Richard Dawkins - Anti -Christ or Great Thinker?

All these dudes suck. They dress up "enlightened west vs irrational barbarian hordes" fantasies in rationalist garb but in the end they're just bigots.

I still listen to Harris's podcast. He's boring on political correctness, but he's often good at articulating positions I don't agree with. And a lot of it is non-political - topics like free will or meditation.

― jmm, Thursday, March 9, 2017 2:17 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he's not boring on political correctness he's actually an islamaphobic prick and bigot who of course has to be against political correctness because the hateful shite he spews isn't politically correct

Could someone explain how Harris has influenced things for the worst?

It's not really about the exact degree of influence he's had over this or that % of voters (which is probably relatively minor, although compare/contrast Harris stuff vs Breitbart).

It's more about what we are to make of someone that goes around the village all the time saying we all know who's to blame for all these cattle dying in their stalls, it's the witches, something must be done about these witches, these witches are entirely evil, even the good ones are secretly evil, no option should be off the table where witches are concerned, we need to actually adjust our idea of what's right and wrong when dealing with witches because they're so evil, doing all this with a totally straight face/intellectual podcast with mood muzak, and then acting surprised and concerned when the villagers start burning people for witchcraft

I've never heard him characterize a group as evil or secretly evil like that.

umm

are you trolling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfKLV6rmLxE

that took 3 seconds. why do you feel the need to go to bat for these guys?

google "sam harris islam"

first hit contains this line:

"The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center. In Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world."

"pouring into our world"

i wonder what he's trying to make people think of when he uses this metaphor?

http://www.dw.com/image/18681320_401.jpg

NV and Jim otm

Although I don't think RAG is trolling. It probably is worth me admitting that Harris might not actually use the word 'evil' in any of this material, but it doesn't really matter

Feeling a need to go bat for Harris is understandable in that Harris cleverly presents himself as a thinking man who might think about/give a shit about your opinion if you were having an argument with him, which then makes us more inclined to engage with him/give him the time of day than we would be to some klan guy saying the same stuff, which they do.

* but it doesn't really matter whether he uses 'evil' or not when what does say (pulling his terminology from the diction of history and sociology and philosophy perhaps rather than good 'n' eeeevil) amounts to 'Islam is the worst thing in the world right now'

Not saying he definitely isn't a bigot (I don't follow him enough to know), like I said above, his ideas about the Muslim clothing issues seemed really bad to me and there's probably more where that came from. That quote Jim provided is really bad but it doesn't sound like him in his recent interviews/podcasts, especially when he has Muslim guests.

I'm just sceptical of some claims about him because he spends a lot of time clearing up times he's been (sometimes wilfully) misrepresented. This stuff spreads easily and I think he's changed stances on some of this stuff, so that 2010 video might not be as useful anymore. But I still think I'd disagree with him.

I trust that you guys are mostly better at this stuff than me so I'd rather ask sometimes than do the wading myself.

"The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center. In Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world."

Do people who think this way know any Muslims at all?

This is the right wing version of larry appleton's ravings about white people in pick up trucks. Just fantastical, straining credulity.

In particular: I am British, went to school with/went to uni with/shared houses with/worked with/have neighbours who are Muslims, that sort of thing there, where people start talking about the 14th century or the gates of Vienna or whatever is just chilling

It's the erasure of real people (real in all the mixture of goodness and badness and reality) and replacing them with images, and the person doing it possibly doesn't even know they're doing it

Haven't you heard, Europe is already lost, the USA is the last hope for the white man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXPFfgdxp9o

cardamon making some excellent posts here

Even a stopped clock etc

harris' denial of free will is tremendously troubling for me, less New Atheism than New Calvinism

Its a commonplace among neurologists and others who have given the Libet experiment etc serious thought. Whether decisions occur through clockwork determinism or quantum randomness, they're still beyond conscious control. Consciousness is a post-hoc narrator of experience, not a little homonculi inside one's head.

It creates tremendous issues for the conventional basis for laws and "justice", but on the other hand, accepting that free will is a self-delusion also creates tremendous compassion for the underprivileged, the sufferers of addiction, etc. Its not all loss.

I don't really see how absence of free will creates any issues for systems of belief devised in the absence of free will

I was under the impression Harris restricted his anti Islam arguments to issues with the actual theology in the texts. So he is more overtly bigoted these days? I haven't been following along lately.

xp: Criminal justice is premised on the accused having free will. Hence the commonplace and probably congenital desire for punishment. However, if we're all poor sods trapped hundreds (or more) microseconds behind decisions made by our subconscious, then punishment, per se, doesn't have a moral basis. Deterrence, sequestration, and rehabilitation (if possible) may, but punishment doesn't.

Mind, I'm not completely in the no free will=helpless camp. The brain has plenty of feedback loops, and hence its probable our conscious narrator has an influence over an adaptive subconscience. We, riding in the caboose, can call the engine on occasion. This may have minimal effect on moment to moment decisions, but can shape the machinery over time.

For "no free will=helpless" above, read "no conscious control = our neural narrator function is a helpless passenger". Lots of room for misinterpretations in discussions of consciousness and free will.

Its a commonplace among neurologists and others who have given the Libet experiment etc serious thought.

A little misleading? There's plenty of debate in such circles about the implications of Libet et al.

Free will debate always just comes back to twasnt me guv

Twas, yacuncha

Its a commonplace among neurologists and others who have given the Libet experiment etc serious thought. Whether decisions occur through clockwork determinism or quantum randomness, they're still beyond conscious control. Consciousness is a post-hoc narrator of experience, not a little homonculi inside one's head.

It creates tremendous issues for the conventional basis for laws and "justice", but on the other hand, accepting that free will is a self-delusion also creates tremendous compassion for the underprivileged, the sufferers of addiction, etc. Its not all loss.

― Sanpaku

i don't have problems with criticisms of ideologies based around "free will", arguments in favor of which are often completely overblown and occasionally outright delusional (the whole "just world" fallacy can be in some ways seen as an extension of overemphasis on "free will"). obviously humans do not control their environment. it's harris' absolutism, his apparent denial of the human capacity to _shape_ their environment, that seems to me, well, fundamentally unscientific. you know, god is a delusion, free will is a delusion... ultimately it leads one to the conclusion that meaning is a delusion, to a clockwork fatalism that, however cunningly argued or philosophically buttressed, is inimical to lived human experience. i would argue that the best possible means of addressing the free will conundrum is to plead ignorance.

fuck it, let's just listen to some robert wyatt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9T8H7vAXTA

there was a "free will" poll awhile ago and I was shocked by the number of people who subscribe to it around here. baffling.

Well the concept of a poll "option" was a cruel joke in the circs tbf

I was under the impression Harris restricted his anti Islam arguments to issues with the actual theology in the texts.

"The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center. In Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world."

^ in other wrds no, he likes to get into social, cultural, political matters too

it's harris' absolutism, his apparent denial of the human capacity to _shape_ their environment, that seems to me, well, fundamentally unscientific. you know, god is a delusion, free will is a delusion... ultimately it leads one to the conclusion that meaning is a delusion, to a clockwork fatalism that, however cunningly argued or philosophically buttressed, is inimical to lived human experience.

Yeah, and fatalism, of whatever stripe, always has an acute psychic/affective pull which I think he's employing deliberately. As well as getting to be the Revealer of Dark Truths. It's cultish stuff

to a clockwork fatalism that, however cunningly argued or philosophically buttressed, is inimical to lived human experience

You'd be surprised. Abraham Lincoln subscribed to this view, and seems to have nonetheless lived a good life, in the Stoic sense.

Guelzo, 1997. [Abraham Lincoln and the doctrine of necessity](http://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=cwfac). Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 18(1), pp.57-81.

again, with bbcode

Guelzo, 1997. Abraham Lincoln and the doctrine of necessity.

"[Man] is simply a simple tool, a mere cog in the wheel, a part, a small part, of this vast iron machine, that strikes and cuts, grinds and mashes, all things, including man, that resist it."

dang

That Harris quote is from 2006. I don't think he'd say anything as extreme as that these days. But that after over a decade of constant debate on this stuff, several months ago he seemed to suggest (if I'm not mistaken) you shouldn't be able to wear a burqa or cover your face in some way in mcdonalds is really bad.

Determinism is terrifying.

accepting that free will is a self-delusion also creates tremendous compassion for the underprivileged, the sufferers of addiction, etc.

Without free will such acceptance could only occur either randomly or else purely mechanistically. I wouldn't be involved in it, other than by pure happenstance, so that even pointing this out is futile, because it is without value.

lincoln read a lot more ecclesiastes than most people. personally i think ecclesiastes is better comprehended through the richard brautigan approach.

xp Isn't compassion valuable whether or not we deserve credit for it?

accepting that free will is a self-delusion also creates tremendous compassion for the underprivileged, the sufferers of addiction, etc.

In theory

But then if I decide not to be compassionate to these people hey that just has to be accepted to because it's not really a decision on my part, and I'm not accountable

And there's no guarantee that having got 'there is no free will' into their head, that anyone would follow the logic and decide that addicts are not to blame for their situation

xps The question of the value of compassion (or of anything at all) would not be confined to whether we deserved credit for it, but would extend to whether value could have any utility at all. If not, then the very idea of value becomes as much of a delusion as free will.

Also, if there is no free will, it renders meaningless a whole series of questions, such as "why are you hitting yourself? why don't you stop hitting yourself?"

I don't think its psychologically tenable to believe you have no control over anything

define "you"

I don't find determinism terrifying, I just accept it. it has no bearing on the decisions I make or how I behave tbh, I just consider it a fact. Considering my conscious identity as somehow separate or outside of the processes that govern the universe seems bizarre to me.