Sam Harris - September 11, 2011

[pokerfan]

Yesterday my daughter asked, “What is gravity?” She is two and a half years old. I could say many things on this subject—most of which she could not possibly understand—but the deep and honest answer is “I don’t know.”

<...>

What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose on earth? These are some of the great, false questions of religion. We need not answer them—for they are badly posed—but we can live our answers all the same. At a minimum, we must create the conditions for human flourishing in this life—the only life of which we can be certain. That means we should not terrify our children with thoughts of hell, or poison them with hatred for infidels. We should not teach our sons to consider women their future property, or convince our daughters that they are property even now. And we must decline to tell our children that human history began with magic and will end with bloody magic—perhaps soon, in a glorious war between the righteous and the rest. One must be religious to fail the young so abysmally—to derange them with fear, bigotry, and superstition even as their minds are forming—and one cannot be a serious Christian, Muslim, or Jew without doing so in some measure.

Such sins against reason and compassion do not represent the totality of religion, of course—but they lie at its core. As for the rest—charity, community, ritual, and the contemplative life—we need not take anything on faith to embrace these goods. And it is one of the most damaging canards of religion to insist that we must.

<...>

Ten years have passed since a group of mostly educated and middle-class men decided to obliterate themselves, along with three thousand innocents, to gain entrance to an imaginary Paradise. This problem was always deeper than the threat of terrorism—and our waging an interminable “war on terror” is no answer to it. Yes, we must destroy al Qaeda. But humanity has a larger project—to become sane. If September 11, 2001, should have taught us anything, it is that we must find honest consolation in our capacity for love, creativity, and understanding. This remains possible. It is also necessary. And the alternatives are bleak.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/september-11-2011

[cleanhippie]

1. Thank you for posting this.

[bananas]

17. Does Sam Harris still believe in torture and reincarnation?

Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=106202&mesg_id=106202

Sam Harris article entitled "Head-in-the-Sand Liberals"
He sounds like a neo-con:
On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right. This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x88886

SAM HARRIS ALERT
Dr. Michael Eslea, Department of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, alerts me to a startling – and disturbing – fact ...
...Harris .. veers into woo-woo territory ... in his introductory chapter (page 41) he states that "There also seems to be a body of data attesting to the reality of psychic phenomena, much of which has been ignored by mainstream science." Turn to note 18 on page 232 to see his justification for this statement, and you will find an astonishing paragraph citing books by Dean Radin and Rupert Sheldrake as evidence. Harris also notes that Ian Stevenson's work (on children supposedly born with memories of past lives) "may be credible evidence for reincarnation."
Only now do I understand a certain coolness I’ve experienced in Sam’s attitude toward me, and I now think that it can be entirely explained by his romance with woo-woo ...
http://www.randi.org/jr/2006-09/092206bad.html#i8

[rug]

2. "False"?

"What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose on earth? These are some of the great, false questions of religion."

These are questions that have been asked since the first synapse was formed.

[Silent3]

8. What does the age of the questions have to do with their validity?

As Harris said, the problem with these questions is their framing. That framing is an assumption that these questions have definitive answers, answers which are somehow already "out there", merely waiting for us to find them, or, perhaps, waiting to be "revealed" to us.

Those questions certainly resonate with the human psyche, but only I think because humans are so much in the bad habit of not challenging the unspoken assumptions that typically lurk behind those questions.

[rug]

11. It has more to do with the nature of the questions than their age.

The problem with Harris', and your, statement is not an assumption that the questions can be answered but that the questions themselves are false (although "truth" is nowhere defined).

Whatever you think of the questions, they are certainly not "false". Indeed, they raise other, as valid, questions. Such as, does life itself have meaniing, what end must a purpose serve, etc.

What cripples his writings is his unspoken defensiveness and vigilance against religion and theology, as he stands, coiled, awaiting vestment-laden assumptions to leap out of the dark.

[Silent3]

25. I wouldn't use the word "false" myself, but I understand what he's getting at.

A lot of people ask such questions as if there must be an answer, some people needing answers so much they'll accept dogmatic religious answers as the answers, and then ignore, tune out, brush aside, be blissfully unaware of, or deem themselves unworthy to ask the inevitable next questions any such answers lead to.

If you take those questions as an invitation to explore the meaning of the questions themselves, however, that's another thing entirely, and not something I'd write of as "false". I don't think Harris would either, but if he would, then there I'd have a disagreement with him.

[Deep13]

12. And they are meaningless.

And they assume what they are asking about. Meaning and purpose imply intentionality. Only knowing beings can do that so the questions imply that someone (rather than some thing) is directing everything.

[rug]

15. Therefore, life is meaningless.

Is that your conclusion?

If not, you're still asking the question.

[Deep13]

16. Guess so. If it's true, not liking it is not contrary evidence.

Life is meaningless because it is not a coded message that has to be deciphered. Words have meaning. Test results have meaning. Symbols have meaning. Life is experiential and has pleasure, pain, joy, loss and all that stuff, but no ultimate meaning. We are in the final analysis a peculiar, complex chemical process that exists on this planet and probably others like it. Nature thoughtlessly evolved us into being and will eventually wipe us out just as thoughtlessly. As for purpose, we are if not the only, then one of the few purposeful creatures on this world, so any purpose for life must come from us.

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? ***"

Hamlet II:2

[rug]

19. There's Macbeth.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Act 5, scene 5

And then there's Hamlet again.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Act 1, scene 5

[Deep13]

24. MacBeth takes a far dimmer view of things than I think reality warrants.

The real cause for wonder is that we are here at all.

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." --Darwin

And I have never doubted that there is more to the universe than I know. I would be pretty foolish to suggest otherwise. But there's the rub (borrowing from Hamlet again), it's not the skeptics who claim it otherwise. It's the theologians who claim to have all the answers. As a skeptic, all I say is that we cannot assume that the wishful thinking of our primate minds has any bearing on how things actually are unless evidence is available to support the idea. Just because humanity is fixated on this idea of divinity, does not mean the universe must accommodate that evolutionary quirk in our thinking by making it true. Even modern ideas of god are really anthropomorphic if you think about it. Discarding the old man with a beard idea that no one takes seriously anyway, one is left with an immaterial being that nonetheless possesses the human traits of thought, compassion, freedom of action, purposefulness--and if one believes the conservatives--anger and vengeance. It seems Genesis has it backward. We all create god in our own image (to quote the Decker character in Star Trek the Motion Picture.)

[Jim__]

3. “Gravity is God’s way of dragging people to hell ..."

... What if I told her, “Gravity is God’s way of dragging people to hell, where they burn in fire. And you will burn there forever if you doubt that God exists”? No Christian or Muslim can offer a compelling reason why I shouldn’t say such a thing—or something morally equivalent—and yet this would be nothing less than the emotional and intellectual abuse of a child. ...

Does either Christianity or Islam teach that gravity is God's way of dragging people to hell? If not, wouldn't that be a compelling reason why you shouldn't say such a thing?

[Goblinmonger]

4. You miss his point.

Take gravity out of his description:

"people (go) to hell, where they burn in fire. And you will burn there forever if you doubt that God exists”

That IS what Christians teach in large part. So his adding of gravity to make a point somehow makes it worse?

[Jim__]

5. Why should I take it out? Why did he put it in?

And if neither Christianity nor Islam teaches that, then his claim is just plain wrong. Why did he feel it necessary to make an incorrect claim?

[Goblinmonger]

21. He put it in to make a figurative point.

It is just as ridiculous to tell children with or without the gravity. That's the point he's making. If you turn around and look on the wall behind you, you might just see it splattered there.

[pokerfan]

6. I believe

that what he's getting at is that one non-scientific (mythological) explanation is about as useful as another.

[Jim__]

7. Then he should try to come up with an example that makes sense.

His claim that No Christian or Muslim can offer a compelling reason why I shouldn’t say such a thing is just plain nonsense.

[pokerfan]

9. whooosh

Google hyperbole.

[Goblinmonger]

20. whooosh is an understatement.

Damn.

[Deep13]

14. It actually is an explanation consistent with both.

If hell is down as people so believed for centuries, then gravity is as good of a way to get there as anything else.

[struggle4progress]

10. The superficiality of such analyses always astounds me. The 9/11 attacks aimed at

the WTC, the Pentagon, and perhaps some political target in DC, such as the White House or Capitol -- that is, the attacks aimed at well-known symbols of US economic, military, and political power. This choice of targets is probably informative about motives

Moreover, the hijackers seem to have been predominately Saudi. In combination, these facts (the choice of symbols of US power as targets, and the Saudi backgrounds of the hijackers) suggest that any useful thinking about the psychology of the planners and hijackers should probably begin with an examination of anti-US resentments among certain sectors of the Saudi population

Saudi Arabia is a country with a culture quite different from that of the US. It is an authoritarian monarchy, ruled by a very small but enormously wealthy elite, which has consolidated its political power by embracing its reactionary traditionalists. The justice system is rather arbitrary, there being no written penal code; medieval-style punishments continue; conservative attitudes towards women are enforced by law ... And modern industrial states in the rest of the world, needing Saudi oil, have cooperated to maintain the Saudi status quo

People outside the small elite core are locked outside the power structure and may be well aware of the uncertainty of their position and the arbitrary powers that can be brought against them. One should then ask: What intellectual tools do those, outside the elite core, possess to analyze their actual situation and discontents? And what cultural motifs will color their analyses?

Harris believes we can become sane by some purely intellectual process, by correcting our own ideologies. But human thinking is a product of circumstance and concrete activity: we cannot ourselves become saner without confronting our circumstances and activities, nor can we expect to understand the deranged thinking of others without first penetrating into their circumstances

[Deep13]

13. I only partly agree.

While what you say is true, it is religion that supports the Saud family's control of the country and it was religion that convinced the hijackers to do what they did. In a case like Saudi Arabia or a lot of other places where nationalist identity has been usurped by strong-man dictators, religion becomes the default cultural identifier. I wonder if such people might be turning their energy toward the real cause of their suffering instead of sublimating it to religious objectives.

[onager]

18. Religion has frequently bitten them in the ass, too.

Right from the very start. They should know bet...oh, never mind...

1920-1930: After years of trying and being defeated...and being sheltered between defeats by Wahhabi fundamentalists in Kuwait...King Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud finally conquers Arabia.

He does so with the help of the Ikhwan, a well-armed military unit of religious fanatics. With Saud's final victory in 1926, the Ikhwan decide Saud isn't religiously pure enough. They openly criticize the King and eventually start a civil/religious war. By 1930 the Ikhwan are finally crushed.

1965: Saudi Arabia's first TV station goes on the air! Fundamentalists immediately denounce it as "blasphemous," since it will broadcast images of real humans.

Some of those Saudi fundies are in the army. One army unit attacks and takes over the TV station. They are led by a Captain who happens to be the nephew of the current Saudi king, Faisal.

Faisal declares that "no one is above the law." His nephew is killed when loyal troops re-take the TV station.

1975: a drug-and-sex addled Saudi playboy gets religion. Serious, fundamentalist Wahhabi religion. He also happens to be a nephew of King Faisal...and brother of the Captain who took over the TV station ten years earlier. He assassinates King Faisal.

1979: at the height of the hajj (pilgrimage) season, the Grand Mosque in Mecca is seized by radical Islamic dissidents. They believe their leader is the Mahdi, the final redeemer of Islam.

French and Pakistani troops finally re-take the Grand Mosque after 2 weeks, a process that kills several hundred people. According to some sources, one of the zealots who helped seize the Grand Mosque was a fellow named Mahrous bin Laden...who survived the siege but never became as famous as his half-brother, Osama.

[struggle4progress]

22. What are the mechanisms of social control in Saudi Arabia, and what effect do those

mechanisms have on Saudis?

The female half of the population has essentially no rights at all. The political rights of the rest depend essentially on personal connections. Without a definite penal code, everyone is at the mercy of the politically powerful. There's no tradition of open government and little tolerance of dissent. The substantial oil wealth is controlled by a small fraction of the population, which gives that fraction enormous power and the ability to buy off opposition

One can, of course, notice a particular religious ideology in the country, but the Saudi royalty made a choice to support that particular ideology as part-and-parcel of its method of social control

[Deep13]

23. Yes, pretty much. nt

[onager]

26. I'm not sure I even know where to start.

Social control? Maybe I should start with the organization everyone's heard of - "The Committee for the Propagation of Virute and the Suppression of Vice." Also known as the matowa, or Religious Police.

In Saudi Arabia, they're in the phone book. EVERY phone book. Judging by the phone book in Jeddah, where I lived, they have branch offices in almost every neighborhood.

People are encouraged to rat on their neighbors for un-Islamic behavior. And sometimes financially rewarded for doing so.

It Takes A Thief Dept. - the Saudi Interior Minister got curious once about who joined the Religious Police. So he commissioned a study. Turned out that a huge number of the R.P. were ex-convicts, who had been released from prison early because they memorized the Koran.

The political rights of the rest depend essentially on personal connections. Pretty much true. Theoretically, IIRC any citizen can appear before the King at his official council meeting and lodge a complaint. I suspect that doesn't happen very often.

Nowadays their financial rights depend on connections, too. The Saudi royal family has bred an amazing number of princes, and just about every one of them fancies himself a businessman.

So if a prince takes a shine to your restaurant, store, or piece of property, you're going to get an offer you can't refuse. From what I'm reading, that situation is creating a massive amount of resentment among the non-royal Saudis.

The female half of the population has essentially no rights at all. - Definitely true. Females are "protected" (their term) in that society to an incredible degree.

In Egypt I often saw women sitting at sidewalk cafes, surrounded by men and smoking shisha (water pipes). Any woman who tried that in The Magic Kingdom would be arrested immediately. At least.

Right after the First Iraq War, with all the Foreign Infidels and press still around, a small group of Saudi women decided to protest the driving ban.

They did that by driving themselves to the mosques for Friday services. (Apparently many Saudi women can drive - they're just not allowed to.)

One of the protesting drivers was a Saudi princess. The story was front-page news in the local paper for one day. The next day, there was an editorial saying "public protests are not the Islamic way," or some such BS. I never did find out what happened to those women, and I often wondered.

That was another huge contrast with Egypt. Where I often saw women swathed in 8th-century religious garb, driving their own cars and yakking on their cell phones. (Yes, simultaneously.) I never saw a woman trying to drive with her face covered. But in Alexandria, I often saw them trying to swim in the sea, weighted down with about fifty pounds of wet black cloth.

OTOH...right here at DU, someone once claimed that Islamic countries had solved their problems with alcoholism and prostitution. Definitely not true. Everyone in Jeddah knew where to buy alcohol, and where to find prostitutes.