This guy is a pig

his argument is that religion causes more suffering than rape (because, he argues, it leads to terrorism, war, etc.). and that religion leads to rape as well e.g. ISIS sex slaves, catholic priest cases).

So by getting rid of religion, you'd be getting rid of a lot of rapes + many other bad things

I'd rather just get rid of rape. This will make religion much more tolerable.

How did Sam Harris become a public speaker? How did he become popular? I think no one makes me more worried for the future of Western civilization than Sam Harris. He is the embodiment of reddit-tier STEM major's arrogance.

Basically what said

It's rhetoric to push against the notion that only pedants and arrogant assholes argue against religion, because religion supposedly is 'meaningless/personal/just a community' or whatever obscurantist liars and wishful thinkers assert.

The underlying points are
>behavior is guided by ideas that are taken seriously
> this means ideas often have wider consequences than just for the individual holding those ideas
> this means people should scrutinize each other's ideas
> religious ideas are shielded from this scrutiny more often than other ideas for various reasons
> certain religious ideas have terrible consequences
> to emphasize this point Harris considers it worse than rape, especially since certain religious ideas and customs justify or facilitate rape

Ofcourse, this gets twisted into: 'Harris thinks rape is just fine' or 'Harris is such a bigot that he prioritizes attacking other peoples 'personal' choices and communties over fighting rape'.

le starbucks barista ressentiment face

I doubt you have read his work if you think that.

Sam Harris is fine. Veeky Forums just hates anyone popular among normal people.

Don't worry, we survived religion, there can be anything worse.

kek

Hmm what a conundrum shall we get rid of
>sectarian belief system used to justify both good and bad actions (former being virtuous or ascetic living and the creation of art; latter being intolerance, inter-communal violence, and repressively patriarchal society)
>animalistic human crime at the very core of our being which is largely unconnected with religion (used only to justify actions ad hoc) that humanity has struggled with for millennia
What a hard fucking choice.

I would make my dick bigger, and then continue to rape.

yes

>it's another scientist attempts philosophy and fails thread

Sam Harris isn't popular among normal people.

>philosophy
>ever succeeding

You guys are pathetic manchildren that have no grasp of real world ethics/politics.

>HAHAH A SCIENCE DUMMY THINKS HE'S SMARTER THAN ME, ME!!! I READ SO MANY PHILOSOPHERS, HE DOESN"T KNOW SHIT SO EVERYTHING HE SAYS IT STUPID XDD

Sam is right.
The only reason you fucks shit on him is because he obviously has flawed metaphysics, but so have many philosophers.

Although, pragmatically he's the most correct, his practical solutions should be the forefront of ethics, we should take out the relativistic culture ethics and religion ethics.

you need to go back

>we should take out the relativistic culture ethics and religion ethics.

You do realize that the removal of religion and religion based ethics only leads to more relativism right? Just look at the SJW movement, which has its roots in Christian theology. Once stripped of its religious tradition and framework, it becomes merely a mechanism to defend whatever batshit insane idiotic issue which an individual feels is pertinent to their own welfare. In western religions, the goal of a moral philosophy is the welfare of the society and community. Once you remove this aspect, all you are left with is a moral philosophy which only allows for individual interpretation. Hence why the SJW movement has fallen so down the rabbit hole.

Relativistic as in "they behead fags because it's their culture".

Sam argues for certain rational ethics based on biological truths.

In his book he mentions a woman, that has a high ranking position in Obama administration, she's one of the people responsible for something something ethics/culture/etc of the government, and she explicitly stated that even if a culture had a 'law' in which certain children for no reason should be blinded (as in destroy their eyes) just because of their own religion/culture, it should be acceptable.

SJW isn't that relativistic as you make it out to be.
Their metaphysics are correct, less oppression, less inequality, etc.
But, they have gone a twisted road, and below their metaphysics they were introduced by retarded reasoning, false statistics, etc.

I do believe civilized, rational, egalitarian cultures can see that well-being for most people/society is the best rule of thumb.

Islam for example don't care for those things, their metaphysics is a book that has serious issues with well being of its own people.

>pragmatically he's the most correct
what do you even mean by this

explain to me how science can be used to discern absolute ethical principles, without making a relative judgment of value

the prospect that his ideas could gain political traction is horrifying to me, especially when you consider he has so little respect for other human pursuits that he would erase religion from the world if he could

You're judging too harshly.
It's like writing a simple program in Python (pragmatic) and you, the elitist program yell and shout that program is inefficient, it should be written in assembly, or better yet, the hardware isn't constructed in the most efficient way, hence his code should be abandoned.

Don't see this as some kind of philosophy, but a practical solution.
The whole gimmick "HE SOLVED PHILOSOPHY WITH SCIENCEDXD" is just that, an empty gimmick.

From a philosophical perspective I'd condemn him too.
But from the standpoint of a citizen of this world I'd help him push the agenda that religion and culture should taken off from the "sacred" status they have.

No matter how complex and deep the world/reality is, we live and function under laws/rules that we agree upon, which are by definition pragmatic.

It's the adult, strategic, reasonable thing to do.
Shitting on Sam Harris is no different than how SJW complain about manspreading while not giving two shits about women getting raped and killed in middle east.

The problem is that his goal IS a metaphysical impossibility (at least according to his materialist metaphysics). He wants to create normative ethics from scientific research. You can't propose an "ought" without agreeing on a particular end to which that "ought" provides the means. We already do that when we say things like, "Science shows that healthy diet will improve your mood." If you reduce Harris's proposed "system" to finding propositions like that, then it is redundant and worthless.

He argues that we can make absolute ethical propositions using science, and that is impossible. It's fatuous to argue that "the core of his idea, pragmatically interpreted, is correct," because that's a completely different argument from what he makes. He is selling the idea that we can answer unanswerable questions if we listen to him.

I think that religion is priceless to humanity, so I disagree that we should ever let secular, material measures of value inhibit the freedom to practice religion. I do think we should always be skeptical of religious beliefs (or "religious" beliefs) that foster bigotry and violence, and encourage people who hold those beliefs to reassess them.

>I do believe civilized, rational, egalitarian cultures can see that well-being for most people/society is the best rule of thumb.

But both Harris and yourself can't account for any teleological end outside of

>biological truths.

which in and of itself doesn't necessarily give it any sort of moral authority. His argument also fails in his understanding of his own philosophy. On the one hand, he claims that there is no free will. But on the other, he claims that we should judge people harshly for their moral wrongdoings and try to be better people. But if there is no free will, these things are illusory, and condemning a terrorist for murdering hundreds of people or a priest for molesting children is pointless, as they were predestined to commit these acts.

You are religious to some extent, correct?
It seems that you are.
I don't want to sound like an arrogant elitist new-atheist but to anyone who has even glimpsed at philosophy can see that your belief is interfering with your perception of ethics, which I understand, I was grew up in a religious house.

Religion is indeed useful, but only to primitive cultures, they need some kind of morality to stop them from being atrocious to eachother.

This is my problem, that you're judging him purely philosophically.
I think his morality case is stronger than any other religion so far.
The key word is practicality, not ultimate infallible answer.
And by practicality I don't mean utilitarianism, I mean biology+aftereffect of christianity, which suits the most amount of people in our current western world.

Harris has made the point before that a lack of free will means we shouldn't blame or even feel hatred towards immoral people. We still need to protect society from such people however, which is what Harris argues for.

You do realize that the idea of completely atheist society is controversial right? As in its doubtful such a thing can even be.

Islam = Ultimate Truth
Why haven't you reverted to Islam?

Look at Japan for example.
They function like atheists even if in paper they are "shinto/buddhist".
In many recent polls 80-90 japs don't even identify with any religion.
Check their crime stats, work ethic, economy.
They don't need an invisible man to make them behave.

Religion makes metaphysical claims that at best are completely unjustifiable, promotes belief without evidence to be a virtue, and is the cause of much unnecessary sectarian conflict. Harris's writing on spirituality encourages a secular approach to spiritual experience that requires no belief in unjustified metaphysical claims.

Yeah the Japanese are a happy people. The unhappy ones kill themselves as should you.

Japan's population has been declining for years now. without any higher purpose in life the Japanese loose themselves in Anime, sexual perversion and pointless toil.40% of Japanese youth show no interest on sex or reproduction Soon their whole race will go extinct.

wha

I was just saying you shouldn't remove religion because that would make everybody sad and feel meaningless, and they would invest their religious nature into things that are actually bad..

You can have meaning and morality without religion though.

>ad hominem
Classy
>Yeah the Japanese are a happy people.
Goalpost change
Classier

It's not just japan, all economically developed countries have this pattern.
Not really about religion.

Unlike japan, europe and US has new hungry immigrants ready for job and childbearing, hence the difference is slightly hidden but still apparent even with that.

It's like you have never met an atheist.

I'm agnostic, but interested in religious studies and personally interested in Christianity. I am completely open to making compromises when religious beliefs pose a threat to material wellbeing. I support individual liberty and I have been an advocate for LGBT and women's rights (for instance) against religious interests. My support of liberty also includes the right for people to seek truth and purpose in religion.

>Religion is indeed useful, but only to primitive cultures, they need some kind of morality to stop them from being atrocious to eachother.
Sorry, this is one of the most ignorant, /r/atheism-type posts I've seen here in awhile. Religion is so much more than a technology and has, since its inception, encompassed much more than an ad hoc justification for morality as you suggest.

maybe its for the best desu

>the elitist program yell and shout that program is inefficient

Most elitist programmers would simply argue that if you're going to use a high level language you should at least use one that isn't complete and utter garbage. Guido Van Rossum is objectively retarded and no language has a less coherent design than Python.

It's a biological truth that we have been raping for years so it must be okay!!!

He is an idiot.

Harris has actually used rape to make the argument that just because something is natural doesn't make it ethical.

>Sorry, this is one of the most ignorant, /r/atheism-type posts I've seen here in awhile. Religion is so much more than a technology and has, since its inception, encompassed much more than an ad hoc justification for morality as you suggest.

What is that much more?
Not even being sarcastic, I sincerely want tot hear it because I don't think I ever thought of anything else beyond it, if you name some reasonable it will be horizon broadening to me.

>My support of liberty also includes the right for people to seek truth and purpose in religion.

This is where were disagree then.
Religion is supremely overrated, I'm not gonna downplay it's role in world history but right now it could completely vanish and we'd be better off.
And it is to a point hypocritical, you would ridicule someone who searched for truth in Santa Claus.

>spiritual
>doesnt require unjustified metaphysical claims

Pick one

That is the most simple-minded evaluation I've seen in a long time.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
How dare you think this stupidly?

You obviously haven't read Harris. If you had you would know his definition of spirituality is compatible with skepticism and reason.

And just because some dumb ass says any given thing is ethical, or not ethical doesn't make it is. There needs to be an absolute moral authority and that only comes from God.

The argument that it can be used to justify anything applies only to ISIS today, and only crazy Mormons and evangelicals try to use it to justify crazy shit.

>4 legs = dog
>cat = dog

This is how you think.

Correct and I don't care to. He is a confirmed retard.

Who says there has to be an absolute moral authority? The universe doesn't necessarily need one. Also there are ways of getting objective moral values without reference to an omnipotent being.

More like dog = 4 legs, cat = 4 legs

Then why do you have an opinion on something you don't know anything about?

>confirmed
By whom?

I can tell you using my rationality that Sam Harris is not a pig, although they do share a common ancestor

Oh I don't know, maybe the fact that since we have been here we have been nothing but too stupid to figure out some basic Morality? We literally need some man in the dessert to go around telling us we can't do certain things because it's not okay. Why is it not okay? I'm sure that is the same thing they were asking. The point is when we entertain the idea of God, it leads us to entertain the idea that we should be living in a certain way.

Yet somehow has more morals than God

literally this.

>Everyone is raping and killing each other, there is no law, no government, no Morality at all among nearly every person on the Earth

It would be pretty immoral to not wipe them out. Unless of course you think letting people continue all of these atrocities which is causing nothing but suffering would be moral.

Tell me a good high level language.

They all have to be somewhat like python just because of how they run.

Sam Harris is responsible for quite a few less genocides than God is.

Sam Harris is a white male.

A white male has been responsible for countless genocides.

QED Sam Harris is worse than God

He's a neocon/Israel shill

"I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I think it is obscene, irrational and unjustifiable to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there’s a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible."
- Sam Harris

He has a degree in philosophy, he's primarily dealing with philosophy nowadays.

This is the guy that spent years meditating with buddhist monks and engaged in a bunch of other spiritual introspective voyages, if you ever read his work you'd realize he's far from being a redditor STEM materialist.

"Consciousness is not material" -Sam the Harris

Hating on Sam Harris is the best way to expose your ignorance and disposition to buy into memes and let 4chinners do the thinking for you.
I reckon there's a strong correlation between finding Zizek ''cool'' and criticising Sam Harris blindly.

Note: He's wrong about his thesis on objective morality, but he maks a compelling case.

Most high level languages are far better than Python. What are library features in decent languages are parser and dict hacks in Python because Python has a shitty incoherent design that makes the language hard to extend.

List comprehensions, generators, context managers, decorators, metaclasses and all the other Python hacks are all features that are completely unnecessary in languages with a coherent design. Most of these bullshit features only exist because Python has far too many statements, crippled lambdas and a hacked on shitty object model.

>What is that much more?
a search for absolute Truth, an existential purpose, a source of identity, a body of mythology that represents and solidifies a culture's values

>And it is to a point hypocritical, you would ridicule someone who searched for truth in Santa Claus.
Of course I would, due to the ridiculousness of believing in someone my dad told me was just him. I think many religions have valuable claims to Truth: Christianity and Judaism with their historical basis and appealing theological ideas, Buddhism and Hinduism with their fleshed out mystical philosophy and scientifically supported meditative practices. I don't want to get into an argument over those. Belief in religion necessarily combines faith and reason, so as long as your epistemology is not open to the possibility of truths that need to be accepted on faith, we will not agree. Suffice it to say that I believe the absolute sense of the world is impossible to discover from a scientific standpoint, and religion is one possible way of apprehending it.

This honestly is just a bunch of meaningless drivel.
The only real truth that can be found in the canvas of religion is as you mentioned yourself the reality of the benefits of certain meditative traditions, which by the way are also found in Abrahamic teachings.

Outside of that there is zero truth to be found in it.

>List comprehensions, generators, context managers, decorators, metaclasses and all the other Python hacks are all features that are completely unnecessary in languages with a coherent design.
No actually I totally see what you mean, those are the absolute worst parts of python. That said tho it's these bits and few other niggles that mean there's a lot of python work out there so I'm not massively bothered.