Stak Contra Sethbag: Sam Harris sucks!

[_brade]

Also, I just thought I'd add that in the debate with Craig where Harris throws out that pancake quote I think Harris gets pretty thoroughly trounced by Craig. Harris failed to even address Craig's arguments and criticisms and sort of just rambled on about the problem of evil. In terms of philosophical sharpness Harris was outmatched by Craig, in my opinion.

[_MrStakhanovite]

You are being somewhat disingenuous in your criticisms of Sam Harris. You seem to be complaining about how his work is seen, or interpreted by, your students and others who you feel do not, or cannot, distinguish between the social consequences of religion as compared to those of culture.

Yeah. No. Read my last paragraph:

This is getting far too long, so I’m going to stop here and hope this better explains what exactly my beef with Sam Harris is, he is not insightful in regards to the real issues at stake, but rather he sticks to the shallows, spearing fish stuck on a sand bar. One could argue that his purpose isn’t to engage the deep end of issues, but speak to the average person. I don’t buy it, he is trying to speak to the average person but completely leave them unprepared to actually critically engage issues?

You leave the impression that you believe he does not adequately make this distinction while you are capable, or more capable than most, of doing so.

Actually, no one really can. There is serious debate in the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion over just what exactly constitutes religion and what doesn’t. There is no clear answer.

So what you have is guy blaming a whole bunch of bad stuff on religion, but never addresses the fact none of this is unique to religion, it is pattern of human behavior that can happen in a wide variety of contexts.

Yet you provide no evidence that this is the case.

This took me about 10seconds to find:

For millennia, the world’s great prophets and theologians have applied their collective genius to the riddle of womanhood. The result has been polygamy, sati, honor killing, punitive rape, genital mutilation, forced marriages, a cultic obsession with virginity, compulsory veiling, the persecution of unwed mothers, and other forms of physical and psychological abuse so kaleidoscopic in variety as to scarcely admit of concise description.

A-historical and Western-centered These are human problems, not problems that exist solely to revealed religion. It goes on…

Some of this sexist evil probably predates religion and can be ascribed to our biology, but there is no question that religion promulgates and renders sacrosanct attitudes toward women that would be unseemly in a brachiating ape.

Of course, there were plenty of atheistic and secular belief systems in and around China that had really bad beliefs about women and their role. Ditto some schools of thought in India. I could also do a laundry list of atheistic thinkers who have had really really stupid beliefs about women too, some of them influencing states.

He hints that this problem predates religion, but seems totally ignorant about how the problem manifests itself in all facets of life. Ask a feminist critic sometime about what areas of secular life sexisms exist in, and you’ll see the problem goes much deeper and is much more complicated than what Sam ever talks about.

I could go on and on about his terrible attempts to understand texts written in languages he can’t read and written for audiences he can’t comprehend, but none of that matters, what matters is making religion look as stupid as possible. A sourcing all that to Ibn Warraq’s? Major red flag that he couldn't bring up any specific Hadith or ruling from one of the schools of Islamic Jurisprudence.

He provides an important and much needed perspective in a country where nearly half the population (46% according to a recent Gallup poll) believe that the Earth was created in six days less than 10,000 years ago by magic, and only about 15% of citizens believe in evolution if some Deity is not involved in the process.

And I think he sucks at doing anything about that. His attitude and work is totally counter intuitive to that goal. But pissing people off does sell books, no?

Your criticisms of Sam Harris' approach to teaching about the importance of reason, science and rational thought

He doesn’t teach those things. He’ll praise them and he thinks he is using them to devastating effect, but…

…and the consequences to society when an understanding and practice of these are largely absent, seems to miss this point.

I think it is largely absent in his work.

Your complaint puts me in mind a badly injured American victim of a terrorist bomb blast who bitches because the first responders showed up in a Toyota instead of a Ford.

Actually, my complaint would be that the EMT thinks who knows how to treat a trauma victims is rolling peoples’ heads around.

[_madeleine]

I can only speak from own experience. I was an atheist for much longer in my life than I have been religious. A couple of decades atheist, five years Catholic.

As an atheist, I dabbled all over, in answering these questions in my own mind. Humanism appealed to me, at a deep level, as did the Eastern philosophies. In particular, Pantanjali. I went through a long phase where I viewed religion as the root of all evil. I still think this is appealing to the young and/or newly emerged from a religious cocoon.

At any rate, I reached a point where I saw through it all.

People are the worst.

The humanist ideal that people can solve these deep, embedded issues of humanity, I came to see as the most naïve way of thinking of all. Altruistic, no doubt. My experiment with atheistic humanism was a failure.

I became a nihilist. I still view nihilism as the only logical option to belief. All else is delusional.

[Guest]

So what you have is guy blaming a whole bunch of bad stuff on religion, but never addresses the fact none of this is unique to religion, it is pattern of human behavior that can happen in a wide variety of contexts.

Again, I have to challenge you on this point. He's explicit in at least the book I read that this bad stuff is not unique to religion and that it can and does emerge in other contexts where groups find it praiseworthy to be dogmatic about claims for which there's insufficient evidence. He also has been explicit that it's often a matter of conversational convenience to speak of religion as a whole thing, but that, in reality, it's much more nuanced than that and the mere fact of something's being a religion isn't a necessary mark against it.

with regard to the women quote you've offered above, Harris, from my reading, does concede, as I've just suggested, that apparently non-religious people and groups often do and believe horrible things. He focuses on religion because there is no social taboo against publicly talking about and criticizing bad secular ideas. There is such a taboo among many cultures against that sort of public criticism of religious beliefs. To address another point, I've even read him recognize the fact that he does tend to stay in shallower water because his focus is on pushing against this social taboo sometimes at the expense of wading into deeper waters.

[_MrStakhanovite]

[And] sourcing all that to Ibn Warraq’s? Major red flag that he couldn't bring up any specific Hadith or ruling from one of the schools of Islamic Jurisprudence.

To explain this; People who are familiar with Islam know where to go to get authoritative rulings from the ulema (religious scholars of Islam who play an very important role in Islamic communities), which would be much more convincing and would better his case than sourcing a guy who is largely frowned on by Muslims everywhere (it would be like mentioning Ed Decker to a Mormon, he may be right, but his name is associated with angry apostasy).

He doesn’t do that because all his knowledge about Islam could fit into a thimble. It is just a talking point for him, a useful example for pure rhetorical effect. Why bother learning about Islamic fiqh and trying to engage people in terms they are more familiar with when you can just pander to the crowd of 18 to 40 aged white dudes who make up the majority of his audience?

But hey, what has scholarship and understanding have to do with anything when we can make a living off getting a bunch of people worked up over a substantial issue?

[_MrStakhanovite]

Again, I have to challenge you on this point. He's explicit in at least the book I read that this bad stuff is not unique to religion and that it can and does emerge in other contexts where groups find it praiseworthy to be dogmatic about claims for which there's insufficient evidence. He also has been explicit that it's often a matter of conversational convenience to speak of religion as a whole thing, but that, in reality, it's much more nuanced than that and the mere fact of something's being a religion isn't a necessary mark against it.

But he doesn't do it well enough, it is a footnote, an aside, something stuck in the discourse like the possible side effects spelled out by a rushed voice in a commercial for a prescription drug. He doesn’t give that fact the respect it deserves and to his detriment.

If he truly acknowledges that every evil impact religion has had can also be found in other human contexts, then why the hard on for rude dismissals of religion? Why not an intense study of “human nature” (whatever that may be) that enables these things to crop up consistently in civilization?

[_brade]

Again, I have to challenge you on this point. He's explicit in at least the book I read that this bad stuff is not unique to religion and that it can and does emerge in other contexts where groups find it praiseworthy to be dogmatic about claims for which there's insufficient evidence. He also has been explicit that it's often a matter of conversational convenience to speak of religion as a whole thing, but that, in reality, it's much more nuanced than that and the mere fact of something's being a religion isn't a necessary mark against it.

But he doesn't do it well enough, it is a footnote, an aside, something stuck in the discourse like the possible side effects spelled out by a rushed voice in a commercial for a prescription drug. He doesn’t give that fact the respect it deserves and to his detriment.

If he truly acknowledges that every evil impact religion has had can also be found in other human contexts, then why the hard on for rude dismissals of religion? Why not an intense study of “human nature” (whatever that may be) that enables these things to crop up consistently in civilization?

Stak, I added this to my last post a few minutes after I posted it and it addresses your question:

He focuses on religion because there is no social taboo against publicly talking about and criticizing bad secular ideas. There is such a taboo among many cultures against that sort of public criticism of religious beliefs. To address another point, I've even read him recognize the fact that he does tend to stay in shallower water because his focus is on pushing against this social taboo sometimes at the expense of wading into deeper waters.

[Guest]

I’m active in student groups that deal with secularism and atheism, I see a good deal of kids (17-20) who are living on campus who come out of uber religious homes. Coming from Jehovah Witness (usually straight up disfellowshiped and getting no support from mom n dad), Mormon, Fundamental Independent Baptist, and hardliner Catholic homes, these kids are going through that glorious phase where they want to say “F YOU!” to anything that is the status quo.

Before Mr S. blames Sam Harris for all of the the naïveté and cramped horizons of these students, maybe he might like to place just a little responsibility on those who brought them up for their childhood and adolescence in ignorance-based world views of the kind that Harris seems to have helped release them from?

Oh hey! Another post talking about me in the third person that adds nothing. Who saw that coming?

Passing over the MADmod style complaint about 'not adding anything', I don't see an answer to my point about the OP - that is, that Mr. S. blames a few hours spent reading Sam Harris's writing for habits of naïveté about religion that should be blamed on a lifetime's religious upbringing.

[_DrW]

You are being somewhat disingenuous in your criticisms of Sam Harris. You seem to be complaining about how his work is seen, or interpreted by, your students and others who you feel do not, or cannot, distinguish between the social consequences of religion as compared to those of culture.

Yeah. No. Read my last paragraph:

This is getting far too long, so I’m going to stop here and hope this better explains what exactly my beef with Sam Harris is, he is not insightful in regards to the real issues at stake, but rather he sticks to the shallows, spearing fish stuck on a sand bar. One could argue that his purpose isn’t to engage the deep end of issues, but speak to the average person. I don’t buy it, he is trying to speak to the average person but completely leave them unprepared to actually critically engage issues?

You leave the impression that you believe he does not adequately make this distinction while you are capable, or more capable than most, of doing so.

Actually, no one really can. There is serious debate in the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion over just what exactly constitutes religion and what doesn’t. There is no clear answer.

So what you have is guy blaming a whole bunch of bad stuff on religion, but never addresses the fact none of this is unique to religion, it is pattern of human behavior that can happen in a wide variety of contexts.

Yet you provide no evidence that this is the case.

This took me about 10seconds to find:

For millennia, the world’s great prophets and theologians have applied their collective genius to the riddle of womanhood. The result has been polygamy, sati, honor killing, punitive rape, genital mutilation, forced marriages, a cultic obsession with virginity, compulsory veiling, the persecution of unwed mothers, and other forms of physical and psychological abuse so kaleidoscopic in variety as to scarcely admit of concise description.

A-historical and Western-centered These are human problems, not problems that exist solely to revealed religion. It goes on…

Some of this sexist evil probably predates religion and can be ascribed to our biology, but there is no question that religion promulgates and renders sacrosanct attitudes toward women that would be unseemly in a brachiating ape.

Of course, there were plenty of atheistic and secular belief systems in and around China that had really bad beliefs about women and their role. Ditto some schools of thought in India. I could also do a laundry list of atheistic thinkers who have had really really stupid beliefs about women too, some of them influencing states.

He hints that this problem predates religion, but seems totally ignorant about how the problem manifests itself in all facets of life. Ask a feminist critic sometime about what areas of secular life sexisms exist in, and you’ll see the problem goes much deeper and is much more complicated than what Sam ever talks about.

I could go on and on about his terrible attempts to understand texts written in languages he can’t read and written for audiences he can’t comprehend, but none of that matters, what matters is making religion look as stupid as possible. A sourcing all that to Ibn Warraq’s? Major red flag that he couldn't bring up any specific Hadith or ruling from one of the schools of Islamic Jurisprudence.

He provides an important and much needed perspective in a country where nearly half the population (46% according to a recent Gallup poll) believe that the Earth was created in six days less than 10,000 years ago by magic, and only about 15% of citizens believe in evolution if some Deity is not involved in the process.

And I think he sucks at doing anything about that. His attitude and work is totally counter intuitive to that goal. But pissing people off does sell books, no?

Your criticisms of Sam Harris' approach to teaching about the importance of reason, science and rational thought

He doesn’t teach those things. He’ll praise them and he thinks he is using them to devastating effect, but…

…and the consequences to society when an understanding and practice of these are largely absent, seems to miss this point.

I think it is largely absent in his work.

Your complaint puts me in mind a badly injured American victim of a terrorist bomb blast who bitches because the first responders showed up in a Toyota instead of a Ford.

Actually, my complaint would be that the EMT thinks who knows how to treat a trauma victims is rolling peoples’ heads around.

You make some good points and, as usual, lay out a well argued case (might want to fix the text in your closing analogy though - I think it might be good one - clever at least). On balance, I see Sam Harris' writing is very useful and especially like his approach in "Letter to a Christian Nation" (as you may have gathered from some posts on other threads).

In response to your comment about pissing folks off to sell books, I would somewhat agree. Harris seems to enjoy being one of the "Four Horsemen" (now three, I guess), and in his quest to continue as a best selling author, he may have overreached a bit in some of this more recent works. Time will tell.

[_lostindc]

I do not believe Sam Harris offers any new ideas (likewise Dawkins is similar but on a grander scale of regurgitation). I believe he does like to stir the pot and he loves the fame and money he has achieved by towing the atheist line in a provocative manner. That being said, I loved his interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. He is an interesting guy who does not discount as much as one would think in terms of possibilities. Also, Harris practices brazillian jui jitsu and is a huge fan of mma so it was interesting to hear about his other passions.