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Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture
by John Gorenfeld, Alternet
First a quick note from Sam Harris about this article (from his mailing list):
Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture
by John Gorenfeld, Alternet
Reposted from:
http://alternet.org/story/46196/
The best-selling author of "The End of Faith" may argue against Christianity, but he is also supportive of phenomena such as reincarnation and ESP, and calls for "compassionately killing" the "Muslim hordes."
Sam Harris's books "The End Of Faith" and "Letter To A Christian Nation" have established him as second only to the British biologist and author Richard Dawkins in the ranks of famous 21st century atheists. The thrust of Harris's best-sellers is that with the world so crazed by religion, it's high time Americans stopped tolerating faith in the Rapture, the Resurrection and anything else not grounded in evidence. Only trouble is, our country's foremost promoter of "reason" is also supportive of ESP, reincarnation and other unscientific concepts. Not all of it is harmless yoga class hokum -- he's also a proponent of waterboarding and other forms of torture.
"We know [torture] works. It has worked. It's just a lie to say that it has never worked," he says. "Accidentally torturing a few innocent people" is no big deal next to bombing them, he continues. Why sweat it?
I wanted to interview Harris to find out why a man sold to the American public as the voice of scientific reason is promoting Hindu gods and mind reading in his writing. But we spend much of our time discussing his call for torture and his Buddhist perspectives on "compassionately killing the bad guy."
In 2004, Sam Harris' award-winning first book said society should demote Christian, Muslim and Jewish belief to an embarrassment that "disgraces anyone who would claim it," in doing so catapulting him from obscure UCLA grad student -- the son of a Quaker father -- to national voice of atheism.
"The End of Faith" may be the first book suitable for the Eastern Philosophy shelf at Barnes & Noble that somehow incorporates both torture and New Age piety, and offers pleas for clear scientific thinking alongside appeals to "mysticism." The old-fashioned brand of atheist, like the late Carl Sagan, argued eloquently against religion without supporting rituals and ghosts.
Harris, however, argues that not just Western gods but philosophers are "dwarfs" next to the Buddhas. And a Harris passage on psychics recommends that curious readers spend time with the study "20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation."
Asked which cases are most suggestive of reincarnation, Harris admits to being won over by accounts of "xenoglossy," in which people abruptly begin speaking languages they don't know. Remember the girl in "The Exorcist"? "When a kid starts speaking Bengali, we have no idea scientifically what's going on," Harris tells me. It's hard to believe what I'm hearing from the man the New York Times hails as atheism's "standard-bearer."
Harris writes: "There seems to be a body of data attesting to the reality of psychic phenomena, much of which have been ignored by mainstream science." On the phone he backpedals away from the claim.
"I've received a little bit of grief for that," he says. "I certainly don't say that I'm confident that psychic phenomena exist. I'm open-minded. I would just like to see the data."
To see the "data" yourself, "The End of Faith" points readers to a slew of paranormal studies.
One is Dr. Ian Stevenson's "Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy." The same author's reincarnation book presents for your consideration the past life of Ravi Shankar, the sitar player who introduced the Beatles to the Maharishi. He was born with a birthmark, it says, right where his past self was knifed to death, aged two.
Making the case for the "20 Cases" researcher, Harris sounds almost like "Chronicles of Narnia" author C.S. Lewis, who said Jesus could only be a liar or the Son of God.
"Either he is a victim of truly elaborate fraud, or something interesting is going on," Harris says. "Most scientists would say this doesn't happen. Most would say that if it does happen, it's a case of fraud. ... It's hard to see why anyone would be perpetrating a fraud -- everyone was made miserable by this [xenoglossy] phenomenon." Pressed, he admits that some of the details might after all be "fishy."
Another book he lists is "The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena." "These are people who have spent a fair amount of time looking at the data," Harris explains. The author, professor Dean Radin of North California's Institute of Noetic Sciences, which is not accredited for scientific peer review, proclaims: "Psi [mind power] has been shown to exist in thousands of experiments."
Harris has spent the past two years doing "full-time infidel" duty, in his words. His second book, "Letter to a Christian Nation," takes the infidel persona and runs with it, lashing back at Christians for their intolerance toward his first book.
In a versatile turn, however, Harris moonlights as inquisitor as well as heretic. Without irony, he switches hats between chapters of "The End of Faith." Chapter 3 finds him complaining that the medieval Church tortured Jews over phony "blood libel" conspiracies. Then in chapter 6, "A Science of Good & Evil," he devotes several pages to upholding the "judicial torture" of Muslims, a practice for which "reasonable men and women" have come out.
Torture then and now: The difference, he tells AlterNet, is that the Inquisition "manufactured" crimes and forced Jews to confess "fictional accomplices."
But if the Iraq War hasn't been about "fictional accomplices," what has? "There's nothing about my writing about torture that should suggest I supported what was going on in Abu Ghraib," says Harris, who supported the invasion but says it has become a "travesty." "We abused people who we know had no intelligence value."
While our soldiers are waging war on Islam in our detention centers, according to Harris, our civilians must evolve past churchgoing to "modern spiritual practice," he writes. "[M]ysticism is a rational enterprise," he writes in his book, arguing it lets spiritualists "uncover genuine facts about the world." And he tells AlterNet there are "social pressures" against research into ESP.
Society is remarkably free, however, in airing justifications for putting Muslims to the thumbscrews. Harris's case for torture is this: since "we" are OK with horrific collateral damage, "we" should have no qualms against waterboarding, the lesser evil. "It's better than death." Better, in other words, than bombing innocents.
Then again, Sam Harris is not devoting his time in the media to call for an end to bombing civilians. Attacking the sacred cow of airstrikes might have been a real heresy, true to his Quaker roots but ensuring himself exile from cable news. Instead the logic he lays out -- that Islam itself is our enemy -- invites the reader to feel comfort at the deaths of its believers. He writes: "Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them."
Playing his part in last year's War Over Christmas, Harris plays it safe with "Letter to a Christian Nation." The book lumbers under a title so heavy, you'd think Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote it from prison. While keeping the Christian Nation on notice that Harris remains disdainful of "wasting time" on Jesus, he now calls for something of an alliance with the Right against Muslim Arabs and the "head-in-the-sand liberals" he denounced in a recent editorial. "Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living," he writes.
Thus praising the hard Right for its "moral clarity" in the War on Terror, Harris reserves much of his wrath for nonfundamentalist Christians, whom he considers enablers of a virgin-birth sham.
Fine, but the alternative to Jesus that Harris recommends in "The End of Faith" is a menu of messiahs. There is Shankara, an avatar of the god Shiva whose water pot could stop floods. There is the first Buddha and his 8th-century successor Padmasambhava. After materializing on a lotus leaf at age 8, Padmasambhava cast a spell that changed his friend into a tiger.
"That is objectively stupider than the doctrine of the virgin birth," Harris says in the interview, however.
Like any religious moderate, he has picked and chosen what he likes from a religion. On the one hand, there's an obligatory swipe in "The End of Faith" against Pakistan and India for threatening to nuke each other over "fanciful" religious disputes. The equal-offender pose doesn't slow Harris from claiming the supremacy of Shankara and other oracles over Europe's entire secular brain trust. For thousands of years, "personal transformation [...] seems to have been thought too much to ask" of Western philosophers, he complains petulantly, as if finding the entire Enlightenment short on self-help tips.
He likes that Buddhism will make you relax. And "dial in various mental states," he says. In the classic case, he says, "you see various lights or see bliss." And like a Scientologist cleric promising you the state of Clear, evicting alien ghosts ruining your life, Harris expresses a faith that his own style of pleasurable mental exploration ushers in good deeds. Meditation, he says, will drive out whatever it is "that leads you to lie to people or be intrinsically selfish."
So it purges your sins? "You become free to notice how everyone else is suffering," he says. Well, some more than others.
We all need our illusions. But doesn't his, a mishmash of Buddhism and "Time-Life Mysteries of The Unknown," weaken his case against Christians? His answer is that Buddhism is a superior product for including the doctrine of "non-dualism," or unity. "The teachings about self-transcending love in Buddhism go on for miles," he says. "There's just a few lines in the Bible." And hundreds in Dostoyevsky and the Confessions of St. Augustine, but never mind: Harris's argument that "belief is action" rests on treating works like the Old Testament not as complex cultural fables but something akin to your TiVo instruction manual.
Though it lapses in skepticism, Harris's work has won a surprising following among nonmystics. Times science writer Natalie Angier felt "vindicated, almost personally understood" reading it, she wrote in a review. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has practically adopted Harris as the American Robin to his Batman in confronting unreason wherever it may lurk in the hearts of men. "The End of Faith" should "replace the Gideon Bible in every hotel room in the land," blurbs Dawkins.
* * *
When that happens, Muslims will check into the Best Western and find a text cheering their torture.
Legendary for his role in the Scopes Monkey Trial, American attorney Clarence Darrow wrote of his admiration for his forbearer Voltaire, the original 18th-century renegade against the church. He thanked Voltaire for dealing superstition a "mortal wound" -- and for an end to torture. "Among the illustrious heroes who have banished this sort of cruelty from the Western world, no other name will stand so high and shine so bright."
And then among those who want to bring it back, there stands Sam Harris.
"They're not talking," Harris is telling me, imagining a torture scenario where the captives clam up, "quite amused at our unwillingness to make them uncomfortable."
No, it's not the sticky (and real) case of Jose Padilla, the detainee who may have been reduced by his treatment to mind mush, possibly ruining his trial. Instead he's sketching out a kind of Steven Seagal action movie scenario in which we lasso Osama or his gang, maybe on the eve of a terror plot. What to do?
"We should say we don't do it," Harris says of torture. "We should say it's reprehensible." And then do it anyway, he says.
So there it is. In Harris's vision of future America, we will pursue "personal transformation" and gaze into our personal "I-we" riddles, while the distant gurgles of Arabs, terrified by the threat of drowning, will drift into our Eastern-influenced sacred space, the government's press releases no more than soothing Zen koans.
Read Sam's summary of these points on his website HERE
Dear Readers —
Some of you may have noticed an article about me that is now running on Alternet.org. The writer, John Gorenfeld, has taken a ninety minute telephone interview, along with selective passages from my books, and made of them a poisonous of mash of misquotation and paraphrasis for the purpose of portraying me as an evil lunatic. While some level of innocent distortion can be expected in print interviews, this case appears genuinely malicious.
You can find Gorenfeld's account of me here. Please feel free to post comments of you own to the site.
If you want to alert the management at Alternet of your displeasure, the contact page can be found here.
As you will see, Gorenfeld distorts my views on torture, spiritual experience, and the paranormal. For the record, I have summarized my views on these subjects on my website.
All the best,
Sam
email: author@samharris.org
web: http://www.samharris.org/
Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture
by John Gorenfeld, Alternet
Reposted from:
http://alternet.org/story/46196/
The best-selling author of "The End of Faith" may argue against Christianity, but he is also supportive of phenomena such as reincarnation and ESP, and calls for "compassionately killing" the "Muslim hordes."
Sam Harris's books "The End Of Faith" and "Letter To A Christian Nation" have established him as second only to the British biologist and author Richard Dawkins in the ranks of famous 21st century atheists. The thrust of Harris's best-sellers is that with the world so crazed by religion, it's high time Americans stopped tolerating faith in the Rapture, the Resurrection and anything else not grounded in evidence. Only trouble is, our country's foremost promoter of "reason" is also supportive of ESP, reincarnation and other unscientific concepts. Not all of it is harmless yoga class hokum -- he's also a proponent of waterboarding and other forms of torture.
"We know [torture] works. It has worked. It's just a lie to say that it has never worked," he says. "Accidentally torturing a few innocent people" is no big deal next to bombing them, he continues. Why sweat it?
I wanted to interview Harris to find out why a man sold to the American public as the voice of scientific reason is promoting Hindu gods and mind reading in his writing. But we spend much of our time discussing his call for torture and his Buddhist perspectives on "compassionately killing the bad guy."
In 2004, Sam Harris' award-winning first book said society should demote Christian, Muslim and Jewish belief to an embarrassment that "disgraces anyone who would claim it," in doing so catapulting him from obscure UCLA grad student -- the son of a Quaker father -- to national voice of atheism.
"The End of Faith" may be the first book suitable for the Eastern Philosophy shelf at Barnes & Noble that somehow incorporates both torture and New Age piety, and offers pleas for clear scientific thinking alongside appeals to "mysticism." The old-fashioned brand of atheist, like the late Carl Sagan, argued eloquently against religion without supporting rituals and ghosts.
Harris, however, argues that not just Western gods but philosophers are "dwarfs" next to the Buddhas. And a Harris passage on psychics recommends that curious readers spend time with the study "20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation."
Asked which cases are most suggestive of reincarnation, Harris admits to being won over by accounts of "xenoglossy," in which people abruptly begin speaking languages they don't know. Remember the girl in "The Exorcist"? "When a kid starts speaking Bengali, we have no idea scientifically what's going on," Harris tells me. It's hard to believe what I'm hearing from the man the New York Times hails as atheism's "standard-bearer."
Harris writes: "There seems to be a body of data attesting to the reality of psychic phenomena, much of which have been ignored by mainstream science." On the phone he backpedals away from the claim.
"I've received a little bit of grief for that," he says. "I certainly don't say that I'm confident that psychic phenomena exist. I'm open-minded. I would just like to see the data."
To see the "data" yourself, "The End of Faith" points readers to a slew of paranormal studies.
One is Dr. Ian Stevenson's "Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy." The same author's reincarnation book presents for your consideration the past life of Ravi Shankar, the sitar player who introduced the Beatles to the Maharishi. He was born with a birthmark, it says, right where his past self was knifed to death, aged two.
Making the case for the "20 Cases" researcher, Harris sounds almost like "Chronicles of Narnia" author C.S. Lewis, who said Jesus could only be a liar or the Son of God.
"Either he is a victim of truly elaborate fraud, or something interesting is going on," Harris says. "Most scientists would say this doesn't happen. Most would say that if it does happen, it's a case of fraud. ... It's hard to see why anyone would be perpetrating a fraud -- everyone was made miserable by this [xenoglossy] phenomenon." Pressed, he admits that some of the details might after all be "fishy."
Another book he lists is "The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena." "These are people who have spent a fair amount of time looking at the data," Harris explains. The author, professor Dean Radin of North California's Institute of Noetic Sciences, which is not accredited for scientific peer review, proclaims: "Psi [mind power] has been shown to exist in thousands of experiments."
Harris has spent the past two years doing "full-time infidel" duty, in his words. His second book, "Letter to a Christian Nation," takes the infidel persona and runs with it, lashing back at Christians for their intolerance toward his first book.
In a versatile turn, however, Harris moonlights as inquisitor as well as heretic. Without irony, he switches hats between chapters of "The End of Faith." Chapter 3 finds him complaining that the medieval Church tortured Jews over phony "blood libel" conspiracies. Then in chapter 6, "A Science of Good & Evil," he devotes several pages to upholding the "judicial torture" of Muslims, a practice for which "reasonable men and women" have come out.
Torture then and now: The difference, he tells AlterNet, is that the Inquisition "manufactured" crimes and forced Jews to confess "fictional accomplices."
But if the Iraq War hasn't been about "fictional accomplices," what has? "There's nothing about my writing about torture that should suggest I supported what was going on in Abu Ghraib," says Harris, who supported the invasion but says it has become a "travesty." "We abused people who we know had no intelligence value."
While our soldiers are waging war on Islam in our detention centers, according to Harris, our civilians must evolve past churchgoing to "modern spiritual practice," he writes. "[M]ysticism is a rational enterprise," he writes in his book, arguing it lets spiritualists "uncover genuine facts about the world." And he tells AlterNet there are "social pressures" against research into ESP.
Society is remarkably free, however, in airing justifications for putting Muslims to the thumbscrews. Harris's case for torture is this: since "we" are OK with horrific collateral damage, "we" should have no qualms against waterboarding, the lesser evil. "It's better than death." Better, in other words, than bombing innocents.
Then again, Sam Harris is not devoting his time in the media to call for an end to bombing civilians. Attacking the sacred cow of airstrikes might have been a real heresy, true to his Quaker roots but ensuring himself exile from cable news. Instead the logic he lays out -- that Islam itself is our enemy -- invites the reader to feel comfort at the deaths of its believers. He writes: "Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them."
Playing his part in last year's War Over Christmas, Harris plays it safe with "Letter to a Christian Nation." The book lumbers under a title so heavy, you'd think Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote it from prison. While keeping the Christian Nation on notice that Harris remains disdainful of "wasting time" on Jesus, he now calls for something of an alliance with the Right against Muslim Arabs and the "head-in-the-sand liberals" he denounced in a recent editorial. "Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living," he writes.
Thus praising the hard Right for its "moral clarity" in the War on Terror, Harris reserves much of his wrath for nonfundamentalist Christians, whom he considers enablers of a virgin-birth sham.
Fine, but the alternative to Jesus that Harris recommends in "The End of Faith" is a menu of messiahs. There is Shankara, an avatar of the god Shiva whose water pot could stop floods. There is the first Buddha and his 8th-century successor Padmasambhava. After materializing on a lotus leaf at age 8, Padmasambhava cast a spell that changed his friend into a tiger.
"That is objectively stupider than the doctrine of the virgin birth," Harris says in the interview, however.
Like any religious moderate, he has picked and chosen what he likes from a religion. On the one hand, there's an obligatory swipe in "The End of Faith" against Pakistan and India for threatening to nuke each other over "fanciful" religious disputes. The equal-offender pose doesn't slow Harris from claiming the supremacy of Shankara and other oracles over Europe's entire secular brain trust. For thousands of years, "personal transformation [...] seems to have been thought too much to ask" of Western philosophers, he complains petulantly, as if finding the entire Enlightenment short on self-help tips.
He likes that Buddhism will make you relax. And "dial in various mental states," he says. In the classic case, he says, "you see various lights or see bliss." And like a Scientologist cleric promising you the state of Clear, evicting alien ghosts ruining your life, Harris expresses a faith that his own style of pleasurable mental exploration ushers in good deeds. Meditation, he says, will drive out whatever it is "that leads you to lie to people or be intrinsically selfish."
So it purges your sins? "You become free to notice how everyone else is suffering," he says. Well, some more than others.
We all need our illusions. But doesn't his, a mishmash of Buddhism and "Time-Life Mysteries of The Unknown," weaken his case against Christians? His answer is that Buddhism is a superior product for including the doctrine of "non-dualism," or unity. "The teachings about self-transcending love in Buddhism go on for miles," he says. "There's just a few lines in the Bible." And hundreds in Dostoyevsky and the Confessions of St. Augustine, but never mind: Harris's argument that "belief is action" rests on treating works like the Old Testament not as complex cultural fables but something akin to your TiVo instruction manual.
Though it lapses in skepticism, Harris's work has won a surprising following among nonmystics. Times science writer Natalie Angier felt "vindicated, almost personally understood" reading it, she wrote in a review. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has practically adopted Harris as the American Robin to his Batman in confronting unreason wherever it may lurk in the hearts of men. "The End of Faith" should "replace the Gideon Bible in every hotel room in the land," blurbs Dawkins.
* * *
When that happens, Muslims will check into the Best Western and find a text cheering their torture.
Legendary for his role in the Scopes Monkey Trial, American attorney Clarence Darrow wrote of his admiration for his forbearer Voltaire, the original 18th-century renegade against the church. He thanked Voltaire for dealing superstition a "mortal wound" -- and for an end to torture. "Among the illustrious heroes who have banished this sort of cruelty from the Western world, no other name will stand so high and shine so bright."
And then among those who want to bring it back, there stands Sam Harris.
"They're not talking," Harris is telling me, imagining a torture scenario where the captives clam up, "quite amused at our unwillingness to make them uncomfortable."
No, it's not the sticky (and real) case of Jose Padilla, the detainee who may have been reduced by his treatment to mind mush, possibly ruining his trial. Instead he's sketching out a kind of Steven Seagal action movie scenario in which we lasso Osama or his gang, maybe on the eve of a terror plot. What to do?
"We should say we don't do it," Harris says of torture. "We should say it's reprehensible." And then do it anyway, he says.
So there it is. In Harris's vision of future America, we will pursue "personal transformation" and gaze into our personal "I-we" riddles, while the distant gurgles of Arabs, terrified by the threat of drowning, will drift into our Eastern-influenced sacred space, the government's press releases no more than soothing Zen koans.
Read Sam's summary of these points on his website HERE
Comments 1 - 50 of 71 | | View Alternate Comment Thread
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #16401 by Galactic Lord Xenu on January 6, 2007 at 2:05 pm
No, actually, Harris and psychic power is true. The torture thing is also true, but a bit misunderstood.Harris is well-known because of his clear and concise attack on Christianity. He's a bit wack on some other stuff, as you can tell. I really wish Dawkins would distance himself from Harris, given that the real battle is over supernatural thinking...
Anyway, I don't think Harris is arguing that torture is a good thing, just that if war is acceptable, then torture itself should be. Which is actually something I think deserves a discussion, even if we may think he is misguided.
Other Comments by Galactic Lord Xenu
3. Comment #16406 by Janus on January 6, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Galactic Lord Xenu is right on the money.Other Comments by Janus
4. Comment #16407 by Galactic Lord Xenu on January 6, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I was a bit hasty and did not read Harris' reply, so here are some comments about that:Given what Harris has written in his book I think he is trying to downplay what he has previously written. Go read his quotes from the book and you'll see--the writer of this article is correct here, and points out the same thing.
I also think that he does make a fair point about torture; while I may not agree I will mull it over some. He's being unstigmatized for coming to a conclusion people don't like rather than looking at his reasons for it.
Other Comments by Galactic Lord Xenu
5. Comment #16408 by Jack Rawlinson on January 6, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Muslims will be cheering "The End of Faith"? Oh boy. Not if they read it!However, in fairness I must say that I didn't agree with the parts of the book pertaining to torture and Sam's thoughts on "mysticism". I thought they marred an otherwise excellent work.
Other Comments by Jack Rawlinson
6. Comment #16409 by IJR on January 6, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Though I think the article inappropriately misrepresents what Harris says, it's not entirely off. I read "End of Faith", and while some of it was good, there were several parts that made me do a double-take. His opinions on psychics, Buddhism, torture and war seem very misguided and misinformed.My biggest problem with him, though, is not so much his wacky opinions about psychics as the fact that in all the books, articles, interviews, lectures, etc from him that I've seen, he just says the same stuff over and over again. His criticisms of religion are very good, but he seems to have a very limited repertoire of criticisms which he just repeats over and over.
Harris isn't all bad. I definitely enjoyed his books, and his criticisms of religion are valid. But he does seem to be receiving more praise than he probably deserves lately. His thinking is rather limited, and when he strays from what he does best (criticizing religion) his ideas start getting wacky.
Other Comments by IJR
7. Comment #16411 by The author on January 6, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Yes, Galactic Lord Xenu, praised be his name, is right: Harris said in his reply that he doesn't know enough about the paranormal. So he should inform himself before commenting on it.I still think his opinion of torture is wrong. The problem lies in his narrow argumentation: If civilian casualties as a result of bombing is ok, then torture is ok, at least in specific situations. I understand what he is trying to say, but if the legislative forbids torture then we cannot ignore that in some situations or we can ignore this law in any situation. As wrong as it may sound: A person who works for the government must in every case be punished for torturing.
The next thing is buddhism (I also read his essay on that): Why on earth should we need buddhism? I understand that meditation obviously works but why do we need buddhism for meditation? And what is this wisdom of buddhism Harris is talking about? If it is near to the scientific method, why not just use the scientific method and forget about buddha?
Well, I also prefer Dawkins. He's perhaps not more reasonable, but more wise, experienced and educated than Harris.
Other Comments by The author
8. Comment #16413 by denoir on January 6, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Harris is known for his affection for some woo-woo things. James Randi has for instance criticised him for that.In the case against religion, it is really not relevant. He makes valid points against primarily Christianity and Islam. Unlike Dawkins, Harris is waging war on harmful religions and not necessarily all supernatural beliefs.
The review is right on one account: I do miss Carl Sagan :-(
Other Comments by denoir
9. Comment #16429 by MIND_REBEL on January 6, 2007 at 2:56 pm
We should have a freethinking Boycott of Alternet if they don't retract that story. Sam Harris is correct, and i'm getting sick of all these cheapshots coming from anti-atheist bigots. Other Comments by MIND_REBEL
10. Comment #16431 by NormanDoering on January 6, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Mr. Harris,I think this is a good argument against torture:
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2004/06/18/torture_1/index.html
Perhaps you should incorporate some of Darius Rejali's views into your view.
Other Comments by NormanDoering
11. Comment #16436 by Joadist on January 6, 2007 at 3:20 pm
This is simply a problem of being in the media spotlight.If you want to find out if a new John Travolta or Tom Cruise is worth watching, you have to read a movie critic's opinion of Scientology.
Torture and ESP are not religious issues. Our sensationalist media doesn't allow us access to the podium unless we agree to allow all the random potshots.
Other Comments by Joadist
12. Comment #16439 by Sinful Messiah on January 6, 2007 at 3:32 pm
"The next thing is buddhism (I also read his essay on that): Why on earth should we need buddhism? I understand that meditation obviously works but why do we need buddhism for meditation? And what is this wisdom of buddhism Harris is talking about? If it is near to the scientific method, why not just use the scientific method and forget about buddha?"Are you sure you read his essay, "Killing The Buddha"? He makes it very clear, particularly at the end of the essay, that if there are benefits to gain from meditation that they need not be "Buddhist." Haven't you heard Sam talk about Christian physics and Muslim algebra? To credit these disciplines with erroneous religious nomenclature is to completely misunderstand their purpose.
Other Comments by Sinful Messiah
13. Comment #16443 by DavidJGrossman on January 6, 2007 at 3:39 pm
I'm not quite as concerned about Sam's opinions about the use of torture. At least those ideas are grounded in reality, for good or for bad.My concern is his tacet approval of the ideas of reincarnation and ESP. (note: I haven't completely read that article but I heard him address reincarnation and ESP in a Beyond Belief lecture) I thought these things were thoroughly debunked by now.
This makes it much harder for me to recommend that people watch his lectures and read his book. One of the lectures I saw ended with a whole section on meditation which I felt diluted the impact of the first part of the lecture.
I respect his views on meditation. I see nothing metaphysical or paranormal about meditation. The problem was, the first part of the lecture was easily understandable by everyone. As soon as he got to the meditation part, I was like 'huh?'. I was struggling to keep up with what he was saying and much of what he said in the first part was forgotten while I tried to understand the meditation thing.
I really hope that Sam does some more research into these paranormal topics and comes to the same conclusion that I'm sure that most scientists come to; they are bogus and unsubstantiated.
I have seen footage of people who claim that their children were reincarnated. They are quite similar in character to the claims of stigmata I've seen from other people. They seem to be fabricated for the purpose of publicity and/or financial gain.
- Dave
Other Comments by DavidJGrossman
14. Comment #16444 by The author on January 6, 2007 at 3:46 pm
"that if there are benefits to gain from meditation that they need not be "Buddhist.""So why does he talk about "Buddhism" all the time? Why not name it "meditation", add in a few words that its origins lie in Buddhism and that's it?
"To credit these disciplines with erroneous religious nomenclature is to completely misunderstand their purpose."
So why does Harris do just that? Why using these religious terms all the time?
Other Comments by The author
15. Comment #16446 by jbannon on January 6, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I haven't read the book so I can't really comment fully. However I will say that if Sam Harris is arguing that killing innocents is morally acceptable or that torture is morally acceptable then he is barking mad. This is the kind of thinking sloppy use of utilitarian arguments leads to. One must not put ends above the means used to achieve them as that is just asking for disaster.There are of course times when innocents are killed and this can sometimes be justified. E.g. if I had to order the shooting down of a passenger aircraft to prevent it from being crashed into a densely populated area then I would do so. However, this does not mean I have not committed an evil, I have and I would have to properly justify it and live with the consequences.
As for torture, that surely is never justifiable. Not only that, it isn't even very effective in its aim. Does Sam think that the US regimes' suspension of the rights of "illegal combatants" is justifiable?
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16. Comment #16447 by ryanbooker on January 6, 2007 at 3:55 pm
When I first read End of Faith the mysticism chapter more or less lost me. I didn't get what he meant. But further reading about Sam Harris and by Sam Harris has led me to the conclusion that most people don't get what he meant.He meant what his clarification above, suggests. That the contemplative and wholly physical practices of some religions can be studied and practised without recourse to supernatural or metaphysical beliefs.
The example he gives is that both Christians and Buddhists have had life changing experiences through their equivalents of prayer. The two practices, prayer and meditation, are functionally similar and can lead to natural changes in mental state and perhaps even physical changes in well being.
These experiences aren't the result of the religion. They are the result of the technique of introspection being used, and can be studied as a natural phenomenon.
i.e. Meditation can be good for you, without the supernatural claims of Buddhism having any truth.
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17. Comment #16448 by John Pritzlaff on January 6, 2007 at 3:56 pm
This article is relatively malicious in the way it describes Sam's viewpoints. I agree with Sam's point about torture, if I remember it correctly. I think it came down to: "If we're willing to wage war, then we should be willing to torture. There's no difference between harming people with bombs and harming people with torture, except that the latter is more personal, and thus gets more sympathy from us." Now, most of us here are not in favor of the war. But the war is a reality, and thus torture is too. Obviously our ideal is to not have wars or torture, but we have one, so we're going to have the other.Sam's viewpoints on the "paranormal" are pretty benign. He basically says: "I just want these things looked into a little further, because of the bias against them. They've been unfairly stigmatized, and therefore we may have a bias against them that allows us to overlook some possible truth-value in their claims. I personally don't think this line of inquiry will lead to much, but I agree that it's worth looking into.
And his views on Buddhism and eastern spirituality are very straightforward, and I'm frankly dismayed with how many atheists don't seem to get what he's saying. All he says about spirituality is that there are obviously steps we can take to change our perceptions of the world, and this needs to be looked into, because a lot of this stuff may be beneficial. The meditation he talks about is simply thought, contemplation, and (as he rightly states) this is a concept that we don't need to take on faith. His whole point is that we don't need to discard everything in eastern thought, because a lot of it is good. But that has nothing to do with taking it as dogma, which is what Harris is explicitly saying we should never do for anything. Zen is good, it helps us think, this is obvious. We don't need to take any unnatural claims on faith in order to see this.
I think the Buddhism discussion is a good step. I don't think the questions he asks at the end of the chapter about consciousness (is it more than a phenomenon) will lead anywhere, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be asked. I think that he makes some good points about the nature of the ego, and I think it is just a phenomenon. It ties into the zen stuff nicely, because there are a lot of great lessons to be learned about the nature of consciousness from Buddhism. That's all from me.
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18. Comment #16450 by ryanbooker on January 6, 2007 at 4:01 pm
RE: TortureJbannon wrote:
"There are of course times when innocents are killed and this can sometimes be justified. E.g. if I had to order the shooting down of a passenger aircraft to prevent it from being crashed into a densely populated area then I would do so. However, this does not mean I have not committed an evil, I have and I would have to properly justify it and live with the consequences.
As for torture, that surely is never justifiable. Not only that, it isn't even very effective in its aim. Does Sam think that the US regimes' suspension of the rights of "illegal combatants" is justifiable?"
It seems to me that the justification you use for shooting down a plane could easily be used to justify the torture of someone in similar "ticking timb-bomb" circumstances.
Of course the validity of the information you may glean is another story, and one I don't know enough about to make comment.
Other Comments by ryanbooker
19. Comment #16453 by jbannon on January 6, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Rayanbooker wrote:"It seems to me that the justification you use for shooting down a plane could easily be used to justify the torture of someone in similar "ticking timb-bomb" circumstances."
Ask yourself this question. What do you do with the torturers on the other side who are designated "enemy"? By torturing you give them carte blanche to do the same thing. There is a fundamental difference between the two scenarios as presented. On the one hand there is a real and present danger and in the other there is not.
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20. Comment #16456 by MelM on January 6, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I was put-off from reading Harris's book some time ago because of a review bringing up some of these issues. He seems to have defended himself well on some of these issues but I don't want to comment further since I haven't read the book--although I'm now warmer on the idea than I had been.I'll just pick out a point he made in his essay on Buddhism:
We need a discourse on ethics and spirituality that is every bit as unconstrained by dogma and cultural prejudice as the discourse of science is.
I'll take the liberty of assuming that he's calling for a rational philosophy. Such a philosophy would be the great anti-toxin for religion and sweep all of it into the history books where it belongs. It's absolutely necessary to replace the mentality of faith/dogma with one of reason/knowledge. But, this means that everything about the universe and human life be brought into the domain of reason: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetic--all the usual subfields within the science of philosophy. There's no excuse for turning anything over to religion. I find this to be a problem with some of the defenders of evolution. "Theistic Evolution" is being used to protect evolution in the Biology Dept. by redirecting theists to the Cosmology Dept. "Leave us alone, your problem is with them." There's certainly no more reason to let religion fill in the "gaps" in Cosmology than to let it fill in those of evolution. Also, there's no reason why Philosophers of Science should accept the claim that "God created natural law." The procedure of faith can't get one to knowledge; that's the real fundamental issue here. In my view, religion is just a weed that grows--and can only grow--where reason is absent. Those who say that nature gave people senses but they don't work and nature gave us a mind but it too doesn't work, shouldn't whine when religion goes hog-wild and threatens to destroy civilization.
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21. Comment #16458 by Pilot22A on January 6, 2007 at 4:33 pm
I haven't read "End of Faith." Taking a look at the posts here, I see that some who have read the book sort of take Harris to task for looking at reincarnation.This totally surprises me.
As I understand reincarnation, one must have a soul and just reading "Letter to a Christian Nation" I concluded that Harris doesn't buy this idea.
Doesn't one have to have a "soul" to be reincarnated?
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22. Comment #16461 by wallace on January 6, 2007 at 4:57 pm
If you are ok with collatoral damage, you should be ok with torture. OK, what if you're not ok with collatoral damage?Correct me if I'm wrong, but Harris seems to equate collatoral damage with a skiing accident or death on a rollercoaster (in his completely misjudged attack on Chomsky). Overall I liked "The End Of Faith", but his reasoning was quite absurd at times and he seems to exist in a different universe from Richard Dawkins.
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23. Comment #16462 by pazuzu on January 6, 2007 at 5:01 pm
In fact an embarassing moment occured at the Salk Institute conference when Harris was pressed about his beliefs concering the Buddhist views on reincarnation and such. If you've seen it you will know what I mean. If not, take a look, you will probably not like it. Harris is not altogether sound. In fact I do not think neither Harris nor Dawkins convincingly countered Scott Atran who came off as quite reasonable. Too bad since I think he is wrongat some level. Well well.Other Comments by pazuzu
24. Comment #16466 by ronnieharper on January 6, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I think most people in this thread (but not all)have misunderstood Sam Harris' line of reasoning regarding torture AND mysticism. Suffice it to say, I think, somewhere we have to come to a meeting of the minds, those agnostics and we. There is a reasoned philosophy somewhere in there, where the meetings of thinking minds, (i.e., say, an atheist and an eastern mysticist,) are at peace. Let the spiritualist find respite in a singularly, personally defined god-concept, instead of mass organized religion. Kind of a baby-steps approach to wheedling religion down to a manageable social norm.As far as the torture issue goes. . . If I were a head of state (commander-in-chief), I would exact information and a guarantee of my citizens' safety out of my enemies, and it would be a private, succesful meeting with each and every one of them as needed. I wouldn't have to tell anyone, except for the suboordinate(s) that carried out the task. That's how I interpret his stance on torture, and I fully agree, somewhat unfortunately. But that is reality, which we can never marginalize with fantastical hopes that everyone will be manageable forever.
Well crap, the link at the bottom of the article explains everything perfectly. I spent so much time at alternet I didn't even notice that link (http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/)
Sam Harris is an incredible philosopher, a gift to us today, in my opinion. Here's a good example: http://edge.org/q2007/q07_5.html#harriss.
I guess the specific moral issues here are a little more fleshy, than they are black and white. Don't hang on the word torture, maybe? It's more about guaging responsibilities as a commander-in-chief, or anyone who makes war.
Just my two cents, sorry it isn't too terribly cogent.
Ronnie Harper
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25. Comment #16471 by Duff on January 6, 2007 at 6:18 pm
I am personally willing to cut Sam Harris a little slack simply because he is young and although very sharp, somewhat inexperienced. His tract, Letter To A Christian Nation, is absolutely brilliant and should be force fed every religious ninny in every country (forgive the hyperbole). However, he hasn't yet realized the weight of his words. His mind is in the right place, but he could use a little of Dawkin's/Dennett's wisdom.Sam, my boy, "eastern wisdom" is only more wise because it is a little more difficult to comprehend.
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26. Comment #16475 by Veronique on January 6, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Thank you John Pritzlaff. I agree with your post. I joined the Sam Harris email list and saw this one earlier. Then I read his (Sam's) reply to the critical interview.Post to the original on alternet. It will get further out there. A lot of people seem to have trouble understanding both Harris and Dawkins. They convolute arguments and that twists them into knots. Keep it all as simple as possible.
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27. Comment #16477 by Jack Rawlinson on January 6, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Without going into detail (because I'm tired and ready for bed), my big problem with Sam's view about torture was precisely his attempt to suggest that it is morally equivalent - or as near-equivalent as makes no odds - with bombing, collateral damage etc. It isn't. Are they both bad, painful, terrifying things which merit antipathy and distaste? Sure. But then so are the activities of hit-and-run drivers and serial killers, but I trust no one is about to suggest a moral equivalence between those things. There is the question of the directness of involvement, and it matters. There is a continuum of "involvement". The pilots of the bombers who pressed the button which launched incendiary pain, death and bereavement on countless human beings during WWII bear a responsibility, yes. But it is in a different stratum to that of the person who takes a captive, incapacitates him and slowly and deliberately inflicts excruciating pain on him - all the while directly listening to and seeing the results of that pain and adjusting his pain-inflicting technique accordingly. I'm sorry, Sam, this is not a black-and-white issue. It is a spectrum. Other Comments by Jack Rawlinson
28. Comment #16478 by Jack Rawlinson on January 6, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Let me just add that I really, really value Sam Harris and I appreciate his robust atheism. These differences are issues which I am sure we could have a satisfying discussion about over a drink or two, and which I am equally sure we could reach - if not agreement - at least respect for each other's position.One can rarely say the same thing about discussions with a faith-head.
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29. Comment #16480 by ryanbooker on January 6, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Jbannon,The situations are not different. Sam Harris never argues that torture should be part of our standard bag of tricks or even common. He simply suggests, quite rightly, that if there are situations under which we deem the death of completely innocent people acceptable, there must be situations under which we deem the torture of most likely NOT innocent people acceptable.
This is perfectly reasonable.
If there is a plane about to crash into a high rise, we may deem it acceptable to definitely kill the 200 people on board to avoid the probable killing of thousands.
Likewise, if there is a bomb in a high rise and we have a captive likely to know something about it. If they aren't responding to interrogation, then perhaps torture is acceptable if it could save thousands of people.
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30. Comment #16481 by ryanbooker on January 6, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Jack Rawlinson,I disagree with the assessment to a degree. Collateral damage is no less intentional than torture, from the point of view that we know with certainty that there will be collateral damage. We deem it acceptable. Most likely because it's impersonal.
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31. Comment #16485 by wallace on January 6, 2007 at 8:06 pm
This is where Harris' "perfect weapon" scenario falls flat on its face. A perfect weapon would produce no collatoral damage, but would not prevent widespread torture. Unless we could invent a "perfect guilt detector" so we could not torture innocent people. Then we could invent a "perfect torture machine" that only tortures people just enough. To be honest, the whole "perfect weapon" idea is a blind alley which we should avoid.Other Comments by wallace
32. Comment #16486 by Jack Rawlinson on January 6, 2007 at 8:25 pm
ryanbooker: I don't dispute that it's intentional. There are gradations of intent, too. When someone drops a bomb on a building they believe contains a legitimate target and maybe some innocent people, their primary intent is to kill the target, but additionally they accept that the price of that intent is the likely death of some innocent people. They may very well regret this. They may comfort themselves with the thought that maybe it won't happen. Maybe there will be no collateral damage. But in any case, they see it as justified in the larger picture.Conversely, when someone tortures an individual they intend only to cause direct suffering to that specific individual. Possibly in the hope of obtaining valuable information, possibly not, but it is very clear that the nature of their primary intent differs crucially from the nature of the primary intent of the bomber pilot. It is a gross and rather sinister blurring of detail to try to equate these intentions and to suggest that the very real distinctions between them are irrelevant in the broader moral spectrum.
We, as rationalists, must be extremely wary of this sort of blurring of moral distinctions, or we run the risk of justifying the accusations of those believers who seek to lump is in with the likes of Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. Morality is relative. It is not black and white. If we lose sight of the differences - subtle and not-so-subtle - between different moral dilemmas we coarsen ourselves.
Damn, I really must go to bed!
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33. Comment #16487 by jbannon on January 6, 2007 at 9:11 pm
ryanbooker wrote:"The situations are not different. Sam Harris never argues that torture should be part of our standard bag of tricks or even common. He simply suggests, quite rightly, that if there are situations under which we deem the death of completely innocent people acceptable, there must be situations under which we deem the torture of most likely NOT innocent people acceptable."
I beg to differ. The situations are different and I never said that the death of innocents was acceptable, it is never right to kill innocents, I said it may be justifiable as a choice of the lesser of two evils, and there is a difference. I have still committed an evil by downing the plane, it's just a lesser evil than allowing the death of thousands.
On the torture angle the primary aim is to directly inflict misery and pain for the purpose of gaining information from a "possibly guilty" person. There are scenarios where torturing one might be justifiable, to save torturing ten say, but again that is a situation of hobson's choice (i.e. no choice at all). There is a choice with the scenario you gave and it is probably more effective than torturing an individual because the information so gained would almost certainly be unreliable.
Aside: I think the treatment the US has meted out to "illegal combatants" is disgusting. They were labelled "illegal combatants" for the express purpose of denying access to people like the Red Cross and Amnesty International.
I am not of the opinion that morality is relative. I don't buy absolute-relative dichotomies as to my way of thinking these are false dichotomies (as is objective-subjective). Morality is certainly contextual to a degree, how could it not be because this is where all the useful information resides, but it is not relative. If we start going sown that road then we're into the cesspool of post-modernism and I presume people don't want to go there.
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34. Comment #16489 by icouldbewrongbut on January 6, 2007 at 11:01 pm
What Sam actually Says:from: http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/
"Response to Controversy
A few of the subjects that I raised in The End of Faith continue to inspire an unusual amount of malicious commentary, selective quotation, and controversy. I've elaborated on these topics here:
My position on torture:
In The End of Faith, I argue that competing religious doctrines have divided our world into separate moral communities, and that these divisions have become a continuous source of human violence. My purpose in writing the book was to offer a way of thinking about our world that would render certain forms of conflict, quite literally, unthinkable.
In one section of the book (pp. 192-199), I briefly discuss the ethics of torture and collateral damage in times of war, arguing that collateral damage is worse than torture across the board. Rather than appreciate just how bad I think collateral damage is in ethical terms, some readers have mistakenly concluded that I take a cavalier attitude toward the practice of torture. I do not. Nevertheless, there are certain extreme circumstances in which I believe that torture may not only be ethically justifiable, but ethically necessary. I am not alone in this. Liberal Senator Charles Schumer has publicly stated that most U.S. senators would support torture to find out the location of a ticking time bomb. While rare, such "ticking-bomb" scenarios actually do occur. As we move into an age of nuclear and biological terrorism, it is in everyone's interest for men and women of goodwill to determine what should be done when a prisoner clearly has operational knowledge of an imminent atrocity, but won't otherwise talk about it.
My argument for the limited use of torture is essentially this: if you think it is ever justifiable to drop bombs in an attempt to kill a man like Osama bin Laden (and thereby risk killing and maiming innocent men, women, and children), you should think it may sometimes be justifiable to torture a man like Osama bin Laden (and risk torturing someone who just happens to look like Osama bin Laden). It seems to me that however one compares the practices of torturing high-level terrorists and dropping bombs, dropping bombs always comes out looking worse in ethical terms. And yet, many of us tacitly accept the practice of modern warfare, while considering it taboo to even speak about the possibility of practicing torture. It is important to point out that my argument for the restricted use of torture does not make travesties like Abu Ghraib look any less sadistic or stupid. Indeed, I considered our mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to have been patently unethical. I also think it was one of the most damaging blunders to occur in the last century of U.S. foreign policy.
It is not clear that having a torture provision in our laws will create as slippery a slope as many people imagine. We have a capital punishment provision, for instance, but this has not led to our killing prisoners at random because we can't control ourselves. While I am opposed to capital punishment, I can readily admit that we are not suffering a total moral chaos in our society because we execute about five people every month. It is not immediately obvious that a rule about torture could not be applied with equal restraint.
It may be true, however, that any legal use of torture would have unacceptable consequences. In light of this concern, the best strategy I have heard comes from Mark Bowden in his Atlantic Monthly article, "The Dark Art of Interrogation." Bowden recommends that we keep torture illegal, and maintain a policy of not torturing anybody for any reason. But our interrogators should know that there are certain circumstances in which it will be ethical to break the law. Indeed, there are circumstances in which you would have to be a monster not to break the law. If an interrogator finds himself in such a circumstance, and he breaks the law, there will not be much of a will to prosecute him (and interrogators will know this). If he breaks the law Abu Ghraib-style, he will go to jail for a very long time (and interrogators will know this too). At the moment, this seems like the most reasonable policy to me, given the realities of our world.
While my discussion of torture spans only a few pages in a book devoted to reducing the causes of religious violence, many readers have found this discussion deeply unsettling. I have invited them, both publicly and privately, to produce an ethical argument that takes into account the realities of our world—our daily acceptance of collateral damage, the real possibility of nuclear terrorism, etc.—and yet rules out the practice of torture in all conceivable circumstances. No one, to my knowledge, has done this. And yet, my critics continue to speak and write as though a knock-down argument against torture in all circumstances is readily available. I consider it to be one of the more dangerous ironies of liberal discourse that merely discussing the possibility of torturing a man like Osama bin Laden provokes more outrage than the maiming and murder of innocent civilians ever does. Until someone actually points out what is wrong with the "collateral damage argument" presented in The End of Faith. I will continue to believe that my critics are just not thinking clearly about the reality of human suffering.
My views on the paranormal—ESP, reincarnation, etc.:
My position on the paranormal is this: While there have been many frauds in the history of parapsychology, I believe that this field of study has been unfairly stigmatized. If some experimental psychologists want to spend their days studying telepathy, or the effects of prayer, I will be interested to know what they find out. And if it is true that toddlers occasionally start speaking in ancient languages (as Ian Stevenson alleges), I would like to know about it. However, I have not spent any time attempting to authenticate the data put forward in books like Dean Radin's The Conscious Universe or Ian Stevenson's 20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. The fact that I have not spent any time on this should suggest how worthy of my time I think such a project would be. Still, I found these books interesting, and I cannot categorically dismiss their contents in the way that I can dismiss the claims of religious dogmatists.
My views on Eastern mysticism, Buddhism, etc.:
My views on "mystical" or "spiritual" experience are extensively described in The End of Faith and do not entail the acceptance of anything on faith. There is simply no question that people have transformative experiences as a result of engaging contemplative disciplines like meditation, and there is no question that these experiences shed some light on the nature of the human mind (any experience does, for that matter). What is highly questionable are the metaphysical claims that people tend to make on the basis of such experiences. I do not make any such claims. Nor do I support the metaphysical claims of others.
There are several neuroscience labs now studying the effects of meditation on the brain. While I am not personally engaged in this research, I know many of the scientists who are. This is now a fertile field of sober inquiry, purposed toward understanding the possibilities of human well-being better than we do at present.
While I consider Buddhism almost unique among the world's religions as a repository of contemplative wisdom, I do not consider myself a Buddhist. My criticism of Buddhism as a faith has been published, to the consternation of many Buddhists. It is available here:
Killing the Buddha "
Other Comments by icouldbewrongbut
35. Comment #16491 by Munger on January 6, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Okay, folks, I read THE END OF FAITH, and I feel there are some thing worth noting.Yes, he does discuss the use of torture in a very real and uncomfortable way. However, his argument about it comes from the fact that violence at a distance is still violence. Take into account the trauma of a bomber who drops warheads on villages VS. a soldier who actually is down in the trenches shooting folks. The soldier won't kill nearly as many, but he will be more likely to be traumatized because his actions confront him.
Harris is merely pointing out that this is human nature. That violence that is away from us is innately more acceptable than violence that is near us. This can hardly be argued.
Secondly, he points out that though torture is repellent to most of us, it is merely a matter of degrees. Here's an example: You have a prisoner. You know he has information and if you don't that that info, 100 children will die. You also know that the only way to get the info is to torture him. Would you do it?
If you answer no, then ask yourself this, what if a thousand children's lives were at stake? No? How about ten thousand? Surely, there must me a number for each of us where torture, though distasteful, becomes less distasteful than the result of squeamishness.
This is not to say that Harris endorses torture. He merely presents a simplified argument that should make all of us realize that life is not so black and white as we want to pretend. In THE END OF FAITH, Harris does not come out pro-torture. He merely proposes that violence is sometimes necessary and we create artificial limits based on the emotional distance of the violence.
Surely, we can all agree that it is not less reprehensible to torture one person for information than to drop bombs that kill hundreds of innocent civilians? Of course, war and violence is always reprehensible. But this does not mean they aren't sometimes necessary. Harris does not say "we should begin torturing prisoners". He merely discusses the rationales of violence that we are comfortable with. The very fact that so many people misinterpret this stand as "pro-torture" shows how quickly people stop listening (and stop thinking) as soon as any philosophical discussion begins.
As for Harris's views on ESP, Buddhism, etc., these are not wholly unusual. As far as I can tell, Harris doesn't believe there is proof for ESP, does not endorse its existence. Perhaps he is more "New Agey" than we would like. But his interest in human consciousness is one of exploration and interest. He doesn't dismiss meditation or reincarnation. Neither does he dismiss an afterlife. For that matter, neither does Richard Dawkins who says these things are just highly unlikely to exist.
So Harris is a little less convinced. That doesn't mean that his arguments aren't logical. And I've yet to hear of Harris actually going to a psychic or basing his explorations of human consciousness through anything other than study.
Regardless of his "Weird" ideas, Harris shares the most essential philosophy with Dawkins. Both are for open discussion of all ideas and philosophies. This includes torture, ESP, alien abductions, and so on. While I'm with most everyone here that there is no god, ESP is wishful thinking, and it's highly unlikely aliens are coming to earth just to screw with us in secret, I don't care if these ideas are discussed frankly.
This movement is not about censorship, but about tearing down the walls that divide us. Only when we are free to discuss all ideas can we begin to understand which ones are worth keeping. Regardless of Harris's (misrepresented) views on torture and (very un-skeptical) views on meditation, he is an outspoken advocate of open discussion.
After all, you can call Harris a kook, and he won't call you intolerant. How many in the religious right can say that?
Other Comments by Munger
36. Comment #16492 by Munger on January 6, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Wow, my whole comment was pointless because just above it Harris answers his critics directly. Still, it's nice to know I understood what he meant.Other Comments by Munger
37. Comment #16494 by ronnieharper on January 6, 2007 at 11:46 pm
HAHA! Might try a threaded forum here. Because of the sheer amount of information people are repeating other posts. Although, a better way of denoting links in the articles might help, as well. Or maybe a reference/rebuttal page after articles with resources and links. Or an articles forum with discussions nested beneath the article posts. I sure do love this website, I can't express how happy I am that this issue is finally getting some real time around the world. I've been waiting for years; I hope it just keeps going. We need this so very badly.I swear I didn't /bold my post !
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38. Comment #16504 by Sancus on January 7, 2007 at 2:07 am
You forgot to close your bold tag, icouldbewrongbut.Harris' intellectual courage is always inspiring. I'm looking forward to all the discoveries he's going to make in his neuroscience career. He makes me want to reconsider joining the field myself.
Other Comments by Sancus
39. Comment #16509 by wice on January 7, 2007 at 3:10 am
i find really strange this kind of interview, where the reporter adds his personal comments to the text _after_ the interview, when the subject cannot react. why didn't he say these things when harris was present?Other Comments by wice
40. Comment #16512 by CitizenPaine on January 7, 2007 at 3:31 am
I enjoyed "Letter to a Christian Nation" and I like to see Sam speak. I have a problem with his approach to torture, however. I appreciate that he is talking about a concept, but there's no point in promoting a concept unless the practicalities of putting it into effect are also considered.Sam says that capital punishment has not led to moral chaos. But capital punishment is totally wrapped around with due process. Can anybody imagine how unreal and ghoulish would be a court case to decide whether or not an individual were to be tortured, quite apart from the fact that the "ticking time bomb" would long since have either exploded or been found by other means in the interim?
Some context: I write from Europe where we have no death penalty.
Citizen Paine
Other Comments by CitizenPaine
41. Comment #16516 by Jiten on January 7, 2007 at 4:38 am
A question on torture and the ticking-bomb scenario: Is torture the only way of getting the information about the bomb's location? This seems to be assumed by everyone. Other Comments by Jiten
42. Comment #16518 by Chris Davis on January 7, 2007 at 5:06 am
Seems to me that New Atheism (I love the way this phrase is starting to emerge) may have a bit of a problem with stuff like this. Like the caricature of the loopy shrink, there are inevitably going to be some prominent atheists who have reached their position starting from a theist one which they found unsatisfactory, via a dedicated search for something more rational. But though they've thrown off the chains of religion, they aren't completely clear of a desire for something mysterious and wonderful.There's hints of this in Sagan's fiction, for instance. Although a devout materialist atheist he couldn't resist putting in the final deist bit in Contact, where his character finds a perfect circle buried in Pi - a clear wink from the creator of the universe etc. Yes, it's just fiction, but I'd suspect that inside many an atheist - especially those who had to shake off religion first - there's a deist wanting to get back out. Harris strikes me as perhaps one of these.
If you really accept the total absence of supernaturalism, then the only path to ESP, reincarnation, advanced mental states reached through meditation and the rest must be via evolution. Given the huge survival advantage that would be conferred on a telepathic animal - predator or prey - then if brain tissue was capable of wireless communication I'd expect to see it all over the animal kingdom. Given that it a) would have to be an innate property of neurons, and b) would have to employ something other than the four known forces or it would be readily detectable, ESP seems to be ruled out from first principles. Putting it down as an emergent property of consciousness is just more special pleading.
Reincarnation requires souls, which is silly. Meditation, if it really has benefits over a short nap and/or autohypnosis, is another feature that one would expect to see running wildfire in nature because of its advantages. All of these things come down to wishful thinking by people who can't, it appears, quite give up the last remnants of mysticism along with their gods.
As I say, there may be a lot of it about, and it represents a vulnerable heel if atheism's spokespeople can't shake it off. This may be unfair to Harris, but any whiff of this type of woo nonsense will be pounced upon by such as Gorenfeld - apparently a theist with an agenda. Happily, Dr. Dawkins has shown repeatedly that he won't touch supernature with Harris' bargepole, and long may he reign.
CD
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43. Comment #16519 by ryanbooker on January 7, 2007 at 5:09 am
The primary aim is NOT to inflict harm on the individual being tortured. The primary aim is the stop some catastrophe.The only difference is proximity. You directly hurt the torture victim, whereas you indirectly (but just as knowingly) hurt the faceless innocent collateral damage.
It's just easier to justify killing someone you haven't met.
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44. Comment #16521 by tuibguy on January 7, 2007 at 5:22 am
I came out of reading The End of Faith with the same understanding of torture that Harris presents, with the exception that torture has rarely been found to produce valuable data or information. It is tempting to tighten the screws on someone that is withholding data that could save lives, if nothing else than from a power exchange with a person who wishes to commit a heinous crime.His section approaches the discussion of the ethics of torture through a "t" account process; the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
As for mysticism, I get that he is saying that meditation does yield great benefits but we needen't ascribe those benefits to the supernatural. Mystics have taught us how to mediate without praying.
Finally, as to the paranormal, I get that he was saying that it is unlikely that these processes exist but if a scientific process can demonstrated to test the data empirically he will be open to reviewing the data and not automatically dismissive. It is a far cry from embracing them.
Of course, this is only from one reading of the book. Gorenfield may have read it several times and pulled out something different. His venom betrays any pretense of objectivity.
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45. Comment #16534 by Jack Rawlinson on January 7, 2007 at 6:30 am
ryanbooker: good point. I realised after I posted last night that I had not made clear what I mean when I use the term "primary intent". You are right to clarify that in one sense the intention of a torturer may be to achieve what he perceives as a greater good (although if you read many real-world accounts of torture it soon becomes clear that few torturers are actually quite so high-minded).I should have said "primary action" rather than intent. I mean simply the raw action taken by the person inflicting the suffering. In the case of a bomber pilot it is to operate a switch and fly home, essentially. In the case of a torturer it is to apply a club, an electrode, a pair of pliers or a bucket of excrement to the body of a visibly suffering human being, and to keep doing it until that person visibly cracks. Surely you will at least concede that this second action takes a very different mindset to perform? And if you agree with that, then why does it? I contend that it does so because there is a quantitative shift along the moral spectrum of cruelty between bombing and torture.
Let me be clear: I am not saying that the results of torture are worse than those of bombing; I am not saying the level of suffering inflicted by torture is higher; I am saying that the unarguable differences in the nature of the actions necessary to cause the two situations indicates a difference in the moral position one must adopt to be a bomber or a torturer.
I can hear the counter-arguments to this already. It's actually a very deep and subtle argument and I suspect this non-threaded format isn't going to support it for too long. :-)
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46. Comment #16535 by gcdavis on January 7, 2007 at 6:47 am
Sam asked for comments to be sent to Alternet, these are mine:The totally dishonest fabrication of an interview by John Gorenfeld with Sam Harris is nothing short of disgraceful. Your claim of "commitment to fairness, equity and global stewardship, and making connections across generational, ethnic and issue lines. AlterNet serves as a reliable filter..." has proved to be thoroughly bogus.
Unless you publish an apology/retraction I for one will not be visiting your site again.
I anticipate that you will not have the guts to publish the content of this email!
Other Comments by gcdavis
47. Comment #16540 by John Pritzlaff on January 7, 2007 at 8:33 am
I saw someone post that they weren't okay with collateral damage, so they're not okay with torture. Well, yeah, duh. Neither is Harris. But he's saying that, since we are already allowing collateral damage, we should be open to torture. Obviously we aren't open to collateral damage, but right now our government is, and so Harris is saying that they should also be open to torture.Other Comments by John Pritzlaff
48. Comment #16543 by ignored_ethos on January 7, 2007 at 8:52 am
This is nothing more than a "swift boating" of Sam Harris and everybody who doesn't want to see his name slandered should go the alternet website and demand an apology. When people say courageous but provocative things like Sam Harris the people who agree and are thankful for his courage must defend his reputation against slander. This is a right wing, fundie tactic that is used to discredit an author, and sadly it often works because if no one speaks up, many will mistake the silence as acceptance. From looking at the comments on the alternet site, Sam Harris could use a voice or two on his side.Other Comments by ignored_ethos
49. Comment #16552 by Alric on January 7, 2007 at 9:55 am
I was worried this would happen. Although Gorenfeld's claims are exaggerated, Sam does vacilate when confronted directly with the question of whether phenomena like reincarnation can occur. I witnessed this on the Beyond Belief meeting when Lawrence Krauss asks him directly about reincarnation. He is unable to come up with a staright answer. Up to that point his arguments were cogent and direct which made the vacilation even more interesting by contrast.I still admire Sam and his work but I would be interested in knowing where his hesitation comes from.
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50. Comment #16555 by MaxII on January 7, 2007 at 10:13 am
What I find really interesting about this controversy is that Harris invited people to read the critique, posted a reasonable repsonse and moved on.Harris is certainly an inspiration because he is a wonderful example of what a public intellectual should be. Sam doesn't rattle and answer vitriole with vitriole. It is argument and reason and an uncommon willingness to listen to even the most scathing critique that characterize his approach.
The final chapters of End of Faith tended to rattle me abit. The torture chapter I had to read several times, mostly to get over my own reluctance to ask the questions it demands. Clearly the ticking time bomb scenario does come up, not nearly as often as it does on 24 but it it has happened. The fact is that Sam, in the way typical of philosophers, managed to ask a terribly difficult question. A question in fact that most of us have trouble looking at squarely because of its deeply personal nature. Agree with his position or not, I think Sam must be given credit for handling the difficult topic of torture with such thoughtfulness.
As to his views on the paranormal. THere are some in here who say he is retreating from the stance that he took in End of Faith. To which I say, so what? I too, once believed in ESP, and reincarnation among other paranormal claims. Or at least thought they weren't improbable. I would be shocked if a fair number of the people here weren't also in a similar place at some point in their lives. Scientists are supposed to be able to change their minds if the evidence suggests it is necessary.
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1. Comment #16400 by Frostbit on January 6, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Lies and deceition is the main agenda of the religious sector.Sam be careful of whom you interview with. Be sure of their integrity before giving them any chance to convolute your words.
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