Progressivism (and granted, Maher is one of them, but not here) makes no sense to me. To the progressive, the fact that 0.3% of Catholic priests are pedophiles somehow indicts a religion of millions, but a significantly larger chunk of Muslims identify with radical Islam and you're not allowed to say anything because that would be stereotyping? Western progressivism engages in a kind of ressentiment, it's a hipster religion... anything dominant in the West = bad, anything not dominant in the West is praiseworthy or at the very least "misunderstood." E.g., the noble savage myth, the hatred of humanity through environmentalism, abortion and population control, etc.
I find that more has to do with specific liberals than it has to do with the whole totality of progressive liberalism and it's related ideas. The noble savage myth was in part to help look at people who like to live a "certain way" live that way if they so chose to do so, because the life of a hunter-gatherer as an example is easier than living as a low tech, subsistence farmer. The hunter-gatherers even go as far as to say that farming sucks as compared to how much time their neighbors spend farming or herding.
Environmentalism, you have some of the whacky Gaea theorists and PETA, that's just PETA, and a few others. Most environmentalists I've met in and debated are actually pretty level headed and can actually "see the other side" or the "reason for it" if you simplify things such as "Do you want people in guns in an orange jump suit traipsing through the woods or wolves around this area?" Helps to place things in a pretty basic framework. It's like how certain complex property rights situations don't coincide well with anarchistic philosophies. You can't expect one worldview to solve every problem.
It's like Lex Luthor in Red Son Superman, "Hrm, Brainaic and Superman actually did have some good ideas in here."
Take for example the issue of intellectual property rights, I'm in support of some of the more anarchistic minded capitalists in the world about some of those ideas and how they short change innovation. You really need to stay on top of your game and be well informed about some of the really bad ideas but also what works for different people. THen there's also the try hards that always fail, those are the ones I'm actually more scared of.
So far problems with the holy text of the religion apparently don't count, they're just problems with the text itself not the overall faith. Beliefs held by the believers, even a wide number of the believers, apparently don't count because not everyone thinks the same way. Actions taken by the believers based on the commands of the text apparently don't count, because bad people are just bad people and it isn't Islam's fault. Legal enforcement of the Koran's laws also apparently doesn't count either, because that's a socio-economic or cultural problem and Islam shouldn't be blamed for that.
What's left? If the text, the beliefs, the policies and the actions all don't count as problems with the faith itself - what possibly could be considered a problem with the faith? It looks like you've defined all the terms in such a way that there cannot be such a thing as a religious problem. When the terms are that exclusive, it's not productive to discuss whether something is a problem with a religion - because the definitions are shaped in such a way that anything possible falls under a different category.
I think you're misunderstanding me here. I'm not saying religion isn't a contributing factor, I'm saying that it's intellectually dishonest to lay the problems at Religion's door alone.
Islam does indeed deserve critiques, and certain Islamic populations also need critical analysis - as does every religion.
My point is that when you overgeneralize, it's not useful and people don't listen. We didn't make huge leaps forward in the AIDs Epidemic because we criticized Catholics for not advocating condom use, we made those strides because we tackled a specific problem in a specific region, in which Catholic beliefs were a part of a problem.
If you want to talk about forced marriages and honor killings - those topics transcend Islamic boundaries, they happen in Hinduism and with transplants from the Indian subcontinent into the west. Framing them in terms of an Islamic problem is again, not useful.
If you want to talk about how the Qu'ran advocates for 'bad thing', and you think that's bad, fine. But if the majority of the Muslim population doesn't treat that as Dogma, what's the point? It's like criticizing all of Christianity for the actions of the Phelps church, because they didn't get the memo that Leviticus isn't canon anymore.
The issue with the Arabs is that they haven't been really at great power war themselves and seen their entire way of life decimated time and again. Going from a modern era lifestyle back towards subsistence agriculture is a leap such as what occurred with the Great Depression and WWI and WWII for the west and parts of the east. Some of those extremist factions haven't seen what hell looks like to really postulate about "giving peace a chance."
Islam doesn't have the same institutions in the west as say the Catholic Church does all over the world, simply because they haven't upgraded their operating system faster than the jihadists who tend to be very aggressive to adapt to new technologies to spread their message. It's also the "circle of cool kids" thing like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or more nefariously the Hitler Youth.
I'm not saying religion isn't a contributing factor, I'm saying that it's intellectually dishonest to lay the problems at Religion's door alone.
I agree. However, it's not always practical to bring up every possible cause of something in every discussion. Especially in a televised debate format. If you're looking for the rigorous comprehensive analysis of the causes behind certain crimes against humanity, you'd be justified in claiming intellectual dishonest if one was to identify religion as the sole cause of pretty much anything. However, it's not reasonable to take a few-minute-debate-show-format and apply the standards of academic discussion to it.
Sam Harris is perfectly justified in calling out these specific Islamic practices, commandments and beliefs as bad things. He's also justified in considering that the religion is a major reason why the culture of that area follows these practices. As Sam Harris' major topic of discussion is religion, he focuses on religion. It's perfectly permissible for an educator who studies and writes about education to declare that the education of a populace is incredible important to that society's wellbeing and to argue that education should be pursued. They don't need to bring up other factors, like lack of air pollution and water sanitation, as other important societal factors (unless they're arguing to shift funds away from those things or something similar). They can just say, "this is a major cause for good things happening in society". Likewise, someone can focus on criticizing one thing he considers negative to society and give examples of horrible things it's had a hand in as examples. This isn't intellectually dishonest, it's a focused form of discussion.
Islam does indeed deserve critiques, and certain Islamic populations also need critical analysis - as does every religion.
Absolutely.
My point is that when you overgeneralize, it's not useful and people don't listen.
You might not consider it useful, but I don't think you can say people don't listen. Generalizations and lumping large groups of people together has been a disturbingly effective tactic in the past.
We didn't make huge leaps forward in the AIDs Epidemic because we criticized Catholics for not advocating condom use, we made those strides because we tackled a specific problem in a specific region, in which Catholic beliefs were a part of a problem.
I like to think that countering religious dogma that was getting people killed is something worth doing. There isn't a debate-budget going around, you can criticize crazy and dangerous statements people make while also working on solving the practical issue on the ground level.
If you want to talk about forced marriages and honor killings - those topics transcend Islamic boundaries, they happen in Hinduism and with transplants from the Indian subcontinent into the west.
They sure do. But this debate wasn't about forced marriages and honor killings. It's whether a specific religion contains harmful messages. Those messages happen to endorse forced marriages and honor killings. Other religions and non-Islamic regions also have problems with forced marriages and honor killings. That has no bearing on whether the specific religion contains harmful messages.
You're shifting the discussion. It would be like if there was a debate about whether violent media causes violence, and you wanted to move the discussion by saying "well there are lots of causes of violence, so if you want to talk about violence you should talk about stuff besides violent media - why aren't you talking about poverty causing violence?" However, that isn't the topic under discussion, and someone isn't being intellectually dishonest for not bringing up issues that aren't under discussion.
Framing them in terms of an Islamic problem is again, not useful.
Why not? They are an Islamic problem. They're just also problems with other religions and ideologies as well.
If you want to talk about how the Qu'ran advocates for 'bad thing', and you think that's bad, fine. But if the majority of the Muslim population doesn't treat that as Dogma, what's the point?
If the majority of self-identifying Nazis don't treat all the horrible stuff as dogma - what's the point? The point is that they're not really practicing what the ideology commands, and that other people are doing so. The horrible ideology is still intact, people are just moving away from it - as they should be. This is progress, they're just still culturally identifying with the religion and doing the less objectionable things (praying, tithing and so on). The problem is that religion and culture and race have all gotten intermingled, so you have to be able to discuss the ideology without discussing the culture or the race. That's how you have things like Jewish Atheists after all.
It's like criticizing all of Christianity for the actions of the Phelps church, because they didn't get the memo that Leviticus isn't canon anymore.
Criticizing Christianity because people are doing what it says is absolutely valid. The fact that reformation has swept a lot of the scarier stuff under the rug is a good thing, and represents people attempting to move away from the actual teachings while reconciling their emotional attachment to the overall spirituality.
Since I've invoked the Nazis as a consistent comparison (not to equate the beliefs, just as a convenient example of an abhorrent ideology that has much more narrow beliefs without a lot of vague subgroups) let's use that again.
Let's say a group of people raised as Nazis realize that exterminating people is bad, but they still want to think Hitler was great and they identify with other aspects of Nazism (like being pro-environment). Nazism is entwined with their identity. Instead of rejecting Nazism, they say that Hitler's writings about exterminating those people were allegorical and misunderstood, they were intended as satirical examples of what not to do or something similar (or they pull the big one and claim it made sense in that cultural context). They instead focus their meetings on social justice for everyone and peaceful environmental activism, while still calling themselves Nazis and believing in the ideology overall.
Are they nazis? It's really, really hard to say. Because Christianity has been redefined and subdefined in so many ways. One could argue that Fred Phelps' group are more genuine christians.
Okay, well let's put it this way: I think all Abrahamic faiths have harmful messages in some respect. They can, and should, be criticized. But when you say things like 'Muslim Countries' - that is a level of specificity you need to be very clear as to what you're talking about, because what is true in Iran isn't going to be true in, say Sri Lanka. That's when you get into the socio-political issues that shape the issue. If an area already had a history of barbaric practices before Islam came - are those practices post-Islam really an Islamic problem? Because that is one of the fundamental mistakes being made when discussing this issue.
I think my biggest issue is that Extremism is a problem everywhere, and while religion can be a factor, and even a major factor, you're not going to come up with solutions solely by looking at the religion component.
Okay, well let's put it this way: I think all Abrahamic faiths have harmful messages in some respect.
Agreed.
They can, and should, be criticized.
Absolutely.
But when you say things like 'Muslim Countries' - that is a level of specificity you need to be very clear as to what you're talking about, because what is true in Iran isn't going to be true in, say Sri Lanka.
Agreed on a practical level. However, I think what you're missing is that Sam Harris only seems to think of "Muslim Countries" in terms of countries with enforcable policies or widespread vigilantism practicing what the Koran preaches. This seems to be a more workable use of the term than "any country with a majority of people practicing Islam". After all, Muslims are quite diverse - and many people that claim to be Muslim wouldn't consider other people that claim to be Muslim as "true" Muslims. Furthermore, a country could theoretically contain a vast majority of people believing that their religion says that they should eat babies - but if they use separation of church and state to keep such policies out of government and no one actually does it... The country itself isn't operating in accordance with that religion. It just happens to have a lot of people of that religion.
That's when you get into the socio-political issues that shape the issue. If an area already had a history of barbaric practices before Islam came - are those practices post-Islam really an Islamic problem? Because that is one of the fundamental mistakes being made when discussing this issue.
If Islamic instruction endorses and sustains the violence, yes. If they don't have any impact whatsoever, then no. But this is an issue of how impactful the religion is, not the morality of the religion itself. The Koran's principles should not be endorsed wholesale as a manual on how to live and act. Anyone attempting to do this should be resisted. It's that simple.
I think my biggest issue is that Extremism is a problem everywhere, and while religion can be a factor, and even a major factor, you're not going to come up with solutions solely by looking at the religion component.
This is a different discussion than the one Sam Harris is having, as I mentioned before. However, it's not even accurate. Jainist extremists are not nearly as scary as Islamic extremists. Overdoing anything is, by definition, negative in some way - but it's not like all religions are created equal. The only problems with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam. And yes, that goes for Christianity and Judaism too.
I have a couple of Eqyptian friends and a Persian neighbour, all of which have conflicting opinions, yet one's I don't hear very often in western society.
They all grew up in the middle east.
Here's what they had to say to me over the last couple of years.
One man's terrorist is another man's Freedom Fighter.
In the case of ISIS/ISIL, some of them are foreigner's, but many of them are also fighting for their country, believing the govt. put in place by the USA/UN in Iraq to be a puppet that will do them no good, and in the case of Syrian govt. (well, we know they're not good, right?)
Both of my Eqyptian friends have read the Quran, and one of them has read both the new and old Testement (he's Christian), the other has also read the Torah.
Sounds like heavy reading to me! But they had quite a bit to say about the Quran being a very violent text, not the say the Old Testament wasn't also, but that the Quran had many many examples of violent actions being a positive thing, and as a way of resolving things.
Both of them agreed that Islam is not a peaceful religion > yet in my experience in Malaysia I found no reason to think like this.
We all agreed that many of the things that people get hung up about in western society, like the Burqa, is not actually a religious thing, it's a cultural thing.
I don't think attacking an Ideology is racist. Disrespectful, insensitive and perhaps arrogant in some cases, but not racist.
I think Ben Affleck is right to some extent and I think that Sam Harris and Bill Maher are equating the problems of the middle east on religion are to some extent, also true.
Maher and Harris both talk about extremism and how Islam have all these beliefs that drive Muslims to commit acts of terror, I don't think that's true. Instead, I think the truth is much more complex than that.
There's some research out there that suggests that people who become terrorists, do so because they are trying to correct something that they perceive as an injustice, may have low economic status, might seek out a group for a sense of belonging, etc.
What one's religious affiliation is, seems to have little or nothing to do with whether or not one decides to blow up a building or fly a plane into it. If all it took was religion X to motivate someone to do those types of things, we'd see more people of religion X doing those things, but we don't. The majority of Muslims are not violent people.
Certainly some of the governments modeling their laws based on religion is bad, but again I don't think we can point to Islam as the reason for why their governments are so heavily influenced by Islam. I think it more or less demonstrates the need for a separation of church and state.
Instead, once again I'm willing to bet the reason religion is so involved in law/government policy is much more complex (I'd have to do some research, but I think it's a pretty safe bet).
I think Ben Affleck also makes a very good point, Harris and Maher both seem to ignore the majority of Muslims that are not violent and ignore others that go out of their way to protect non-muslims. I also think that Affleck is right that both Harris and Maher are painting Muslims inaccurately, even if that is not their intention of doing so. The thing that I noticed when they were talking in that segment is that they use words like 'the Muslim world' and I think they are being disingenuous and/or misleading by using that term.
There's no problem when you are being critical of the ideology of the religion, but Ben was pointing out that is not what they are doing. They are painting a picture that basically says that Muslims are violent because the religion is violent and it has all these violent texts in it.
I guess this whole thing has spiraled out of control for Sam: On the Mechanics of Defamation
Looks like Sam's being attacked by Reza and other theists.
That video really proved to me that miracles do indeed happen. I mean here you have a room with Both Maher and Sam Harris in it and neither is the biggest bigot in the room. It really proves that anything is indeed possible. If you would say to me that this is indeed possible I would have responded that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence but hey now I have video proof so I cannot deny it anymore.
I guess this whole thing has spiraled out of control for Sam: On the Mechanics of Defamation
Looks like Sam's being attacked by Reza and other theists.
...I'm not sure if this is -like- a "real thing," or if I'm just getting sucked into the online hype.
That's interesting. If it's true that his Doctorate is in Sociology, that is a bit of a misrepresentation - however I would say that when explaining my degrees, I don't use the exact name, I explain what it's in, not what it's called. He is still very well qualified. As for his claims of affiliation, I honestly don't know.
Regardless, does it really surprise you that an argument about religion devolves into name calling? The twitter war here is epic.
I would say that Harris' attempt to defend is point of view is problematic on it's own. The implication is that there are some people who simply can't be reasoned with, which I don't think is true. At least, I don't think his intention is true - we help deprogram people (like cultists) with strongly held beliefs on a regular basis. While I agree that there often isn't time to reason with an individual intent of violence, that doesn't mean you can't reach people with certain beliefs.
The reasons for extremists acting out on their beliefs often has just as much to do with the sociopolitical environment as it does the belief (which is thinly veiled for 'Religion'). That's something that can be changed. Hell, Al Qaeda were once our allies - and if we had invested a quarter as much in rebuilding Afghanistan as we did in funding the fight against the Soviets, we would never have had the problems with the Taliban in the first place. This is why it is dangerous, if not downright stupid, to leave all these problems at Religion's doorstep - it's oversimplistic and it ignores a lot of obvious problems. It didn't matter whether a people are Islamic, Christian, Atheist or any other religion. You prop up a brutal dictator for long enough, people are going hate you for it and rebel, and it's going to lead to a long line of problems down the road.
I guess this whole thing has spiraled out of control for Sam: On the Mechanics of Defamation
Looks like Sam's being attacked by Reza and other theists.
You get the sentiment, to keep things fresh you study different things and this allows you to communicate more outside the "anteater world." Hell, Krauthammer is a psychiatrist not a political science person at all, yet he is a conservative political thinker. No different than Glenn Beck, whose education, well if you ever saw his show you know he only reads and "thought for himself."
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The point I was trying to make earlier with the whole "78%" poll wasn't that information about these groups should be censored. I agree with those that were saying all information is good information. But, when it comes to polls and the like in Social Science we really have to be careful HOW we use that information. As BatterysRevenge -and others- pointed out there are a lot of variables that causes people to act as they do. Simplistic polls and studies that look at just one of these variables -like "is black" or "is Muslim"- can gloss over other factors that might be very important. In glossing over those parameters, people might jump to unjustified conclusions -like whites are smarter than blacks based on IQ tests.
While information like "78% of British Muslims think that the Danish cartoonist should have been prosecuted" shouldn't be swept under the table, I do think we have to be very careful when drawing conclusions from it. That is why I "started to cringe a little inside" when Sam pulled that poll out to justify some of the statements he was making. I simply didn't think a poll like that could be used to draw the conclusions he was drawing.
However, here in the video linked above I think he makes much more salient points about the dangers of Islam, and about how people -like myself- might react to statements about those dangerous. I certainly don't agree with Sam on all of his opinions, but I do respect him and much of the work he has done on how belief works. I am glad he got a real chance to clarify what he meant in the less than ideal environment of "Real Time with Bill Maher."
The point I was trying to make earlier with the whole "78%" poll wasn't that information about these groups should be censored. I agree with those that were saying all information is good information. But, when it comes to polls and the like in Social Science we really have to be careful HOW we use that information. As BatterysRevenge -and others- pointed out there are a lot of variables that causes people to act as they do. Simplistic polls and studies that look at just one of these variables -like "is black" or "is Muslim"- can gloss over other factors that might be very important. In glossing over those parameters, people might jump to unjustified conclusions -like whites are smarter than blacks based on IQ tests.
While information like "78% of British Muslims think that the Danish cartoonist should have been prosecuted" shouldn't be swept under the table, I do think we have to be very careful when drawing conclusions from it. That is why I "started to cringe a little inside" when Sam pulled that poll out to justify some of the statements he was making. I simply didn't think a poll like that could be used to draw the conclusions he was drawing.
However, here in the video linked above I think he makes much more salient points about the dangers of Islam, and about how people -like myself- might react to statements about those dangerous. I certainly don't agree with Sam on all of his opinions, but I do respect him and much of the work he has done on how belief works. I am glad he got a real chance to clarify what he meant in the less than ideal environment of "Real Time with Bill Maher."
Sam does explain himself a lot better in the interview you linked. I still think his argument is a little problematic, because he still refers to the Muslims who aren't extremist as 'not taking their religion very seriously' (in the quote read back to him) - as opposed to simply following different doctrines when it comes to many of the issues that he raises.
I really think you need to apply an 'If not for...' test to Religion to see whether or not something is truly a religious issue or a sociopolitical one. If not for Islam, we'd still have many of the same problems with violence in the Middle East that we have today. We might not have the organization at the same level, but it'd be there.
Sam does explain himself a lot better in the interview you linked. I still think his argument is a little problematic, because he still refers to the Muslims who aren't extremist as 'not taking their religion very seriously' (in the quote read back to him) - as opposed to simply following different doctrines when it comes to many of the issues that he raises.
He's referring to the commands in the religious text in question. When someone actively doesn't do what their religion says is god's will, how can you object to the characterization that they aren't taking the religion very seriously? I'm glad they don't, but this seems like an extremely tiny nitpick.
I really think you need to apply an 'If not for...' test to Religion to see whether or not something is truly a religious issue or a sociopolitical one. If not for Islam, we'd still have many of the same problems with violence in the Middle East that we have today. We might not have the organization at the same level, but it'd be there.
Religion is part of a social environment. Using the quoted tactic, I can disprove anything is an issue of anything - provided there's a larger category to appeal to. Let's see if violent crime is strongly influenced by poverty. "If not for poverty, we'd still have many of the same problems with violent crime in the USA that we have today.". Well, looks like it's not really an economic issue then, it's a socio-political one.
Socio-Political means: "Combining social and political factors". Religion is a social factor. You might as well look at someone's homework and say, "That's not an algebra problem, it's a mathematics problem". Or look at a kid's report card where he got straight As except for an F in math and a C in English and say, "That's not a math problem, that's an academic performance problem".
You're arguing that these problems are not solely caused by religion. I agree. Neither is violent crime driven solely by poverty and neither is that kid's GPA driven solely by his poor performance in math. But shifting the discussion wholesale from any contributing factor isn't productive. You should certainly make the point that it's not the sole cause, then address the concerns about whether it is *a* cause and how significant of a cause it is.
He's referring to the commands in the religious text in question. When someone actively doesn't do what their religion says is god's will, how can you object to the characterization that they aren't taking the religion very seriously? I'm glad they don't, but this seems like an extremely tiny nitpick.
What I meant was that he is ignoring the importance of Doctrine, or religious 'errata'. Many Imams have issued Fatwas against violence and extremism. It's like criticizing the Bible for the old testament stuff that has long been decreed as no longer relevant, which I've made the mistake of doing.
Add to it that a lot of the references to violence were originally tempered by a very strict code of conduct that went hand in hand - one that isn't followed by modern extremists. Even if a Muslim believes that the passages that advocate violence in some form, it's the extremists who aren't taking it very seriously.
You're arguing that these problems are not solely caused by religion. I agree. Neither is violent crime driven solely by poverty and neither is that kid's GPA driven solely by his poor performance in math. But shifting the discussion wholesale from any contributing factor isn't productive. You should certainly make the point that it's not the sole cause, then address the concerns about whether it is *a* cause and how significant of a cause it is.
This isn't how Sam frames his argument in any of the blog posts I've read or interviews I've watched, which is what I'm arguing. As to whether or not is IS a cause, of course it is. But I don't think, in the case of the Islamic extremists, that it's even close to the most relevant cause. We're talking about the legacy of a group that was specifically trained and equipped for guerilla warfare against occupying forces. What did anyone think was going to happen? It doesn't matter if they were Muslims, Communists or whoever - that group is going to be a threat in the future.
Add to it that a lot of the references to violence were originally tempered by a very strict code of conduct that went hand in hand - one that isn't followed by modern extremists. Even if a Muslim believes that the passages that advocate violence in some form, it's the extremists who aren't taking it very seriously.
They're taking it about as seriously as Muhammad and his army did.
We're talking about the legacy of a group that was specifically trained and equipped for guerilla warfare against occupying forces. What did anyone think was going to happen? It doesn't matter if they were Muslims, Communists or whoever - that group is going to be a threat in the future.
I don't see how that follows. Guerrilla training doesn't make people more violent than they would be otherwise, just more effective when they do decide to become violent. Lots of people have guerrilla training and aren't considered threats to the United States or the rest of the world - our own special forces, for starters.
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You... know that the Onion is a parody news site, right?
Yep, thought it made the point better than one of the top people in Jainism who wrote one of the top books on the subjects is so disinterested in Jainism that he's stated to classes "I don't care about Jains" when asked about current or future research. There's also those who study things like Masonic history or some obscure thing in science that also gets bored when studying something for a long time. Variety is the spice of life, but like all parody what makes it so funny is that it's so true.
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He's referring to the commands in the religious text in question. When someone actively doesn't do what their religion says is god's will, how can you object to the characterization that they aren't taking the religion very seriously? I'm glad they don't, but this seems like an extremely tiny nitpick.
I have to disagree, because I think you're making a big mistake here in that you are measuring religious people's seriousness by your standards. Sure you can point to things in religious text and say "well you don't take it seriously like a true believer because you don't follow the texts to the letter" but that seems intellectually dishonest and completely wrong to me.
I honestly don't think it matters what you think about how serious you think they are about their religion, what does matter is what religious people think about how serious they take their religion. For example, there are no Christians who follow every line of text in the bible (for obvious reasons) but still take their religion very seriously and I would speculate that this is true for many followers of different religions.
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You're arguing that these problems are not solely caused by religion. I agree. Neither is violent crime driven solely by poverty and neither is that kid's GPA driven solely by his poor performance in math. But shifting the discussion wholesale from any contributing factor isn't productive. You should certainly make the point that it's not the sole cause, then address the concerns about whether it is *a* cause and how significant of a cause it is.
I'm going to address this too because I think you're making another mistake, but at the same time raising a good point. We do need to determine how significant a cause something is to a problem. The mistake I think you're making, is that you're focusing too much on religion as the reason and it seems you think it is *the*, or at least, *a* primary cause.
If so, then I have to disagree with you, because I think religious people in general can think for themselves and make their own decisions and it's wrong to characterize religious people as drooling brainwashed zealots (not that you've done this here). I think if you focus too much on religion as "a" or "the" primary cause, then you're going to miss the forest for the trees. That's equally as problematic and unproductive as shifting the discussion wholesale from any contributing factor, because you could miss what the real primary causes or significant factors are.
Religious people aren't really different from non-religious people. Rather, I think that people in general when they make a decision and want to feel more justified in that decision, people's personal biases will serve them well here. In other words, they look for things to help them feel more justified in a decision they're going to or have already made. If someone's religious, then they might justify their actions with religion. If they're not religious, then they might justify their reasons/actions with something else (nationalism, a greater good, etc.).
I think there are far more important contributing factors than religion in regards to this topic and instead I think religion, if it does play a contributing factor at all, is not nearly as strong as the ones I've named in my previous post.
This should shed some light on the silliness of comments like "Al Qaeda was our ally" which is 100% false and a lot of the problems people are having here.
As humans, we have a tendency to cling to ideologies. Any positive set of beliefs can quickly turn malevolent once treated as ideology and not an honest intellectual or experiential pursuit of greater truth. Ideology does in entire economic systems and countries, causes religions to massacre thousands, turns human rights movements into authoritarian sects and makes fools out of humanity’s most brilliant minds. Einstein famously wasted the second half of his career trying to calculate a cosmological constant that didn’t exist because “God doesn’t play dice.”
I have to disagree, because I think you're making a big mistake here in that you are measuring religious people's seriousness by your standards. Sure you can point to things in religious text and say "well you don't take it seriously like a true believer because you don't follow the texts to the letter" but that seems intellectually dishonest and completely wrong to me.
I honestly don't think it matters what you think about how serious you think they are about their religion, what does matter is what religious people think about how serious they take their religion. For example, there are no Christians who follow every line of text in the bible (for obvious reasons) but still take their religion very seriously and I would speculate that this is true for many followers of different religions.
It wouldn't be incongruous for someone to state "Based on definition X, which I hold to be reasonable, people that aren't doing X aren't taking their religion seriously" and to simultaneously state "Many people not doing X still think of themselves as taking their religion seriously".
The argument then becomes as to what should be the appropriate definition for "taking your religion seriously". The definition I'm referring to is treating the holy text that is claimed to be the divine word of god as if it actually is the divine word of god (charitably assuming that if people believe the god they worship and claim to serve is telling them to do something, they actually would do it). If you think a different definition is more appropriate, that's fine, but for this discussion this is the definition Sam seemed to be using. Arguing the accuracy of the definition is a challenge to his vocabulary, not his point.
I'm going to address this too because I think you're making another mistake, but at the same time raising a good point. We do need to determine how significant a cause something is to a problem. The mistake I think you're making, is that you're focusing too much on religion as the reason and it seems you think it is *the*, or at least, *a* primary cause.
If so, then I have to disagree with you, because I think religious people in general can think for themselves and make their own decisions and it's wrong to characterize religious people as drooling brainwashed zealots (not that you've done this here). I think if you focus too much on religion as "a" or "the" primary cause, then you're going to miss the forest for the trees. That's equally as problematic and unproductive as shifting the discussion wholesale from any contributing factor, because you could miss what the real primary causes or significant factors are.
Religious people aren't really different from non-religious people. Rather, I think that people in general when they make a decision and want to feel more justified in that decision, people's personal biases will serve them well here. In other words, they look for things to help them feel more justified in a decision they're going to or have already made. If someone's religious, then they might justify their actions with religion. If they're not religious, then they might justify their reasons/actions with something else (nationalism, a greater good, etc.).
I think there are far more important contributing factors than religion in regards to this topic and instead I think religion, if it does play a contributing factor at all, is not nearly as strong as the ones I've named in my previous post.
I have never stated that the religious beliefs are the primary cause. I've been responding to attempts to discount discussion of religious beliefs as a major factor (notably an argument that such a discussion of the harm a specific religion causes is inappropriate because such issues should be discussed only as broader socio-political issues). If you want to provide evidence that religious beliefs are either not a major factor or are a non-factor, great.
It wouldn't be incongruous for someone to state "Based on definition X, which I hold to be reasonable, people that aren't doing X aren't taking their religion seriously" and to simultaneously state "Many people not doing X still think of themselves as taking their religion seriously".
I understand that, but I find that intellectually dishonest. Let me put this another way, how serious one takes something is subjective, not objective.
Because of this you can't apply your subjective views about how seriously someone else takes something because you don't know how seriously they take it (you'd just be making an assumption), unless they tell you.
There is no reason to suspect that a christian wearing a cotton/polyester mixed shirt doesn't take their religion just as seriously as another christian who refuses to wear mixed fiber shirts because the bible says they shouldn't.
Just the same, there is no reason to suspect that a Muslim that supports gay rights is any less serious about Islam than a Muslim that believes that gays should be killed because their religious texts says they should. There is no reason to suspect that the Muslims who put their liveson the line to protect Christians in these countries take their religion less seriously than the Muslims who turn to terrorism.
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The argument then becomes as to what should be the appropriate definition for "taking your religion seriously".
No, the argument is by who's standard do we measure the seriousness that someone takes their religion, not the definition. I am arguing that if we measure by Harris's standard or the standard's that you seem to be applying, then we're looking at the problem in the wrong way.
If you start that standard at "X doesn't follow every religious text, therefore X doesn't take their religious seriously" then I think that's a terrible standard because it cherry picks the cases you want so you can make the exact argument you want and completely ignores the vast majority of followers that still take their religion seriously and don't do X, Y, or Z.
The problem therefore isn't the definition, it's the standard you've set for it.
Quote from Stairc »
The definition I'm referring to is treating the holy text that is claimed to be the divine word of god as if it actually is the divine word of god (charitably assuming that if people believe the god they worship and claim to serve is telling them to do something, they actually would do it). If you think a different definition is more appropriate, that's fine, but for this discussion this is the definition Sam seemed to be using. Arguing the accuracy of the definition is a challenge to his vocabulary, not his point.
No, I'm arguing that his standard is flawed for the reasons I've stated above. Sam Harris is not a Muslim, he's not part of their culture, he doesn't live in their countries or have to deal with their problems, their political issues, or anything. I don't think he's really tried to understand the people he's talking about rather than just characterize them by his own standards, a standard that makes it so that no religious person anywhere could take their religion seriously, because the standard he has set makes it impossible.
I think that's absolutely ridiculous and again, intellectually dishonest.
Quote from stairc »
I have never stated that the religious beliefs are the primary cause. I've been responding to attempts to discount discussion of religious beliefs as a major factor (notably an argument that such a discussion of the harm a specific religion causes is inappropriate because such issues should be discussed only as broader socio-political issues). If you want to provide evidence that religious beliefs are either not a major factor or are a non-factor, great.
Well I did point out the direction, which are easily found on google. Still here are a few articles:
There are tons more out there, far more than I'm going to post here. Again, religion does not appear to be a main reason for why people turn to terrorism.
Well, no, attacking an ideology is not the same as attacking a race, because an ideology is not a race.
You can do both at the same time, an obvious example being attacking those who are Jewish for being Jewish, "Jewish" indicating both a religion and an ethnicity, but they are not in themselves the same.
Progressivism (and granted, Maher is one of them, but not here) makes no sense to me. To the progressive, the fact that 0.3% of Catholic priests are pedophiles somehow indicts a religion of millions, but a significantly larger chunk of Muslims identify with radical Islam and you're not allowed to say anything because that would be stereotyping?
The two aren't analogous.
The Catholic church isn't just an idea, it is an institution. It is an organization. And yes, when you have an organization that employs pedophiles in high positions, has abuses (and by abuses I mean child molestation) perpetrated by said pedophiles, and then actively works to cover up those abuses, that defames that organization.
The same is not the case between radical Islam and moderate Islam. And I really don't think saying, "Just because someone is Muslim, doesn't mean they support terrorism," is some hair-brained scheme to cover up the truth, ljoss, I think it's a basic fact.
It wouldn't be incongruous for someone to state "Based on definition X, which I hold to be reasonable, people that aren't doing X aren't taking their religion seriously" and to simultaneously state "Many people not doing X still think of themselves as taking their religion seriously".
I understand that, but I find that intellectually dishonest. Let me put this another way, how serious one takes something is subjective, not objective.
Because of this you can't apply your subjective views about how seriously someone else takes something because you don't know how seriously they take it (you'd just be making an assumption), unless they tell you.
I find calling that intellectually dishonest intellectually dishonest, because I believe I’m being intellectually honest. Whether something is intellectually dishonest or not is subjective, not objective. The only way you can make such a statement is to apply a specific definition of “intellectual honesty” – which I might disagree with and still consider myself intellectually honest despite your criteria. Sound familiar?
The question is not “how seriously do they feel they’re taking their religion?” Harris is making a statement that he doesn’t feel they’re taking their religion seriously based on his own definition. These are different things. If you want to argue whether his definition is appropriate, go ahead, it just means he should have used different language in making his point.
Quote from Foxblade »
Quote from Stairc »
The argument then becomes as to what should be the appropriate definition for "taking your religion seriously".
No, the argument is by who's standard do we measure the seriousness that someone takes their religion, not the definition. I am arguing that if we measure by Harris's standard or the standard's that you seem to be applying, then we're looking at the problem in the wrong way.
“Who’s standard do we measure the seriousness” is the same as arguing over the definition of, “What taking the religion seriously means”. You’re just changing “definition” to “standard” here.
Quote from Fox Blade »
No, I'm arguing that his standard is flawed for the reasons I've stated above. Sam Harris is not a Muslim, he's not part of their culture, he doesn't live in their countries or have to deal with their problems, their political issues, or anything. I don't think he's really tried to understand the people he's talking about rather than just characterize them by his own standards.
I believe your analysis of Sam Harris is flawed. You’re not part of his social circle, you don’t live where he lives, you don’t deal with his problems. I don’t think you’ve really tried to understand Sam Harris, rather than just characterize him by your own standards.
Well I did point out the direction, which are easily found on google. Still here are a few articles:
There are tons more out there, far more than I'm going to post here. Again, religion does not appear to be a main reason for why people turn to terrorism.
That’s fine, and I’d be inclined to agree that religion as an abstract concept isn’t the main reason people turn to terrorism. Indoctrination and lack of critical thinking are both crucial elements, which often have a strong hand in religion of course, but the argument has not been about whether it’s the main reason. My discussion has been about whether it’s appropriate to discuss a specific religion and the harm it may or may not cause at all.
This should shed some light on the silliness of comments like "Al Qaeda was our ally" which is 100% false and a lot of the problems people are having here.
The worst thing that could happen to this post is to have it be used as convenient feces to fling at the Blue Tribe whenever feces are necessary.
Umm honestly, tough get over it. The author's a blue triber and doesn't want people pointing it out that some blue tribers are like this, I don't care.
Maybe to be more empathetic everyone gets called out in the comments and I'm OK with you calling me out, as I know you will.
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As humans, we have a tendency to cling to ideologies. Any positive set of beliefs can quickly turn malevolent once treated as ideology and not an honest intellectual or experiential pursuit of greater truth. Ideology does in entire economic systems and countries, causes religions to massacre thousands, turns human rights movements into authoritarian sects and makes fools out of humanity’s most brilliant minds. Einstein famously wasted the second half of his career trying to calculate a cosmological constant that didn’t exist because “God doesn’t play dice.”
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I find that more has to do with specific liberals than it has to do with the whole totality of progressive liberalism and it's related ideas. The noble savage myth was in part to help look at people who like to live a "certain way" live that way if they so chose to do so, because the life of a hunter-gatherer as an example is easier than living as a low tech, subsistence farmer. The hunter-gatherers even go as far as to say that farming sucks as compared to how much time their neighbors spend farming or herding.
Environmentalism, you have some of the whacky Gaea theorists and PETA, that's just PETA, and a few others. Most environmentalists I've met in and debated are actually pretty level headed and can actually "see the other side" or the "reason for it" if you simplify things such as "Do you want people in guns in an orange jump suit traipsing through the woods or wolves around this area?" Helps to place things in a pretty basic framework. It's like how certain complex property rights situations don't coincide well with anarchistic philosophies. You can't expect one worldview to solve every problem.
It's like Lex Luthor in Red Son Superman, "Hrm, Brainaic and Superman actually did have some good ideas in here."
Take for example the issue of intellectual property rights, I'm in support of some of the more anarchistic minded capitalists in the world about some of those ideas and how they short change innovation. You really need to stay on top of your game and be well informed about some of the really bad ideas but also what works for different people. THen there's also the try hards that always fail, those are the ones I'm actually more scared of.
The issue with the Arabs is that they haven't been really at great power war themselves and seen their entire way of life decimated time and again. Going from a modern era lifestyle back towards subsistence agriculture is a leap such as what occurred with the Great Depression and WWI and WWII for the west and parts of the east. Some of those extremist factions haven't seen what hell looks like to really postulate about "giving peace a chance."
Islam doesn't have the same institutions in the west as say the Catholic Church does all over the world, simply because they haven't upgraded their operating system faster than the jihadists who tend to be very aggressive to adapt to new technologies to spread their message. It's also the "circle of cool kids" thing like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or more nefariously the Hitler Youth.
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Quite possibly.
I agree. However, it's not always practical to bring up every possible cause of something in every discussion. Especially in a televised debate format. If you're looking for the rigorous comprehensive analysis of the causes behind certain crimes against humanity, you'd be justified in claiming intellectual dishonest if one was to identify religion as the sole cause of pretty much anything. However, it's not reasonable to take a few-minute-debate-show-format and apply the standards of academic discussion to it.
Sam Harris is perfectly justified in calling out these specific Islamic practices, commandments and beliefs as bad things. He's also justified in considering that the religion is a major reason why the culture of that area follows these practices. As Sam Harris' major topic of discussion is religion, he focuses on religion. It's perfectly permissible for an educator who studies and writes about education to declare that the education of a populace is incredible important to that society's wellbeing and to argue that education should be pursued. They don't need to bring up other factors, like lack of air pollution and water sanitation, as other important societal factors (unless they're arguing to shift funds away from those things or something similar). They can just say, "this is a major cause for good things happening in society". Likewise, someone can focus on criticizing one thing he considers negative to society and give examples of horrible things it's had a hand in as examples. This isn't intellectually dishonest, it's a focused form of discussion.
Absolutely.
You might not consider it useful, but I don't think you can say people don't listen. Generalizations and lumping large groups of people together has been a disturbingly effective tactic in the past.
I like to think that countering religious dogma that was getting people killed is something worth doing. There isn't a debate-budget going around, you can criticize crazy and dangerous statements people make while also working on solving the practical issue on the ground level.
They sure do. But this debate wasn't about forced marriages and honor killings. It's whether a specific religion contains harmful messages. Those messages happen to endorse forced marriages and honor killings. Other religions and non-Islamic regions also have problems with forced marriages and honor killings. That has no bearing on whether the specific religion contains harmful messages.
You're shifting the discussion. It would be like if there was a debate about whether violent media causes violence, and you wanted to move the discussion by saying "well there are lots of causes of violence, so if you want to talk about violence you should talk about stuff besides violent media - why aren't you talking about poverty causing violence?" However, that isn't the topic under discussion, and someone isn't being intellectually dishonest for not bringing up issues that aren't under discussion.
Why not? They are an Islamic problem. They're just also problems with other religions and ideologies as well.
If the majority of self-identifying Nazis don't treat all the horrible stuff as dogma - what's the point? The point is that they're not really practicing what the ideology commands, and that other people are doing so. The horrible ideology is still intact, people are just moving away from it - as they should be. This is progress, they're just still culturally identifying with the religion and doing the less objectionable things (praying, tithing and so on). The problem is that religion and culture and race have all gotten intermingled, so you have to be able to discuss the ideology without discussing the culture or the race. That's how you have things like Jewish Atheists after all.
Criticizing Christianity because people are doing what it says is absolutely valid. The fact that reformation has swept a lot of the scarier stuff under the rug is a good thing, and represents people attempting to move away from the actual teachings while reconciling their emotional attachment to the overall spirituality.
Since I've invoked the Nazis as a consistent comparison (not to equate the beliefs, just as a convenient example of an abhorrent ideology that has much more narrow beliefs without a lot of vague subgroups) let's use that again.
Let's say a group of people raised as Nazis realize that exterminating people is bad, but they still want to think Hitler was great and they identify with other aspects of Nazism (like being pro-environment). Nazism is entwined with their identity. Instead of rejecting Nazism, they say that Hitler's writings about exterminating those people were allegorical and misunderstood, they were intended as satirical examples of what not to do or something similar (or they pull the big one and claim it made sense in that cultural context). They instead focus their meetings on social justice for everyone and peaceful environmental activism, while still calling themselves Nazis and believing in the ideology overall.
Are they nazis? It's really, really hard to say. Because Christianity has been redefined and subdefined in so many ways. One could argue that Fred Phelps' group are more genuine christians.
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I think my biggest issue is that Extremism is a problem everywhere, and while religion can be a factor, and even a major factor, you're not going to come up with solutions solely by looking at the religion component.
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Agreed.
Absolutely.
Agreed on a practical level. However, I think what you're missing is that Sam Harris only seems to think of "Muslim Countries" in terms of countries with enforcable policies or widespread vigilantism practicing what the Koran preaches. This seems to be a more workable use of the term than "any country with a majority of people practicing Islam". After all, Muslims are quite diverse - and many people that claim to be Muslim wouldn't consider other people that claim to be Muslim as "true" Muslims. Furthermore, a country could theoretically contain a vast majority of people believing that their religion says that they should eat babies - but if they use separation of church and state to keep such policies out of government and no one actually does it... The country itself isn't operating in accordance with that religion. It just happens to have a lot of people of that religion.
If Islamic instruction endorses and sustains the violence, yes. If they don't have any impact whatsoever, then no. But this is an issue of how impactful the religion is, not the morality of the religion itself. The Koran's principles should not be endorsed wholesale as a manual on how to live and act. Anyone attempting to do this should be resisted. It's that simple.
This is a different discussion than the one Sam Harris is having, as I mentioned before. However, it's not even accurate. Jainist extremists are not nearly as scary as Islamic extremists. Overdoing anything is, by definition, negative in some way - but it's not like all religions are created equal. The only problems with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam. And yes, that goes for Christianity and Judaism too.
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They all grew up in the middle east.
Here's what they had to say to me over the last couple of years.
One man's terrorist is another man's Freedom Fighter.
In the case of ISIS/ISIL, some of them are foreigner's, but many of them are also fighting for their country, believing the govt. put in place by the USA/UN in Iraq to be a puppet that will do them no good, and in the case of Syrian govt. (well, we know they're not good, right?)
Both of my Eqyptian friends have read the Quran, and one of them has read both the new and old Testement (he's Christian), the other has also read the Torah.
Sounds like heavy reading to me! But they had quite a bit to say about the Quran being a very violent text, not the say the Old Testament wasn't also, but that the Quran had many many examples of violent actions being a positive thing, and as a way of resolving things.
Both of them agreed that Islam is not a peaceful religion > yet in my experience in Malaysia I found no reason to think like this.
We all agreed that many of the things that people get hung up about in western society, like the Burqa, is not actually a religious thing, it's a cultural thing.
I don't think attacking an Ideology is racist. Disrespectful, insensitive and perhaps arrogant in some cases, but not racist.
Maher and Harris both talk about extremism and how Islam have all these beliefs that drive Muslims to commit acts of terror, I don't think that's true. Instead, I think the truth is much more complex than that.
There's some research out there that suggests that people who become terrorists, do so because they are trying to correct something that they perceive as an injustice, may have low economic status, might seek out a group for a sense of belonging, etc.
What one's religious affiliation is, seems to have little or nothing to do with whether or not one decides to blow up a building or fly a plane into it. If all it took was religion X to motivate someone to do those types of things, we'd see more people of religion X doing those things, but we don't. The majority of Muslims are not violent people.
Certainly some of the governments modeling their laws based on religion is bad, but again I don't think we can point to Islam as the reason for why their governments are so heavily influenced by Islam. I think it more or less demonstrates the need for a separation of church and state.
Instead, once again I'm willing to bet the reason religion is so involved in law/government policy is much more complex (I'd have to do some research, but I think it's a pretty safe bet).
I think Ben Affleck also makes a very good point, Harris and Maher both seem to ignore the majority of Muslims that are not violent and ignore others that go out of their way to protect non-muslims. I also think that Affleck is right that both Harris and Maher are painting Muslims inaccurately, even if that is not their intention of doing so. The thing that I noticed when they were talking in that segment is that they use words like 'the Muslim world' and I think they are being disingenuous and/or misleading by using that term.
There's no problem when you are being critical of the ideology of the religion, but Ben was pointing out that is not what they are doing. They are painting a picture that basically says that Muslims are violent because the religion is violent and it has all these violent texts in it.
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Looks like Sam's being attacked by Reza and other theists.
Not that atheist aren't also fighting back:
Reza Aslan Scoffs That You Can Only Be a Credible Public Atheist If You’re a Religious Scholar With a Degree, Which He Doesn't Have Himself.
Now Reza is also suffering from defamation, which seems serious he's actually been lying about some of his credentials....
...I'm not sure if this is -like- a "real thing," or if I'm just getting sucked into the online hype.
That's interesting. If it's true that his Doctorate is in Sociology, that is a bit of a misrepresentation - however I would say that when explaining my degrees, I don't use the exact name, I explain what it's in, not what it's called. He is still very well qualified. As for his claims of affiliation, I honestly don't know.
Regardless, does it really surprise you that an argument about religion devolves into name calling? The twitter war here is epic.
I would say that Harris' attempt to defend is point of view is problematic on it's own. The implication is that there are some people who simply can't be reasoned with, which I don't think is true. At least, I don't think his intention is true - we help deprogram people (like cultists) with strongly held beliefs on a regular basis. While I agree that there often isn't time to reason with an individual intent of violence, that doesn't mean you can't reach people with certain beliefs.
The reasons for extremists acting out on their beliefs often has just as much to do with the sociopolitical environment as it does the belief (which is thinly veiled for 'Religion'). That's something that can be changed. Hell, Al Qaeda were once our allies - and if we had invested a quarter as much in rebuilding Afghanistan as we did in funding the fight against the Soviets, we would never have had the problems with the Taliban in the first place. This is why it is dangerous, if not downright stupid, to leave all these problems at Religion's doorstep - it's oversimplistic and it ignores a lot of obvious problems. It didn't matter whether a people are Islamic, Christian, Atheist or any other religion. You prop up a brutal dictator for long enough, people are going hate you for it and rebel, and it's going to lead to a long line of problems down the road.
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That and whenever you enter a career, you tend to go on a "drift" away from your hard major. Even in academia:
http://www.theonion.com/video/expert-on-anteaters-wasted-entire-life-studying-an,14210/
You get the sentiment, to keep things fresh you study different things and this allows you to communicate more outside the "anteater world." Hell, Krauthammer is a psychiatrist not a political science person at all, yet he is a conservative political thinker. No different than Glenn Beck, whose education, well if you ever saw his show you know he only reads and "thought for himself."
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The point I was trying to make earlier with the whole "78%" poll wasn't that information about these groups should be censored. I agree with those that were saying all information is good information. But, when it comes to polls and the like in Social Science we really have to be careful HOW we use that information. As BatterysRevenge -and others- pointed out there are a lot of variables that causes people to act as they do. Simplistic polls and studies that look at just one of these variables -like "is black" or "is Muslim"- can gloss over other factors that might be very important. In glossing over those parameters, people might jump to unjustified conclusions -like whites are smarter than blacks based on IQ tests.
While information like "78% of British Muslims think that the Danish cartoonist should have been prosecuted" shouldn't be swept under the table, I do think we have to be very careful when drawing conclusions from it. That is why I "started to cringe a little inside" when Sam pulled that poll out to justify some of the statements he was making. I simply didn't think a poll like that could be used to draw the conclusions he was drawing.
However, here in the video linked above I think he makes much more salient points about the dangers of Islam, and about how people -like myself- might react to statements about those dangerous. I certainly don't agree with Sam on all of his opinions, but I do respect him and much of the work he has done on how belief works. I am glad he got a real chance to clarify what he meant in the less than ideal environment of "Real Time with Bill Maher."
Sam does explain himself a lot better in the interview you linked. I still think his argument is a little problematic, because he still refers to the Muslims who aren't extremist as 'not taking their religion very seriously' (in the quote read back to him) - as opposed to simply following different doctrines when it comes to many of the issues that he raises.
I really think you need to apply an 'If not for...' test to Religion to see whether or not something is truly a religious issue or a sociopolitical one. If not for Islam, we'd still have many of the same problems with violence in the Middle East that we have today. We might not have the organization at the same level, but it'd be there.
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He's referring to the commands in the religious text in question. When someone actively doesn't do what their religion says is god's will, how can you object to the characterization that they aren't taking the religion very seriously? I'm glad they don't, but this seems like an extremely tiny nitpick.
Religion is part of a social environment. Using the quoted tactic, I can disprove anything is an issue of anything - provided there's a larger category to appeal to. Let's see if violent crime is strongly influenced by poverty. "If not for poverty, we'd still have many of the same problems with violent crime in the USA that we have today.". Well, looks like it's not really an economic issue then, it's a socio-political one.
Socio-Political means: "Combining social and political factors". Religion is a social factor. You might as well look at someone's homework and say, "That's not an algebra problem, it's a mathematics problem". Or look at a kid's report card where he got straight As except for an F in math and a C in English and say, "That's not a math problem, that's an academic performance problem".
You're arguing that these problems are not solely caused by religion. I agree. Neither is violent crime driven solely by poverty and neither is that kid's GPA driven solely by his poor performance in math. But shifting the discussion wholesale from any contributing factor isn't productive. You should certainly make the point that it's not the sole cause, then address the concerns about whether it is *a* cause and how significant of a cause it is.
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What I meant was that he is ignoring the importance of Doctrine, or religious 'errata'. Many Imams have issued Fatwas against violence and extremism. It's like criticizing the Bible for the old testament stuff that has long been decreed as no longer relevant, which I've made the mistake of doing.
Add to it that a lot of the references to violence were originally tempered by a very strict code of conduct that went hand in hand - one that isn't followed by modern extremists. Even if a Muslim believes that the passages that advocate violence in some form, it's the extremists who aren't taking it very seriously.
This isn't how Sam frames his argument in any of the blog posts I've read or interviews I've watched, which is what I'm arguing. As to whether or not is IS a cause, of course it is. But I don't think, in the case of the Islamic extremists, that it's even close to the most relevant cause. We're talking about the legacy of a group that was specifically trained and equipped for guerilla warfare against occupying forces. What did anyone think was going to happen? It doesn't matter if they were Muslims, Communists or whoever - that group is going to be a threat in the future.
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They're taking it about as seriously as Muhammad and his army did.
I don't see how that follows. Guerrilla training doesn't make people more violent than they would be otherwise, just more effective when they do decide to become violent. Lots of people have guerrilla training and aren't considered threats to the United States or the rest of the world - our own special forces, for starters.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Yep, thought it made the point better than one of the top people in Jainism who wrote one of the top books on the subjects is so disinterested in Jainism that he's stated to classes "I don't care about Jains" when asked about current or future research. There's also those who study things like Masonic history or some obscure thing in science that also gets bored when studying something for a long time. Variety is the spice of life, but like all parody what makes it so funny is that it's so true.
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I have to disagree, because I think you're making a big mistake here in that you are measuring religious people's seriousness by your standards. Sure you can point to things in religious text and say "well you don't take it seriously like a true believer because you don't follow the texts to the letter" but that seems intellectually dishonest and completely wrong to me.
I honestly don't think it matters what you think about how serious you think they are about their religion, what does matter is what religious people think about how serious they take their religion. For example, there are no Christians who follow every line of text in the bible (for obvious reasons) but still take their religion very seriously and I would speculate that this is true for many followers of different religions.
I'm going to address this too because I think you're making another mistake, but at the same time raising a good point. We do need to determine how significant a cause something is to a problem. The mistake I think you're making, is that you're focusing too much on religion as the reason and it seems you think it is *the*, or at least, *a* primary cause.
If so, then I have to disagree with you, because I think religious people in general can think for themselves and make their own decisions and it's wrong to characterize religious people as drooling brainwashed zealots (not that you've done this here). I think if you focus too much on religion as "a" or "the" primary cause, then you're going to miss the forest for the trees. That's equally as problematic and unproductive as shifting the discussion wholesale from any contributing factor, because you could miss what the real primary causes or significant factors are.
Religious people aren't really different from non-religious people. Rather, I think that people in general when they make a decision and want to feel more justified in that decision, people's personal biases will serve them well here. In other words, they look for things to help them feel more justified in a decision they're going to or have already made. If someone's religious, then they might justify their actions with religion. If they're not religious, then they might justify their reasons/actions with something else (nationalism, a greater good, etc.).
I think there are far more important contributing factors than religion in regards to this topic and instead I think religion, if it does play a contributing factor at all, is not nearly as strong as the ones I've named in my previous post.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
It wouldn't be incongruous for someone to state "Based on definition X, which I hold to be reasonable, people that aren't doing X aren't taking their religion seriously" and to simultaneously state "Many people not doing X still think of themselves as taking their religion seriously".
The argument then becomes as to what should be the appropriate definition for "taking your religion seriously". The definition I'm referring to is treating the holy text that is claimed to be the divine word of god as if it actually is the divine word of god (charitably assuming that if people believe the god they worship and claim to serve is telling them to do something, they actually would do it). If you think a different definition is more appropriate, that's fine, but for this discussion this is the definition Sam seemed to be using. Arguing the accuracy of the definition is a challenge to his vocabulary, not his point.
I have never stated that the religious beliefs are the primary cause. I've been responding to attempts to discount discussion of religious beliefs as a major factor (notably an argument that such a discussion of the harm a specific religion causes is inappropriate because such issues should be discussed only as broader socio-political issues). If you want to provide evidence that religious beliefs are either not a major factor or are a non-factor, great.
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I understand that, but I find that intellectually dishonest. Let me put this another way, how serious one takes something is subjective, not objective.
Because of this you can't apply your subjective views about how seriously someone else takes something because you don't know how seriously they take it (you'd just be making an assumption), unless they tell you.
There is no reason to suspect that a christian wearing a cotton/polyester mixed shirt doesn't take their religion just as seriously as another christian who refuses to wear mixed fiber shirts because the bible says they shouldn't.
Just the same, there is no reason to suspect that a Muslim that supports gay rights is any less serious about Islam than a Muslim that believes that gays should be killed because their religious texts says they should. There is no reason to suspect that the Muslims who put their lives on the line to protect Christians in these countries take their religion less seriously than the Muslims who turn to terrorism.
No, the argument is by who's standard do we measure the seriousness that someone takes their religion, not the definition. I am arguing that if we measure by Harris's standard or the standard's that you seem to be applying, then we're looking at the problem in the wrong way.
If you start that standard at "X doesn't follow every religious text, therefore X doesn't take their religious seriously" then I think that's a terrible standard because it cherry picks the cases you want so you can make the exact argument you want and completely ignores the vast majority of followers that still take their religion seriously and don't do X, Y, or Z.
The problem therefore isn't the definition, it's the standard you've set for it.
No, I'm arguing that his standard is flawed for the reasons I've stated above. Sam Harris is not a Muslim, he's not part of their culture, he doesn't live in their countries or have to deal with their problems, their political issues, or anything. I don't think he's really tried to understand the people he's talking about rather than just characterize them by his own standards, a standard that makes it so that no religious person anywhere could take their religion seriously, because the standard he has set makes it impossible.
I think that's absolutely ridiculous and again, intellectually dishonest.
Well I did point out the direction, which are easily found on google. Still here are a few articles:
http://terrorism.about.com/od/causes/a/causes_terror.htm
http://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue3_2011/story2full.shtml
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/11/terrorism.aspx
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC0QFjAC&url=http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/Soc_Psych_of_Terrorism.pdf&ei=MyFCVMnBAYS3yASUqYDgDA&usg=AFQjCNGF1jQCZAHlkd6CMwFY2CTVmAOwsw&sig2=EGHO0x75bqZ-9-f3Mlk4QQ
http://www.academia.edu/5585121/Why_Do_People_Join_Terrorist_Groups
There are tons more out there, far more than I'm going to post here. Again, religion does not appear to be a main reason for why people turn to terrorism.
You can do both at the same time, an obvious example being attacking those who are Jewish for being Jewish, "Jewish" indicating both a religion and an ethnicity, but they are not in themselves the same.
The two aren't analogous.
The Catholic church isn't just an idea, it is an institution. It is an organization. And yes, when you have an organization that employs pedophiles in high positions, has abuses (and by abuses I mean child molestation) perpetrated by said pedophiles, and then actively works to cover up those abuses, that defames that organization.
The same is not the case between radical Islam and moderate Islam. And I really don't think saying, "Just because someone is Muslim, doesn't mean they support terrorism," is some hair-brained scheme to cover up the truth, ljoss, I think it's a basic fact.
I find calling that intellectually dishonest intellectually dishonest, because I believe I’m being intellectually honest. Whether something is intellectually dishonest or not is subjective, not objective. The only way you can make such a statement is to apply a specific definition of “intellectual honesty” – which I might disagree with and still consider myself intellectually honest despite your criteria. Sound familiar?
The question is not “how seriously do they feel they’re taking their religion?” Harris is making a statement that he doesn’t feel they’re taking their religion seriously based on his own definition. These are different things. If you want to argue whether his definition is appropriate, go ahead, it just means he should have used different language in making his point.
“Who’s standard do we measure the seriousness” is the same as arguing over the definition of, “What taking the religion seriously means”. You’re just changing “definition” to “standard” here.
I believe your analysis of Sam Harris is flawed. You’re not part of his social circle, you don’t live where he lives, you don’t deal with his problems. I don’t think you’ve really tried to understand Sam Harris, rather than just characterize him by your own standards.
That’s fine, and I’d be inclined to agree that religion as an abstract concept isn’t the main reason people turn to terrorism. Indoctrination and lack of critical thinking are both crucial elements, which often have a strong hand in religion of course, but the argument has not been about whether it’s the main reason. My discussion has been about whether it’s appropriate to discuss a specific religion and the harm it may or may not cause at all.
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candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Umm honestly, tough get over it. The author's a blue triber and doesn't want people pointing it out that some blue tribers are like this, I don't care.
Maybe to be more empathetic everyone gets called out in the comments and I'm OK with you calling me out, as I know you will.