Sam Harris
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==Let's play "Harris or Malkin?"== | ==Let's play "Harris or Malkin?"== | ||
Harris' stance on Islam is often indistinguishable from [[Michelle Malkin|certain batshit ideologues]]. See if you can tell the difference: | Harris' stance on Islam is often indistinguishable from [[Michelle Malkin|certain batshit ideologues]]. See if you can tell the difference: | ||
| − | *"The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually | + | *"The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists."<ref>[http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/18/opinion/oe-harris18/2 It's Real, It's Scary, It's a Cult of Death], Sam Harris, ''Los Angeles Times''</ref> |
*The "[[Park51|Ground Zero mosque]]" will be viewed as a "sign that the liberal values of the West are synonymous with [[First Amendment|decadence and cowardice]]."<ref>[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/08/13/ground-zero-mosque.html What Obama Got Wrong About the Mosque], Sam Harris, ''The Daily Beast''</ref> | *The "[[Park51|Ground Zero mosque]]" will be viewed as a "sign that the liberal values of the West are synonymous with [[First Amendment|decadence and cowardice]]."<ref>[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/08/13/ground-zero-mosque.html What Obama Got Wrong About the Mosque], Sam Harris, ''The Daily Beast''</ref> | ||
*"It is time we admitted that we are not at war with '[[terrorism]].' We are at [[Ann Coulter|war with Islam]]."<ref>[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/dec/1/20041201-090801-2582r/ Mired in a Religious War], Sam Harris, ''[[Washington Times]]''</ref> | *"It is time we admitted that we are not at war with '[[terrorism]].' We are at [[Ann Coulter|war with Islam]]."<ref>[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/dec/1/20041201-090801-2582r/ Mired in a Religious War], Sam Harris, ''[[Washington Times]]''</ref> | ||
Revision as of 23:27, 21 April 2014
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Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, author, proponent of scientific scepticism, Ben Stiller look-alike, and founder of Project Reason, a charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and values in society.[1] He is best known for his books The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. Harris is a prominent face in the so-called new atheism movement, along with fellow atheists Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens, the "four horsemen." Of the four, his works are probably the most difficult to recommend to others for reasons pertaining to tone and his prose is by far the least spontaneously readable or enjoyable of the group.
Harris has been caught citing notorious peddlers of parapsychology such as Rupert Sheldrake and Dean Radin. He takes a range of alleged paranormal phenomena more seriously than do most scientists.[2]
Contents |
Religion
Harris is intolerant of religious belief, and has a strong hatred of Islam in particular. He believes that ending religion would do more good than ending rape.[3]
“”From this perspective, rape is a crime that one man commits against the honor of another; the woman is merely Shame’s vehicle, and often culpably acquiescent—being all blandishments and guile and winking treachery. According to God, if the victim of a rape neglects to scream loudly enough, she should be stoned to death as an accessory to her own defilement (Deuteronomy 22:24).
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| —[4] |
Project Reason
Project Reason is described on its website as "..a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The foundation draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world." Its advisory board includes many well known scientists, sceptics and atheists, including the following:
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali (odd, given her wingnut beliefs and accommodationism of Christians)
- Richard Dawkins
- Christopher Hitchens (until he popped his clogs R.I.P.)
- Bill Maher (Quite a rational man, if one overlooks his denial of germ theory and his anti-vaccination stance)
The End of Faith
In The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason Harris argues that unjustified beliefs, specifically religious beliefs, need to be challenged. He defines a belief as a "lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person's life."[5]p. 12
He dedicates a section of the book to what he sees as the problem with Islam.[5]p. 109 He considers Islam to be a special case, due to the amount of text in the Qur'an that would need to be ignored for it to be a truly peaceful religion. He uses the results of a 2002 survey by the Pew Research Center which posed a question to Muslims of whether they felt suicide bombing or other violence against civilian targets could be justified in the defense of Islam, which revealed shockingly high support in many countries.[5]p. 125[6] Elsewhere he sees Islam as violent, anachronistic and opposed to important Western values, notably free speech. Harris accuses Western liberals of being more concerned with political correctness and with avoiding accusations of racism than with defending Western freedom.[7]
Ironically, at the end of the book Harris seems to show a greater respect for Eastern religions than for Western religions. He admits that Asia has had a fair share of "false prophets and charlatan saints," but that Asian cultures have also developed some wondrous insights into consciousness by direct experimentation with meditation.[5]p. 215-217 He also argues that this spirituality or mysticism does not need to be attached to a single dogma and can be experienced and experimented with in a scientific manner.[5]p. 217 This is part of a larger argument which he makes in the book: it needs to be acknowledged that spiritual experiences can be experience regardless of religious belief, and they are not evidence of any claims other than the experiences themselves. This makes mysticism a rational enterprise that can make claims about experiences and consciousness without attempting to attach them to claims about the universe as a whole, because it is such a powerful part of the human mind, but strong will to believe in something does not mean truth.[5]p. 221
The Moral Landscape
In The Moral Landscape, Harris argues that science can provide a system of morality.[8] He was notably savaged for this, within both the philosophical and the atheist communities. Specifically, he was criticized for breaking Hume's law and straw manning ethical and moral philosophies.[9] Harris has responded to these criticisms.[10]
Neuroscience
Harris has conducted research on the neuroscience of religious belief.[11]
Let's play "Harris or Malkin?"
Harris' stance on Islam is often indistinguishable from certain batshit ideologues. See if you can tell the difference:
- "The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists."[12]
- The "Ground Zero mosque" will be viewed as a "sign that the liberal values of the West are synonymous with decadence and cowardice."[13]
- "It is time we admitted that we are not at war with 'terrorism.' We are at war with Islam."[14]
- "We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it."[15]
- "They (Muslims) must tolerate, advocate, and even practice ethnic profiling".
- “Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe. The demographic trends are ominous: Given current birthrates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25 years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow. Throughout Western Europe, Muslim immigrants show little inclination to acquire the secular and civil values of their host countries, and yet exploit these values to the utmost—demanding tolerance for their backwardness, their misogyny, their anti-Semitism, and the genocidal hatred that is regularly preached in their mosques. Political correctness and fears of racism have rendered many secular Europeans incapable of opposing the terrifying religious commitments of the extremists in their midst.”
- “And one of the problems we have is that many Muslims, for understandable reasons and some for really deplorable reasons, are playing hide the ball with the articles of faith, and are eager to have the conversations of the sort you have had from a very cynical and manipulative perspective. We’re just going to keep having big families, and eventually it’s going to be Eurabia, and the war will be won. There are people who really think in those terms, and they’re not necessarily just the people in the center of the bull’s-eye of Islamic infatuation.”
Harris claims that these quotations have been taken out of context.[16] We've linked them in the footnotes, you can judge for yourself.
Bibliography
- The End of Faith (2004)
- Letter to a Christian Nation (2006)
- The Moral Landscape (2010)
- Lying (2011)
- Free Will (2012)
- Waking Up, A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (September 2014)
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ The Project Reason website
- ↑ Sam Harris: A Man of Faith? The Skeptic's Dictionary newsletter #74
- ↑ The Temple Of Reason
- ↑ God’s Hostages
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Harris, Sam (2004). The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. W.W. Norton & Company.
- ↑ Considering that these countries are repressive theocracies where these thoughts are tailored, the reaction should be "duh."
- ↑ The Reality of Islam
- ↑ The TED talk based on the book
- ↑ See the reviews by Kwame Anthony Appiah; Scott Atran; Ophelia Benson; Russell Blackford; Robert Todd Carroll; Troy Jollimore; Jackson Lears; Kenan Malik; Thomas Nagel; H. Allen Orr; Massimo Pigliucci; Josh Rosenau
- ↑ Harris's Response to Critics
- ↑ Harris et al. The Neural Correlates of Religious and Non-Religious Belief. PLoS ONE 4(10)
- ↑ It's Real, It's Scary, It's a Cult of Death, Sam Harris, Los Angeles Times
- ↑ What Obama Got Wrong About the Mosque, Sam Harris, The Daily Beast
- ↑ Mired in a Religious War, Sam Harris, Washington Times
- ↑ In Defense of Profiling, Sam Harris, samharris.org blog
- ↑ RESPONSE TO CONTROVERSY, Sam Harris, samharris.org blog