Mr. Harris said “At this moment, millions of women and girls have been abandoned to illiteracy, forced marriage, and lives of slavery and abuse under the guise of “multiculturalism” and “religious sensitivity.” This is a crime to which otherwise well-intentioned apologists for Islam are now accomplices.”

As a Muslim woman, I feel deeply offended with this erroneous statement.

For some one like mr. Harris to claim impartiality, rationality, and to pretend to be defending me as a Muslim woman, yet fails to adhere to the basic principles of objectivity and honest research is deeply disheartening and demoralizing.
Would Mr. Harris who holds the banner of liberating me as Muslim women dare to give me his research papers and conscientious studies that prove his claims.

Would he kindly offer to show me the scientific evidence that proves to me that we –Muslim women- are illiterate beings, forced into marriage, and live a life of slavery?

Would he answer me if Islam is such a bad ideology, and if it degrades women as he ignorantly claims, why is it that 4 out of 5 converts to Islam are women, knowing that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world?

Interesting also to notice that in the so called ” Democratic Free World” the number of women in Parliaments are less than those in the “Undemocratic, Un-Free” Islamic countries

The free world: US 16.3% , UK 19.7%, Israel 14.2%, and France 12.2%

The “other” world: Rwanda 48.8%, Afghanistan 27.3%, Iraq 25.5%, United Arab Emirates 22.5%,Pakistan 21.3%, Monaco 20.8%, Sudan 17.8%

I am afraid to say that women like Thatcher, Albright, Rice, Golda Meir, did not set a good example and were not the type to encourage us to support more participation of western women in parliaments in the “Free World”; otherwise it would’ve been a good idea for Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan to come and liberate the Western women
http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm

I would urge mr. Harris’s scientific integrity that he should trouble himself with some investigation and to do a bit of homework before he makes such false claims?
A good start might be by watching this elementary introduction about Islam.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-768956312207897325&q=when

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4312980342283025421&q=empire

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7502243539190558658&q=empire

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=94144204270367302&q=empire

To believe in God or not believe, is of no consequence to me, it is the individual’s choice; but what matters to me immeasurably is that no one should have the audacity to pile up some fantasy about my life and my beliefs and to propagate it as factual information.

NO SIR

That is not acceptable

Go and do your research first, and it might be a good idea to talk to us –Muslim women- whom you so very “kindly” trying to “un-slave”.

Btw, it might also be a good start if you read my blog to learn something about the relationship of husband and wife in a Muslim marriage:

http://poetryforpalestine.spaces.live.com/

In order to live we are forced to believe in reality.
Why believe in anything else outside experience?
Why ask questions that cannot be answered rationally?

Spirituality is an emotional response to awareness of things beyond our understanding.

One cannot draw a meaningful picture of a house if one has never been outside.

There ARE such things as silly questions.

I’ve enjoyed reading the comments here. Here’s a break down of people:

1. People who agree with Sam, often keeping it short and sweet to give him a written “thumb’s up”.

2. People who demand that the bible be interpreted as not being at all like how it was written. Huh? So…those people, who believed that women were property, were just trying to create one gigantic life lesson? They did not want women to be stoned, sacrifices to be made, people to be killed, etc? ‘Cause…that’s what history shows. A lot of killing in all sorts of ways with God tacked on. Did the billions of people read it wrong? If it’s meant to be different, should it not be rewritten to convey the simple message you guys think it’s conveying?

3. People who think that Hedges is right and that Harris should die in horrible ways (I’m paraphrasing; though that crew should show up eventually).

4. People who believe that Harris is arrogant, often just screaming insults and shaking a fist whilst saying that religion has made us great.

5. Atheists who put their two cents in, often putting in facts and historical references to boost their argument.

Okay…after that break down, I can assume maybe two responses (besides non-response):

1. People saying I made a point.

2. People saying that I’m an arrogant moron that deserves hell, notably the unregistered people.

So…to my point:

Harris is trying to find someone that argues for faith rationally. So far, it’s been either people who remain as neutral as possible, like Hedges, to avoid any form of criticism, or people who are so crazy that they are nearly screaming “PRAISE JESUS! HE WILL KILL YOU, YOU HEATHEN!”

The problem with religion is that these two groups are the loudest ones: the cowards and the maniacs. On one hand, you have a group that doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, but still thinks you need to be converted, and on the other hand, you have a group that wants to kill you and watch you suffer in hell. It’s a disturbing mix of nice and nasty that should never be together.

Religion claims to be the answer, when all it does is cause bickering. People have always questioned religion. Rather, people have always done something that religion detests. Remember that in the dark ages, religion attacked the idea of the Earth being spherical and jailed any and all who believed it. Why? It wasn’t in the bible. When it was proven, they ‘tweaked’ it and said that the four corners spoken of were really the cardinal directions. Right. Anywho…atheists were often called heathens/heretics and were often burned along side witches. Nice. Religion offers little to starving children in Africa; they’re given a cross and a bible and maybe a little food. After all, if they truly cared about the people there, they would teach them skills and help them to find better food sources. Instead, they are forced to accept Jesus and condemn condoms, thus spreading AIDS, so that they can survive. Is this fair and just?

Oh, and by the way: America is a great country, but religion is a filthy stain. It justified our slavery. We forced it on the natives and killed many of them. We came here with equality in mind, but dashed it immediately. Look at us: mostly Christian, disgusted by atheism, disgusted by Islam, confused about Buddhism, forming our government’s laws AROUND Christianity (read: Gay rights, women’s rights, abortion), etc.

So, there’s my two cents. I don’t know how worth it my opinion is, but it’s out there.

Tentaculata,

Your assertion that Mr. Harris’ arguments are “hollow sophisms” lacks both coherency and cogency.

The term “bourgeois enemy” is a subjective categorization. Your own examples demonstrate this.

Mr. Harris has clearly defined, elsewhere, what he means by “bad ideas”, “bad reasons”, and “bad behaviors”. Therefore, unless you address these definitions specifically, you cannot equate them with such a categorization.

Thus, your argument is illogical, unconvincing, and, ultimately, irrelevant.

I was present at the UCLA session and have read Hedges’ “American Fascism” and both of Harris’ books.

It may be fun, but in the end trumping up a childish ‘debate’ between these two writers for the edification of a largely progressive audience is a waste of time and energy that could be better deployed on other issues.

Neither man holds any brief for organized religion or for the idea of an anthropomorphic God directing traffic with his eye on the sparrow. Yet both are A-OK with ‘spirituality’ in some sense. This quasi-debate seems to boil down to this: Given that the word ‘God’ doesn’t mean much, should we ever use it? It’s not a substantial debate about a bedrock aspect of ‘reality’ (another overly-used term). It’s a debate about a word.

There are better questions for progressives to debate, such as, ‘Given that the human population includes a dangerous number of delusional, bloodthirsty zombies, what can be done to start addressing the serious problems we recognize in common?’

Hedges, Harris and Scheer are intelligent men who can contribute—and have contributed—a great deal to the needed discussion. But as to this tweedledee vs. tweedledum business, both of these guys, plus C-minus moderator Scheer, should buy a vowel.

Hedges is a clever, clever debater. I’ve seen him champion ideals I hold dear several times. But he is wrong in this case. He makes some assumptions out of the gate about Sam’s position which are just not true.

Personally, I do agree with Sam - even though he would not believe what I believe. I happen to believe that there’s more evidence to support all life on earth being of extraterrestrial origin and I know Sam would not, since there is no proof.

Hopefully we would all agree that “evidence” is interpreted thru one’s paradigms, and that one’s “logic” is a slave to their paradigm. What Sam does - and what I hope we ALL do, is to question those paradigms and ask ourselves where these paradigms come from. Each of us have criteria by which we judge something to be true. Then, if we want to really question ourself, we should naturally have criteria by which we judge this criteria to be true or false. And criteria by which we judge the criteria by which we judge that criteria…etc. It’s no wonder that most people give up and just “believe”.  But I really respect Sam’s unemotional position here. Removing the emotional attachment to our arguments holds a lot more weight - from my little perspective, anyway.

I believe that Adolph Hitler was a Roman Catholic.  He was raised in that faith and never renounced it.

Sam Harris writes on his website:
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/

“Especially unscrupulous critics of my work have claimed that my critique of Islam is “racist.” Such criticism is almost too stupid to merit a response. But, as prominent writers can sometimes be this stupid, here goes:
My analysis of religion in general, and of Islam in particular, focuses on what I consider to be bad ideas, held for bad reasons, leading to bad behavior. My antipathy toward Islam—which is, in truth, difficult to exaggerate—applies to ideas, not to people, and certainly not to the color of a person’s skin.”

Cambodian dictator Pol Pot’s ideology was centered on the reclaiming of a primitivist-agrarian communist utopia.  It was not centered on race. 

It was centered, in Harris’ words, on what Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge felt were “bad ideas, held for bad reasons, leading to bad behavior.”  Which, in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge, justified the killing fields and the S-21 prison and concentration camp where interrogation involving torture was a regular occurrence.

People who were educated (especially in the West) or appeared to be intelligent (those with glasses, for example), those who had contact with Western countries, Buddhist monks, the handicapped, were seen as “bourgeois enemies” and an estimated 1 to 2 million of these Cambodian people were exterminated by the Cambodian Khmer Rouge (CIA, Amnesty International).  In the same way that the Nazi regime killed homosexuals despite a race-centered ideology, the Khmer Rouge included ethnic minorities like Chinese, Laotians, Vietnamese, and Cham among their “bourgeois enemies,” despite a lifestyle- and class-centered ideology.

Harris’ argument that he is not racist because he is not arguing for biological or racial inferiority of Muslims is hollow at best and the most dangerous kind of sophistry.

In the interests of brevity, I will be extracting the most relevant sections from Harris’ quotes.  The paragraphs in their entirety, without ellipses, can be found in the compilation of quotes I have posted, and of course tracked to “The End of Faith” itself, as I’ve provided the page numbers.

Sam Harris writes on his website:
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/

“I also think it was one of the most damaging blunders to occur in the last century of U.S. foreign policy.”

At the debate Sam also denied ever supporting the war in Iraq.  However, on page 151 of “The End of Faith,” Sam Harris writes:

“It seems all but certain that some form of benign dictatorship will generally be necessary to bridge the gap.  But benignity is the key – and if it cannot emerge from within a state, it must be imposed from without.  The means of such imposition are necessarily crude: they amount to economic isolation, military intervention (whether open or covert), or some combination of both.  While this may seem an exceedingly arrogant doctrine to espouse, it appears we have no alternatives.  We cannot wait for weapons of mass destruction to dribble out of the former Soviet Union – to pick only one horrible possibility – and into the hands of fanatics.”

That sounds like a pretty accurate description of Iraq.  Remember “They will welcome us as liberators?”  Surely we were benign.

In the interests of brevity, I will be extracting the most relevant sections from Harris’ quotes.  The paragraphs in their entirety, without ellipses, can be found in the compilation of quotes I have posted, and of course tracked to “The End of Faith” itself, as I’ve provided the page numbers.

Sam Harris writes on his website:
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/

“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.  I considered our mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to be patently unethical.”

and

“If [the interrogator] 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.”

On page 193 of “The End of Faith,” Sam Harris introduces the hypothetical ticking time bomb scenario (for which there is no precedent), courtesy of Alan Dershowitz (who also claims that Israel treats Palestinians humanely and no longer use torture, but that’s another issue):

“Given this state of affairs – in particular, given that there is still time to prevent an imminent atrocity – it seems there would be no harm in dusting off the strappado and exposing this unpleasant fellow to a suasion of bygone times.”

Strap-pa-do: A form of torture in which the victim is lifted off the ground by a rope attached to the wrists, which have been tied behind the back, and then is dropped partway to the ground with a jerk.

In November 2003, Manadel al-Jamadi was killed during an “interrogation session” at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in which the strappado was used on him. His death was ruled a homicide by the U. S. military.

But Sam here condemns Abu Ghraib as sadistic, stupid, and patently unethical, so his casual suggestions of meting out the strappado are okay.

In the interests of brevity, I will be extracting the most relevant sections from Harris’ quotes.  The paragraphs in their entirety, without ellipses, can be found in the compilation of quotes I have posted, and of course tracked to “The End of Faith” itself, as I’ve provided the page numbers.

Sam Harris writes on his website:
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/

“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 “water-board” a man like Osama bin Laden (and risk torturing someone who just happens to look like Osama bin Laden).
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.”

On page 194 of “The End of Faith,” Sam Harris writes:

“Rather, it seems obvious that the misapplication of torture should be far less troubling to us than collateral damage: there are, after all, no infants interned at Guantanamo Bay, JUST RATHER SCROFULOUS YOUNG MEN, MANY OF WHOM WERE CAUGHT IN THE VERY ACT OF TRYING TO KILL OUR SOLDIERS…  The ethical divide that seems to be opening up here suggests that those who are willing to drop bombs might want to ABDUCT THE NEAREST AND DEAREST OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS – THEIR WIVES, MOTHERS, AND DAUGHTERS – AND TORTURE THEM AS WELL, assuming anything profitable to our side might come of it.”

Remember “Innocent Until Proven Guilty”?  The discussion on torture in “The End of Faith” focuses on the good logic of torturing SUSPECTED terrorists and their wives, mothers, and daughters.  It is safe to make a public statement now talking about the relative merits of torturing Osama Bin Laden.  A confirmed terrorist such as Bin Laden is not a suspected terrorist and certainly not his wife, mother, and daughter.  And, incidentally, many of the rather scrofulous young men interned at Guantanamo have now been shown to have nothing to do with trying to kill our soldiers.

Sam Harris writes on his website:
http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/

“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.”

A greater evil does not justify a lesser evil.  The ends do not justify the means.

These writings by Sam Harris are quoted in their entirety.  There are no ellipses.  It is not out of context.  Page numbers are cited.

“Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.  This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.  Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people.  If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense.  This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and of innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world.  We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 53

“In the next chapter we will see that in our opposition to the world view of Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history.  It is as though a portal in time has opened, and fourteenth-century hordes are pouring into our world.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 107

“We are at war with Islam.  It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so.  It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been “hijacked” by extremists.  We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and actions of the Prophet.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, pp.109-110

“Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 123

“What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry?  If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them.  In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own.  Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime – as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day – but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 129

“Who are those improbable creatures scurrying about in shrouds and being regularly beaten for showing an exposed ankle?  Those were the dignified (and illiterate) women of the House of Islam.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 131

“I suspect that Muslim prosperity might even make matters worse, because the only thing that seems likely to persuade most Muslims that their world view is problematic is the demonstrable failure of their societies.  If Muslim orthodoxy were as economically and technologically viable as Western liberalism, we would probably be doomed to witness the Islamification of the earth.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 133

SAM’S GREATEST HITS II

“Any systematic approach to ethics, or to understanding the necessary underpinnings of a civil society, will find many Muslims standing eye-deep in the red barbarity of the fourteenth century.  There are undoubtedly historical and cultural reasons for this, and enough blame to go around, but we should not ignore the fact that we must now confront whole societies whose moral and political development – in their treatment of women and children, in their prosecution of war, in their approach to criminal justice, and in their very intuitions about what constitutes cruelty – lags behind our own.  This may seem like an unscientific and potentially racist thing to say, but it is neither.  It is not in the least racist, since it is not at all likely that there are biological reasons for the disparities here, and it is unscientific only because science has not yet addressed the moral sphere in a systematic way.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, pp. 145-146

“It seems all but certain that some form of benign dictatorship will generally be necessary to bridge the gap.  But benignity is the key – and if it cannot emerge from within a state, it must be imposed from without.  The means of such imposition are necessarily crude: they amount to economic isolation, military intervention (whether open or covert), or some combination of both.  While this may seem an exceedingly arrogant doctrine to espouse, it appears we have no alternatives.  We cannot wait for weapons of mass destruction to dribble out of the former Soviet Union – to pick only one horrible possibility – and into the hands of fanatics.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 151

“Is Islam compatible with a civil society?  Is it possible to believe what you must believe to be a good Muslim, to have military and economic power, and to not pose an unconscionable threat to the civil societies of others?  I believe that the answer to this question is no.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 151-152

“What is the difference between pursuing a course of action where we run the risk of inadvertently subjecting some innocent men to torture, and pursuing one in which we will inadvertently kill far greater numbers of men, women, and children?  Rather, it seems obvious that the misapplication of torture should be far less troubling to us than collateral damage: there are, after all, no infants interned at Guantanamo Bay, just rather scrofulous young men, many of whom were caught in the very act of trying to kill our soldiers.  Torture need not even impose a significant risk of death or permanent injury; while the collaterally damaged are, almost by definition, crippled or killed.  The ethical divide that seems to be opening up here suggests that those who are willing to drop bombs might want to abduct the nearest and dearest of suspected terrorists – their wives, mothers, and daughters – and torture them as well, assuming anything profitable to our side might come of it.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 194

“Given what many of us believe about the exigencies of our war on terrorism, the practice of torture, in certain circumstances, would seem to be not only permissible, but necessary.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p.199

“Ours is a world in which bombs must occasionally fall where such doubts are in short supply.  Here we come upon a terrible facet of ethically asymmetric warfare: when your enemy has no scruples, your own scruples become another weapon in his hand.”

—Sam Harris, The End of Faith, p. 202

Re: #73703 by Jason Bradfield

I don’t know what sense of “empiricism” you’re using, but any conception of knowledge that doesn’t permit knowledge acquisition through experience is untenable.  Information about our environment can only be gathered through experience.

As for your reference to the logician, you’re making an argument from authority on the basis of one source.  Can you rephrase this fellow’s argument?  If not, can you tell us whether this guy is the appropriate authority to refer to, and if there’s consensus in the field?

Your universal generalization about atheists at the end of your post is indicative of a non-truth-seeking disposition.  It’s rhetoric, and it’s entirely unproductive.  Furthermore, to know it you would have to have experience of atheists, but you reject empiricism so….

I think mankind is constantly evolving - from the belief in many gods, to the belief in one god, and finally to the belief in no gods. Let’s hope we get there before the godsters destroy us and our planet.

Sam Harris says,

“We can, however, rationally discuss what we know about chocolate”

Knowledge founded on what? Empiricism? HA!

I wish these ‘religious’ folks that have been debating Harris would stop with all the chit chat and go straight for Sam’s jugular. Bottom line - there is no knowledge justifiable by empiricism.

All Sam Harris’ empirical, so-called “rational”, thinking is actually inductive and therefore fallacious. The whole scientific method is one big stinking fallacy.

This is why the atheists either deny logic altogether (which is impossible to do) or redefine logic.

There is nothing “rational” about Sam Harris.

See David Zarefsky, Professor of Argumentation and Debate and Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, as an example of a man who, understanding the nature of formal logic, has to deny it (redefine it) in order to make empiricism work.

David Zarefsky, Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, Part 1 and Part 2 (The Teaching
Company, 2001.

Atheists are the most irrational morons on the planet.

Jason
thereignofchrist.com

I attended the UCLA debate and I agree with Sam’s “Strike Back” response.  Hedges, in his opening remarks, was clearly “hedging”.  He was redefining religion, avoiding the things he could not defend (“The word “God” should be a verb instead of a noun”) .  I felt like his opening remarks were more of a sermon than the start of a debate.  I have read Sam’s two books (End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation) and I do think Hedges misrepresented at least some of Sam’s positions, and to play the “racist” card was inexcusable.  I was disappointed that neither Sam nor Scheer asked Hedges his opinions on Biblical miracles (virgin birth, resurrection, water/wine, parting of oceans, etc.)  Finally, while Scheer is obviously an interesting and intelligent guy, I thought he was a terrible moderator.  He had no control over the debate (which is, by the way, the primary job of the moderator), allowed Hedges way more time than he allowed Sam, and injected too much of his own opinions into his remarks.

Faith (and by proxy religion) has by DEFINITION everything to do with superstition, irrational beliefs, and tribalism.

Thanks for the simple, short and sweet response, Sam.

Thank you Sam for such a refreshing contribution to the discussion.  Unfortunately far too many people adopt the simplistic view that we shoudl accept or reject everything you say—which, I am sure, could not be further from your mind.

Well said Sam.  Short and to the point.  I can’t wait for Truthdig to post the audio.

Sam, as someone who has read The End of Faith and was indeed “alarmed” by some of the views you expressed in it, I’d be eager to see you parse how exactly those web posts that quoted you distorted your views. Most of the quotations, if I remember it right, were block quotations that held a whole thought or a set of thoughts, not little snippets of a word or two that could easily be taken out of context.
Colin Wells