Stak Contra Sethbag: Sam Harris sucks!

[_MrStakhanovite]

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 wish he had followed his own advice when he said this in his debate against William Lane Craig at Notre Dame during the most important engagement of his career:

If you think saying Latin words over your pancakes will turn them into the body of Elvis Presley you’re insane, but if you think the same about a cracker and Jesus you’re a Catholic

[_brade]

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 wish he had followed his own advice when he said this in his debate against William Lane Craig at Notre Dame during the most important engagement of his career:

If you think saying Latin words over your pancakes will turn them into the body of Elvis Presley you’re insane, but if you think the same about a cracker and Jesus you’re a Catholic

Help me understand what you think was distasteful about that statement? I mean that sincerely. I may be inclined to agree with your assessment here, or maybe not, but I just want to have a better understanding of what you think about the instance you've brought up before I say anything about it.

[_MrStakhanovite]

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?

No no, they are influenced by Harris. See this comment from J.T. Eberhart, a former bigwig with the Student Secular Allaince:

In 2004 I was an atheist, but I was the live-and-let-live type. Religion didn’t bug me, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Then, for Christmas that year, my mother got me both of Sam Harris’ books. In The End of Faith there was a single sentence that changed my life forever.


We live in an age when a person could have the intellect and the resources to construct a nuclear bomb, and still believe they’ll receive paradise for detonating it.

He was right. My work as an activist began the following semester. I read every piece Harris put out, memorizing some of the passages for use in my own debates.

Check outhis glowing approval of a secular student group naming a Pineapple "Mohammed". I'm not making this crap up, Harris has made a huge impact

[_MrStakhanovite]

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

[_brade]

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?

No no, they are influenced by Harris. See this comment from J.T. Eberhart, a former bigwig with the Student Secular Allaince:

In 2004 I was an atheist, but I was the live-and-let-live type. Religion didn’t bug me, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Then, for Christmas that year, my mother got me both of Sam Harris’ books. In The End of Faith there was a single sentence that changed my life forever.


We live in an age when a person could have the intellect and the resources to construct a nuclear bomb, and still believe they’ll receive paradise for detonating it.

He was right. My work as an activist began the following semester. I read every piece Harris put out, memorizing some of the passages for use in my own debates.

Check outhis glowing approval of a secular student group naming a Pineapple "Mohammed". I'm not making this s*** up, Harris has made a huge impact

People influenced by Harris to appropriately engage dogmatism have, I think, understood correctly his main message. People who name pineapples "Mohammed" have not, at least from what I've consumed of his work. Again, if I remember right he addresses this point specifically in at least one of his books and does so pretty emphatically in the video I linked to.

I know I'm coming across here as a Harris apologist, and I don't really like that idea, but I've just not noticed this thread in his work and I haven't come across this response in any of the professed atheists I know. I'll happily disapprove of any inappropriate inciting on his part, but I haven't seen it. I've watched him play the debate game and try to score rhetorical points, but, nothing has struck me as obviously out of place or time.

[_MrStakhanovite]

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?

[_MrStakhanovite]

Help me understand what you think was distasteful about that statement? I mean that sincerely. I may be inclined to agree with your assessment here, or maybe not, but I just want to have a better understanding of what you think about the instance you've brought up before I say anything about it.

This list is off the top of my head, but I PM’ed a Catholic hoping they could help explain why such a comment is distasteful:

-The topic was God and Morality, not transubstantiation.

-No one on stage held Catholic beliefs, but the hosting institute was Catholic, so you had people in the room being insulted with no representation.

-Even if it wasn’t off topic, no self-respecting Catholic is going to agree with that crass characterization of transubstantiation.

-It wasn’t just a straw man; it was a characterization that explicitly implied someone should be considered “insane” if they believe in transubstantiation.

So what we got was a zinger that was celebrated over Twitter, but a zinger that pretty much turned off any Catholic who might be considering Harris' ideas.

[Guest]

Stak,

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. 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. Yet you provide no evidence that this is the case. Given your example concerning defamation of Muhammed and Islam, you should not be accusing others of shooting fish in a barrel.

I have read a lot of Sam Harris. 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.

Your criticisms of Sam Harris' approach to teaching about the importance of reason, science and rational thought, and the consequences to society when an understanding and practice of these are largely absent, seems to miss this point.

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.

[_brade]

Help me understand what you think was distasteful about that statement? I mean that sincerely. I may be inclined to agree with your assessment here, or maybe not, but I just want to have a better understanding of what you think about the instance you've brought up before I say anything about it.

This list is off the top of my head, but I PM’ed a Catholic hoping they could help explain why such a comment is distasteful:

-The topic was God and Morality, not transubstantiation.

-No one on stage held Catholic beliefs, but the hosting institute was Catholic, so you had people in the room being insulted with no representation.

-Even if it wasn’t off topic, no self-respecting Catholic is going to agree with that crass characterization of transubstantiation.

-It wasn’t just a straw man; it was a characterization that explicitly implied someone should be considered “insane” if they believe in transubstantiation.

So what we got was a zinger that was celebrated over Twitter, but a zinger that pretty much turned off any Catholic who might be considering Harris' ideas.

Ok, so I think that's fair enough. I think his zinger touches on an interesting question, but I think you're right in pointing out that he's harming his own chance at discussion on it by framing it that way.

[Guest]

PM'd Catholic here.

Mr. Harris hasn't said anything new re: transubstantiation. He's borrowed from the Protestant Reformation. How ironic is that? If I were one of those unrepresented Catholics in the audience, I'd be thinking *whatever*. Not because I've turned my critical thinker off, but because it is obvious he only views another's POV as valid, as long as it aligns to his own. Very dogmatic, don't you think?

Poor uber-religious kids who have been rescued from one dogma into another.

JSYK, I'm rolling my eyes.