tpaine posted:aerdil posted:i read letter to a christian nation like twelve years ago when i went through a short atheist phrase of reading hitchens and other toxic shit and it was definitely the sam harris book that ended it. even in that cloud of teenage atheism it was clear he was full of shit.
this atheist author is full of shit. better become religious again
im still an atheist but not particularly passionate about it along the lines of strident annoying atheists proclaiming Did You Know Religion Caused All The Wars In THe World? i find theology more interesting now tbh despite not believing any of it
tpaine posted:shriekingviolet posted:you can leave behind religious identity and also choose not to align yourself with the new atheists, it's not a fixed binary???
he said "short atheist phase"
"a short atheist phase of reading hitchens and other toxic shit"
Taking a look at the things which consider themselves followers of Sam, odd specimens as you can imagine
https://m.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/558lkg/sam_harris_is_a_fraud_article/?utm_source=mweb_redirect&compact=true
E: bah!
bumpthread posted:Harris managed to contact Noam Chomsky and challenge him to a debate. His sparring with even as mediocre a person as Chomsky demonstrates just how much of a poser Harris is.
Is Chomsky really mediocre? He's not a Leninist but his work is exceptionally thorough.
here, go hog wild
http://www.rhizzone.net/forum/search/?action=search&keywords=chomsky&author=&forum=0&search_in=topic&sort_by=0&sort_dir=ASC&show_as=topics&search=Submit
bumpthread posted:Is Chomsky really mediocre? He's not a Leninist but his work is exceptionally thorough.
quoted for ban
stegosaurus posted:this article got posted on reddit twice and is doing huge #numbers. we got 11k visitors last month total, today and yesterday combined are already at nearly 6k. thats a lot of fbi agents.
sick
Gibbonstrength posted:i love numbers
i prefer deuteronomy
1. not defending soviet russia
2. making fun of pomo gibberish
Gibbonstrength posted:when I was a teen liberal I was obsessed with atheism in a really crude form and so was my whole family. I would've lapped Sam Harris up then. and I suppose I hate to think of all the kids reading this guys stuff soaking it up and becoming little proto Nazis, having their narcissism lacquered on by this spoiled brats smug racist trash writing.
10 years ago sam harris was one of my idols but then i discovered LF and my sins were forgiven
"Harris’ team also discarded data that did not suit their desired results: 7 out of 40 participants were not included in the results"
differs from your statement here:
"Where was this clear-headedness when you were watching Sam cut half the participants from the study based on a gut feeling?"
tpaine posted:i'm going to make a parody thread called Sam Harris Is A Friend because apparently a lot of you were too weak minded that you couldn't sniff out the falsity of religion on your own and had to be led to it by an angsty fraud who probably weighs 350 pounds and is hundreds of years old
Maybe you should just admit that God is real and surrender yourself to God
Edited by swampman ()
tpaine posted:i'm going to make a parody thread called Sam Harris Is A Friend because apparently a lot of you were too weak minded that you couldn't sniff out the falsity of religion on your own and had to be led to it by an angsty fraud who probably weighs 350 pounds and is hundreds of years old
im not sure how much of the audience for people like harris/dawkins et al were ever strongly religious, probably a lot were already atheists or had started doubting long before they ever watched a New Atheist vid. i think the appeal is largely affirmation for people who see themselves as similarly rational and need an explanatory framework for why the world is so irrational. fundamentalists are violent and crazy, just like bankers are conniving and greedy. this critique ignores material conditions - "The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo" - New Atheists never seem to go beyond this embryo and very conveniently funnel a lot of energy into criticism which plays directly into the goals of empire in that islam is portrayed as uniquely aggressive.
Synergy posted:btw, your article is really good Gibbonstrength, one nitpick though
"Harris’ team also discarded data that did not suit their desired results: 7 out of 40 participants were not included in the results"
differs from your statement here:
"Where was this clear-headedness when you were watching Sam cut half the participants from the study based on a gut feeling?"
From memory 7 excluded due to being of uncertain allegiance, a few more dropped because of inconsistent responses, so it's an exaggeration but I think he ended up with mid 20s participants
Makeshift_Swahili posted:tpaine posted:i'm going to make a parody thread called Sam Harris Is A Friend because apparently a lot of you were too weak minded that you couldn't sniff out the falsity of religion on your own and had to be led to it by an angsty fraud who probably weighs 350 pounds and is hundreds of years old
im not sure how much of the audience for people like harris/dawkins et al were ever strongly religious, probably a lot were already atheists or had started doubting long before they ever watched a New Atheist vid. i think the appeal is largely affirmation for people who see themselves as similarly rational and need an explanatory framework for why the world is so irrational. fundamentalists are violent and crazy, just like bankers are conniving and greedy. this critique ignores material conditions - "The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo" - New Atheists never seem to go beyond this embryo and very conveniently funnel a lot of energy into criticism which plays directly into the goals of empire in that islam is portrayed as uniquely aggressive.
Personally I think that the motive is narcissism, it's a label to make into a projected identity. They lash out so harshly when that image is attacked (see the reddit thread) because that's the core feature of narcissism - I'd rather die than lose my chosen identity. I'm an athiest, a rational and secular person, that's what they have instead of a real human identity. I'm going to talk about this at length probably in part 3, the link between petit bourgeois panic about identity, fascism, and narcissism.
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tpaine posted:i'm going to make a parody thread called Sam Harris Is A Friend because apparently I was so weak minded that I couldn't spell out the falsity of religion on my own and had to repeatedly cite an angsty fraud for my book's 350 pounds of footnotes
harris is a friend of mine
The gamechange was more around the time of the American constitution, that you can still have your practices and such but you agree to reign in your will-to-power and so we can have a large society without (much) infighting and civil war. In an ironic twist, Harris is seeking out simple answers in order to benefit himself and his faction in much the same way that the religious people and campus radicals he criticizes do.