Ytlaya posted:

I think part of the reason people assume many of those "critical of Islam" are racists is that, when they criticize Islam, there's an implication of "and we should do something about it" (because otherwise there's no point to so persistently attempting to force a discussion about it). But there isn't really anything that you can "do about it" that isn't horrifically hosed up and racist in practice.

computer parts posted:

New Atheism started as a "no gently caress you dad" movement by white libertarians but has devolved into generic anti-Islam screeds.

computer parts posted:

Crowsbeak posted:

Probably the easiest way is to advocate for nuking people for not believing what you do under the pretense of a pre emptive strike. Sam Harris has always been a blood thirsty psychopath to me.

computer parts posted:

So you admit atheism historically has significant influence from Libertarians.

Now what you need to prove is that New Atheism is divorced from those influences. And no, saying "all my atheist friends say they're progressive" doesn't count.

Crowsbeak posted:

One it shows his rather simplistic understanding of Muslims, and the fact he thinks he would need to do that to deter Muslims is quite frightening. Maybe it is indeed you profile all people of a religion, who think its fine who lacks perspective and maybe you need to learn some basic human compassion and not rush to prophets of "reason who think its reasonable to align with fascists, and advocates preventing a people from being able to build centers of worship. Also taking someone at their word is not creating a man of straw.

Crowsbeak posted:

You know one dose not need atheism to be against anti gazers and yec types.

Who What Now posted:

I asked the same thing and I'm really curious whether he backpedals or doubles down.

Rakosi posted:

Nope, but on that same token would you not warn a female friend or family member that it's unsafe to go by certain places when its dark? Your comparison is dumb and is normal DnD chaff. One person says something, very clearly, with a particular narrow area of applicability and then posters start trying to generalize it over other stuff in order to try shut it down.

Who What Now posted:

In what context is it ok to victim blame?

my dad posted:

Do you guys even know what the fancy words you keep using mean?


I kinda feel bad for atheists in academia, like my brother, for ending up having to make an effort to distance themselves from cargo cultists of science like you, just because you happen to use the same word to describe an aspect of yourselves despite having almost no similarities otherwise.

WampaLord posted:

It was a monstrous thing to say. To claim that the Jews were in any way responsible for their own slaughter (even if he's couching it in terms of "they isolated themselves" which is also bullshit) makes him not worth listening to in any way in my opinion. Of course, I am biased, being Jewish.

Rakosi posted:

That is a terrible synopsis. He actually does have a better wording, elsewhere, of the crux of his argument, though:

Morality is not reserved, as a domain of discourse, to religion. Imagine the worst possible world, where every person suffers the most that they can, for the longest that they can. And then imagine the opposite, where everyone enjoys the most amount of peace and joy for the longest that they can. Between these two idealized poles of human flourishing, there are scientifically verifiable decisions that humans can make, as a society, to move the peg in one direction or the other. Thus morality is scientific (IE, measured), not religious.

Woozy posted:

You're doing the same thing he is, which is utterly failing to understand the actual enormity of the is-ought gap. The question isn't merely difficult, its non-sensical. Your best and worst possible worlds are populated by value judgments about this one. It's not enough even for a genuinely universal moral claim (vague bullshit about S U F F E R I N G which reminder some people don't actually think morality is reducible to whatever best enables orgiastic hedonism), the claim has to be empirically verifiable, as in literal evil particles vanishing at the righteousness of scientific truth. Harris doesn't even bother attempting this, of course, because surprise! The audience of a TED talk doesn't actually ever disagree about anything so all you have to do is say the words "female circumcision" and bloop they're all moral realists.

Woozy posted:

You should absolutely quit your job as a philosopher because "greater human happiness" is no more an objective or empirical moral goal than "everything should suffer and bleed all the time".

Woozy posted:

Oh please lol. He goes to some lengths to mention it while never once showing any indication that he understands why its a problem. Is the argument here really "it's unfair to hold us to a high standard of proof for outrageous claims?" Look its one thing to think you'll just get away with reducing the entire normative world to questions about ~suffering~, but your very next move can only be to fart and shrug at questions of how to populate the world of the suffering without the benefit of subjectivity. I mean presumably it just doesn't strike you as controversial when Harris breaks out the highlight reel of Muslim crimes against humanity to constitute the meaning of suffering because you agree with him. What options are available to those who don't already think like he does? This is the sort of dispute anything called science would ordinarily have some power to arbitrate.

Who What Now posted:

So? Scientifically prove those matter.

Woozy posted:

There is a way to evaluate the effectiveness of a given policing system and its called subjectivity you thick gently caress. You're acting like capital-T Truth is the only arbiter of right and wrong which is completely backwards. Scientific truth has absolutely nothing to say about the question, because the universe doesn't given one tiny gently caress about your "dead bodies" or whatever. The first thing to do when we're talking about right and wrong is to decide what we want for ourselves and to admit that this is a value judgment.

Literally The Worst posted:

the best way to talk about general trends: start with an incredibly specific example from an incredibly small sample group


god there's osmething funny about you having a martyr complex

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

1) Are any of our religions true? While this can most certainly be a fruitful area of discourse, for our purposes I think we will just assume the answer is "no" and move on. Feel free to address this if you think there is something of vital importance to be said, however.

2) Are our religions doing harm, or more precisely, doing more harm than good? This, I feel, will comprise the lion's share of our discussion in this thread, though perhaps not enough to eclipse the other questions entirely. I think it is beyond debate that our religions do both harm and good in various situations, and determining which side has the higher score can be incredibly difficult, especially given that there are other factors, like poverty or political instability, which may or may not play a role in the obvious examples of seemingly religiously inspired violence. It is also hard to determine how heavily the religious precepts themselves weigh in on these sorts of occurrences, and claims run the gamut from "they are the only factor" to "they aren't a factor at all". Further compounding the problem is how varied our religions are in their prescriptions. "Religion" is a word like "drug": are we talking about Tylenol or crack cocaine here? If the side arguing that religion is vitiating our society is thinking "radical Islam" and the side arguing for religion's benignity is thinking "Episcopalian", we will inevitably talk past each other. Let's strive to be specific here.

3) If the answer to question 2 is yes, religion is, on balance, doing more harm than good, then what is our best strategy in opposing it? Here, I feel, is where the dispute over tone comes into play: even those who agree with a Dawkins or a Hitchens than religion is poisonous will object to how rude or crass they can be when espousing their views. They will say: we need to be nicer to win them over. But do we? Was Martin Luther King or Malcom X more effective in their approaches to end racism? And tone aside, how active do atheists need to be? Do we take an uncompromising approach, or do we make common cause with religious moderates to oppose extremism before dealing with "religion" more broadly? If extremism is eradicated, will there even be any need to oppose the softer flavors of religion? Or is none of that necessary; can we just sit back and wait for a sea change to happen without our input? What does the victory condition look like?