[des]

This is a very interesting book (mostly), that it, a one might say, anti-theistic polemic.
He says the following things: faith in anything not substantiated by factual information
is harmful and leads to violence and other bad things; that Christianity and Islam
are particularly violent and harmful; that the only hope for humanity is to give
up ancient beliefs and become rational nontheistic people.

He argues for a spirituality centered in experimenting with consciousness, much as
the nondoctrinal parts of Buddhism do. Actually I would say he may be a Buddhist,
but certainly not one who takes on any of the more Shintoistic (or the Tibetan
style of Buddhism) aspects of Buddhism.

He also believes that moderate religious people are dishonest (you have to be
a fundamentalist to be honest, but then you are almost psychotically dangerous :-)), but the worst
part of moderates is that they are too tolerant of the more whacky ideas fo their
fundamentalist neighbors. I thought that might be the most interesting aspect of the book.

There are many problems with his discussion. ONe thing I have not seen anywhere is
that I feel he is inappropriately and gratiutiously violent in his descriptions. It isn't enough
for him to say people were burned at the stake, but he needs to tell us how it was done.
Perhaps that was to make it real. A better approach might have been to give an individual
case, as I have heard done.

He has very little knowledge of anythign other than fundamentalist religion. He has
not read any Bible scholarship for instance. So his arguments about anything beyond
fundamentalism (and perhaps even that) are simplistic. One example would be
his arguing away any metaphorical reading of any part of the Bible by using a shrimp
recipe. And saying cubing the shrimp stands for this and that. Cute but silly.
His argument of taking something to the extreme, losing the point. Nobody, for
instance, would read the story of Job and get out of it something that was not
even related to the story but some kind of Freudian deliberation. I mean no one
serious. Isn't it the question of what happens when bad things happen to good people?
That's serious, and totally related to the story.

I think he is just totally unaware there is Bible scholarship at all, which troubles
me when he is interested in so much else.

Another is that he does not address any area that might complicate his ideas.
For instance the whole of modern cosmology is very interesting from a theological
standpoint. How come things happened so "just right"?? The universe wasn't too
hot or too cold (by fractions of a degree)-- that sort of thing. Is that just coincidence?
If so it was coincidence after coincindence after coincidence, as someone much
wiser than me said. (?) It is hard to believe that this guy with a mental capacity that
he seems to have and curiosity wouldn't know about this stuff, so I think he chooses
to omit it, since it doesn't jive with his ideas.

Anyway I think people should read his book because he has a lot of very interesting
thigns to say, but he is wrong on some of them. The one of them that has me thinking
most is the "conversational intolerance bit". Look at what has happened to us being
tolerant of it? A world where the president is waging war based on almost
thinking he is sent by God, and not cleaning up the global warming, etc. (not
necessarily from the president but major players who think we are in end times
anyway).


--des

[JosephM]

des, on Oct 23 2006, 12:07 AM, said:

This is a very interesting book (mostly), that it, a one might say, anti-theistic polemic.
He says the following things: faith in anything not substantiated by factual information
is harmful and leads to violence and other bad things; that Christianity and Islam
are particularly violent and harmful; that the only hope for humanity is to give
up ancient beliefs and become rational nontheistic people.

--des

Hi des,

That is quite a statement and conclusion. It seems to me obvious that he is not intimately familiar with theistic religions except in a general fundamental sense. Faith in Love is neither harmful or violent if defined correctly and factual information that he speaks of is actually perceptual information. Even Buddhism does much to show us that what we think is factual is just a colored perception and that true knowledge is obtained by transcending the mind rather than allowing it to determine what is fact and what is not. The mind is incaple of this. Just some thoughts to consider.

Love in Christ,
JM

[des]

I think there are many limitations to Sam Harris' thinking, even though I thought his book
was thought provoking. Obviously if religions practiced the love they professed to, this world
would be a MUCH better place. Alas that is not always so, as the events that Mr. Harris
described did happen/are happening all over the world.


Mr. Harris is quick to write off things done good in the name of religion, saying something
to the effect that good can come without religion. (I would agree there). But I think
he misses (or choses to miss) momentously good things done thru the whole of
organized religion, that would be hard to do otherwise. I think he carefully
selects these things, and doesn't deal with things he doesn't wish to mention, like the civil rights
movement or much fo the movement against apartheid, or slavery a century before.

Also one other logical error he makes is that any time a nonreligious (secular) event atrocity is
committed, that isn't secularisms fault, but the fact that sometimes religions are created
without God. For instance, communism would be a "religion", in his view. Then the fault
still is religion not secularism. I think this is a mistake. I think it is just another example
of absolute power corrupting absolutely. Of course, communism did take on irrational beliefs,
however, there could have been a purer communism that did not take these on. The problem
is not a sort of secular religion, imo. Of course, it may be that things that seem to be
on opposite ends of the extremes end up close together. I think it happens a lot.

There are lots of logical holes if you poke around awhile. But I think in this age of
fundamentalism, what Sam Harris does is quite brave. I'm sure he gets hate mail, and
if someone threatened to bomb him, I wouldn't be surprised.

He's written another "book", sort of his answer to the Paul's letters-- A Letter to
a Christian Nation". Haven't read that.


--des