As expected, every time I highlight some reactionary idiocy from Sam Harris, I wake up to a chorus of his fan boys urgently typing at me to tell me the rallying cry of the Harrisites everywhere: HE DIDN’T REALLY SAY THAT
. Yeah, he did. He really does prefer Republican nutjob Ted Cruz over any of those ‘leftists’ he despises on foreign policy, because Muslims.
But at least it was Cruz, right? He didn’t say anything nice about Ben Carson, I would hope? Sorry to break your illusions, but another reader also told me I had to listen to his recent interview with British neocon, Douglas Murray. He was kind and told me I could skip almost all of it, and just zip up to the 1:56 mark.
Given a choice between Noam Chomsky and Ben Carson, in terms of the totality of their understanding of what’s happening now in the world, I’d vote for Ben Carson every time. Ben Carson is a dangerously deluded religious imbecile, Ben Carson does not…the fact that he is a candidate for president is a scandal…but at the very least he can be counted on to sort of get this one right. He understands that jihadists are the enemy.
Yeah, that’s right. Ben Carson is a religious imbecile, but according to Harris, he’s better qualified than some damn leftist on the basis of his foreign policy expertise, which consists of hating Islam almost as much as Sam Harris does.
Just think about that.
Sam Harris listens to Ben Carson and thinks he makes sense on Middle East policy.
Oh, boy, I’m going to get so much hate mail in the next few days…
Yup and as I pointed out on another thread, he also said Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were making sense on the ‘Muslim world’.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page3/20060403_sam_harris_interview1
And dispite saying that they had some worrying infatuations with biblical prophecy, Harris opined that the Christian right spoke with the greatest moral clarity about the wars in the MIddle East. A strange statement for someone who claims not to have known what to think of the Iraq War.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-end-of-liberalism
Here’s a tricky one, though: given the choice, would you prefer Ben Carson or Sam Harris as POTUS? After all, AFAIK Carson has never advocated preventive nuclear war.
I think it this point I could pick Pee Wee Herman and he’d be a better choice than either of those bozos.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Pee Wee for president.
Ben Carson’s sole qualification in foreign policy seems to be “muslims are evil”. I mean, he’s the guy about whom has been said that “nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East.”
And that’S whom HArris would like toh ave access to vast nuclear weapons.
Oh, wait…Harris, nuclear weapons…
Shit.
As predicted, the hate mail is already coming in. Did you know that the fact that I skipped over an hour and 56 minutes of his conversation with a neocon is proof that I was ignoring all the nuance in Sam Harris’s position?
The correct answer in the Carson or Harris for POTUS question, is suicide.
As someone from a family that has been the target of anti-muslim violence and discrimination (we aren’t muslim, but such is life for middle eastern people in a post 9/11 America) I think the only way I can really sum up Harris’ doubling down in bigotry is “Yikes!”
I really, really hate even mentioning Harris in any context because his fans are insistent in denying everything he says that might make them question their idolatry, and there’s nothing you can say short of literally regurgitating everything he has ever written that will satisfy them. You are not allowed to paraphrase, interpret, or explain why what he says is wrong.
Harris is the atheist Koran.
Somehow I doubt that the preceding two hours were all just nuance to justify the claim that Ben Carson is more qualified on Middle East foreign policy than Noam Chomsky. I also doubt that ANY amount of nuance could ever justify that claim.
Carson’s own advisers are telling people publicly that he doesn’t know anything about the middle-east.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/us/politics/ben-carson-is-struggling-to-grasp-foreign-policy-advisers-say.html?_r=1
To quote: his main foreign policy advisor, Duane R. Clarridge, went to The New York Times to say that his employer doesn’t understand world affairs. Like, at all. In fact, Clarridge’s exact quote was, “Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East.”
Yet HE’S the one who supposedly understands the Middle East better than Norm? Sheesh!
Obviously, we should profile people who look conceivably like engineers
+++
PZ
Well, it’s not fair to simply accuse Harris of jingoistic idiocity. It’s nuanced jingoistic idiocity…
Nuance? Ah, the ‘is’ is silent.
Ah, i see my suspicions were correct, he is a fucking idiot…An evil one as well.
You know who Harris reminds me of more and more?
Orson Scott Card.
He too, claimed to be a lefty bleeding heart liberal who wanted government to protect the little guys against the big bullies and reluctantly voted for the the bushists only because “only they” had been “clear-sighted” enough about the big bad evil “terrorist menace”.
And it’s been clear for quite some time by now that Card was bullshitting his audience: that from the very beginning he was just another far-rightist psychopath with delusions of intellectual grandeur.
I’m so over Harrisites. Their near worship of the man and refusal to critically examine what he says are infuriating. At this point, he could probably say “The Black Live Matter movement promotes black supremacy and a kill the police mentality” and his sycophants would crawl out of the woodwork to defend those words from any criticism.
I also wonder when Harris is going to criticize the white, male terrorists we have in the U.S. Or maybe I should say “when is he going to recognize that domestic terrorism-so often from white men-is a bigger problem than his irrational fear of the oogedy boogedy Muslims?”
@16
Probably never.
He caters perfectly to that “Dictionary atheist douchebag” demographic, the same way Dawkins and Patcondell do. As long as he keeps this up, he’ll have a gravy train of die-hard acolytes willing to renounce any form of conscience in order to defend their demagogue du jour.
Also too, while I haven’t had a chance to ask Noam what he thinks of IS and radical Islam in general, I’m pretty sure he’s against them.
Also too, while I haven’t had a chance to ask Noam what he thinks of IS and radical Islam in general, I’m pretty sure he’s against them.
Exactly. I’d wager that most of the “leftists” understand perfectly well that jihadists are an enemy (“an”, not “the”; a distinction Harris seems to miss a lot). The difference is that we “leftists” don’t use that as an excuse to paint all Muslims with the “you might be a terrorist!” brush. It’s funny, in a way, that Harris and his defenders hide behind claims that we’re missing the nuance of the argument, when Harris’s argument is that we basically need to throw nuance out the window and just treat all Muslims as potential terrorists.
Blockquote fail. :( Forgot my tags.
@19
Not just Muslims; anyone that could conceivably be a Muslim, or that looks too “Muslimish”. Harris has the exact same logic that gets Sikhs attacked by islamiphobes.
Ben Carson is more qualified on Middle East foreign policy than Noam Chomsky
To be fair: they probably can both find the middle east on a globe. So that makes them equally qualified. Right?
@cervantes
“Also too, while I haven’t had a chance to ask Noam what he thinks of IS and radical Islam in general, I’m pretty sure he’s against them.”
Of course he is. The problem of Harris with NC is that he doesn’t agree with him on how to address the problem, but he keeps straw manning that NC is not critical of Jihadists, which is utter dishonest BS.
See how he beautifully puts everything together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCedWxlG90M
He literally says, this is the extreme of Islamic fundamentalism. But there is a reason that the extreme narrative has taken over. Do you think a fool like Harris can understand this? I highly doubt it. In other words, how on earth is it possible that the cause of people clinging to a murderous ideology be the murderous ideology itself? There must be other reasons for that. And this is NOT to deny that the immediate cause of Jihadism is Jihadist ideology, but what about more distant causes which are more preventable? The fact that the cause of Jihadism is Jihadist ideology doesn’t for the life of anyone solve any problem. We have to figure out what drives people to choose such a violent interpretation over a non-violent one (which exists) and why it is largely seen in places when there is political chaos.
In a hypothetical scenario, is it hard to imagine that after decades of sanctions, wars, and political chaos in the US, KKK might take over and people might join it? now are you going to focus on the ideology of KKK? or on how to offer alternative narratives? this doesn’t make any sense. The alternative narratives are there but they clearly do not work anymore. And by “work” I don’t mean moral or ethical superiority but providing short-term means to survival and meaning of life.
I…uh, oh lack of gods, I know I should not be surprised, but I am. This is weapons-grade idiocy, the kind of idiocy that wants more than anything, to wrap itself in weapons, scorch earth, and when left standing in a bloody pit of fascism, yells “victory!”. This is sickening. This is damn scary. I dearly wish that Harris had been reduced to “eh, that guy that yells his screed on the street corner”, but unfortunately, he has a host of fans who presumably vote.
asbizar
The very same crowd who usually whine about “political correctness” and “thought crimes” will viciously attack you for trying to find reasons for the rise of islamic terrorism beyond the dogma of “muslims are evil”. Then you’re an apologist for terroris and peeing on the graves of the victims of *insert nearest muslim terrorist attack*
Dammit. I knew it was a mistake to not nod along with Harris. I don’t have “a gravy train of die-hard acolytes willing to renounce any form of conscience in order to defend their demagogue du jour” — even my fellow FtB bloggers detest me — and I’ve got retirement coming up in less than a decade.
PZ @ 26:
What? Did everyone go crazy while I wasn’t looking?
Well, jihadists most certainly are not “the enemy” they are merely “an enemy” of apple pie, freedom et yadayada.
Along with radical ideologues and idiots of many other flavors.
Yes or no. You would vote for the Muslim Brotherhood over Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and especially George W. Bush.
@29
The Muslim Brotherhood isn’t trying to get any nomination for president last I checked.
Can you ask a less disingenuous question?
You said the same thing on Twitter, Mr Salz, and got blocked for your stupidity. Goodbye, Mr Salz.
By the way, nice example of black & white thinking. Have you considered that I would think all of them are totally unsuitable and incompetent and refuse to vote for any of them? No, apparently not.
If you want to start drinking early, the defenders are out en force in the RawStory thread.
Context!: 1 shot
Misunderstanding!: 1 shot
Regressive left!: 2 shots
–
Proceed with caution!
@32
I haven’t taken a look, but given what we’ve got here alone, you’ll die from alcohol poisoning five posts in.
“Oh so you don’t like Republicans do you? Well, what if you had to choose between Republicans and the Muslim Brotherhood? GOTCHA!” Jesus tap-dancing Christ, do people honestly think they’re clever with questions like that? “Mr. Meiyersz, would you or would you not vote for Jihad McAmericakiller over George Bush? It’s a yes or no question, so that’s your only options. Yes or no Mr. Mayeirs? YES OR NO!?”
Hah, you made me snort my tea.
You know, even before I got clued in to some of the problems with the high-profile atheist spokesoldwhitemen, way back in the days when I still liked Dawkins and Hitchens, there was something about Harris that made me stop and say “that doesn’t seem right.”
Oh, speaking of Dawkins, I noticed that there’s still a link to the Richard Dawkins Foundation in the sidebar.
When I was listening to his latest podcast, I nearly chocked when I heard him say he would vote for Ben Carson. We always hear him say that he despises the rest of Carson’s politics but we never hear where he actually disagrees with Carson.
microraptor @36:
I’m not familiar at all with the RD Foundation, but perhaps they still do good work, in spite of Dawkins’ racist, sexist asshattery.
@PZ
Whoa! I’m with Caine: Other FtB bloggers detest you, PZ? That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.
@asbizar, #23:
Well, it’s not. But to be fair to Harris “everything has a cause except my exception” has been seen around here a few times before.
From the OP:
So Ben Carson gets everything wrong and is dangerously deluded – but he points his finger in the same general direction as Sam Harris while the rational, educated person who has spent years discussing and advocating specific policies in any number of areas (according to Harris) points in a different direction.
That’s a reason to vote for Carson? Over any rational and educated person?
Think about it, even if Carson identifies the (primary) enemy that you identify, what will a “dangerously deluded religious imbecile” do in pursuit of that enemy? What policies will the dangerously deluded religious imbecile inflict on us? What terrors of war will the dangerously deluded religious imbecile inflict on your “enemy”? Will Carson use nukes? What will restrain him if this is literally the only thing he gets right? When the global oil market is in uproar and the US economy is badly hit, how will Carson respond? Will he have planned ahead?
Nuance, schmuance. I recognize he’s posing a hypothetical, but even in the hypothetical he’s not making any sense: a delusional president who gets one thing right, no matter how important that thing might be to an individual voter, simply cannot be trusted with the power of the presidency. Think about it. In this hypothetical he’s fucking delusional. Say you really believe that abortion is murder on an industrial scale. So you elect Carson to the Presidency and instead of crafting a constitutional amendment he spends the next 4 years trying to find the north corner of the Oval Office, because if he can just pray to his god from the corner of the oval, he knows all abortion will stop.
There is only one end-point to this bullshit. Harris wants to go full-on right wing authoritarian and is going to use his reputation as “scary, far-left liberal” (that gets placed on anyone that has spoken out against faith as an epistemological foundation) to cash in, big time.
Just wait, he’ll even drop his opposition to Christian misuses of government power or property so long as they get that “one issue” correct. I won’t go so far as to say he’ll publicly (pretend to) convert to Christianity, but the public statements that make him unpalatable to the theocratic right wing will cease.
I don’t actually believe that he’s completely unprincipled or that this has been a “long con”. But his thinking has moved more and more in a specific direction, and once it moves far enough people will make it clear how much money there is to be made as a more-famous SE Cupp. The history of antagonism to faith-based epistemology will only ensure that the well of money for his appearances will be far deeper than for Cupp’s. At first he’ll just say things he would be happy to say anyway and convince himself he’s refraining from criticizing faith at just this one event, because they were nice enough to invite him, and pay him, and that’s not today’s topic. (Maybe that’s already happened, I don’t know.) But eventually he’ll stop criticizing faith between those appearances so as not to piss off his money source. It’ll just be the job, of course. He won’t have changed his principles, it’s just that he’s stopped speaking about one of his priorities in order to work on another – and for more money to boot.
…But of course, if it goes on long enough it will change his principles.
My only consolation in all this will be Randi’s million bucks.
Thinking of Dawking (How does one Dawk anyway?), he weighed in on the controversial advert by the Church of England that movie theatres [sic, autocorrect] are refusing to screen:
Parse that as you will …
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/22/richard-dawkins-says-uk-cinemas-should-screen-the-lords-prayer
Once you laboriously sort through all of Harris’s ‘nuance’, which is largely just of bunch of incoherence, the core of his argument is that the Quran and Islam is simply worse for mankind than the Bible and Christianity; the Quran is the “motherlode of bad ideas”. If this were true then it would be impossible for there to be a time when an Islamic society was more advanced, progressive, tolerant and learned than a Christian society. If you believe that, I invite you to read about Bayt Al Hikma and the Dark Ages. Then explain to me why the followers of the Quran are always worse than the followers of the Bible and always will be. Because evidence is to the contrary.
Harris said : Ben Carson is a dangerously deluded religious imbecile, Ben Carson does not…the fact that he is a candidate for president is a scandal…but at the very least he can be counted on to sort of get this one right. He understands that jihadists are the enemy.”
This is indeed correct, though, isn’t it PZ? The jihadists are indeed the enemy. In fact, those who understand the eternal menace that Islam is, that is, the Islam of the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira, which make up the totalitarian ideology of the ancient Caliphate might well argue that Harris is actually being soft here. It isn’t just the jihadists that are the enemy, but Islam itself that is the enemy.
It is Islam with which we are at war. It is Islam itself – not the vague and uninformative “Islamic terrorism”, not the vague and uninformative “Islamic extremism” or even worse just “extremism” – with which we, the civilized world and the semi-civilized world are at war. It is not “Islamism” with which we are at war either. That term is merely a frightened and mealy-mouthed euphemism for the political aspects of the practice of Islam. It is Islam itself, the entire religion, everywhere over the whole face of the Earth, from Morocco to Malaysia, that we are at war with.
And what’s more, we are all starting to realize the horrible truth, the truth that everyone wanted to avoid, the truth that we have all by lying to ourselves about, the truth that we haven’t been able to bring ourselves to say aloud since this war began.
What is that horrible truth? When those planes hit the World Trade Center, we all lied to ourselves in the most ludicrous way. We immediately looked overseas to fight our enemy, thinking that since Al Qaeda had set up in Afghanistan, that we should go there to fight them. We said to ourselves “Fight them there, so we don’t have to fight them here”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/2/242333/-
And that was a mistake wasn’t it PZ? The truth is that, after 9/11 we got the theater of war wrong. We thought it was overseas, in Afghanistan, or perhaps in Iraq, but the true theater of war in the War on Terror [aka the War with Islam] is actually our own countries. The true theater of war in the War with Islam is the historic homelands of the West – Europe and the United States and Canada, where, without any forethought, without anyone being asked it would work, millions of the enemy, the Muslims, have been allowed to emigrate in to our lands, deep behind what the Muslims themselves are taught by their religion to think of as enemy lines.
Muslims who live in the United States or France or Britain or any other Infidel nation, are living, by the lights of Islam itself, deep behind enemy lines, in the Dar al-Harb, in the House of War, in lands controlled by Infidels, whom Islam teaches that they are in a state of permanent, although not necessarily open, warfare. Why should Infidels still allow Muslims to live, and to grow, and to set down roots and earn money and power, and to have families and multiply, and to proselytize their religion, which is a totalitarian ideology that claims Total Dominion over the Earth, Total Control over all aspects of life for its followers, and conversion, subjugation or death for all others?
Why? There is no reason, and there is nothing left to do but fight them. We should expel from from our lands, and in their lands, we should fight them in the easiest possible way: by simply cutting the off from all trade. Those who live in the Camp of the Infidels should work to Isolate, Divide, and Demoralize the Camp of Islam.
Harris isn’t being bigoted, he’s being mostly reasonable, and in total, he’s actually being quite soft on Islam. Harris is still interested in making peace, even though he probably realizes, somewhere at the back of his mind, that it’s completely hopeless.
@42
Yikes, that’s a hell of a screed
Krishan, #42
Hahaha
#43 – Have any substantive reply to offer? Or do you have nothing but just an empty and toothless “that’s a hell of a screed” ?
#44 – Have any substantive reply to offer? You quote a paragraph of mine above and write”haha”, but do can you point to any mistakes in it? You have an Arabic name [which might be Muslim or Christian]. Does that mean you are familiar with Islam and what it teaches? Can you demonstrate to me that Islam does not teach that Muslims are in a state of permanent, although not necessarily open, warfare with Infidels?
On the subject of reactionary idiocy:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/11/more-penetrating-insights-from-richard-dawkins-supergenius
Have a nice day.
@45
Easy. The overwhelming majority of muslims compartmentalize their teachings the same way Christians, Hindus, Jews, and every other kind of religious folk do to be able to function in a cooperative society.
Not that I really give a shit about disproving a reactionary screed with enough purple prose to make Lovecraft sick.
Muslims don’t agree on what Islam teaches anymore than Christians agree what Christianity teaches. Or anymore than atheists agree on what atheism means, for that matter. Your entire screed is invalid because it’s based on the false assumption that there is some kind of objective Islamic teachings that every Muslim believes. Hell, a whole damn lot of the conflicts in the Middle East are precisely because of the fact that there is no agreement over what Islam is or means.
@47
That’s not remotely true. Any serious look at the polling data [as in the Pew Global Survey] on Muslims opinion shows the total opposite of what you’re saying. In actual reality, the overwhelming majority of Muslims believe in the killing of apostates, in Sharia law, and in the Jihad, the holy war to conquer the world. That is the reality one can see day in and day out in the headlines, in the opinion polls, and the reliably theocratic and totalitarian politics that come out of Muslim societies, and have been reliably there for 1,300 years.
You wrote that “Not that I really give a shit about disproving a reactionary screed with enough purple prose to make Lovecraft sick.”
Translation: “I have no argument and I know it, so I’m going to write this to make myself feel better”.
Actually, that does kinda read like a Lovecraft “end of story racist summation” passage.
@49
Irrelevant. Your average muslim doesn’t stone nonbelievers or chop off hands, just like your average christian or your average jew doesn’t either.
Branches of Islam.
Not monolithic. QED
@Krishan Bhattacharya #42
You are a xenophobic bigot and so is Harris. Muslims are not all “the enemy” (as if there was only one group of people with members that choose terrorism).
Vivec “Easy. The overwhelming majority of muslims compartmentalize their teachings the same way Christians, Hindus, Jews, and every other kind of religious folk do to be able to function in a cooperative society.”
Correct! And this, though for some reason PZ and others here seem bullheadedly unable to see it, is a large part of the core of Sam Harris’s point. Harris, along with Maajid Nawaz and others, is all about empowering the majority of Muslims who would NEVER advocate terrorism, to stand up against radical, political Islam and reform their faith so that the radicals lose their power. How many times does Sam have to say this?! The man doesn’t have a bigoted bone in his body.
And I’m sick to death of PZ and others claiming everybody who calls him out on his distortions of Sam’s views are just blind followers. It’s possible to have thought things through AND agree with Sam Harris. Perhaps the reason so many people call PZ out for distorting Sam’s views is not because they’re mindless acolytes. Perhaps it’s because he DOES distort Sam’s views. Every. Single. Time.
Quoting Harris and pointing out that what he says is horrible is not distortion, no matter how badly you wish it to be. He LITERALLY said Ben Carson was more correct about Islam than Noam fucking Chomsky. He LITERALLY said it’s perfectly understandable and totally not bigotry for people to prefer Christian refugees over Muslim refugees. Find me a Muslim who would find either of those stances “empowering”. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
@54
Yeah, no, fuck off. As someone from a family that routinely faces islamiphobic violence and discrimination, Harris and his merry band of sycophants can blow me.
Chomsky: More secular than any presidential candidate with a decent chance in the last 50 years, other than Bernie Sanders.
Carson: More hateful toward atheists than any presidential candidate who got a decent chance prior to this election season.
How many atheists will realize this means Sam Harris is throwing every atheist in America under the bus in the name of his enormous bigotry?
@49: You cite Pew, but Pew does not seem to bear out your statement. Please give a specific URL. I tried looking, and this one was interesting, on whether suicide bombings were often or sometimes justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies (country by country, large Muslim populations):
http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/01/concerns-about-islamic-extremism-on-the-rise-in-middle-east/pg-2014-07-01-islamic-extremism-10/
Gaza had the highest combined yes vote. No other territory hit 50% (though some countries were not included, such as Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan). They do not provide a weighted average by population, but since Indonesia was at 9% and Pakistan at 3% we can say with some confidence that the numbers cannot come anywhere close to a majority.
A bets on how many muslims Krishan Bhattacharya actually knows?
Krishan @42:
Wow, you’re so far down the rabbit hole of anti-Muslim bigotry that it’s probably pointless to try talking sense into you. I will point out that there are billions of Muslims on the planet, and the vast majority of them are peaceful. You’re treating Islam as if it is a monolithic belief system that only has one element, when it is just like other religions with far more nuance than you credit it with. It also has believers of all stripes, like other religions.
Here in the United States, since 9/11 we face a greater threat from homegrown extremists than from Islamic extremists. We’re worried about the wrong group in this country. Currently, Islamic extremists pose a greater threat to other Muslims than they do non-Muslims.
It is impossible to quote Sam Harris in context.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
According to his twitter, he does seem to know theocrats like Walid Shoebat and outright fascists like Geert Wilders, but of course it’s those mooslims we should be afraid about. “Rolls eyes.”
It’s funny how Krishan is coming to the aid of Harris, by penning a screed that compars 1 billion people to a slevering horde of madmen we should all be afraid of.
And Krishan, there is no point in arguing with a fact-less masturbatory fantasy screed like yours.
themadtapper: “He LITERALLY said Ben Carson was more correct about Islam than Noam fucking Chomsky. ”
No, he did not. He said Ben Carson is “sort of correct” about identifying who the enemy is. His exact words: “He understands that jihadists are the enemy”. He said nothing about Ben Carson being correct about Islam in general. You are distorting again.
“He LITERALLY said it’s perfectly understandable and totally not bigotry for people to prefer Christian refugees over Muslim refugees.”
No, he did not. What he said is that it’s not CRAZY to assume that Christians are less likely to be jihadists than Muslims. If you listen to the rest of his words in the podcast, he goes on to point out how Syrian refugees are not the problem.
This is exactly the kind of distortion that seems to be standard among Harris’s critics.
Krishan @49:
I’m sure you’ll be along any minute now to present a credible source for your information.
Doug Sinclair,
And how about those literal words quoted in the OP, How are you going to un-distort that?
Doug @54:
Except when he talks about profiling Muslims at airports.
Dear PZ:
Could you write a post in the future that’s critical of both Dawkins *and* Harris? That would be swell to watch their acolytes (or followers or sycophants or mindless minions, whichever term is preferred) flood the comment section.
It is Islam with which we are at war.
What do you mean “we”?
I don’t do wars.
Also: pro tip – “war” is a political thing. It’s silly to say in effect “we are engaged in a political interaction with a religion” because, um, that’s not religioning. Religioning is “schism” and “theological debate” whereas war is politics. There is always a question of the degree to which religion motivates an individual’s politics. Once people start picking up guns, its no longer a matter of religion. Unless you have some rabbis anathematizing their enemy, or priests calling down the wrath of god or whatnot. Religion has very little power. Political and ethnic hate has a lot.
@64: Strange, isn’t it, how critiquing their assertions dispassionately tend to elicit no response.
@66, 54, etc: No, no, the brain is not a bone. I am totally willing to accept that Sam’s femurs are not bigoted and I’d even go so far as to say that he would probably accept an organ transplant from someone who did not physically resemble or agree with him. Nevertheless, he makes racist statements and extrapolating from the particular to the general in this instance seems entirely reasonable.
” Nevertheless, he makes racist statements ”
Point me to one single racist thing he has ever said.
@duce7999:
And duce7999 wins the thread. I see this becoming a well-known internet law in the near future.
@70
His belief on focused TSA screening, which is already a bigot-filled slog for people like me, is pretty fucking racist.
Cry “Muslim isn’t a race” all day, but there’s no way to focus your screening procedures like he wants that won’t involve “those weird brown people from the middle east.”
I concur. Without being able to quote Harris in context, it is impossible to understand what he is saying.
Tony @36: I have no idea. Seems like it would be possible to find an organization that does similar work without the baggage, though. But that’s off topic so I’ll drop it for now.
Doug @70:
Suggesting that we profile Muslims at airports is racist, bc Harris thinks that Muslims have visual identifiers that allow people to identify them. They do not. But to bigots like Harris, all Muslims are of Middle Eastern or Arab descent. That’s the only way in which profiling could be achieved. He doesn’t allow for the fact that there are white and black Muslims. To suggest that we profile Muslims bc of the actions of a relative few Islamic extremists is no different than saying we should profile white men because of the actions of the various white, male terrorists. But I don’t see Harris suggesting the latter, despite the fact that we’re in far greater danger from white male terrorists in the US than we are of Islamic extremists.
Vivec: “His belief on focused TSA screening, which is already a bigot-filled slog for people like me, is pretty fucking racist.
Cry ‘Muslim isn’t a race’ all day, but there’s no way to focus your screening procedures like he wants that won’t involve ‘those weird brown people from the middle east.’
And this just confirms to me that you haven’t actually read or listened to what he’s said again and again on the subject.
“He doesn’t allow for the fact that there are white and black Muslims.”
Yes. He does. You clearly haven’t read his actual views on the subject either.
@76
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There’s no correct way to read or quote Sam Harris, according to Harrisites
Except for the way that puts him in the absolute best light (and profiles those odd brown people from the middle east), of course.
@78, 77, 76 … For a fun time, try reading Greenwald on Harris:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-harris-muslim-animus
It’s particularly amusing to me because I dislike Greenwald, but when he gets his teeth into a juicy
bonebrain, he won’t let go and shakes it until it rattles. Definitely time for a rabies shot.@Tony!, the best and greatest Shoop of all time, #75:
Look, there’s just no way around it: Sam Harris’s home is critically undersharked.
Honestly, I’m still waiting for proof that anyone is as big a threat to human life as white people are. Even the most radicalized islamic group seems to be unable to match the US’s kill count of innocent non-white civilians. Unless ISIS has nuked any cities to oblivion yet?
I wonder if Krishan Bhattacharya is a BJP supporter.
Here is the entire block PZ quoted:
The context here is Islam and how it relates to “what’s happening now in the world”. And Ben Carson is a weapons-grade moron on almost every subject, up to and including foreign policy, the Middle East, Islam, and yes even specifically jihadists. “Oh, Harris didn’t mean Syrian refugees…” Yeah, well Carson does. Carson is among many who want to refuse the Syrian refugees on the grounds that they might be terrorists. So no, Carson is not particularly knowledgeable about who “the enemy” is. You can pick nits about whether Harris was talking about “Islam in general” or specifically radical jihadists, but that doesn’t change a thing. Harris is choosing a religious sycophant over a scholar on matters of foreign religious extremism and how it affects the world.
And here you’re just outright lying. Here’s Harris’s words:
He says knowing a refugee family is Christian versus being Muslim is positive information, and that it’s not bigotry or xenophobia to express that. The basis of that is “no Christians are jihadist”, which is fundamentally stupid since a jihadist is by definition a Muslim extremist. It ignores the undeniable fact that Christian extremists exist. “Some Muslims are jihadists, no Christians are jihadists, therefore knowing a refugee is Christian rather than Muslim is positive information” is a completely bigoted bit of logic based on either ignoring Christian violence or somehow weighing Christian violence as less serious. And saying that Harris later tries to play the “oh, but I’m not saying Syrian refugees are a problem” doesn’t help at all. The whole fucking reason Muslim refugees are being discussed is because of the Syrian crisis and the refugees thereof. Defending the very attitudes people use to justify turning away Syrian refugees then saying “oh, but I’m not talking about Syrian refugees…” is dishonest. If he’s not talking about Syrian refugees, then what the fuck refugees is he talking about? And even if he’s not, it still doesn’t change the fact that he’s sweeping Christian extremism under the rug in order to justify different attitudes toward Muslim refugees.
East Asian too.
Actually, perhaps he’s being even more nuanced than we realize–maybe he really does understand that everyone can be Muslim, and so he’s arguing for profiling everyone.
Doug @77:
Yes I have you fucking dishonest ass. It is not possible to visually profile Muslims. And yet Harris thinks it is possible. All Muslims do not share the same physical characteristics.
themadtapper: “a scholar on matters of foreign religious extremism and how it affects the world”
Noam Chomsky is an extremist himself. His “American imperialism is to blame for everything” shtick is just malarkey. He may be a scholar, but he’s a misguided one who jumped the shark years ago, and he’s obscuring the real problems. Ben Carson, on this point, at least acknowledges what the problem is. This is exactly what Harris is lamenting. That the moronic right is being empowered by the left’s unwillingness to acknowledge the actual problem. “It has nothing to do with Islam” is all they keep saying. And it’s nonsense. There are many factors at play, but Islam is definitely one of them.
“If he’s not talking about Syrian refugees, then what the fuck refugees is he talking about?”
I didn’t say that. Part of his quote was talking about refugees. But a part of the same recording that PZ did NOT quote is where Sam explicitly says “the immediate problem of global Jihad is not a problem of migration. It’s a matter of already-radicalized citizens in all of these societies.” He’s not worried about refugees; refugees are not the problem. Harris, unlike Cruz, is happy to allow Syrian refugees into the country, but PZ leaves that part out.
Harris is well aware of Christian extremism. He’s also aware that it’s a much smaller problem for Christians than radical Islam is for Muslims.
“Yes I have you fucking dishonest ass. It is not possible to visually profile Muslims. And yet Harris thinks it is possible. All Muslims do not share the same physical characteristics.”
And Harris fucking says this over… and over… and over. Yet somehow you don’t hear it.
I’m sure if I showed pictures of them to enough people I could find someone who thinks some of my relatives “look Arab/Muslim,” despite none of us having any sort of direct Arab heritage.
Just a little aside: the largest (by population) Muslim country is Indonesia, which is home to over 200 million Muslims. Indonesians and Arabs don’t really look alike.
Because he doesn’t say he is full of shit and should be ignored, and apologizes to the world for sounding like a bigot.
Show us his apology to the peaceful Muslims, and his plan to have them treated like Jerry Seinfield.
@86
How is it at all controversial that US imperialism and cultural imperialism is the cause of much of our current problems? Its not like every one of our current enemies can trace their existence back to some petty war of ours or us propping up dictators to fight a proxy petty war for us.
Sam Harris’s article “In Defense of Profiling”:
Sorry, Doug Sinclair, but it looks like your boy is a fucking racist.
No, the moronic right is being empowered by rampant bigotry. The left is perfectly willing to acknowledge the actual problem (hint: it’s not “all Muslims”). Ben Carson is NOT right on radical Islam, and neither is Ted Cruz. Because their idea of radical Islam includes pretty much all Islam. You keep pointing to Harris saying Syrian refugees aren’t the problem, but the people he’s holding up as examples of “people who know who the enemy is” are people who DO think Syrian refugees are a problem.
I dropped a quote from my post @92
Whenever someone uses the phrase “political correctness” what they mean is “I’m a fucking bigot and proud of it.”
Don’t worry. Ron Murphy to the rescue with graphics and all. These Harrisites really are comical.
https://twitter.com/ronmurp/status/669276142218690560
@94
And its a stance like that (Harris’, not yours) that makes airplane travel so painful for my family already.
Me and my dad somehow happen to be “randomly selected” for additional screening for almost every flight we’ve been on, and in one occasion TSA tried to pull my dad out of the “American citizen” line on the way back from Turkey, despite his assertions that my mom was standing next to him and holding his passport.
Suffice to say, I come from a family of swarthy middle-easterners that frequently travel to the middle east.
@samharris has been immeasurably empowered since being discovered by Ben Affleck. Now that he has been raised up in public consciousness as the poster boy of islamophobia that the liberals have been looking for, what’s going to happen when more and more look into his writings and interviews to discover what he is really saying. Doesn’t take much literacy with the English language to see the disconnect between what’s reported as Sam Harris’ views and what the gist of his arguments consist. Sam’s got take-it-to-the-bank recognition that he didn’t have before – no doubt.
Doug boldly rides forth to defend Sam Harris from being mischaracterised, ignoring all the evidence put forth for that characterisation, and, without missing a beat, he then proceeds to claim (without evidence) that Noam Chomsky is an extremist who thinks “American Imperialism is to blame for everything.”
I’ve actually been reading quite a lot of Noam Chomsky’s stuff lately and you know, never once did I see him advocate anything like torture or racial/religious profiling (views I personally would consider extreme) Nor did I ever see him claim that “American Imperialism is to blame for everything” as opposed to the truth of the matter which is merely that American Imperialism is to blame for a great deal.
I do find it funny that Noam Chomsky should be brought up in this way… as an alternative to Ben Carson. I mean why Chomsky? Then of course it hit me: it would appear that dear old Sam is still somewhat put out by the rather embarrassing schooling he received from Prof. Chomsky on these issues a while back.
Harris is a terrible writer, philosopher, and debater.
I hate it but it seems we are again going back to his “profiling” business. It is true that Harris said he himself could be a potential Muslim and thus a target of profiling and that he did not mean “brown people from Middle East”. Okay, fine. But then he was asked how the hell his profiling business was supposed to work? To which he basically said, “Um, yeah, you know, I was flying the other day and TSA was hassling an old grandma who obviously was not a terrorist. That’s what I mean! It’s waste of time/resources!” That’s really all there is to his intellectual depth. Apparently “looking Muslim” now could be anyone and everyone, except those “old grandmas, who obviously are not terrorists”. Or maybe it includes “brown people from Middle East”. Or maybe “people who might be terrorists”.
So Doug Sinclair, if you want, I can retract my belief that Sam Harris is kind of an asshole/bigot. But then instead, I’ll need to pick up the belief that “His mental abilities are at the same level as Ben Carson and that he cannot formulate a coherent thought without tripping over”.
@99
What I love about the grandma defense is that it’s very similar to the doublethink used by conspiracy theorists.
ISIS/Al Qaeda are simultaneously smart enough to plan deep-cover infiltration and terrorists plots, but too stupid to put a bomb vest on an old lady if they were suddenly given exception from screening procedures.
@100:
Yeah, even his own example doesn’t make sense. This is the thing about Harris. He’s a very shallow thinker. Probably he just saw the old lady in his example and thought “Gee, this is a waste of time. Why don’t we do more targeted screening? Oh yeah, those muslims have the highest probability of blowing up planes so let’s just screen them!” And then he thought no more. So he made a post and never budged from it, not when people pointed out the social costs, the implicit racism, and not even after he was schooled by a security expert who patiently explained that his proposal does not make sense, it is not more efficient and it is not going to result in safer airports.
But no, Harris knows it all. He still has not budged and he maintains that he is onto something.
He clearly does not think through and he cannot handle intellectual schooling. Why the hell he would stupidly claim to “vote for Cason over Chosmky” if not for the intellectual butt kicking that he suffered from Chomsky recently?
Painting the problem as an Islam problem immediately frames the problem as Holy War with Christians vs Muslims. This is an entirely idiotic and extremely dangerous thing to do, and it’s exactly what extremists want us to do. Sam Harris almost exclusively frames it this way, and it is not an okay thing to do. Hate crimes against Muslims have been trending upwards, police are illegally monitoring mosques which is an extreme affront to freedom of religion (which has now been endorsed by presidential candidates). Where is Sam Harris on these such issues? These are real issues of freedom and humanism, and he practically dismisses such things.
Sam Harris’ conversation with Chompsky demonstrated that he very much thinks in this kind of childish black and white way. He practically demonstrates virtue ethics in that conversation, where because we’re the good guys, it’s okay when thousands of people die as a consequence of our actions. But when bad guys do it, that’s totally different and horrible. He’s a blatant apologist for the most grotesque of war crimes over and over again. And this guy pretends to be a critical thinker?
He has shown a complete disregard for Muslim lives and freedoms. Honestly, just stop defending him. He’s not worth it.
You know how you do that? You do that by welcoming the Islamists’ Muslim victims when they seek asylum, without blithering about how Idiot du jour is right because Christians are “safer” than Muslims.
You do it by not singling out “people who look like they might conceivably be Muslim”–as if that were even possible–for extra scrutiny at airports.
Those wondering why our esteemed host feels so beleaguered this festive Thanksgiving™ Season® can find a small part of the story in the comments here.
Be warned the sad saga hinted at therein may not brighten your holiday spirits.
@doublereed #102:
Which is, explicitly, exactly what Daesh wants. Harris claims to see them as enemies, but by promoting the exact same black-and-white worldview they do, supporting candidates who would undoubtedly continue the endless war, and promoting the policies of profiling and torture that Daesh uses as recruitment tactics, it’s hard not to see him as working toward the same goals. Are we sure that Harris isn’t just Daesh’s most successful undercover operative?
Harris always does this. He engages in rhetorical deepities. Is it possible (not likely–just possible!) a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer might sneak in to the country as an immigrant? Forget for a moment how frigging unlikely that is, as explained by Ed Brayton.
Sure, anything’s *possible.*
That’s all Harris was saying! A non-zero chance! Why you people hate on poor Sam!?
He says this shit that supports bigotry, then when people object, he and his supporters insist he meant only the most innocous possible interpretation of his words–so innocuous, in fact, that if that’s what he meant there was really no reason for him to say them.
But of course he says these things in the context of a sickening reality in which civil rights are suspended, the US is practicing torture, and fascists want to turn away desperate refugees trying to escape appalling violence.
But Sam didunt mean nothing! No siree. Let’s parse his words until they mean nothing at all.
Duce’s law: It is impossible to quote Sam Harris in context.
Corollary: Except for whatever context kisses his ass the most.
Lady Montegreen @106
Yes indeed. Ol’ Sam, so misunderstood by his critics, just wants what’s best for everyone. That means keeping the ebil Muslins at bay. Of course the only way to do that is assume that every Muslin is ebil, even the ones who aren’t. But you can’t be sure about those Muslins. They might be nice people but they could be ebil, after all, they’re Muslin. People don’t realize it but inside each Muslin is Muslin DNA, which might mutate into ebil Muslin DNA. So let’s keep ‘Murcans safe by keeping the Muslins away from ‘Murca so when the ebil Muslin DNA appears it won’t be here.
Or something. You can never tell what Harris is saying, let alone thinking.
@ Tony, 67:
The fact that PZ has not done this is irrefutable proof that he doesn’t blog for the clicks.
The Young Turks did a piece on this nonsense from Sam Harris. I particularly like how he keeps emphasizing how in-context everything is for all the Harris fanboys. Seems like he’s had to deal with the same issue that PZ has haha.
There’s a similarity between Harris defenders and Hillary Clinton defenders. They’re so used to defending Their Heros from made-up accusations that they have lost the ability to even consider the possibility that any accusation might not be made-up, and when the damning evidence shows up that Their Hero is not what they thought, such a thing cannot be admitted.
He probably held a door open for a veiled woman once.
***
To be fair, many grievances can be traced back to European colonialism and not the American imperialism that followed.
***
Incorrect: whenever someone uses the phrase “political correctness” what they mean is “I’m a fucking bigot and since I don’t have the firepower to bully you into submission I’m going to pretend that you are the one trying to bully me and ceaselessly whine about it”
***
The thing about authoritarians is that they see other authoritarians as competition, not as enemies. Constitutional democracy, with its universal rights, its rule of law, and absence of formalized aristocracy: This is the enemy in authoritarians’ eyes, and they’ll always try to destroy it: either with guns and bloodbath (Daesh) or by attempting to sabotage these from the inside.
The Vicar @111
There’s a substantially different signal to noise ratio between what Harris says and what Hillary Clinton says.
@ microraptor:
For that matter, there’s also a substantially different signal to noise ratio between made-up accusations against Harris and made-up accusations against Hillary Clinton.
More to the point…
@ The Vicar, the hell does Clinton have to do with this discussion? Rabid defenders of Major Personalities are par for the course. Is Clinton somehow special in this regard, or do you just have a hobby horse to ride? I mean, jeez, randomly interjecting Clinton into this discussion is past derail territory. More of a Ticket to Ride train car hopping boards onto an Empire Builder map.
[Urge to derail rising.. SANDERS IS BAD ON GUN ISSUES /runs away]
doublereed @ 110
Cenk Uygur has been lately involved in a Twitter dispute with Harris and his supporters, including Dave Rubin who used to have his show on TYT network and who has, after having left TYT, been railing against “reactionary left”.
laurentweppe
While afterwards taking to the internet to whine about it….
I think a closer comparison is with Scott Adams – another misunderstood genius who can never be quoted in context. Apart from anything else, Clinton is an actual war criminal, while the other two, however repellent, have never, fortunately, been in a position of executive power.
Yes, The Vicar is convinced that Pharyngula is a den of Hillary-worshippers, and his favourite sermon is an excoriation of this idolatry.
@115
I think Rubin left TYT mainly because of their criticisms of Israel. Rubin is complete IDF apologist so it was predictable. There was a heated debate between Rubin and Cenk during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in 2014, where Rubin was largely regurgitating every piece of propaganda known to man.
His new show, the Rubin Report, is essentially just platform for hard-right Zionists, Muslim-bashers, anti-feminists, and Neocons to vent spleen.
dereksmear @ 118
The Israel question may have been a major part of it. Another thing is that TYT had two essentially identical talk shows, Rubin Report and The Point with Ana Kasparian. The latter had a format change sometime in 2013-14 which brought it closer to the format RR had while on TYT Network. Whatever the reason, one thing implies bad blood between Uygur and Rubin: At the time DR left, he was supposed to co-host the TYT Old School podcast with Cenk Uygur, but he canceled his appearance on a very short notice.
While Bernie Sanders may hold Chomsky in high regard, I still think Sam Harris is using a false dichotomy. Chomsky isn’t a presidential candidate or a politician, he’s a public intellectual, who works on a different set of rules than a politician. Furthermore, I think electing Carson would have unpredictable effects, just think what can go wrong with Carson and Putin in high-level negotiations.
Forget about what can go wrong: there’s a lot of things which can go horribly right: two would-be autocrats convinced of their own intrinsic superiority: they could develop a massive mutual crush.
BTW, how many scientific publications does Sam Harris have? His fan boys are getting ridiculously annoying with their chants of “SCIENTIST! SCIENTIST!”
I’m just curious. There are a bunch of “Sam Harrises” so they muddle up my google fu.
@lotharloo “BTW, how many scientific publications does Sam Harris have? His fan boys are getting ridiculously annoying with their chants of “SCIENTIST! SCIENTIST!”
I’m just curious. There are a bunch of “Sam Harrises” so they muddle up my google fu.”
As far as I know, one, which is his thesis and is published in PLOS one, and is on fMRI study of religious and non religious people, and believe me, that is not going to be very informative.
And a “letter” to the nature, complaining that a religious person shouldn’t lead the science.
So yes, pretty much nagging about religion, He is one of the most myopic people in recent history who is also called a scientist. And he is not. He is mainly a philosopher with the same mindset of Ayn Rand.
@121
I think he’s done about 2 peer-reviewed articles which were co-authored.
Okay, thanks! Sounds a bit of a low publication record for a PhD but I’m not a into neuroscience.
Sorry, I looked into it again, and it is 3.
1. Functional neuroimaging of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty.
2.The neural correlates of religious and nonreligious belief.
3.Performance comparison of machine learning algorithms and number of independent components used in fMRI decoding of belief vs. disbelief.
@68, Marcus Ranum
I don’t get it. Where do you get the idea that once people fight it is “not a matter of religion”? What does that even mean? What kind of logic are you using? How are you categorizing “religion”? I really completely cannot tell.
A religion encompasses a person’s entire philosophy (at least it can, and historically often aims to and succeeds). So it includes a person’s views on morality and politics. So it includes ethnic hate. This should be obvious from any reading of the Bible.
The idea of “non-overlapping magesteria” nonsense.
*is nonsense.
@#68, Marcus Ranum
While I generally agree with your stance, I have to disagree with this particular argument. If you don’t admit divine inspiration — and, being an atheist, I certainly don’t — then all religious movements are necessarily political movements. Even an insincere, ineffective religion is political, by displacing others (the choice to take no action is still a choice, after all).
And the early history of Islam in particular is a merging of religion with action, which is particularly unfortunate for your argument: as long as Mohammed didn’t have enough believers to form a credible army, he was peaceful, but there’s no doubt that when Mohammed had built up enough believers and agreements with other leaders to go to war without getting swatted like a bug, which is of course when he went to war, Islam as a whole was at war; he was still alive and in control of the cult, so it wasn’t just a few later believers interpreting his words. Even the modern Muslims who cherry-pick the first part and try to ignore the second would hardly claim otherwise. (And this isn’t unique to Islam; I don’t claim to have an encyclopedic knowledge of world history, but IIRC there is a parallel case of a cult going to war in pre-Islamic-influence Chinese history as well. It may be more common for only parts of a religious group to go to war, but that’s not always how it works.)
@#114, PatrickG
Gee, maybe you could read what I said and that would give you a clue. But for the hard-of-thinking, here’s an expanded version:
Go back about a decade, and 99 out of 100 criticisms of Sam Harris were the usual religious-person “I haven’t read this book but it’s by an atheist so I’m going to say it’s bad anyway” silliness. Harris’ defenders seem to have grown so used to dealing with objections which have no valid foundation that they are unable to grasp the idea that someone might actually have an objection to Harris’ actual arguments. If you attempt to specify your objection, there’s a delay of a few seconds while their brains attempt cognitive dissonance, and then your argument is forgotten and you are classified into the “groundless objections” category and they tell you that you haven’t really dealt with what Harris is actually saying.
This is a familiar state because Hillary Clinton’s fans are constantly in that mode; they’re used to made-up charges from Republicans to the point where they are unable to understand why anyone would actually object to Clinton on a factual basis. Complain to a Clinton supporter about Clinton’s history or her policy propositions, and you can almost see the moment where their brains become unable to distinguish between what you’re saying and a Fox News reporter screaming “Bengazi Bengazi Bengazi”.
The answer to your question is, therefore, “it’s not that they both have fanatical defenders, it’s the specific nature of those defenders”.
As opposed to all those wonderful candidates who worked hard for gun control throughout their careers? Oh, that’s right, there aren’t any — the NRA controls Congress on that issue, and the ones who aren’t in agreement are complicit through a lack of action.
Sanders is very far from perfect — offhand I can think of at least 3 major ways in which he has wrongheaded policy — but he’s head and shoulders above everyone else running in both major parties. Although the perfect is the enemy of the good, it’s more relevant that the terrible is the enemy of both.
Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks eviscerates Harris’ ‘thought experiment’ about a nuclear first strike on a nuclear-armed Islamist country: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/cenk-uygur-sam-harris-anti-muslim-thought-experiments-are-like-repubs-actual-policy-ideas/
@clevehicks, that was beautiful.
Hey, Harris fans, go argue with Cenk.
I knew I was missing something by staying out of Pharyngula. I laughed for half a minute.
Back to lurking; the huge manuscript must get out at last.
Not sure if “detest” is the right word, but what PZ seems to be referring two can be summarized in two words: Ophelia Benson.
*flee*
Sam Harris presents his ideas in a way that is invites challenge on the basis of evidence. Why is there almost no discourse at this level? I suspect that the core issue is that his reasoning threatens to provoke the uncomfortable exercise of re-examining one’s worldview. This forum is jammed full of dismissive comments about how Harris and his “fanboys” whine about “context” and “misrepresentation”. But these are precisely the disingenuous tactics being used. If I am charitable, I will say that it happens on a subconscious level, but to name a crime with dismissive scorn and then proceed to commit that crime with your next breath is a really sad exercise that I see repeated in every other comment on this blog, and sadly by PZ himself in his strikingly unthoughtful musings where Harris is concerned.
Pretty much every instance where Harris has ever “agreed with” or stated that a right-wing xenophobe is “right”, his point has not been to underscore the correct thinking and laudable conclusion of said xenophobe. I know you all understand this, but why do you persist in pretending to not absorb this point? Harris’ thesis is that these wankers are *accidentally right* about certain issues, particularly those where we see bad ideas contributing to bad behavior. That people so obtuse could blindly find their way to a correct statement now and again is a condemnation of a great chunk of the Left who persist in their fondness for following the chain of causality and blame straight up the ladder to Western Imperialism and never even consider the notion that some ideologies really do provoke dangerous behaviors.
The points that Harris makes are generally pretty obvious low-hanging fruit. That they encounter so much resistance on the Left is unsettling to me. I just want to see someone refrain from the name calling and get into a more productive debate where perhaps some of you uber intellectuals challenge Harris in a legitimate way–perhaps by explaining why the statistics that he quotes about islamist sympathy are skewed or misleading, or don’t really translate to the types of behaviors that Harris predicts they will. I’ve seen PZ pretend to do this in one of his anti-Harris rants, but it was really just a pretext to (unjustly) call him a racist.
Muslim Derangement Syndrome.
I exchanged some email last year with Noam Chomsky about Sam Harris after Harris wrote this appalling piece, which was retweeted by Steven Pinker: http://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/why-dont-i-criticize-israel
Chomsky had some choice words for both of them, calling Pinker’s views “grotesque” and sending me this: http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/12/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged-decline-of-violence/
On Harris, he sent me an unpublished letter that he had written, responding to Harris’s charges against him, which I can’t post here. But after I sent Noam this article by Theodore Sayeed: http://mondoweiss.net/2012/06/sam-harris-uncovered.html
he commented “I hadn’t realized the depths of his depravity though, even descending to relying on the disgusting racist and dedicated liar Dershowitz.”
I also sent him this ad hominem non-response from Harris to the above: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/wrestling-the-troll
and Sayeed’s rejoinder, in which he admits to misrepresenting Harris by failing to “portray the full spectrum of his views”: http://mondoweiss.net/2012/09/sam-harris-in-full-court-intellectual-mystic-and-supporter-of-the-iraq-war.html
Noam’s final comment about Harris: “Quite a guy.”
Can’t argue with you when you’re wholeheartedly ready to dismiss all arguments because ‘Sam Harris defenders’.
dirtytomflint #134
Who are you talking to?