Chomsky on Hitchens, Harris and Skinner

Noam Chomsky says Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are religious fanatics. Recorded at the University of Toronto.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Noam Chomsky
• Religion
• Sam Harris
• Richard Dawkins
• Christopher Hitchens
• Skinner
• Islam

[belodeau]

That Harris & Hitchens call out the apologetic failings of the liberal left in no way makes them "radicals" of any kind, nor does it make them "war-mongers" or "militant" or "right wing." The problem is when we oversimplify and categorize complex situations and ideas. Standing up for oppressed peoples and standing against those who bully and oppress is a noble stance, even when it does not fit into an easily digestible categories.

Chomsky makes himself a victim of his own dogma here.

[notconvincedbuddy]

Sam Harris advocates war and torture. The man is a disgrace to the anti-clerical tradition of Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan and Gore Vidal. At least Hitch was funny even if he was an apologist for Bush and Cheney.

Chomsky debunks these charlatans.

[badblueman]

@Satarack The argument here isn't against materialists. As far as I understand it, intellectual honesty on our inability to be precise never stopped anybody from attempting to define truth as accurately as possible based on some personal axiomatic beliefs about reality. I know that I may be dreaming now, but I choose not to believe that. To imply choosing random beliefs is ok because of our faulty nature is, imo, internally inconsistent somewhere down the line.

[Satarack]

@badblueman Now you're probably thinking, "why can't theism be such a persistent false belief with survival value?" But in doing so you forget that religious beliefs are not affirming the same beliefs as a naturalistic view does. According to naturalism, natural selection selects for survival value; but on a religious view God or something like god has an involvement with evolution. This would give a basis for affirming that evolution leads to true belief, not just survival value.

[Satarack]

@badblueman *Numerical Mathematics final*

If the actual function is a hyperbolic function, that we can't actually say that my taylor series polynomial is the true function of the data. It might give us true predictions, and be consistent with observation; but the function itself is not the true function of the data.

Likewise, it's possible that a false belief can have survival value and persist.

[badblueman]

@Satarack That's the problem with These philo-theologians. They have beliefs and already hold them as absolute for which they collect proofs, but then always defend themselves with incredulity when opposed. I didn't mean it as a genetic fallacy, it's about truth on evidence. If there is evidence for the evolutionary nature of our psyche, then it's to be taken into account when making statements about how our minds work. It does say something about probability of the religion being true though.

[Satarack]

@badblueman *Numerical mathematics continued*

For example, no matter what set of continuous data I have, it is possible to create a taylor series polynomial that fits that data with a high degree of accuracy. According to your definition of truth that, "the more consistent an observation is with what we label real...the more of a truth value we give it," then this taylor series polynomial would have a very high truth value. But suppose this function was actually a hyperbolic function.

[Satarack]

@badblueman Now speaking of being consistent with observation, that does not intail that the neurological mechanism involved has the right belief. All that matters is that particular belief makes consistent predictions.

Numerical mathematics is a very good example of how false beliefs can be consistent with reality. The purpose of numerical mathematics is not to determine what the underlying truth of a set of data is; but to approximate the truth.

[Satarack]

@badblueman No, the only way one could accept that Plantinga was shooting himself in the foot is if you were to accept a genetic fallacy as true. Offering an explanation of the origin of religion has nothing to do with whether it's true or not. So maybe religion did evolve, or maybe it even has some genetic component; but that's simply irrelevant to whether it's true or not.

[badblueman]

@Satarack The more consistent an observation is with what we label real or objective, the more of a truth value we give it. It's pretty obvious to that our beliefs are survival oriented. The existence of religion itself seems a projection of our "tool making" evolutionary perspective into the universe. Why are people so worried about "purpose"? Because we evolved as purpose machines; that's how tools are made, they need purpose for their conception. Plantinga may be shooting himself in the foot.

[mortald]

never let that woman field questions again

[lictor313]

chomsky is ailing... he's been totally wrong on Ron Paul, and Sam Harris... he's starting to unravel