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The Sam Harris discussion thread

Z Buck McFate

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For discussion about all things Sam Harris. He has a few books- I've read Lying and (am halfway through) Waking Up. He also puts out regular podcasts. I was going to wait to start this thread until I had a relatively thorough explanation of his whole thing, but I told [MENTION=29233]Mvika[/MENTION] I'd start this thread over a week ago and an adequate description isn't coming to mind. Except maybe to say he has a degree in philosophy and a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and his thing is spirituality without religion.

He has several interesting podcasts here: Podcast: Sam Harris.

So, anyone familiar with his work: like his work? love his work? hate his work? Tell typo c why. I'd been wanting to start a thread to discuss his podcasts for a while, but this can be about anything Sam Harris. (I don't mind asides about his type, but I'm hoping it doesn't become the purpose of the thread.)
 

Empyrean

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Here's kinda my general assessment of Harris from my own background. It seems that amongst academic philosophers, most don't take him very seriously (that is, they don't actually take the time to engage with his work out of intuition that it's easily picked apart through logic chopping; that's my guess anyway, and whether that actually is the case or not, I've no idea). I'm also aware of a lot of negativity towards him and the New Atheists in general from philosophical circles for various reasons.

That said, I haven't engaged with his work thoroughly enough to formulate an opinion. The above is merely my own experience with how others in my own background seem to view Harris.

Still, my intuition screams that his particular stance regarding the scientific basis for moral or ethical grounding seems way too philosophically strong. E.g., one could find holes in it pretty easily given some effort. Pat Churchland, whose own work on morality and ethical foundations I find interesting and rigorous, was said to have surmised that: "There is not one single example in [Harris’s work] of what we have learned from neuroscience that should impact our moral judgments regarding a particular issue. There may EXIST examples, but he does not provide any."

A very simple look at possible areas of problems would simply be the fallback on just what philosophy of science are we using to justify various claims about ethical foundationalism, how logically tight or sound those underpinning theories are, and so on and so forth. This may not actually be an issue but it is, for example, something I might start out with just to feel things out.

I tend to personally dislike the New Atheists, except for Dennet, mostly for their general scientistic leanings.

Anyway, I like discussions about Harris because he's popular and he's controversial to both academics and layman. I think this should be a fun thread! I also plan on engaging with his work more directly in the future to formulate my own opinions. :)
 

Zangetshumody

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I will try to contain my critiques of Harris into a form that would be useful for other kinds of analysis, within the broader scope of the ideological landscape, within which Sam makes his postures.

I guess I have just introduced my remarks in line with a general point that I have been wanting to make for a short while, which has to do with a new kind of discourse, which is sorely needed in the public sphere, which has otherwise remained taboo— for most of recorded history, in every culture I have ever been taught about...

Let me get right to making this point, so then I might move to substantiating it, before it gets too murky with introductions to this subject that I wish to address. I would say, that we have come a long way culturally, as a species, we have a certain mix of resources and technological capabilities, and the right kind of interface and access to media which allows us to experiment with new ideological synthesis;- one of the most advanced manifestations of this, in my opinion, would be something like the Rubin Report, which, is not exactly the chronological fruit of other, similar advancements in cultural progress, although I would still link it— as somewhat related to similar trends on display: in the Pete Holmes show and Last Week Tonight; in this broad movement toward generating an ability, to intellectually take on the delineations between separable spheres of 'social-political function' and 'cultural appeal'.

The edge which I'm trying to describe, is more to do with the "sx" style of communication and approach, which breaks down the "so" narrative, which I believe is the depository of 'mob rule' sentiments, which are the residue of hegemony, which plague most people's, according to their particular societal-inheritances, which, as part of their operation, are aggressive toward any culture of immediate substantiation— that only an individual can possess the burden of confessing. Pandering to 'mob sentiments', does produce a certain unpalatable and inhumane mockery at the level of 'human' communication, which, as the general culture of hegemonic residues gets eroded, by the realism produced from the contemplation of a real sexual liberation that is starkly contrasted with social norms which offer no supporting context or meaningful resolution to the source of these sexual energies, which have been repressed throughout most ages, along with the repression of other socio-political energies (accountability, responsibility and capability are all very intertwined subjects, as they impact on an individual's mangled indoctrination into sexual and social development, and there are cultural manifestations which inhibit each of these forms of individual integrity, that have monotonously persisted in societal inheritances: until someone is capable of challenging it, speaking the truth about it, and holding their ground without subjugation or captivity; and children are by far, the least protected in this regard, in every culture). Sensitivity toward conscientious objection is itself, a very hard thing to police from inside any pluralistic framework (it is probably fundamentally impossible, or would only become affordable in a system that was conceited in its societal orchestration of wealth redistribution, paradoxically curtailing its pluralism, while seeking to procure it (which is exactly the kind of crutch which can grow cancerous according to some inexhaustible ideological threshold that in turn threatens to hold all of society captive***)). Okay... now I'm skating around my central topic a bit too much: my point is that, it has historically been a cultural imperative, for there to be a general societal immunity against the discourse of individual examination of 'intentional-mechanics'. This level of discourse probes the full depth at which people have generated their principle beliefs, and the mechanics which comprise their operational-assumptions. This style of genuine discussion, is the mark of a true philosopher (in the way that Socrates' virtue was expounded by Plato: as a humility which is capable of probing the deceit of presumptuousness [which is often portrayed as a self-deluded position, that is incapable of asking "why" about it's own position, or privately contending within the pessimism, that its position must be preferred over the nebulousness which the position is taken to displace, in its unspoken fear that nothing better might be contended by discerning a divergent nature of that wider nebulousness circumstance <--- this is similarly the position that Scientism falls into, and Sam Harris along with it.])

Sam does a better job at collating the philosophical work of converging the various fields of thought, but he does so in the unshakable presumptuous that Science is the north star that the constellation of all knowledge must coalesce around, even in spite of dealing in all the horribly cherry-picked philosophical sophistry, required to preserve that kind of rigged-narrative. This false religion of blind Hope, that lives through the sentiment 'well, without Science, then we would truly be lost and utterly un-redeemable', is worse than any Nicean Creed. I have not seen Sam answer this charge: but I would love to hear a principled answer without any of the flashy propaganda about tech-advancement and groundbreaking discoveries (which are thrown out and replaced each day by 'new better science!')— as to: why is the Scientific Method worthy of our respect, (without recourse to inductive answers that distract from the substance of that topic).

I'm not going to try to repeat all, the many arguments I have developed against the ""philosophy around Science""; but science does fall pray to two major, and incurable defects:
I will summaries the effect of these two defects before explaining them both~ Science can't discover the truth, its always promising us that its going to give us a[,or the] full answer, and its fundamentally incapable. I have gone into specific examples of how it fudges understanding itself or the phenomenon it supposedly explains with its "scientific description", but I will just illustrate now, how this basic Ponzi-scheme, defectively perpetuates itself.

Science is only useful, after its been relegated into some form of epistemological-'junk' (that has become totally irrelevant for producing the 'full Scientific answer'); because for Science to give us something that people can use for engineering, it needs to develop a fully cached out level upon which to maneuver all the mechanical pieces; which is something that can only be done safely, after we have finished approximating all 'forces' [which we have yet to fully understand] into a significant figure, maintained only by the God of Statistic, so that we may {blindly} hope to never exist to witness a spoon levitate because of sheer 'quantum improbability'.

Its as if, Science is the erroneous supposition that the world is deterministic, and as it deploys itself in search for proving this supposition~ it regurgitates levels of mechanical operations in "nature", after it has already surpassed that area of "nature" for its ability to prove that there is a fixed-form/dead-state/temporal-signature of order, which is the operative source that vindicate's Scientific proof as the only species of moral agency worth living through. (<--- I don't think that many people who <3 Scientism will understand what I just wrote there, but sadly, I think Sam knows exactly what I'm describing, because this is what I see him advocating).


Oh, I need to edit this post a bit also...

But just to finish another important point that I was trying to weave into my thesis, is that Harris is much too similar to those who he critisizes. I consider his form of belief, to be almost indistinguishable to those who believe in the 'sky-father'. I am not an atheist, but I find it alarming that I believe many of the philosophical forefathers of Science would be more inclined towards me my mystical interrelation of the Christian Scriptures, than the Atheistic cult of finding a pinnacle of undeniable [source of] 'factual' authority; such an article, is to my mind, indistinguishable from idol worship, only in a slightly more perfected guise~ the idol has not yet been found, and the search for this idol, must take precedence over every other source of human edification as the basic corner-stone of flourishing. It is the same style God as the fanatics, it just calls for a broader stream of devotion that seems more congruent with modern life, and seemingly compatible with pluralism although at its heart its broadcasting nihilism (notwithstanding Sam's project to brand it as something mystically akin to Buddhism).

I have not given mr Harris's work nearly enough attention to have a concrete opinion, I remember his remarks from the four horsemen youtube videos that were around, and most recently his interview on the Rubin Report, and I remembered something from around the controversy which involved Chomsky on political issues...

More importantly, I wanted to make a further overarching point, about how personality style is part of some kind of ideological matrix, and that the next step in Public Discourse, is to seep into the depths of this dimension, which is probably something Paul Rubin is on the cusp of, although it might be very hard to accomplish this style of discourse: depending on the 'spiritual' maturity of all the participants, in their capacity to reach the limits of their confidences and the full dynamic machinery of their ideological preferences.


*** addendum: there is a further economic point to be made here, on the politics that's involved with money, and the interface that money provides individuals, and the utility it collectively affords to the functional aspect in society, but that is an entirely different topic, something I was thinking about to create a private system of sustainable, accelerated arrangement of communicating relative utility and signaling an individuals preference of interfacing with relative utility; conceptually experimenting with systems of token-currencies that represent pieces of an economy modeled into a game that maximizes productivity per man-hour and has some kind of systematic capital investment mechanism to crank out some kind of wealth creation: or some rudimentary financial theory that a private organisation could use to institutionally delegate between its organs, a functioning secondary economy, capable of expansion (synergistically providing a floor to labour prices in Capitalism, as a secondary private economic alternative, or operating independently as an Anarcho Syndicalism).
 

Mvika

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@zangetshumody : This level of discourse probes the full depth at which people have generated their principle beliefs, and the mechanics which comprise their operational-assumptions. This style of genuine discussion, is the mark of a true philosopher (in the way that Socrates' virtue was expounded by Plato: as a humility which is capable of probing the deceit of presumptuousness [which is often portrayed as a self-deluded position, that is incapable of asking "why" about it's own position, or privately contending within the pessimism, that its position must be preferred over the nebulousness which the position is taken to displace, in its unspoken fear that nothing better might be contended by discerning a divergent nature of that wider nebulousness circumstance <--- this is similarly the position that Scientism falls into, and Sam Harris along with it.])

Sam does a better job at collating the philosophical work of converging the various fields of thought, but he does so in the unshakable presumptuous that Science is the north star that the constellation of all knowledge must coalesce around, even in spite of dealing in all the horribly cherry-picked philosophical sophistry, required to preserve that kind of rigged-narrative. This false religion of blind Hope, that lives through the sentiment 'well, without Science, then we would truly be lost and utterly un-redeemable', is worse than any Nicean Creed. I have not seen Sam answer this charge: but I would love to hear a principled answer without any of the flashy propaganda about tech-advancement and groundbreaking discoveries (which are thrown out and replaced each day by 'new better science!')— as to: why is the Scientific Method worthy of our respect, (without recourse to inductive answers that distract from the substance of that topic).

I am little confused by the argument presented here. Please let me break it down into four discussion points that arise from the individual premises woven together in the sections quoted above:

(1) Socratic method was not meant to demonstrate the failure of human intelligence. Rather, through incisive questioning of the premises that formed the foundation of an individual or culture's beliefs, it was primarily used by Socrates (as claimed by Plato) to illuminate the limits of accepted knowledge, or what is unexamined but presumed to be true. In other words, it used human reasoning ability (intelligence or critical thinking skills) to uncover the limits of established "knowledge."
I suppose that if one were to assume that science, not the scientific method of enquiry, was popular "established" knowledge in the 21st century, then Socratic enquiry, possibly and arguably, would have revealed its limitations and flaws.
However, Sam is not deterministic in the sense that he believes he knows the truth--this is the presumptuousness that was commonly targeted by Socrates, in order to expose its shaky premises and logical sophistry. Rather, the extent of his determinism can be summed up as "we don't need to believe in something when there is no evidence for it and that those who claim to know (organized religion) don't know either." This, I would assume, is very much in sync with Socratic thinking, who (supposedly) once said that, "All I know is that I know nothing."

The arrogance is not in challenging the unsupported proclamations and assertions of an established system--theology--rather in contending that nothing needs to be proven to any extent to demand allegiance and adherence to the same. A demand for such complete, unquestioning acceptance of a set of assumptions, when its champions have not put forward a shred of evidence to support its validity.

(2) The second premise, that had been presented as self-evident here, is what was hinted at in the above point but wrongly ascribed to Socratic method. If I am to decipher the argument against the presumed intellectual arrogance of the strawman referred to above as "scientism" by the author of the post, he/she is now arguing from the standpoint that Godel's ( can't get the diacritic working, sorry!) incompleteness theorems (a) imply Platonism, or anti-mechanism, or both, or that (b) they make a case against atheism, by creating legroom or cram space, for the existence of God , if not going as far as proving his existence.
First, Godel was not able to provide an absolutely unprovable sentence, and second, just no. it is a popular fallacy that his work could be used to validate Platonism or Anti-mechanism. There are many peer-reviewed scholarly articles that do a better job of correcting these assumptions and I can add the references, if this assertion on my part is the point of contention.

(3) Second, while the completeness theorems can certainly be seen as antagonistic to absolute atheism, Sam's version of atheism is actually agnosticism from a strictly technical point of view.
He does not claim that God, in the Eisteinian sense, does not exit. He is clear that the God of the religious texts--who personally controls and runs the world, does not exist. It is intellectually malicious to deliberately confuse the Eisteinian cosmic unknown organizing or disorganizing force to the personal God of Abrahamic religions who is completely involved and judgmental of human affairs. This God is not "nebulous" or unknowable like the Deistic God of our Founding fathers. The God that Sam Harris refuses to believe in is one who not only has rule books passed on from the Middle Ages, but is also highly concerned with human time-management, human sexual activities, real estate allocation by race , and the place of women in the society.

Yet, none of the branches of sciences ( the only way for us to know anything, unless we go back to believing in shamans and prophets who simply divine information through osmosis) have been able to present a shred of evidence in support of this type of God. However, look where we dare, we can find evidence that contradicts the claims of religion. I will simply point to Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Galileo and every other truth-seeker of landmark achievement in contrast to the intellectual poverty of the religious theological works.
I don't believe that the above point will warrant a serious intelligent argument.

So then, it must be skepticism that is under attack. Okay--If it is presumptuous to be skeptical of the unproven and often contradicted assertions, then what can how should we describe the gall of those who claim to "know" what happens after death, and only because they were born to certain human beings living in a certain culture, who also believed the same thing, and so on? I want to know why Sam is being accused of presumptuous and intellectual arrogance for doing what Socrates did: Ask questions and truthfully admit that the other side came up empty.

(4) Sam's departure from what is called militant atheism is what makes him so special.
While the other "horsemen" ( with a partial exception of Dennett) did not seem to understand the impact of the void left behind in the area of morality and spirituality, which would be the natural consequence of weaning away the humankind from religion, Sam not only acknowledged this problem but went on to write one of his ( in my opinion) most important contribution to the wellbeing of sentient creatures: A work of love that painstakingly delieanates evidence-based morals and evidence-based guidelines to live a conscientious life. Each of his guidelines are logically derived ( requiring no leaps of faith or cognitive dissociation) to maximize the wellbeing and minimize the human suffering-- a truly benevolent and beneficent book as any written on the subject (and I am including Arthur Koestler and his ilk, and from the other end, Deepak Chopra types here)

My greatest impetus to support Sam's work comes from the fact that his philosophical foundation of Consequentialism, and the moral principles that spring from his understanding of the former, are both workable and do work. They add utility value to the human experience of everyday life, and in this unpretentious pragmatism lies more virtue, than in all the persnickety pontificating about the,imagined or otherwise, flaws in the technical or semantic constructions within this exemplary man's work.
 
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Beorn

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[MENTION=29233]Mvika[/MENTION] or anyone else, how does Harris deal with the distribution of moral authority?
 

Zangetshumody

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[MENTION=29233]Mvika[/MENTION]

It is already quite late where I am, so I will probably work on editing my posts in a bit, or just focus on extending this reply to fortify my answering remarks.

I am not academically proficient to the point of being able to follow the works you have mentioned, but I believe I am philosophically versed enough to be aware of the kinds of issues that can be involved in this area: it seems already that, in the terms with which you have presented Godel's contribution on these issues: there could be easily be a lacuna cast from within the particular way he has described all the operative distinctions;— no doubt you are using him as an authority because he is making some stark distinction which is hard to ignore the gravity of, and I don't doubt, that the more mathematically or logically a contention is drawn out, the more abstract and profound its reach: though I would caution, that these sorts of findings are not closed to being starkly re-characterized, depending on how much color can be painted onto the distinction that have already produced simple conclusions... if Science itself has taught us anything, is that what can be taken as the appearance of determinism, or a closed-description, is just a speciously hinged to a constructed framework:- and even taking the 'safe bet' on choosing the authoritative safety offered by a mathematics, is not without its philosophical perils. I do not mean that to be taken as some form of an absurd claim, I am simply insulating a philosophical prospect, which might even have an analog in speculation of physicists who contend with tangible points where things can't be added up.

The arrogance is not in challenging the unsupported proclamations and claims of an established system--theology--rather in contending that nothing needs to be proven to any extent to demand allegiance and adherence to the same. A demand for such complete, unquestioning acceptance of a while set of assumtpitons, when its champions have not put forward a shred of evidence to support its validity.

I quite like this quote, I believe one of my points is that this kind of critique applies evenly to those who take shelter from Science and from a big-brother conception of Godhead. This is somewhat tangential, but I do take issue with your donation of the Christian Scriptures solely to the water-down version of a 'Christian' brand of intellectualism, which I find repugnant and indistinguishable from any other form of false conscious-belief. I require myself and others to be convincing in their convictions, I don't believe I have ever lost an argument on the points which I persist in believing: proponents of Science are either incapable of following a discussion further into their non-existent fundamental basis for their belief system, or they scurry at any hint where they are expected to posit why their faith in Science is anything other than "unquestioning acceptance".

I would be so bold as to contend, that you have entered the fray somewhere in the middle, supposedly engaging with my critique, but by my measure, its no where near the basic tenants of my argument. To move onto replying to further points of discussion you raise~

It is interesting, because I might fathom that in the same way you cheaply miss-characterize and strawman your own opposition, and are prone to the exact criticism that I was extolling through the my recourse to Socrates' characterization of intellectual virtue (by the way, I didn't ever cite the Socratic method directly, nor did I wish to either...).

Yet, none of the branches of sciences ( the only way for us to know anything, unless we go back to believing in shamans and prophets who simply divine information through osmosis) have been able to present a shred of evidence in support of this type of God. However, look where we dare, we can find evidence that contradicts the claims of religion. I will simply point to Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Galileo and every other truth-seeker of landmark achievement in contrast to the intellectual poverty of the religious theological works.
I don't believe that the above point will warrant a serious intelligent argument.

I could very easily rewrite the alternative nightmare which you have setup to malign: into showing that only by your presumption do you discount vast tracts of empirical data, data which doesn't fit into the Scientific Method (also because Science only operates by measuring a consequence, and so it is indelibly pegged to determinism, which has already been disproven as an operative tenant of reality, while Science has hidden this development about itself within statistical descriptions, to disguise its incapacity to explain "causes"— which as it turns out, are only a product of the style of inquiry being made, and are indistinguishable from the type of bias that has one choosing Science over psychological accounts of empiricism; which could be extended to include the "shamans" and "prophets" which you overlook in your conceited suspension of any further inquiry or study (which might uncover a philosophical complexity held by the Christian Scriptures which your imagination; and attachment to false-advertising, has kept you from understanding.)

So you proceed from making a technical distinction over the Socratic method, while ignoring the point I actually made by exemplifying the virtue of Socrates; while committing the very same intellectual crime which I had so laboriously laid out... did I miss anything?
 

Mvika

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[MENTION=20790]Zangetshumody[/MENTION]

Yes. Pretty much everything I said.

Socrates is not your friend here. Bringing him up to sum up your argument just turns your post into QED for mine.
 

Zangetshumody

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[MENTION=29233]Mvika[/MENTION]

Since you return silently of every point of contention that I raise, hollowly table thumping the same pitiful substantiation, that 'we must use Science of else we have nothing...' which is certainly, just as prone to your superficial self-identification, and defensiveness of skepticism.

Your tactic is malign your ideological opponents of being grossly in violation of Skepticism, and then seek refuge into the presumption of superior culture, made from the shelter of 'Scientific reasoning' as the source of philosophical coherence (which it can never substantiate, except by your ilk which tries to allude to great technical-sophistication, and relative superiority, while remaining cloaked in an 'unquestioning acceptance' used to mop up the linger epistemological presumptuousness); can you for a second stop confusing Science with the skeptical position: and try develop a real argument which doesn't receive all of its integrity, from the stark comparison to any alternative, which manufactured from a populist and vulgar representations that are allergic to real study.

Go read 1 John Chapter 5, you can't expect to have your criticisms being preferred by someone who knows that you are taking an erroneous philosophical arrangement, and comparing to a miss-understood system of philosophical knowledge, of great depth and value: which you have taken the cheapest excuse to gloss over (someone calling themselves Christian seems philosophically inept, so that's my excuse to worship Scientism~ pitiful).

I still see no independent substantiation of "Scientific reasoning", you give an excellent example of your own writing, of how your belief system is a vulgar example of table thumping all confidence for it validity. How are you not the perfect example of a philosophical 'philistine'?

[MENTION=20790]Zangetshumody[/MENTION]

Yes. Pretty much everything I said.

Socrates is not your friend here. Bringing him up to sum up your argument just turns your post into QED for mine.

More hollow table thumping... I won't waste further time on this level of exchange, in this tradition I would of just answered your first reply with: False reductions so to make cheap and hollow points, ignores everything fatal to the position that's even made in response; obviously selective reading skills at work, and a willingness to be intellectual deceitful in order to engineer the appearance of superiority. Unconvincing, 2/10, would not read him/her again.
 

Mvika

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I don't worship scientism [MENTION=20790]Zangetshumody[/MENTION] , I just don't see any evidence for believing anything else either. Science, luckily, does not expect me to. It offers evidence and experiments that can be replicated by anyone who disagrees, and is open to being modified as we learn more.

I didn't write a long reply to your post because you are very hard to read. It is more tedious than reading Butler and Derrida combined, and unlike in their case, I don't have to subject myself to this in the hope of some commensurate reward in the end. If you had written in a straightforward and simple manner, I would have probably understood enough to have made a worthy rebuttal. Maybe you are a great writer, but your message is lost to me if it is not adapted to my lower intelligence. The great artist is the simplifier, after all.

In my defense, (a) it was hard, painful reading, (2) it missed my argument by a mile, (3) it was not meant to illuminate, as much as obscure the landscape enough to ambush a waylaid reader, (4) I ain't paid to do this and it was not intellectually exciting. So, my short answer.

It breaks my heart that you have decided that we won't have any more of these exciting, meaningful discussions.
 

SearchingforPeace

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It is well done. An enjoyable read and a reasonable take on a contentious issue.

Of course, most of the gun issue is based upon irrational fears. Gun control efforts in America arose out of racism, so the fears related to it are rooted in a much tougher issue.

Politicians on both sides use guns to drive voters to the polls (as if they agreed to not be reasonable on the issue just so both sides can demagogue it)....
 

Z Buck McFate

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I'm not sure I understand the question above, about the distribution of moral authority, but I'm moderately certain he'd say people should learn to trust themselves and their own moral judgment. I could be mistaken, but I think that's the general Atheist viewpoint. (And if anyone wants to find a clip of Sam Harris talking about this to post in this thread for discussion, that's fine. But any grievances about the distribution of moral authority in Atheism in general, it'd be appreciated if it were put in another thread.)
 

Mvika

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I dont believe so no. About him.

Can we clarify the premise here? You have never heard of him and that says something about him? Why?
Is it because (a) you have heard of everyone who is worth hearing about irrespective of the exposure they receive from the media? Or (b) you believe that the media coverage received is the ultimate measure of what an intellectual has to offer to the broader audience?
 

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"Why Don’t I Criticize Israel?" - Sam Harris Podcast - YouTube I like the way he frames the moral dilemma for an uninvolved bystander.

what if we die and God said...i sent down all these wonderful things and you were so distraught with worry of what will be you missed what is. you were so pulled to get rid of the bad, you ifgnored the good. i wanted what you have to be grand and what will be to be even more grand. whether there is an after life or not, you created hell for your life on earth.
live laugh and love...nothing else matters.

my grandpa passed away. my aunt was distraught, asking God why. i helped the nurse clean him up because no one else could mentally or emotionally handle it while he was dying from cancer. i laid in his room for the 2 days i had left with him. not asking why, not beating myself or anyone up. i just laid in his presence he smiled when he heard my voice, neger opened his eyes. we laughed at stories, we joked, and yes we did cry. but it was peaceful, not chaotic or stressful. he chose this route. he was told he needed to get checked, he was given the option of fighting it. he didnt want any of that. he just wanted to live his life. life is not about fear, its not about regret, its about living. any thoughts of after life should be about wonder, excitement, curiosity. not about answers and truths. the happiest people die in curosity and wonder, others die frantically searching for what will be and how do i get it.


its amazing how many people ruin current life for an after life
 

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Interesting. He makes a lot of valid points. I've been trying for years to convince my wife to get a gun in the house, join a club & train with it (as required by law in my country), even though I'm strongly against the way the US runs gun possession and I'm as pascifist as they come. I know that may sound hypocritical. But apparently this guy, I've never heard of, feels the same way.
 
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