I got up this morning and was moved to churn out a YouTube video before 9am. It was really easy because Sam Harris said some incredibly bigoted things about that sinister theocrat
, Zohran Mamdami.
Making videos is easy when you get inspired by looney-tunes creeps.
The Zionist project is imperiled, perhaps most by the attitudes of younger generations towards Israel. Their propagandists have been scrambling to improve the situation, and the most surefire way they know of to get Israel’s approval numbers up is with a fresh injection of fear: to turn the anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia up to 11, non-stop.
I wonder if Sam Harris is dutifully doing his part in response.
Sam Harris has always been a horrible person.
It isn’t like he is ever going to change either.
So what hate filled bigotry did he say lately?
(I don’t watch Youtube videos so the link in the OP isn’t going to help me.)
So here it is. The tl;dr version.
.1. Sam Harris is a mindless hater of Muslims.
The mayor of New York City is a Muslim.
Sam Harris hates Zohran Mamdani.
.2. Sam Harris lies a lot.
Sam Harris lies about the mayor of NYC.
I didn’t have to read that to know that Sam Harris is still a horrible person and a waste of time.
A quote from the same article above.
Sam Harris hates almost everyone all the time.
Sam Harris lies a lot.
Sam Harris is usually wrong about everything.
I actually figured all that out myself many years ago.
I read his book, The End of Faith, when it came out.
I got half way through and said, “This is garbage and a waste of my time” and took it back to the library. At least I didn’t spend any money buying the thing.
He mostly just Muslim and Islam bashes.
I can’t even say it was wrong.
But it isn’t our main problem with religion in the USA.
We have our own version of militant Islamists called fundie xians.
They are here, they are powerful, and they want to take our society back to the Dark Ages.
Bigoted aholes like S Harris don’t even have an conscience. Mamdani is one of the most decent people in the garbage bag that is government. He is ethical and moral and works for the betterment of his constituency without pushing his Muslim faith.
Speaking of aholes: B Maher and J Fetterman spent time pushing the billion dollar taxpayer funded ballsroom as just couch change. WTF
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/sarah-k-burris/116998/couch-money-fetterman-and-bill-maher-defend-cost-of-trump-ballroom
Bingo, my thoughts re Sam Harris exactly. “He had nothing” — and he still doesn’t. He’s been banging the same broken drum for 20+ years. I wasn’t impressed by The End of Faith at the time, and a recent re-reading of the first chapter or so lowered even that low judgement. (BTW: I’ve never seen Harris adequately taken to task for his credulity re reincarnation and Rupert Sheldrake — does anyone know if he’s walked that back?) I recall being in a bit of a minority for taking a more moderate and nuanced attitude towards religion than was popular at the time. PZ seems to have come around closer to my way of thinking. So I get to feel smug ;-). Religion can play a role in radicalization and general nastiness, but the roots are as much social and political. Give people some economic security, some dignity and life prospects, and their religion tends to get moderated or abandoned, no matter what their holy book says.
It truly is embarrassing how self-styled skeptics fail to examine their own biases, and just swallow any old crap that bears the label “Anti-Religion” (against Islam in particular, also Christianity, except that some atheists now cozy up to that because it’s not Islam, which is the bogeyman-du-jour). There’s a certain kind of person for whom atheism is basically the lazy way of fancying themselves the smartest person in the room (because doing that the honest way is out of the question), and an uncritical adulation of Sam Harris et al is a red flag. (Yes, I have a specific individual in mind). Tim O’Neill is also somewhat responsible for disenchanting me with the atheist movement, and Harris has been among his targets.
This comment turned into a brain-dump ;-). To tidy up loose ends:
– Yes, Spouse and I were at the Creation Museum that day. Good times.
– Not enough cat in that video.
@2 raven
My interpretation: Mamdani is a decent fellow who “really” cares about garbage trucks and “helping the city,” but because he is a Muslim people keep asking him questions about things that don’t have a lot to do with being mayor and have a lot to do with Israel and Islam.
I had to look up who Harris is. Sweden has its own humanist philosophers.
The most important was Ingemar Hedenius, who had been criticizing religion and Christianity since 1947.
The big debates were already over by the time I had grown up.
.
Regarding islam, my beef has always been the theology, not the immigrant in the food shop. The immigrants will outgrow the religion once they have economic and physical security, just like other Swedes did.
Ingemar Hedenius – Wikipedia
.https://share.google/5wwaBkMpClCofJhUz
Sam Harris being a boring islamaphobic bigot is something we discovered roughly 20 years ago isn’t it?
I see from wiki that he’s also an Effective Altruist nutter.
I see from wiki that [Harris is] also an Effective Altruist nutter.
Holy crap, that’s a whole ‘nother layer of arrogant stupid indifference, on top of his apparent inability to distinguish “Muslim” from “Islamist.” That and “long-termism” are just fantasies for clueless rich twits to pretend they’re the smartest, most farsighted guys in every room (and the libertarians and techno-twits who follow them, with or without being paid for it — which group is Harris in?).
Sam Harris is a nepo baby whose mom created Soap and some other well known shows. Apparently he’s a neuroscientist but more of a pundit. Looking him up I see he’s done some podcast(s) with that other guru neuroscientist Andrew Huberman which should tell you everything you need to know. Beware the lure of the calm calculating ASMR voice telling you to rationalize the worst ideas possible.
Youtube video transcript (massaged):
↓
Hey friends, I first met Sam Harris in 2006, 2007, somewhere around there at a conference. Now, when I say I met him, I’m using that word very loosely because I have never in my life had a conversation with Sam Harris. I’ve never interacted with him in any significant way. Uh I have criticized him online and things like that, but no, we’ve never had a back and forth discussion about much of anything.
Uh the one time I think he might have acknowledged my existence was when I saw him point me out to his bodyguard. Yeah. Sam Harris would—I don’t know if it’s still true, but back then he was going everywhere with bodyguards surrounding him because he was terrified of Islamic terrorists coming up and killing him. It it was it was kind of absurd and ridiculous.
This this was at these otherwise very pleasant conferences that were social events. We’d we’d get together and have a grand time and go out for lunch and dinner and just talk talk talk. Um at this same time that he was hiding himself away with bodyguards. Uh this was for instance when um when Iron Ra and I were out on the street talking to Muslims who wanted to argue with us. Yeah, we weren’t afraid. These are basically normal human beings with one weird, quirky religious belief.
So, it was it was it was absurd that he was hiding himself away. Uh but it meant that he didn’t fraternize much with the other people at these conferences. Yeah. So, I was unimpressed with Sam Harris from the very beginning.
Anyway, the conference we were at was the uh Beyond Belief conference and it was it was a good conference. There were some great people there. I mean there was the familiar contingent of atheists—uh Sam of course and Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett and uh there were a few others who’s it’s been a long time. It’s been almost 20 years so I can’t remember them all. Uh but anyway, there were a bunch of us there and uh they also brought in some other interesting people and the person who who impressed me the most at this conference was a guy named Scott Atran who is an anthropologist who specialized in studying Muslim communities around the world and also apparently he’s done a lot of work in Latin America with revolutionaries there for instance.
And his observations kind of annoyed some of the atheists because what he was arguing was no it’s it’s not Islam that turns these people into terrorists. That what’s happening instead is that we have these gangs of underemployed single young men. They get together for—he he mentioned specifically soccer clubs. So this this was their this was their social outlet. So they would get together in these these clubs. They would live together in apartments. Uh they would branch out from uh this this general activity of let’s let’s go to a club, let’s go play soccer, uh let’s hang out at the barber shop, all this sort of thing.
And somebody would bring in the Quran and they would start studying this, they would they would get this idea that here’s a way we can be more than just single young men who are raising a ruckus and having fun together. Uh we could have a purpose.
So the inciting incident wasn’t religion. The inciting incident was the fact that these are young men who don’t have much to do, who are trying to find meaning in their life and they latch on to uh the idea of working as a community in these groups of fellow Islamic people.
The atheists did not like this because they wanted to suggest that no it’s it’s religion is the motherload of all bad ideas. You can imagine Sam Harris saying that sort of thing and that what we need to do is is oppose religion and just going after religion would solve all the problems. If we could get rid of religion, life would be good again. [clears throat] Of course, it doesn’t work that way.
Nothing works that way. Uh but but this is for for instance at the end of the at the end of the meeting uh there was a specially organized little group where they got together and it was basically Sam Harris berating Scott Atran and telling him he was all wrong and going on and on about this.
It was it was a comical event because Sam Harris had nothing—he had nothing but his feelings about religion and his hatred of Islam to drive his discussion. Meanwhile, Scott Atran, he’s a professor of anthropology. His fieldwork involved getting into these Islamic communities and talking to people and finding out what they actually thought and what they were actually doing. Yeah. Scott Atran had the evidence, the data. Sam Harris just had his biases. [clears throat] It was it was kind of an embarrassing event.
Um, I’m I mean I was clearly on Scott Atran’s side. I think he’s correct in this that what’s happening is that young men all over the world are finding themselves displaced and useless and they go looking for something to give them value, to make them heroic and worthy in the world. And this was afflicting Islamic communities. It’s also afflicting American communities. I mean, seriously, look at the world around you. You know, you look at it and you see all these um these manosphere people. We see the Proud Boys. Uh we we see various organizations like that that are almost entirely male. And this is what’s driving them is this need to get out there and prove themselves and show that everybody else is wrong.
Um, it’s it’s kind of psychopathic, but I would say that the real root problem is our neglect of young men that causes this problem.
I should also point out that one of the common observations made at this time was that the atheist community was largely made up of young men. Young men who hated the idea of women joining in. So, this isn’t just Islamic terrorists driven by their belief in Muhammad. It was useless young men going nuts and uh doing all kinds of crazy things to prove that they were the best people and that they were that they were valuable and yeah, we should have lots of women mate with us. You know, that kind of crap.
Uh, so Sam [snorts] did not come off well in this debate.
Okay. So, I don’t care for Sam Harris. I’m making my biases upfront and clear. No, I I think he’s I think he’s a terrible person and a bad representative of atheists. Uh he should stay in the intellectual dark web and hide in the darkness. Um anyway, so I have this bias and I admit it’s it’s just been my experience with him.
However, recently Sam Harris himself posted a video. I don’t know why he proudly posted this video to uh explain how much he disliked Zoron Mdani, the current mayor of New York. And his his argument is terrible. Again it’s he feels like oh yeah there that he says all these good things and he’s doing all these things but secretly deep in his heart he’s got nefarious evil plans and they’re all driven by his um Muslim background.
Sam Harris keeps embarrassing himself this way and this was a great example of just terrible reasoning. Uh, so I’ll play a little bit of it for you and you can see what I’m talking about. So again, this is this is Sam Harris berating Zor Zoran Mdani for his secret beliefs.
Let me find it here. Let’s fire it up.
He’s not the equivalent of Trump. He’s a very different sort of character than Trump, right? Um, but also one who we should want nothing to do with politically. I think he’s a he’s an act—I think he’s a sinister figure. I think he’s a a a none too closeted um Islamist or or or at at minimum apologist for—an apologist for Islamists. He’s not uh ethically sane by my lights at all. Though he can seem to be somebody who really just cares about, you know, people who are finding it hard to make ends meet in uh in New York, right? Uh but if you double click on many of his political allegiances and the kinds of things his, you know, his wife likes on social media and all of that, what you get is a picture of someone who’s captured by a fairly sinister uh theocratic agenda and an anti-semitic one.
You know, this is not about garbage trucks and um uh you know, cleaning up Central Park and really helping the city. The thing that really seems to animate him are are these um political concerns that don’t have a lot to do with being mayor and they have a lot to do with Israel and and uh Islam. He’s not the worst person you might find in in that uh vein, but he’s uh far too close to being a shill for Islamist theocrats, then I would want running a major American city to say nothing of our government. Right? Right.
So if we had a Mani character who was a viable presidential candidate who had these kinds of ties to obvious anti‑semmites and Islamists and um you know Muslim Brotherhood adjacent evil.
You see what I mean? Okay. So he’s trying to argue that Zoron Mdani is a sinister theocrat on the basis of the fact that his wife has liked a few things on social media that Sam disapproves of. Um and otherwise just he’s got nothing. He’s got he’s just—atheists always like to pretend that we are the rational ones who come with the evidence and are prepared to discuss the actual factual stuff behind the real world. And Sam Harris is living in a fantasy world populated by evil Islamic terrorists who are conspiring to take over the government.
Yeah.
So if if you look up Zoran Mani on on Wikipedia, this is this is what it says. A democratic socialist, Mdani campaigned on a progressive affordability‑focused platform supporting fare‑free city buses, universal child care, city‑owned grocery stores, a rent freeze on rent‑stabilized units, additional affordable housing units, and a $30 minimum wage by 2030. He also expressed support for LGBTQ rights, comprehensive public safety reform, and tax increases on corporations and those earning above 1 million annually.
If that is the secret theocratic Muslim agenda, I want to join. This sounds great. That that what we should be taking into account is not the biases and bigotry of people like Sam Harris, but what these people actually say and do. And Mdani so far is saying the right things and he’s putting them into action. He’s doing the right things.
Th this is where I get embarrassed at being an atheist is when people like Sam Harris come along and make up this nonsense to justify their bigotry. You know, uh this this should strike home to every atheist. Have you ever encountered somebody who tells you that you must be uh a hedonist and criminal in your thoughts because that’s the only reason you would want to be an atheist and get yourself free of Christian morality? And they project onto you all these horrible things simply because you don’t believe in their god.
That is exactly what Sam Harris is doing to Zoron Mumdonni. It’s an act of projection. He’s extrapolating from his biases about what Islamic people are like to conclude that there’s something sinister about Zoron Mdani just because he’s a Muslim. No, I don’t buy this. This this is not good rational thinking. This is just bigotry writ large.
Anyway, now you know what I think of Sam Harris. Okay. Uh, not that I’ve ever hidden my dislike for the guy for many, many years. Yeah, it’s been about 20 years that I’ve known of known of Sam Harris and since I sort of tangentially met him in the sense of being in the same building at the same time. Uh, yeah.
Yes, kitty, you’re pestering me. What do you want here? Come on. The cat’s complaining. The cat doesn’t like Sam Harris either. That’s the truth of it.
Okay, that’s all I wanted to say. I wanted to get that off my chest. Um, I’ll also mention that right now I’m wearing this classic t‑shirt made by Jay Mcrite to commemorate our visit to the Creation Museum. Yeah, I’ve still got it. So, this is a rare thing. Not many people have this. Speak up if you were at the Creation Museum on that splendid occasion where we just laughed our heads off at these ridiculous people.
[cat bit left out]
Sam Harris’ brain contains the motherload of prejudiced ideas.
John Morales @11
Thanks for posting a transcript. PZ has done this in the past. Sometimes I’d rather read through than watch a video, but maybe I missed some comical hijinks at the end with Evil Cat.
Thanks John.
@ 1. “The Zionist project is imperiled, perhaps most by the attitudes of younger generations towards Israel. “
Pity the younger people have lost their Democracy to Trump then ain’t it? The outcome that you Trump helping troll worked to make happen.
If Kamala was POTUS that public opinion would actually matter and she could be prssured into taking some reasonable steps against israel. But Trump – Netanyahu’s pick for POTUIS and buddy – doesn’t give a fuck and they’ll now rig or cancel future “elections” so those young people, most people, don’t get a say anymore. As we fucking well warned you back when you campiagned for the fascissts for years.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Atran
@10. Hemidactylus :
Who? Haven’t heard of him before Lessee :
Plus :
Also
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Huberman
@11. John Morales : Thanks from me for the transcript there too.
@1. Trump Helping Bad Faith Troll “beholder” : Do you think that calling Israel, a nation of ten million people, “the Zionist project” will cover for the fact that you effectively helped Netanyahu -Smotrich-BenGvir and the Likudnik extremist reichwing of Israel as well as Trump when you campaigned for years here against Kamala and the Democratic party and therefore in favour of the fascists in the Founding Fathers project aka the United States of America and Trumpist and Israeli Jewish Supremacist reichwing Fascism?
PS. Answered my questions yet?
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/04/17/humans-are-awful-creatures/#comment-2299314
@10: Notwithstanding his Wikipedia description as “neuroscientist and philosopher”, as far as I can determine (but someone with better search skills than I have, feel free to try) he’s published virtually nothing in the scholarly literature of either field since he finished his Ph.D. His formal philosophical training ended with a BA — which puts him on a par with moi. “Professional loudmouth” would be a more apt title.
And now he’s interviewing crackpots with exploded ideas to…what, fill up air time? Look edgy to his fans?
Somebody needs to organize an intervention to halt StevoR’s dangerous obsession with anyone who isn’t a card carrying fanboy of K. Harris.
@ ^ shermanj : Its NOT a matter of being a “..card carrying fanboy of K. Harris.” its the catastrophic global impacts of those who enabled Trump to take power repeating old mistakes that robbed HRC and Gore of Presidencies that would have made the world vastly different and better for (almost) everyone.
Its about trying to make the disingenuous Trump helping trolls accountable and make them rethink their views and change their behaviour here and elsewhere and prevent the mistakes of those past elections from being repeated.
Dangerous? How so exactly? To who exactly?
PS. You don’t have to be a card carrying fanboy of Kamala to see that she was by far the better option for POUS when the only other choice was GenocideS Don Trump. Right?