Sam Harris hate thread

fam, i do not intend to sound like an arrogant prick, but even calling him a philosopher is really pushing it.

Here's some fun facts about Sam Harris:

1. Since getting his PhD, he has conducted no scientific research.
2. Since getting his PhD, he has taught no university/college courses in neuroscience.
3. Since getting his PhD, he has devoted his efforts to his anti-religious think tank and publishing books, such as the one on using drugs and meditation to discover truths about our reality.
4. He received his PhD through partial funding from his own atheist organization.
5. He didn’t do any of the experiments for his own thesis work.
6. His PhD thesis was about how science can determine what is right and wrong and he turned it into a book for sale.
7. Since publishing his thesis/book, Harris has yet to use science to resolve a single moral dispute.

that guy is a right-winger and religious (always casting doubt on studies that portray religion unfavorably). also a climate change skeptic.

im sure harris' work is shit, but i wouldn't be surprised if someone like briggs was politically motivated to trash it.

I don't have to agree with the guy's political views to know when he's right about something else.

this is part that i don't get. Isn't he supposed to be an analytic? so why does he borrow shit from eastern thought (not the drug part)?

also, that image seems ambiguous, can you elaborate on its meaning?

ok but he literally shits on every study/argument against religion

salon.com/2015/05/07/scoring_the_noam_chomskysam_harris_debate_how_the_professor_knocked_out_the_atheist/

sauce

The only thing really needs to be said is that he is a slightly more literate version of a Holla Forums poster circa 2008.

The Chomsky exchange is autism: the thread.

I quite like him. The only ones that hate him are fucking liberals.

as a liberal i have to agree. im surprised lefty POLITICALLY INCORRECT feels the need to constantly shit on a guy known for being politically incorrect about islam. he's not even right wing.

He is a liberal. Are you retarded?

wtf, did you even read the thread, you newfag?
Who the fuck is hating him for his views on Islam? Nobody gives a shit about that. Zizek hates him too, but even he "strongly" agrees with him on the Islam stuff. Not to suggest I dislike Harris because the sniff man does though.

Also, he is a rightist, like all liberals are

then what do you give a shit about? he isn't known for his amateurish philosophy.

pc libs hate him

He's right about all those things.
Deal with it.

You are sorely mistaken. He's known for his atheism, his neoconservative political positions, and his amateurish "philosophy". Most of his published works are in the domain of philosophy. You are simply wrong about this.

zizek's views on islam are a bit more nuanced than harris. You should read welcome of the desert of the real and iraq the borrowed kettle.

He even advocates for a type of "islamic socialism"

youtube.com/watch?v=ObnBHMzIQ_A

what are his philosophical views even? seriously the only people i ever hear talk about this guy are ass-ravaged muslim apologists like glenn greenwald and reza aslan.

He's talking about his Sam's scientism.
New Atheism is cancer

There are way worse people. What's with the butthurt obsession?

Not a thing tho

good, but he doesn't accept harris's view of islam being the source of all terrorism and war in the MENA reigion

what is scientism even? belief in empiricism? why is that so contentious to a board overwhelmingly secular?

Quote please

In short order: Scientistism and hard determinism.

isn't that the jist of harris' view on islam?

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although I agree, I really think that the social liberals/ social progressives are extremely dangerous. They're the ones who pretend to "leftists", seen as "leftists" by the public. When leftist potential begins boiling, they divert the movement, remove its fangs, tranquilizing it in a way to mean nothing but a politeness

Nah, no if you actually listen to him he pretty much says that. He completely ignores historical events and material conditions. He does blame the Middle Eastern problem on religion. I think I might even recall him blaming India's poverty on religion, but I'd have to check. He's a wishful and lazy thinker. I could say more.

Scientistism is just overemphasizing the value of positive science as if its truths are the only meaningful ones.

Secular philosophers also take issue with it as well. Dennet for example:

Jesus christ

It's just the source of a news story. Probably one of the top sites to come up if you type "Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris" in google. Don't be such a faggot.

Yet harris talks about spiritual experiences with great reverence

Do.

Anyone else here leftist but likes sam harris for unrelated reasons?

So spiritual. Wow.

I can feel the grey matter density shrinking in my head from just reading his incredibly spiritual and intellectually profound reflection on mindfulness.

Yes. This quote is in fact the only time sam harris ever talks about spiritual experience.

i don't have the time to look over every instance of Sam Harris talking about religion. That's a little unreasonable. What I imagine he does though, is refuse to engage with spiritual experiences as such. He probably throws in that it changes cognitive function, intellectual competence, gray matter density, etc. becaus

e he sucks.

I agree

If be interested if you could show me somewhere he doesn't do that. Like maybe to a Christian or Muslim. Or a Buddhist even. Even with meditation it seems he makes a lot of effort to say that Buddhists are basically wrong, but their religious practice is of value from a scientific standpoint.

Just to be clear: I don't mean to say that he should be treating spiritual experiences with great reverence – especially since the guy (as far as I can tell) is a total naturalist.

But if you're saying:

Then I do want to see that because I find it hard to believe and because I want to be corrected if my perception of the guy is off.

Islam may be an ugly religion, but there are vast differences within Islam. Historically, Islam was often no worse than Christianity, and occasionally better. The rise of really pernicious Saudi Wahhabi extremism is quite recent, and of course backed by the United States.

What Harris does is to transform the legitimate and really outstanding political grievances of people in the Middle East who have suffered literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths due to Western meddling, and make it all about Islamic irrationality. This is "they hate us for our freedoms" level bullshit, but geared towards a more outwardly sophisticated audience.

Harris is a fucking phony. There is also something really annoying about the way he pretends to be so collected and balanced, while of course whining about how he is constantly misunderstood.

Fuck him, and fuck his mindless followers.

Glenn Greenwald has made some good criticisms of him. youtube.com/watch?v=cDqYzAvYdQk

Not the guy you're replying to, but I'd like to offer my perspective.

I disagree with the idea that one cannot engage in "spiritual" practices in a purely secular fashion (by 'secular' I mean complemety divorced from religion). Although the claims made are less impressive usually, there's some evidence pointing toward the advantage of meditation practices such as Vipassana in calming the mind.

From my own anecdotal standpoint of practicing forms of Buddhist meditation, I can undoubtedly say it's had a good effect on me.

One of his books, "Waking Up" places great emphasis on his own personal experience of meditation practices; I felt like he was less pushing it from a scientific standpoint, but more of a "come and try it for yourself" standpoint. After all, it's possible for someone to take a scientific approach to some things, and in other areas to take a more suitable approach for betterment, which in this case, Harris thought would be to give people instruction on the practise.

Although I find it quite ironic that Harris still persists with what seems to be hatred and ignorance despite these practices, it's probably not a surprise because he has divorced the practice from Buddhism and taken as how he sees fit (picking and choosing). I can personally say that keeping within a Buddhist framework for my own practices has helped me.

I can't speak as for the scientific side of what he talks about, but his idea of:
goes with my own experience (and mostly what I've heard of other's) of mindfulness meditation. I don't know whether it's a good idea to try and quantify these effects with science as he does. That could be a mistake.

There is also evidence that shows that praying is helpful as well. Harris conveniently ignores that.

Hi Cenk

At least Cenk has charisma, and before TYT went full SJW, they did a lot of great shows. Harris by contrast is positively painful to listen to.

Sam Harris criticizing Wikileaks: youtube.com/watch?v=EdGeBG8Iphg

rhizzone.net/article/2016/09/30/sam-harris-fraud/

So basically Harris is right and this upsets you? I like the start of End of Faith.

well Holla Forums?

The man gets on a radio show to talk about Muslim violence, Israel's right to defend itself, and the need for the United States to invade Iran. Another guest debunks his every point using data from various human rights organizations and other sources. The man later attempts to ruin the other guest's reputation by calling him an anti-Semite and also impact his livelihood by getting him fired from his teaching at a university. Why is it so easy, then, so trivially easy—you-could-almost-bet-your-life-on-it easy—to guess the man's ethnicity?

What if I agree tho?

Careful Holla Forums. That talk will get you nicked over here.

If I am to take this at face value and address it head on, the two are still not comparable. You say that kikes are more liable to play the race card to shut down debate. Fine. I agree. So this excuses muzscum how exactly? Islam is a real fucking issue today. Attacking the few who will call it as it really is is either enemy of my enemy doublethink, or just straight up craven.

What about the part where the young mans family got killed by western influences along with nearly a million of his countryman? Making him seathe with rage, unable to think clearly and just want revenge?

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Harris is not 'calling it as it really is.' He is making the religion of Islam the centerpiece of the problems that the Western world has been having there, which provides cover to the vast crimes perpetrated by the United States and Israel in particular in that region, and the inevitable hatred that many people there would feel towards those countries. Do you think that you can kill hundreds of thousands of people and not have their friends and families hate you? Instead of addressing these problems at their root and acknowledging Western crimes so there can be a basis for reconciliation and peace, people like Harris dehumanize the people there as extremists impervious to reason and motivated only by religious hatred.

Harris, Maher, Hitchens and others like them provide liberal cover to neoconservatism.

Anglo consequential utilitarian scum.

what of it? If we go tit for tat we end up in Constantinople and that gets us nowwhere. So here's another one to consider, answer not necessary.

Why are muslims so easy to provoke? In the 50s the CIA used islamists to agitate against the Shah (though of course left/pol/ will condone this cause muh imperialism). In the 70s, it was islamists to agitate against, and ultimately overthrow the soviets. In Sudan muslims have been carrying out technical genocide for decades. Nigeria, Boko haha. Were they too a response to the west? Why is the response here so different to other places the west has shafted?

IF what you say is true, and there uis a strong case to anwer, then perhaps yes the white man and his western civilisation should be wiped out and ereased from history. But I'd give the world to your most base nigger before I did your most enlightened muslim.

Do you not see the diametric opposition that exists between western values (lets save a few posts here and call these secularism, reason, progress) and Islam, or do you see it and choose not to comment?

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You mean the Constantinople that was wrecked by the 4th Crusaders? Nobody other than some Deus Vult losers has personal investment in the mechanics of power in that part of the world in 1453.

It's not about playing an endless blame game, but acknowledging that wrongs were done instead of dehumanizing people and pretending that their real legal and political grievances aren't the reason why they are fighting you, but only because they are evil.

I don't even know the point of this paragraph.

So it was secularism, reason, and progress that dropped depleted uranium on Fallujah? I seem to remember it being an administration ruled by Israel-first neocons and defense industry stooges with a Christian president supported by a Christian electorate.

If the islamic religion has terrorism in its doctrine, then why are all terrorist acts commited by islamists who are directly influenced by western meddling?

Where are the terrorists from Indonesia, the largest islamic country? Where are the terrorists from India or Bangladesh? Or Albania, Turkey, Morroco, Maldives, Bosnia and dozens of other countries?

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hahahahahahahahahah

Sam Harris fucked Ann Coulter.
no man in his right mind would get a boner for Coulter.
somthing is obviously wrong with him.

anyhow, tbh i don't know enough about him to have a definitive opinion yet.
he seem like the average ant-theist to me

He is, and he's part of the whole fedora group. He calls his opinions "rationalist".

Also, wtf, show me where you get that from!

my fucking sides

dunno man, as long as he doesn't go full blown racialist, i'm ok with the guy.
wanting an ideology gone is rational and logical.
wanting a group of people gone on the false assumption that every single person from X group is inherently bad is however absurd

He's not racialist at all, but he is very neoconservative, pro capitalist etc.

he's a very narrow thinker.
sometimes he comes up with an interesting though but he has an arrogance which makes him believe he understands far more than he does, and that the world should run by his rules.

then he's ok in my book altho we disagree on some stuff.

i have no respect for spooked people.

Wasn't this the faggot who said if he had the choice between living in a world without rape or religion, he would rather live in a world without religion?

I'd actually choose the same thing but for different reasons, the world would be a lot more honest. People like him also couldn't hide behind "muh Islam" with their support for imperialism in the MENA.

Fucking Quakers, amirite?

There is no excuse for it, if that is what you are trying to say. It is never excusable to murder one group of people for the sake of another, when they are not responsible.

Also, it is very telling how these attacks are always by Muslims. To my mind it means the religion must erode basic human morality if its adherents are so disproportionately willing to murder innocent people.

They exist in proportion to the proximity of rival sects of Islam, and Christianity.

Further, if you look at honor killings (and expand your definition of terrorism to include beheading people because they are homosexual, for example) then those countries are rife with it.

Funny how it works exactly the same way.

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