Sam Harris: lecture on religious faith - Part 05

[Photosidekick2]

Religion, as well as the belief in any other supernatural thing, is indeed very dangerous. Even Hitler said that he had "God on his side."

[robertojaen]

@pmfcal Stalin was not necessarily an atheist, he was god in his head. That is why every home in Russia had a portrait of Stalin.

[MadMAn12gauge]

haha just kidding :P

[chazdoit]

@pmfcal And even if they allowed religion on their society they would have still commited all those atrocities, an appeal to a higher authority will not stop these crimes, in contrast most tyrants can justify themselves and their crimes claiming to be divinely authorized.

Argentina was pretty catholic, the military dictatorship killed thousands of civilians, having a religion didnt help one bit there.

[YamaKazoo]

Hold on a minute, was the nuclear crisis in the 60s about religion ? That almost killed all life on earth. And what he said about ireland is wrong, lots of irish republican legends were protestant, the wars and eventual independence from britain was about sovereignty of all ireland, under irish rule, in other words nationalism. He's wasting his time, his book should be about tolerance and unity. AND he talks alot about christians & muslims and almost next to nothing about judeaism.

[MadMAn12gauge]

@YamaKazoo stop crying and let the adults post messages here, you troll...do that somewhere else

[YamaKazoo]

@MadMAn12gauge wow, what a clown you are. You call me a troll while your trolling, well done bill.

[YamaKazoo]

@YamaKazoo you're

[shaneephraimsphotogr]

He is the Devil! he is trying to warp your thinking, he is the devil in disguise. Well that's the ignorant mentality of religious belief anyway.

[maddtappin]

This talk has changed my life...

[qaplatlhinganmaH]

check out:

Dan Siegel Google Talk

about brain and neuroscience

Dan Rather Brain Science

[Davebierman]

this talk changed my life

[aensinger]

Very glad to hear that. Sam Harris is so clear, thoughtful and on-point.

[ananiasacts]

Isn't there any upside to religion? How will we identify wicked people without the promise of forgiveness and salvation for mere faith? Doesn't religion, and Christianity especially, have special attraction for the treacherous?

Do we really want minds weak enough to embrace such absurd and morally reprehensible ideas to be studying anything else? Might religion be a sort of pH buffer soaking up the acids and bases that would be more corrosive if left unbound?

[herzogf22]

I can only rate you one thumb up; your comment clearly deserves two, I hope you can forgive me.

[PiccyVideos]

I dislike this idea of changing the language lexicon to let religions off the hook for the behaviour.

Namely, starting to call 'Muslims', 'Islamists'.

Lets call a spade a spade. They are all Muslims.

[ReasonForFree]

To PiccyVideos

While I think I agree with your overall intention, I don't really see a problem with your particular example. People who follow Islam can reasonably be called Islamists.

[JOMO59]

If we are going to call a "spade a spade" and avoid changing lexicon it should include also agreeing to be wary of anyone who agrees to be a slave to any dogma.

[queenastilon]

@PiccyVideos

You said: "I dislike this idea of changing the language lexicon to let religions off the hook for the behaviour. Namely, starting to call 'Muslims', 'Islamists'." It does not let them off the hook at all. The difference is that not all Muslims are Islamists. Islamists definitely want everyone to be Muslims, want to Islamise any country they move into, etc. A sort of evangelical Muslims, if you like (I don't).

[rdtcp]

pmfcal and hackenbollox: very good last point.

I have to think that religious people must understand this clear and concise bit of reasoning, but habitually refuse to see it or admit that they do, as it detrimentally undermines their untenable position (adv00cate).

[inkstersco]

The state the problem plainly:

In political discussion, religion is never discussed in terms of the merits of its specific ideas. Religion is talked about as if it were race: neither right nor wrong, but just is.

[prubens123]

Hmmmm..... And what country are you from? Do you think for a second that an out of the closet atheist is going to be elected the President of the United States of America any time soon. Government leaders in America are regarded as stronger and more ethical leaders based on their faith (Christianity). This needs to change.

[aguteempasil]

Barak Obama is an atheist.

[jessicalba7]

@aguteempasil good for him!

[adv00cate]

1) The only logical, ethical prescription in a naturalistic world is utilitarianism.

2) By any utilitarian calculus most people the bottom of the pile, and thoroughly expendable. There is no good arguments by a naturalist that gives us a binding source of authority for human dignity in life.

3) Sam is essentially arguing point #2: religious people "don't" have any human dignity and don't deserve any "respect."

Chris Hedges debated Harris and said he is an intellectual featherweight.

Cheers.

[disdanic]

As course, I fully agree that the tragedies resulting from totalitarianism are some of the most reprehensible and horrific in history.

You don't seem to pay attention when people refute your points, but I'll help you out anyway: the problem wasn't that totalitarian states did away with religion, it was that in doing so, with such dogmatic rigour, they ended up acting too much like institutional religions. Stalin's crazed show trials = the Catholic Inquisition, make sense?

[adv00cate]

For some reason in the last century mankind was the most educated and the bloodiest. Most of the bloodshed was in Russia, China and Nazi Germany (which banned most churches).

The whole point of the atheist movement is:

1) Kill God

2) Then, according to Dan Dennett decide what is moral (but with me mention of God).

3) Build a God-less Utopia.

That's what Russia started out as: a Godless Utopia.

Instead of Sam studying how the brain works, how about studying how to make it work better?

Cheers

[stinky472]

You are actually indirectly supporting Harris' arguments, even though it is only because you don't understand it. All of this bloodshed came about from people accepting doctrines without open, rigorous questioning. That is exactly what Harris is against, with religion being a prime example of that today, especially in the U.S.

[adv00cate]

Sam wants to point out "religious wars," but will never never take any responsibility for Atheists violence against religion as during the Russian revolution, Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union, North Korea, etc. Yet he is the foremost proponent of dialectic materialism.

Sam mentions western medicine. Hospitals every year in the US kill thousands of folks by mistake. Perhaps Sam can go after the bad doctors when he is finished with all these crazy religion folks.

[analubalitious]

Clearly you have not heard the historical dogmas that drove Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, or N. Korea. Hitler supported and was supported by the church, as was Stalin. N. Korea is not a rational atheist state, it is a dogmatic pseudo-religion with a dead leader. Wars have been fought explicitly for religion, never explicitly against it as a primary motivation. In all these cases the problem was never too much skeptical criticism, it was too little.

[adv00cate]

"Hitler supported and was supported by the church, as was Stalin."

Beg pardon?

A great man passed away this last week:

Solzhenitsyn warned of "an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses," and a "tilt of freedom in the direction of evil . . . evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature."

If he could see the dangers, why can't we?

Best regards.

[analubalitious]

1) Solzhenitsyn, to my knowledge, didn't blame atheism for the events of the two world wars or his incarceration. (Please correct me if I'm wrong)

2) The horrors of pol pot, hitler and stalin did not derive from atheism and rational thought. They came from pseudo religious / pseudo scientific ideas about genetic or divine superiority.

3) There is nothing mutually exclusive about being skeptical and critical while also being compassionate and moral. Again, the problem isn't too much skepticism.

[analubalitious]

This is actually why Harris tried to shy away from the term 'atheist', because it carries too much baggage among the ignorant. The point about the wars is that no war has ever been fought for (or society built on the principle of) critical rational skepticism.

However, many wars have been fought with the explicitly stted purpose of religious conquest. Critical rational skepticism doesn't lead to genital mutilation, child molestation, blood sacrifices, or violent reactions to alternative views.

[stinky472]

adv00cate: I'd like to pose this question to you. Where do you think morality comes from? Religion? Even the Bible has an abundance of teachings which anyone, even most devout Christians (of which my mother is included), would consider downright evil. Where does this moral filter over religion come from? Is it somehow magically recursive, like the teachings of the Bible teach you to naturally disregard certain teachings of the Bible, and that the Bible itself is the source from which we find

[stinky472]

certain parts of the Bible to be immoral? Don't you think it much more likely that morality is a secular concept?

[hackenbollox]

There's a very good reason for that, which is that those actions weren't driven by Atheism. The same can't be said, for instance, of the religious people who flew planes into buildings. False comparison there.

[adv00cate]

Not true.

One of the basics of Marxism and its dialectic materialism was wiping off any religion off of the face of the Earth. This happened in Russia, China, N. Korea, etc. It almost happened in Poland as well.

Marxism is very atheistic. Marx said that religion is the opiate of the people.

Now the new militant atheists, and liberal press say the same while raking in serious coin.

Today no one believes in Marxism anymore, but Europe may believe in secularism as the new state religion.

Cheers.

[Zdrazy]

Atheism does not predispose one to hold the ideological stance that all religion must (even if by force) be expunged. This is an innate tenet of Marxism, which is an ideology, unlike Atheism.

[stinky472]

"[...] but will never never take any responsibility for Atheists violence [...]."

That violence was not the product of critical thinking, rather the lack of it. Most of us atheists today are atheists because we don't accept something without critically thinking about it and trying to find real evidence to believe in it.

To the contrary, the 'atheists' you speak of were blind followers of fanaticism, fascist thinking, etc. They were basically like religious followers to put it simply.

[JOMO59]

I think the greater point here is to avoid dogmatism (a form of tyrranny) of any type and from any source no matter what it calls itself.

[seabrain]

Buddhism is also, technically, an atheistic religion :P

[papasitoman]

Harris is great. He breaks down old, useless ideas and replaces them with reason. He is NOT anti-religion-he is anti-stupid ideas. He has expressed his affection for Buddhism, Jainism, and others. I share a similar p.o.v.

Yesterday I had a debate with 3 Jehovah's witnesses and they used the old argument of

"1 day in the bible doesn't mean 1 day. It means the exact amount of time it took to create the world-in 6 days. Later the word day DOES mean day-it just doesn't apply to god."

I was scared

[GTRrocker666]

This guy is brilliant, much better speaker than hitchens and dawkins in my opinion

[grawk1]

certainly better than hitchens, and a good match for dawkins on a good day.

[ruralpotter]

IHaveEpilepsy, he does this because the "beliefs" of Buddhism cannot be the driving force, the idea behind, the excuse if you will, for murder, torture or even abuse. There cannot be a Buddhist Inqusition. The Buddha even said that no belief should ever be forced and there is no heresy, and not to believe anything just because it is said or written, even if he said it! A "religion" that denies dogma and divine punishment cannot be even concidered religion by western standards.

[Byrnie1989]

Whilst i agree with him absolutely with this view on Buddhism, it's likely he's biast, he practices meditation and zen.

but yeh... Go Sam

[sylviabombs15]

sam harris = moral crusader of our time

sam harris = the man

i also love how he takes those bid, deep breaths through his nose. go sam

[jeffreyser]

He also talks up Jainism in the speech, proving he's not anti-religion, merely anti-harmful religion. Buddhism is historically less harmful than other religions. (mainly due to the fact that it promotes rationality and critical thinking, not just blind faith)

[grawk1]

it still unfortunatly has a lot of unsubstantiated claims and groundless beliefs, as well as a nihilistic view on morality and an indifference to death, making buddhism still destructive on some level.

[wlaviola260516]

liviti, it often takes generations for new ways of thinking to take hold and flurish. History is full of examples of this, as Sam states, where at one time there was only a religious answer that was later replaced by a better scientific answer. Even something like smoking cigarettes took a generation or two before people changed their attitudes toward it. I would hope that you would not abandon "thinking reasonably" and espousing it because you can not see a time when it would be beneficial.

[liviti]

like seriously, you're not convince the billions in the islamic world to give up their religion with "open and free discourse", nor by force? i'm sorry rationality is not going to win. tough.

[liviti]

so what's his solution?

[devourerofbabies]

I like how Sam straight up says that Islam is the worst religion in the world.

[klangsteiner]

Sam Harris is also an excellent author.

[MetaMorphy]

Yes, it is so strange how people claim that there would be wars anyway without religion. There would be violence without racism but fighting against racism is still good. It goes to show how off balance most thinking about religion is.

[cg3001]

agreed...wise there more like him