Posted on 11/25/2015 5:34:19 PM PST by Faith Presses On
Full title: Sam Harris talks Islam, ISIS, atheism, GOP madness: "We are confronting people, in dozens of countries, who despise more or less everything that we value"
...We were particularly interested in Harris's liberal critique of the American Left, which he says has failed to talk honestly about the origins and consequences of Islamic extremism. This conversation took place before the recent attacks in Paris, but many of these themes have been widely debated since then.
(snip)
Yes, politics and ordinary grievances enter into many of these recent conflicts. It isn't difficult to see why a person who has lost his or her family in an errant drone strike might hate America, and there is no question that a desire for revenge transcends religion or culture. But the truth is that a sincere belief in the metaphysics of martyrdom can turn an ordinary person into a dangerous religious maniac. And only Islam preaches this doctrine as one of its central tenets...
(snip)
...If you believe that the historical Jesus was born of a virgin, resurrected, and will be coming back to Earth, you are a Christian. Indeed, it would controversial is to call oneself a Christian without believing these things. But each of these claims rests on terrible evidence and stands in contradiction to most of what we now know about the world. The odds are overwhelming that Jesus was neither born of a virgin, nor resurrected...
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
“what we now know about the world...” Is he saying that 1st century Jews didn’t know how babies were made? And that people when they die stay dead absent a miracle? Lots of evidence out there given that it all happened two thousand years ago.
“The reality is that the Israelis, for all their faults, have been more restrained in their use of force than the U.S. has—if for no other reason than that they are more vulnerable to world opinion. Every Palestinian child the IDF kills inches Israel ever closer to the brink of exile from the community of nations. Thus, when four children are blown up on a beach in Gaza by an Israeli missile, one thing should be absolutely clear: The missile went astray...The Israelis currently have the power to kill as many Palestinian children as they want. The fact that they kill so few, amid circumstances that have all the hallmarks of “collateral damage,†tells us something about them. The fact that the Taliban enters a school in Peshawar and methodically butchers 132 kids, after forcing them to watch their teacher being burned alive, tells us something about them.
“The regressive Left is blind to these distinctions...
“e are better than our enemies. And the horror is that even such a simple statement of moral fact will be derided as wartime propaganda by many of our readers. Indeed, many will think that even using a term like “enemy†in this (or any) context is a kind of jingoistic outburst. These people take civilization for granted—which is a luxury we can’t always afford. As impossible as it may be to believe, many of our readers think that we are worse than the jihadists. I am long past imagining that there is anything I can say to rectify this sort of moral confusion...”
Post #3 is includes a few more excerpts from Harris on the Western secular left and Islam.
I believe he knows he is talking to a secular humanist audience that doesn’t believe in God, and so in miracles, either, and his point is that a couple thousands of years ago, the lack of knowledge about the physical laws of the universe made belief in God and miracles acceptable, while now, to “right-thinking,” “rational” people, that’s no longer the case.
I don’t share a lot of this guy’s views, but he does open up some interesting points to ponder. Unwittingly he hones my grasp of Islam in the negative. Sounds like he isn’t totally against that, but I haven’t read the entire article either.
He’s quick to point out the U. S. is impure, taking a whack at Judaeo Christian ethics in the process.
I think it is worth the read and I made a PDF of it. I’ll be viewing it later. It’s nine pages cleaned and polished.
Folks should read the article for more than the meat and potatoes. Yes he states his views and gets his point across (meat and bones), but there is more than that to this interview.
Look at the respect the interviewer extends to him. If this were a Christian Republican, the guest wouldn’t get three sentences out before the host would be chopping him to little pieces. Of course, in that instance, the public would need to be protected. They shouldn’t be expected to know what to do with the information being presented.
(Interview was done by eMail so the comment about interrupting should be taken in that context. Missing is massive push-back, what would happen if this guy were one of us. Christian/Conservative)
However if the information is atheistic, Leftist, anti the American culture, folks can interpret that just fine. No need to clarify anything.
So what you get here is a decent old-fashioned interview.
Harris is allowed to state his beliefs, and the public is allowed to review them and evaluate on their own.
Contrast this with just about any interview with Curz, Trump, or other decent Republicans.
The interview is worth reading, even if only to see what a real interview looks like.
You draw a guy out, and let him impress or hang himself.
What a novel concept. (not)
Excellent article. Thanks for posting.
It’s interesting to me that folks seem to think modern man is so much more intelligent.
I’m pretty sure people breeding cattle know how babies are made.
Mary was not with a man. Duh! They didn’t know that was how babies were made? LOL
Intellectual people can be so unintentionally funny sometimes.
We are impure certainly. Guilty of some prejudice and capable of ethnic hatred certainly. At least, I certainly am. However, I doubt I’m able to behave as the the Taliban who enters a school in Peshawar and methodically butchers 132 kids, after forcing them to watch their teacher being burned alive. Such behavior is simply inhuman.
Liberal atheists still fail to understand that the country where they live, the U.S., is the greatest country in the world because of white, Christian males.
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