Evolution and cosmology are certainly interesting, but they don't really serve the need that fuels religions because they are intellectual, not emotional, experiences.

Science concerns itself with facts about reality. Intellectual.

Religion concerns itself with our relationship with reality. Emotional. — Hippyhead

Then I put it to you that a significant step forward would be for religions to give up pretending they have facts about creation and history, admit that it's all just emotive storytelling, and cease filling children's heads with false facts and interfering with teachers' job at teaching them scientific facts.

Religion is not science. Like most forum atheists you want to compare religion to science as if they were the same thing with the same goals. That is, you appear not to have enough of an understanding of religion to be a credible critic.

Like most forum atheists you want to compare religion to science as if they were the same thing with the same goals. — Hippyhead

Nope, not me. I'm happy to agree that that religion should make no claims to fact.

Irrespective of the views of the individuals, science is a secular discipline. It does not depend on the teachings of any church, is not constrained to study and report on that consistent with any church dogma, and does not consider historical texts absolute truth. — Kenosha Kid

And it actually doesn't promote atheism either, even if many draw that conclusion.

It's just a method.

cease filling children's heads with false facts and interfering with teachers' job at teaching them scientific facts. — Kenosha Kid

I'm not saying you're wrong- in any way. It's just this is probably the EXACT same quote geocentrists said to real scientists not that long ago, usually before imprisoning them or worse. You can blame religion, or you can blame the true common element, which is dogma. Rather, ignoring an often spoken about but seldom applied bit of wisdom: "the only thing I know is that I know nothing".

Scientific doctrine essentially demands extraterrestrial life exists. Aliens, man. Call them what you will. Say one shows up and says "Yeah, it all happened. We're your gods. Check that out". Then that would be that.

I'm not saying you're wrong- in any way. It's just this is probably the EXACT same quote geocentrists said to real scientists not that long ago, usually before imprisoning them or worse. You can blame religion, or you can blame the true common element, which is dogma. — Outlander

Rigid belief systems of any kind can and will thwart progress for the believer. That includes outdated scientific theory, if one makes a belief system out of it. However, to thwart the progress for generations to come, you need a religion. Me not accepting the big bang is unlikely to affect my great granddaughter. Me converting to Christianity and believing in Genesis and that non-believers will burn in eternity for hell is likely to affect my great granddaughter a lot.

Everyone should be free to believe whatever makes sense to them, no matter how out of date or stupid. But no one should have the power to stop someone else, including their children, from being capable of taking on new information.

It's also worth remembering that the geocentrists who imprisoned heliocentrists were the Inquisition. That's not a coincidence.

I'm happy to agree that that religion should make no claims to fact. — Kenosha Kid

Right. Like I said, you're comparing religion to science as if they were both fact finding enterprises, and then declaring science the best method of finding facts. This is the classic forum atheist misunderstanding, endlessly repeated on every philosophy forum. It's mostly a fantasy superiority pose built upon ignorance.

If you want to review and critique religion we should do so by measuring religion against it's own goals. How well is religion in general or a particular religion helping people manage their relationship with reality?

Let's imagine we have a young child dying of cancer. They're afraid about what's coming next. Whatever explanation we choose to share, how well does that explanation ease the child's fears and help them come to terms with what they face? How well does the story we tell help them manage their relationship with reality?

Would it be good religion to tell the child that they were born for no known reason in to short life full of pain and next they will be a rotting slab of meat in the ground? Such an explanation might be a reasonable scientific theory, but it would probably suck as a religion, right?

Funnily enough I agree that Harris is the smartest philosopher alive. I urge people to try and read ‘The Moral Landscape’ and not be impressed.

I also agree that ‘public intellectual’ describes him pretty well, but that shouldn’t mean that we dismiss him. I find so much of analytic philosophy barking up the wrong tree so Harris I find refreshing just on pure hit rate of what he gets correct.

In a similar vein I like Sean Carrol a lot. A physicist by training he doesn’t (in my opinion) have the same hit rate of correctness as Harris in philosophy but often has interesting things to say. I like his Ask Me Anything podcasts which you can find on YouTube.

But generally, Harris is a one off - there’s not many that really approach him for mine.

A particular moment of stupidity was when he recited a cooking recipe adding religious overtones to it as an example of how you can imbue any mass of words with profane meaning and using this as an example of how such ‘meaningless’ interpretations are somehow evidence for religion being bogus.

That we can actually produce such narratives from any text shows that we have a narrative function for interpreting in the world … such a function is far from meaningless and is actually something that humans excel at and live in every single day of our lives.

It kind of baffled me how he could not see that the thing he pointed out is the most meaningful item there possibly is in human history … that is why we have history.

All said and done, I do not think he is a complete waste of time, just lacks humility sometimes and his attempts to rectify this generally fail - the exchange with Chomsky was cringeworthy.

I don’t think Harris would argue about the importance of narratives or stories. His bit about the recipe (from memory) was simply to illustrate that it is very easy to read significance into text even when it is not intended, or borderline absent.

Harris will readily admit that there is some good to be found in religion, but that religion is rarely necessary to find that goodness, such that we needn’t put up with the obvious harms that religion also brings.

But he did argue this without even realising it. That was my point.

I think he does a reasonable job of being a spokesperson for ‘science’ in general. He sure as hell is not the best philosopher in the world … that had to be one of the most crazy labels I have heard attached to him, a bit like calling Jordan Peterson a philosopher. Both of them have a narrow field of expertise that they seem to believe to be much broader (or rather their ‘fans’ seem to believe that).

Personally I think Sean Carroll does a better job of reaching out to other branches of knowledge than Harris (accepting he possesses little to no expertise openly).

Funnily enough I agree that Harris is the smartest philosopher alive — invizzy

He is not a philosopher really. He is a neuroscientist with an interest in politics regarding the atheist movement (which was certainly called for in US).

the exchange with Chomsky was cringeworthy. — I like sushi

Glad I wasn’t the only one who cringed. As a general fan of Harris, I was really disappointed. I was hopeful for a meaningful exchange, but Sam simply could not hear the answers Chomsky gave about American “intention” regarding Al Shifa.

Too bad.

I see comments like this on the reg, yet it looked like Chomsky was the dill from my vantage point! I seem to be in the minority about this so perhaps a bias toward Harris on my behalf.

I am not really talking about Harris' breadth of knowledge when I praise him. One can be an extremely good philosopher with a narrow field of expertise!

Since posting my opinion of Harris a week ago, my Youtube feed is suddenly full of Sam Harris clips. — fishfry

The Youtube AI knows ... you inside out! Run (for your life)!

This site uses Google Analytics, which places a tracking code on every page, so that every time you visit a page, Google knows about it. Google also indexes page content, and of course Google owns Youtube. I don't know much about this technology, but theoretically, putting all this together, it is possible that the pages that you browse affect the choice of suggested videos. (I block google-analytics.com, and I keep Google login confined to those instances where I actually need it - although Google also keeps track of IP addresses.) — SophistiCat

:scream: and also very :cool:

As for Sam Harris, I'd say his rhetorical skills are over the top! He's also proficient in logic and that makes him a worthy opponent.

And his area of expertise is NOT philosophy, ergo he is maybe a reasonable amateur philosopher (he would likely state this himself if pressed hard enough). I say this because his general take on anything is marred by the political arguments he got caught up in when he was not even arguing, just stating something blatantly true.

He is no more a ‘good philosopher’ than I was a ‘good tennis player’ in my youth. Meaning I could beat all of my friends but they were not exactly seasoned pros or semi-pros.

Yes, and good to take note of it. Do not get me wrong, I admire Harris and his approach and stance in many areas but like everyone else he has shortcomings.

I still find him worth listening to from time to time and would never simply dismiss him because he has made some - what I consider - poor remarks.

He is not a philosopher really. He is a neuroscientist with an interest in politics regarding the atheist movement (which was certainly called for in US). — I like sushi

Socrates was charged with impiety which probably means he made some rather snarky comments about god(s) [re Euthyphro's dilemma] which was a polite way of saying god(s) is/are either unnecessary and/or undesirable i.e. atheism.

yet it looked like Chomsky was the dill from my vantage point! — invizzy

Then you either weren’t paying attention or you were clouded by prejudice towards Sam. I can’t see any way around it.

It’s as if you watched the Chomsky/William F Buckley conversation and came away believing Buckley looked good and Chomsky the “dill.” Come on.

Sam Harris is mediocre at very, very best. At worst he's just a useful idiot, probably believes what he says about torture and AI and the woke left.

He sometimes can string together some interesting observations, maybe once every 3 hours in his podcast. Not much more.

The worst of the so called "New Atheists". Hitchens used to be fantastic but went hard right the last decade of his life.

Dawkins and Dennett are quite good in many respects.

Maybe you’re unaware of how aggressive this post looks in a cold reading. I was up front about my bias toward Harris and gave an opinion on who it appeared to me came out looking better. No need to get exasperated!
From your point of view: a man being wrong on the internet - well there’s plenty of those out there :)

Fair enough. To each his own!

Thanks! No hard feelings, I realise I’m in the minority with this opinion haha :)