Stak Contra Sethbag: Sam Harris sucks!

[_MrStakhanovite]

So on another corner of the internet, Sethbag and I were having a conversation about Sam Harris. I moved it here because it has outgrown the other medium and is probably more useful here. The crux of the issue is my appraisal of Sam Harris and his books.

Straight up, I think Sam Harris is a crap head. I make no bones about this, but it doesn’t follow that people who like Harris are crap heads. I can appreciate that people like his work and find some kind of value in what he has to say, but where I draw the line is how little his books prepare people to actually encounter “religion” in the public sphere.

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. Some dye their hair purple, others get nose rings, they wear ridiculous clothing, experiment with alcohol, drugs, and sex. It’s a stage modern kids have been going through now for decades, but while doing all this, these kids are groping around in the dark looking for their new “identity” to replace the one they just got rid of.

Naturally, they turn to someone like Sam Harris to inform their worldview. They like his approach to religion, calling a spade a spade, and telling people in no uncertain terms that their religion is a fraud and it makes them act like fools. It is like a breath of fresh air, here is a guy who is saying everything they’ve wanted to say for years and he’s doing it in a book that was on the NYT bestseller list. They take on this enlightened view that religion is some silly thing that needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history, that science answers any question that religion could ever hope to speak about, and that the world will become a much better place once people stop with the fairy tales about sky daddies and their prophets. They have adopted what they like to call a “reality based worldview” based on any number of things they value: science, logic, reason, rationality.

Then they show up to student meetings and want to organize a “draw Muhammad” day. I take my turn in telling them in no uncertain terms that is the worst idea and completely disconnected with reality, to which they question me about freedom of speech and not giving religion any special treatment. So I have to explain to them that this campus has a critical mass of Muslims from which a large majority are refugees from a country whose largest contributor to the national GDP is piracy. So you have a large group of black students in a predominantly white city, who not only have to deal with racial issues, but also dress differently, speak with accents, and belong to a religion that is associated with terrorism. I have to stress that this basically the demographic they are picking a fight with, and right or wrong, you are going to look like a bunch of bullies.

Next, I have to take time to explain to them just how an image of Muhammad functions in the strain of Sunni Islam present on campus, it doesn’t hold the same meaning for these people that it does for your typical westerner. For us a picture of George Bush is just that, a picture, so you can do whatever you want to that picture because it is just a mere representation of George Bush and not the actual thing that is George Bush (cue Moksha joke). For these other students, to be “in the image of” Muhammad is partake in the essence of Muhammad, this distinction we make in the West between the real Muhammad and an image of Muhammad is almost non-existent in the more aniconic forms of Islam.

In addition to this, the person of Muhammad is far more important in Islam than Joseph Smith is in Mormonism, for example. Muslims base their behavior in life on how Muhammad lived, his habits and advice on day to day living and how to conduct one’s relationships with friends and family. An insulting picture of Muhammad is a slight against the very person of the Prophet and the very ideal of what Muslims think the moral life is.

I’m always ready to defend free speech against blasphemy laws, but there is a time and place for these sort of things, and this isn’t the time nor place for those kind of antics. So, they see my point of view and drop the issue and all is well. But this is just an example, a symptom, of the kind of ignorance that Sam Harris breeds in his fans. Find me someone who really agrees with and is informed by Nu-Atheism and I’ll show you a person who can’t even begin to make a meaningful demarcation where culture ends and religion begins. This is similar to the anti-porn crusaders who want to scrub all indecency from being easily available, but can’t tell you what exactly constitutes porn and what doesn’t, but can just point to examples and that totally fails as a definition.

(quick aside here, that is one major lesson I learned from the Socratic dialogues is that the strategy of supplying examples in lieu of definitions is one that always fails. A great example is the Euthyphro dialogue!)

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?

[Guest]

I believe this is exactly the type of discussion young people need to have. It is time to cleanse ourselves from the Toby Keith rhetoric of red white and blue atheism.

Oh, and I wonder what the dark corners of the Internet you hang out in are like.

[_sock puppet]

(quick aside here, that is one major lesson I learned from the Socratic dialogues is that the strategy of supplying examples in lieu of definitions is one that always fails. A great example is the Euthyphro dialogue!)

How about define the major lesson, not give an example of it?

[_sock puppet]

So on another corner of the internet, Sethbag and I were having a conversation about Sam Harris. I moved it here because it has outgrown the other medium and is probably more useful here. The crux of the issue is my appraisal of Sam Harris and his books.

Straight up, I think Sam Harris is a crap head. I make no bones about this, but it doesn’t follow that people who like Harris are crap heads. I can appreciate that people like his work and find some kind of value in what he has to say, but where I draw the line is how little his books prepare people to actually encounter “religion” in the public sphere.

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. Some dye their hair purple, others get nose rings, they wear ridiculous clothing, experiment with alcohol, drugs, and sex. It’s a stage modern kids have been going through now for decades, but while doing all this, these kids are groping around in the dark looking for their new “identity” to replace the one they just got rid of.

Naturally, they turn to someone like Sam Harris to inform their worldview. They like his approach to religion, calling a spade a spade, and telling people in no uncertain terms that their religion is a fraud and it makes them act like fools. It is like a breath of fresh air, here is a guy who is saying everything they’ve wanted to say for years and he’s doing it in a book that was on the NYT bestseller list. They take on this enlightened view that religion is some silly thing that needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history, that science answers any question that religion could ever hope to speak about, and that the world will become a much better place once people stop with the fairy tales about sky daddies and their prophets. They have adopted what they like to call a “reality based worldview” based on any number of things they value: science, logic, reason, rationality.

Then they show up to student meetings and want to organize a “draw Muhammad” day. I take my turn in telling them in no uncertain terms that is the worst idea and completely disconnected with reality, to which they question me about freedom of speech and not giving religion any special treatment. So I have to explain to them that this campus has a critical mass of Muslims from which a large majority are refugees from a country whose largest contributor to the national GDP is piracy. So you have a large group of black students in a predominantly white city, who not only have to deal with racial issues, but also dress differently, speak with accents, and belong to a religion that is associated with terrorism. I have to stress that this basically the demographic they are picking a fight with, and right or wrong, you are going to look like a bunch of bullies.

Next, I have to take time to explain to them just how an image of Muhammad functions in the strain of Sunni Islam present on campus, it doesn’t hold the same meaning for these people that it does for your typical westerner. For us a picture of George Bush is just that, a picture, so you can do whatever you want to that picture because it is just a mere representation of George Bush and not the actual thing that is George Bush (cue Moksha joke). For these other students, to be “in the image of” Muhammad is partake in the essence of Muhammad, this distinction we make in the West between the real Muhammad and an image of Muhammad is almost non-existent in the more aniconic forms of Islam.

In addition to this, the person of Muhammad is far more important in Islam than Joseph Smith is in Mormonism, for example. Muslims base their behavior in life on how Muhammad lived, his habits and advice on day to day living and how to conduct one’s relationships with friends and family. An insulting picture of Muhammad is a slight against the very person of the Prophet and the very ideal of what Muslims think the moral life is.

I’m always ready to defend free speech against blasphemy laws, but there is a time and place for these sort of things, and this isn’t the time nor place for those kind of antics. So, they see my point of view and drop the issue and all is well. But this is just an example, a symptom, of the kind of ignorance that Sam Harris breeds in his fans. Find me someone who really agrees with and is informed by Nu-Atheism and I’ll show you a person who can’t even begin to make a meaningful demarcation where culture ends and religion begins. This is similar to the anti-porn crusaders who want to scrub all indecency from being easily available, but can’t tell you what exactly constitutes porn and what doesn’t, but can just point to examples and that totally fails as a definition.

(quick aside here, that is one major lesson I learned from the Socratic dialogues is that the strategy of supplying examples in lieu of definitions is one that always fails. A great example is the Euthyphro dialogue!)

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?

MrStak,

Your beef doesn't seem to be with the underlying ideas of Harris, but how new found adherents, in their exuberance perhaps, get a bit intolerant of believers. Is that it?

[_Chap]

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?

[_brade]

MrStak,

Your beef doesn't seem to be with the underlying ideas of Harris, but how new found adherents, in their exuberance perhaps, get a bit intolerant of believers. Is that it?

I just finished reading one of his books and have spent some time over the past few weeks watching some of his debates and my assessment is that people who behave like the new adherents to atheism you describe are ignoring Harris' explicit instructions on time, place, and manner. If I remember right he addresses this kind of misplaced enthusiasm at an atheist convention where he offers some pretty harsh criticisms to his own camp, and even goes as far as saying that the whole idea of getting together as atheists is wrongheaded.

[_Chap]

MrStak,

Your beef doesn't seem to be with the underlying ideas of Harris, but how new found adherents, in their exuberance perhaps, get a bit intolerant of believers. Is that it?

I just finished reading one of his books and have spent some time over the past few weeks watching some of his debates and my assessment is that people who behave like the new adherents to atheism you describe are ignoring Harris' explicit instructions on time, place, and manner. If I remember right he addresses this kind of misplaced enthusiasm at an atheist convention where he offers some pretty harsh criticisms to his own camp, and even goes as far as saying that the whole idea of getting together as atheists is wrongheaded.

I'd agree with that last point. Where I live, nobody cares whether you are an atheist or not. So I feel about as much in common with other atheists as I do with other people who share another negative feature I possess - being a non-collector of stamps. (Maybe I might feel different if we were all being threatened with being burned at the stake.)

[_sethpayne]

MrStak,

Your beef doesn't seem to be with the underlying ideas of Harris, but how new found adherents, in their exuberance perhaps, get a bit intolerant of believers. Is that it?

I can't speak for Stak but I'll chime in with my $.02. My beef with Harris is that he isn't aiming correctly. His real problem is with the dogmatic positions derived by religionists from the premise that God exists and not with the actual philosophical and logical rationale for why there may be a "first cause." He tries to disprove God's existence by shooting down dogmatic assertions *about* God. As Stak mentioned, this never works. You can't disprove a premise by demonstrating the absurdity of an assertion derived from that premise. For every absurd assertion there are many others which translate into sources of positive social capital -- especially in eastern religious traditions. Where does God end and culture begin? What Harris fails to account for is the symbiotic relationship between religion and culture. He then dismisses something as a product of belief in God when in reality, that something is most likely a product of culture.

Harris shoots at fish in a barrel when he should be taking on actual substantive arguments from thinkers from Aquinas to Plantiga.

[_lulu]

not with the actual philosophical and logical rationale for why there may be a "first cause."

or why there may not be a "first cause."

But yes, that is how I understand where Stak is coming from re Harris. Although that might not be the main thrust of this particular OP.

@Stak, you know you've arrived when people start arguing about what you really mean. ;)

[_brade]

MrStak,

Your beef doesn't seem to be with the underlying ideas of Harris, but how new found adherents, in their exuberance perhaps, get a bit intolerant of believers. Is that it?

I can't speak for Stak but I'll chime in with my $.02. My beef with Harris is that he isn't aiming correctly. His real problem is with the dogmatic positions derived by religionists from the premise that God exists and not with the actual philosophical and logical rationale for why there may be a "first cause." He tries to disprove God's existence by shooting down dogmatic assertions *about* God. As Stak mentioned, this never works. You can't disprove a premise by demonstrating the absurdity of an assertion derived from that premise. For every absurd assertion there are many others which translate into sources of positive social capital -- especially in eastern religious traditions. Where does God end and culture begin? What Harris fails to account for is the symbiotic relationship between religion and culture. He then dismisses something as a product of belief in God when in reality, that something is most likely a product of culture.

Harris shoots at fish in a barrel when he should be taking on actual substantive arguments from thinkers from Aquinas to Plantiga.

I feel like I'm not reading the same Harris as everyone else.

Edit: Here's his talk at an Atheist Alliance conference a few years ago. His thoughts on spiritual experience are well worth the listen alone.