo8344 3 months ago
@TurboDally not only that but if whites should feel guilt for black enslavement then so should blacks as many of them were sold or traded to whites by blacks from other local tribes
kris6682 1 month ago
@TurboDally Should blacks feel quilt for mass murder and genocide in Africa such as Rwanda or Darfur? I just want to understand the framework of racial quilt theory. Can it work both ways?
Mishkafofer 3 weeks ago
Harris was supposed to answer a question on moral philosophy and instead opens up with both barrels on Atran. Then Atran practically says Harris is clueless. But all in a most gentlemanly manner! Hahaha...
pandaya 11 months ago 7
“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi,” -Friendship among men makes one speak this way?
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
When it comes to economics in their region, Islam IS the problem. As it is for suicide bombing, oppression of women, poor mental health, poverty in general, overwhelming ignorance about reality, stupidity on an unimaginable scale and violence in general. They live and die for an after life that doesn't exist. Yeah, an enigma of the first order, lol.
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
Where did this debate happen? Is there a full version online?
Swiley117 11 months ago
Disappointing! Atran asks Harris a critical question about his ideology—"Can science guide us to choose which of competing moral models is the right one?"—and Harris does everything but answer. In his scenario in which doctors cannibalize one human to save five, he confronts the question, then sidesteps it, hops from point to point, starts a diatribe on Islam (?) throws out a couple of ten dollar words, then launches a personal attack on Atran. That question should've been in his wheelhouse.
Kaath9 11 months ago 2
@Kaath9 Yes, a lot of people in the comments are saying that Harris leaves Atran stumped here. I agree. Stumped by the sheer dishonesty and evasiveness of Harris's response. Instead of actually answering Atran's question, he seeks to discredit his position by claiming that it's "irresponsible", neatly avoiding the hassle of raising a coherent counter-argument. It's disappointing to see so many people duped by Harris's superficial intellectual posturing.
lewicron 11 months ago
@lewicron I was impressed with Atran's poise—and also by the way he prefaced his remarks by praising Harris on another subject (he seems to make a habit of that). I couldn't help noticing that he was amused by Harris's response. And I'm not sure Harris caught the implication of Atran's last comment to the effect that the subject should be debated by someone who knew what they were talking about ... and that that wasn't happening here.
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 Yes, I did chuckle at Atran's riposte. His RSS feed at the Huffington Post is well worth following.
lewicron 11 months ago
@Kaath9 Atran at first praises Harris for his talk on ethics and science. This means that he heard Sam say the following "the thing to notice is there are many peaks but also that there are many more ways not to be on a peak" something he's said at many of his presentations and has now written in his book The Moral Landscape. Science point towards one ethic? It was a stupid question on it's face, and was already answered at the presentation. I will believe what the jihadist says are his motives.
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 Atran seems to use praise of his opponent before he gives negative critique as a matter of course—not just in this instance. I suspect it's a methodology. Psychologically, this tends to ameliorate the effects of the negative critique, thus softening antipathy. The question about science and morals wasn't stupid at all. If Harris proposes science is to be our moral guide, he must be able to explain how it can do so clearly. If he can't, the standard is unusable.
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 If you're going to demonstrate your ignorance on what has transpired between these two, please do so with a little more subtlety. You suspect it's a methodology? Is this why Atran stood in front of an audience of people who study Islam, psychology, science, religion, and said "you all don't know what the hell you're talking about"? Very good way of ameliorating! Moral guidance was outlined over 15 times in his videos on youtube, his book, and many speeches. Clarity of thought eludes you
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 Good tactic. Call your opponent ignorant. A lot of westerners don't know much about Islam besides what they read in comments like yours or from media outlets who are also passing along disinformation. I've been following the disagreement between these two for several years now, and I can understand Atran's frustration with Harris. Hey may have "outlined" moral guidance over 15 times, but he's yet to answer the question of how that's supposed to work on the streets where we live.
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 God loves not the aggressor-That's all it says? I've had a copy for over 20 years and have read it more than once. There are no profound ethics in it whatsoever. Just reducing an imaginary entity's intellect to that of a spoiled boy-king who can do and know all things-except he built us to praise him a certain way for this perfect being has needs. Laughable! There are wicked things in it I have a feeling that you haven't read them though. Care to say just 1 bad thing about the Qu'ran?
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 One bad thing? It was written for a very different time and for very different people. While there are ethics in it that are both profound and timeless, it's also dealing with issues that are not dominant in modern western culture—people burying their girl children alive, men who think nothing of gathering scores of concubines or wives, then cutting them loose to die, etc. It's easy to resort to presentism to critique history but is it reasonable to do so?
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 You just said "call your opponent ignorant. A lot of westerners don't know" Hypocrite. If this is how you reason and interpret things, it's understandable why you side with an ignoramus like Atran. What is to be known about Islam is written in one unbelievably simplistic book that is accessible to anyone, even "westerners". Their primitive culture and meek minds are easily understood. "Allah Akbar!" right before dying was actually "All for soccer!" Who knew?
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 No, sweetie. I didn't call you ignorant. I just commented that a lot of westerners (including me, once) get their ideas about Islam piecemeal. They read the Qur'an without understanding the culture it addressed or the issues it spoke to. While you've been attacking my intelligence and my thought processes since the beginning of this thread; all I've been trying to do is get you to realize that it's just not that simple. It's easier to hate people who seem alien, though.
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 I never said you called me ignorant. There is a reason why you can psychologically profile people with a high degree of success without having met them, serial killers for example. People, their beliefs, nor their motives are anywhere near complex or difficult to understand. Culture is an organized system of beliefs and thought patterns always made manifest by a group, making that group distinctive from other groups. They are saying what motivates them on their videos. Harris is right.
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 About the jahidist rationale. I agree: we should listen to what the (surviving) jihadists and their families and peers say about why they did what they did. That's Scott Atran's area of expertise. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's comments about suicide bombers being the weapon of people with no other weapons were apt, and make a lot more sense than the virgins in heaven theory which, I note, is only advanced by western commentators who've never interviewed any jihadists themselves.
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 Is this why they've found dead suicide bombers with their genitals wrapped in protective cloth? Muslims don't think god inspired the Qu'ran, they think it is his word. The people who know, should not live by the whims and superstitions of the religious. If you read the Hadith you'd know that it is permissible to lie to gain an edge in the name of the faith. You can listen to the survivors if you want. Mein Kampf had nothing to do with Hitler's views about Jews, he was just babbling.
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 So because Muslim men wrap their genitals in protective cloth we're supposed to infer what? That they think their narlies are going to heaven with them? And where did you get this information—just curious, because I've never heard it. About the Qur'an and Hadith. The Qur'an does not say a word about this type of "martyrdom". It says "God loves not the aggressor." And Hadith (which I have read) is the "alleged" sayings of Muhammad, not his direct teaching.
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 Actually, Atran just returned with an astonishing conclusion- they weren't wrapped in protective cloth, it was a nut-cup they were wearing as they just finished a soccer game and had to wear some protection. We've deployed our best scientist and sociologists to study the anomaly as to why soccer is manifesting these strange results but only in combination with people who are Islamic. This is very perplexing as religion and soccer are normally benign except with Islam..what could it be?
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 Yes, but to construct Sam's "peaks" you need to establish what "up" is. So what Scott sees as the problem is not trying to find the ONE WAY to be moral (Harris often addresses using his health analogy), but what measurement we should use for morality itself. For Sam it's Human Flourishing, for the Chinese Communists it's Harmony, and for the Nietsche followers Scott mentions it's perfection through suffering. This remains a problem, but I give Sam credit for working on it.
lordabacu 11 months ago
@lordabacu Since our minds and nature itself is quantitative in various ways, science may have something to say. If one were actually able to measure these approaches, one form could trump another. Suffering has an almost universal definition. Happiness, because of culture, has many. I, like Harris, believe that the truth about happiness, is culturally transcending. The idea that humanity could rid itself of tribalism, nationalism, and war, is too enticing to ignore, even in Harris's approach.
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
The 'four-horseman of the apocalypse' fan-boys sure as hell make me laugh!
fuckooo 1 year ago
Informing one's self can only do so much. If you lack the ability to digest and extrapolate to any degree whatsoever, information does nothing, hence, Scott Atran is an educated moron. I know the videos are a few years old but watching Scott take on Sam is much like watching a broom stick attack an oak tree (intellectually speaking of course). The way he pronounces Al-Qaeda as if choking, is causing me to loose vast amounts of sleep at night. Some people specialize in annoying.
Opposingforce77 1 year ago
@Opposingforce77 As a good number of my friends speak Arabic or Farsi as a first language, I can tell you that Atran is pronouncing Al Qaida properly and not fragging it like most Westerners do. My take on the video was much different. Harris looked uncomfortable and he did not answer Atran's very pertinent question. In the end, he resorted to an ad hominem attack on Atran's character. In what way is that being an intellectual oak tree?
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 There was nothing ad hominem about his attack. Atran is engaged in intellectual dishonesty and Harris is just pointing it out. He fits perfectly in with the types of people who think that 9/11 was an inside job, or that man never really landed on the moon. Yes, his conjectures are that far detached from reality. I've read his book and his thoughts are very disorganized and off base. He is a bona fide moron.
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
ad hominem: "(of an argument or reaction) arising from or appealing to the emotions and not reason or logic. • attacking an opponent’s motives or character rather than the policy or position they maintain" Atran asked a question about Harris' specific claims on science and morality—Harris responded by attacking Atran on Islam, a completely different subject. He called him irresponsible, and confabulatory, and he misstated Atran's position. (& you connect him with 9/11 conspiracists—good job!)
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 Thanks for defining this for me. Argument A: Harris mentioned heuristics, rationality, and morality, in which case your ad hominem term was inappropriate. Argument B: Harris mentioned nothing about morality the first 90 seconds he responded in which case your term was appropriate. Atran:Sam, stop keeping the one true path science is suggesting us to take to yourself! Harris: No Atran! That secret stays with me!
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 Yes, Harris mentioned all those things in a way that seemed disconnected from the question. It's as if Atran had asked how do you use a ruler to measure time and Harris said: "Well, you see, there are heuristics involved, and rationality and, of course, time and ... well, you use a ruler." Then he switched to an emotionally charged issue that had nothing to do with the question, attacked Atran's behavior, and deferred the debate. I think ad hominem covers it pretty well.
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 I've read your pathetic rebuttals on the other videos and understand why you have such sloppy moral relativism. As a fan boy I will say "it is to excuse their actions to offer any other explanation except their own evil mullahs, their own filthy religion." You can type in "virgin martyr" on youtube or any other search engine and see some of the now dead suicide bomber's videos they choose to make before ceasing to exist. Warning: it may just be "westerners" in costumes acting.
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 "... you and your pathetic band of rebels..." Oh, wait, that's Star Wars. Your comments really take me back. I haven't heard this sort of stuff since I left fourth grade. (Yeah, well...your moral relativism is SLOPPY! So there!) I'm not doubting that there are fundamentalist fanatics whose reasons for martyrdom are hard for us to grok. But that's not ultimately what's driving this phenomenon. These are desperate people who lack any weapons and have themselves become weapons.
Kaath9 11 months ago
Why does the rationale for suicide have to be binary—either all martyrs die for "pure companions" in heaven, or all die for other reasons? Is it possible that different people take this extreme option for different reasons—all of which, as I noted in another comment, come back to desperation and a sense of powerlessness? I'm not excusing anyone's actions, but I do want to understand their real motivations, not simply grasp at a simplistic but comforting dumbing down of those motivations.
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 Your last sentence exposes your failed logic. They've made videos, watch them as they talk of paradise and rivers of honey and wine, how beautiful and obedient their women will be, and not about extra green soccer fields or how you don't get shin splints in heaven. They mention infidels, how great Allah is every two seconds, how great heaven will be, and Islam, Islam and more Islam . Atran is the pinnacle of stupid. We love death more than the infidel loves life...no soccer here either.
Opposingforce77 11 months ago
@Opposingforce77 I've never said anything about soccer fields. And what Scott Atran said about soccer was taken out of context. It doesn't serve any purpose to try to narrow this subject down to simplistic either / or thinking. Islam isn't the problem. Fanatical behavior has cropped up in other faiths, in politics, in economics, in race relations. And often these things are only the tools of radicalism and the disguise it wears not the reason for it. People are more complex than that.
Kaath9 11 months ago
Wow, Atran got his feelings hurt, and you can really hear it in his voice as he's passing the mic along at the end.
instereovideos 1 year ago
@instereovideos Er ... he was chuckling. Harris never answered the question. So there really was nothing for him to respond to, was there?
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 I was talking about the very last thing that was said in the video "And that I haven't seen here." His feelings were hurt.
instereovideos 11 months ago
@instereovideos I took that as a subtle dig at Harris. Yes, he felt the issues should be debated by someone who "knew what they were talking about" which he hadn't seen there. I don't think his feelings were hurt at all, but he clearly understood that Harris hadn't answered the question. I suspect that, as I watched, the video, I had the same expression on my face as he did on his—bemusement that his opponent opted for a personal attack instead of simply answering a very pertinent question.
Kaath9 11 months ago
@Kaath9 Right, I got that. And yet I felt that Harris hurt his feelings and there wasn't any "bemusement." I just disagree with you.
instereovideos 11 months ago
is that daniel dennett sitting next to the guy at the beginning??
Freethinker12341 1 year ago
@Freethinker12341 Yes.
82abhilash 1 year ago
@Freethinker12341 Woah. Mind Blown
hjstuckey 11 months ago
@hjstuckey ? can i help u?
Freethinker12341 11 months ago
@Freethinker12341 who the hell cares?
SeeProfileForDetails 11 months ago
@SeeProfileForDetails who the hell cares about what?
Freethinker12341 11 months ago
i think he meant confabulatory in the psychiatric sense when referring to Atran's style, according to dictionary com: "confabulatory - the replacement of a gap in a person's memory by a falsification that he or she believes to be true." tbh i didn't know it was a word until i heard Sam say it :D
jaylias 1 year ago
@jaylias It gets better... He then called his opponents facts a "blizzard of detail" which is "orthogonal" to the question at hand, which in mathematics means "perpendicular." It's a crazy way of saying that the guy's facts run in the opposite direction from the point of the argument. Love it.
instereovideos 1 year ago
sam wrote a book on him
EvolvedParadigm 1 year ago
Comment removed
EvolvedParadigm 1 year ago
WTF? "You have a blizzard of detail, much of which is orthogonal to the question at hand" he says, while completely ignoring the question at hand and attacking the questioner on orthogonal issues.
tky011 1 year ago 3
"The majority of suicide bombings are carried out by secular Marxist groups" really? On what evidence is this statement based? I would sincerely be interested to know.
trapfish 1 year ago
@trapfish The LTTE in Sri-Lanka, which is secular but had long ago abandoned its marxist ideology have launched more suicide attacks than all other groups combined. They are the only organization I know that had a standing army of suicude bombers within their military hierarchy. You could argue that since most of these attacks were launched by suicide boats against Sri-Lankan navy targets, they don't conform to our normative definition of suicide bombing. PKK in Turkey also use suicide bombers
londonbridge7 1 year ago
@londonbridge7 I had heard of the Sri Lankan suicide bombers, indeed Sam talks about them in End of Faith, but the idea that the "majority" of suicide bombers are secular seems a little out there to me, I still haven't seen any evidence that this is the case. I could be wrong but you would need to come up with some pretty startling stats to overcome the current numbers blowing themselves up in the sad situation that is currently Iraq and Afghanistan.
trapfish 1 year ago 8
@trapfish sam harris' point, in basic terms, is that suicide bombing is fueled by individual + collective oppression rather than Religous Zeal. In all the holy books, it is clearly outlined that Suicide is one of the worst crimes on can comite
bjl34565 6 months ago
@bjl34565 That's why the suicide bombers don't think of it as "suicide". They think of it as martyrdom. and that they are dying in defense of their faith.
Drgamedood 5 months ago
@Drgamedood thats the justification but not the reason
bjl34565 5 months ago
@bjl34565 It's the reason. =)
Drgamedood 5 months ago
@Drgamedood potentialy. but the point im trying to make is that suicide bombing is more about oppression and socio-political status rather than just a religon that has been around for 1600 years that is only just becoming extremly fanatical at, strangly, the same time that the countries with the largest muslim comunity are undergoing radical political change and forgien oppression.
bjl34565 5 months ago
@bjl34565 Sam Harris deals with that in many of his debates on Islam and in his public articles. You should look up his article "Bombing our illusions" or watch his debates with Chris hedges/Reza Aslan.
Drgamedood 5 months ago
@Drgamedood REZA IS A BEASt!!! will do man
bjl34565 5 months ago
@londonbridge7 More suicide attacks than all other groups combined? This seems highly unlikely, especially if you calculate only civillian targets. If you don't mind me asking where did you get your numbers? I ask because one can read about suicide attacks every other day in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also I have spent time in Sri Lanka.
xanthromera 1 year ago
@trapfish it's based on no evidence. It's nonsense.
jackdav34 1 year ago
atran was destroyed
bonfirejovi 1 year ago
Imagine Sam Harris as President...someone who can use the word "orthogonal" in a non-mathematical setting while also deploying multiple, multisyllabic words in the SAME sentence WITHOUT teleprompters. But we could never elect him because he doesn't believe in an imaginary sky-deadbeat dad who promises lots of ice cream and happiness you just have to DIE first. That's a great rule of thumb incidentally, be wary of any groups offering deals that require your death before you get your part.
RozarSmacco 1 year ago 43
@RozarSmacco i say hitch for president.
Freethinker12341 1 year ago
@RozarSmacco A parrot can do that. I'm not implying that Harris is a parrot, merely that the pronunciation of words composed of multiple syllables is not a very good foundation for determining a person's level of intellect.
Sleipnirrr 11 months ago
@Sleipnirrr All things being equal I think having a large vocabulary directly correlates to someone's relative intellect and is useful (especially if you have nothing else to go on)
RozarSmacco 11 months ago
@RozarSmacco The phrase is "all _else_ being equal", and you claim there is nothing else to go on? So what you are saying is, given you are uneducated in a particular subject, and you listen to a discussion between two people who are educated in that subject - you would support the one who uses the fanciest words?
Sleipnirrr 10 months ago
@RozarSmacco - And you think Obama couldn't without a teleprompter? I've got news for you. When you're free to speak your mind and you spend all the time doing it and rehearsing your material, you can be as fluid and off the cuff and wax as prosaic as Sam does. Take it from me, I used to be that guy.
But when you're a politician or President, you've got measure every word, calculate every sentence, edit yourself mentally and verbally on the fly so as to not provide your enemies with ammo.
morpheusxnyc 10 months ago
@RozarSmacco Yes, I can imagine Sam Harris as president. But not without imagining myself as first lady...
revelwoodie 9 months ago
@RozarSmacco Sam Harris for President is an utterly terrifying thought. The man has openly mused about the possible necessity of extirpating large areas of the planet with nuclear weapons in order to stop Muslims from getting an atomic bomb.
tiivc 9 months ago
@tiivc It's a futile idea, if taken seriously (which I think the original poster was not intending), since Sam Harris is neither a politician nor a diplomat, the latter often by his own admission. It would actually be a tremendous waste of his talents.
jds127b123 8 months ago
Sam Harris for president, 2012.
Sam Harris is probably, at an intellectual and philosophical basis, the smartest man on the face of the earth.
ssminopoopy 1 year ago
For a different perspective on the motivations for suicide bombing, search for Dr. Andy Thomson. He basically comes to the opposite conclusions of Altran. He also offers more compelling evidence than Altran of belief influencing behavior: (e.g., Altran argues that suicide bombers don't believe in 72 virgins in paradise, Thomson cites the practice of the protective-wrapping of the genitals by bombers to preserve them for the virgin-plowing paradise).
turbozed 1 year ago
You should hear what this Scott Atran guy had to say during Beyond Belief 2006. He basically made a comment that everyone in the whole conference had no idea what they were talking about and nobody that spoke had any insight whatsoever into the issue of science as it relates to religion. It was both staggeringly arrogant and fatuous at the same time. Check it out in Session 6 of beyond belief (around the 15 minute mark).
turbozed 1 year ago
@turbozed
If you watch the other videos from that conference you'd probably agree with what he said - that is that the other people had no idea about terrorism. And given that Atran is an acclaimed expert on this topic and the rest of the New Atheists generally aren't I'd say he was probably correct.
psycropticunt 1 year ago
@turbozed It was arrogant, but he had a few legitimate points. A lot of the speakers really were ignorant about religion in general and Islam in specific. That's not to say everything Atran says is correct.
jackdav34 1 year ago
Atran is totally stump !
KaonNeutre 1 year ago
Atran looks puzzled at the utter lack of substance in Harris' response. Also, Harris seems unaware that the majority of suicide bombings are carried out by secular Marxist groups.
psycropticunt 1 year ago
@psycropticunt Secular Marxist groups? Really?! Do you care to sight sources please. Atran is not looking puzzled, he is looking stumped.
82abhilash 1 year ago
@82abhilash
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism - Robert Pape. Social scientist and terrorism expert. Atran has also written extensively about the issue and agrees with Pape's findings. Atran has a new book out in October this year about the anthropology of terrorism.
psycropticunt 1 year ago
@psycropticunt Oh the book says during the time of the cold war most suicide terrorists where communists. Welcome to the 21st century my friend. Where communists are no longer a threat to the free world while Islamists are. While we are on the subject the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka had more suicide bombers than Islamists. They did not directly threaten the free world either.
82abhilash 1 year ago
@psycropticunt To understand the capacity to Islamism to destroy the free world, it is not enough to simply count the number of suicide bombings that they do. There is so much more that goes towards the development of situational awareness. And if you leave Islam out of the equation, you are missing a big chunk of it. Try understanding Soviet policies without understanding Marxism, or German policies during WW2 without understanding Nazism. See what I am talking about?
82abhilash 1 year ago
@82abhilash
I see what you're wanting to say but it certainly isn't cogent. You are simply clutching at straws.
psycropticunt 1 year ago
@psycropticunt Without substantiation, all you have done is make a baseless claim. It isn't cogent because you say so? Is that your argument?
82abhilash 1 year ago
@psycropticunt Atleast in my humble opinion.
82abhilash 1 year ago
@psycropticunt haha XD
93alvbjo 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@psycropticunt
"the majority of suicide bombings are carried out by secular Marxist groups." Not sure if I am suppose to laugh or cry at that statement.
transit1457 1 year ago
hello?!??
Sam Harris was asked a question and played with two or three attempts to BS his way around it. Who can take him seriously? It's just vacuous.
geodgereturns 1 year ago 2
@geodgereturns Ask the right questions and you will get good answers. Otherwise it is garbage in garbage out.
82abhilash 1 year ago
@82abhilash
Yeah, right. Q: "Do you think the original moral premises can be settled with scientific debate?"
A: I think science construed in a larger sense, there's something that's called "rationality" that we distinguish from "irrationality", so history is a part of that, the belief that the Japanese bombed pearl harbor is a factual belief and anyone who is going to argue that the people from Borneo did has a burden, it seems to me. And that's not science, it's history."cont
geodgereturns 1 year ago
"But this is construing science in that larger sense, that larger footprint of certainties scaling with the evidence. Uh, yeah, science is the best we've got. There are consequentialist problems. Who among us wants to live in a society where you go to the doctor for a checkup and he realizes he's got five people who need organs...We can use various rational heuristics to discover we don't want to live in that society even though it's hard to do the moral arithmetic" ..cont
geodgereturns 1 year ago
cont. "and say the integrity of one person's life will trump the five people who needs his organs, whether you use a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, I mean we can talk about these things and converge and we're probably not going to end up what the Chinese come up with."
Translated, it goes like this: Q."Do you think the original moral premises can be settled with scientific debate?" A."No. We'll settle it the way we always have, with history, rationality, and philosophy. But I'll call it science."
geodgereturns 1 year ago
@geodgereturns Good job. You caught Sam Harris on that one.
82abhilash 1 year ago
@geodgereturns Yeah, we have been watching him requalify his definition of science to include exactly what you say since the Moral Landscape came out, BUT there is a difference between more analytic and speculative forms of philosophy, history that uses Bayesian formulae, and empirically based "rationality." That's what he's getting at. The difference in all of them seems to imply some level of defeasibility.
gatogreensleeves 1 year ago
from what i gather via reading the definitions, orthogonal means to miss the point completely, it basically means two vectors form a right angle, so i think Sam is saying the actual point is up here, and scott's point is orthogonal, or at a right angle with it, going the other direction.
AndrewDewittBaker 1 year ago
@AndrewDewittBaker Orthogonal does not quiet mean miss the point completely. It means just touching on it while mostly going in a different (right angled) direction.
82abhilash 1 year ago
@82abhilash In mathematics orthogonal means two vectors whose product is zero. What Sam means is that Scotts points contradict themselves to a point of zero and are meaningless.
Einsteinian99 1 year ago
Doesn't this jackass (Atran) realize that the Hu regime's co-option of Confucian social harmony is a cheap ruse to suppress political dissent? Chinese society should not be harmonious, they should overthrow these repressive villain assholes, adopt a government worthy of their largely awesome culture, let Taiwan do whatever they want, and THEN worry about genuine harmony rather than laying down for a crap government.
JiangZiyaTabooDays 1 year ago
Is it just me or does Atran give the impression of being an arrogant prick?
AndrewDewittBaker 1 year ago 2
@AndrewDewittBaker He completely comes across as an arrogant prick. However, he knows a lot about islam and the middle-east and in his talks provides evidential support for his views. Sam Harris wrote a book about the stupidity of religion (which, by the way, I haven't read) and that's it. I don't think Atran's smugness helps him get his views across.
stoprainingonme 1 year ago
@AndrewDewittBaker (by pretending to be arrogant) Atran is showing how arrogant everyone is because they don't understand anything about suicide bombers. He's telling everyone in the room (especially Harris) how their reason to what Islam is, is 100% shameful and ignorant
emipunk 1 year ago
lol video should be called Sam Harris pwns n00b
HappyRogueStatus 1 year ago
Put ww in front of this link and then you see one hour with the 911 gold robbery
.youtube.com/watch?v=BkPRskciqVM&feature=PlayList&p=910FF04408D3AE5A&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1
honnnesty 1 year ago
"details orthogonal to the question at hand"
its called evidence you arrogant ignorant prick
niinja2 1 year ago