/lit/ - Literature

>>5576715
Burn.

>>5576715
>2014
>pissing off the greatest philosopher of the past 200 years

>>5578796
Well aren't you a baitlord.

Damn, I love Aslan, praise Allah

>>5578801
>first guy to comprehensively refute the is/ought gap
>baitlord

pick one

>>5578818
>First guy to comprehensively...

No stfu how rong could u b

>Aslan and Greenwald know that nowhere in my work do I suggest that we kill harmless people for thought crimes
>Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them

>>5578818
>first guy to comprehensively refute the is/ought gap

Who even cares what Sam Harris does or thinks, honestly

>>5578796
⇒greatest philosopher of the past 200 years
wrong

>>5578840
People of the middle east he wants to nuke just for living there do care a bit.

>>5578818

>>5578855
>NEVER EVER

It just goes to show how morally stunted we've all become.

Internet defamation isn't funny

>>5578896
Am I the only one that actually feels kinda bad about the whole Ben Garrison thing?

>>5576715
wee ooo wee ooo tone police here. we're going to arrest twitter user @dan_verg_ for using the g-word and the f-word to describe a guy whose only crime was saying we should murder more Muslims.

>>5578850

> people

>>5576715
>explicitly says we should kill religious people, specifically muslims
>hey man, why do you gotta over react so much?

>>5578807
Praise Aslan

>>5578915
What Ben Garrison thing?

>>5579005
If you've ever stumbled upon a racist/anti-semetic cartoon signed by Ben Garrison, then it's a fake cartoon. It's become a maymay on /pol/ to add the Ben Garrison trademark to any offensive cartoon. Ben Garrison got super butthurt about it which led to even more people doing it.

>>5576715
I like Sam Harris. He's a good enough guy.

>>5579022

>>5579013
Aaahhhh... ok.

>>5579022
I also do. By and large, he makes good points. Not being sarcastic.
>inb4 fedora

>>5579035

So are you faggots on /lit/ actually religious or some shit? Crazy pack o' cuntz.

>>5579052

>>5579052
Only the really retarded among us. Most are just autist who enjoy posting le epic hat may-may

>>5579052
Yeah, I have a hard time understanding it, too. Kids these days. They're the same ones getting their jimmies rustled when people shit on Rand.

>>5579052
I hope you know /lit/ is a Catholic board

>>5578850
But he can't nuke them, so why do they give a shit?

Just make fun of him for looking like Seth Green's fugly uncle, like I do.

>>5579079
Catholic board

>>5579079
>>5579085
>being a papist heretic
Orthodoxy 4 lyf

>>5578850
that you, aslan?

>>5579079
Fuck off

>>5579070
>>5579076

>>5579079
>>5579085
Filthy infidels. A fatwa on /lit/!

>>5579052
Comments like this make me so proud

>>5579013
>>5579005

>>5579101
>someone spent time creating this

>>5579035
>>5579022

I agree. I don't avidly follow the Sam Harris hate parade on /lit/ but from what I have seen there is no conclusive arguments posed against him(by people on this board. It seems mostly to be dismissive due to his popularity.

Why can't a piece of literature/philosophy hold value while simultaneously being popular? This position seems reserved to the authors of the past in the minds of most. It seems completely arbitrary.

He's totally right. Muslims are dangerous people who want to enslave the world in their dogma. Kill em all.

>>5579120
His views are completely unsophisticated. And it's irritating because he is so smug and acts as if he has access to the absolute truth. This is made worse that he overtly disrespects the history of philosophy and philosopher and religious scholars etc. I.e. people who are way more qualified in the areas that he's writing about. He's the fedora meme incarnate.

>>5578796
who, joe rogan?

>>5579170
joe rogan is the actual ubermench
have you seen the supplements he's taking? he's gonna live 200-1000 years propagating the new evolutionary paradigm of new jersey

>>5579164
are these claims substantiated? Could I have examples?

>>5579109
>zimmerman
>white

>>5579213
The entirety on The Moral Landscape. There's a part, I don't know it off by heart, but he lists a bunch of ethical positions and says he didn't bother to study them because they were boring.

Also there's this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtH3Q54T-M8

During his speech he says we can ignore moral philosophy because science found "well being" (whatever the fuck that) in the brain and this solves ethics. Then Simon Blackburn destroys him during his speech.

All the other speakers make good points too. Except Krauss who I honestly don't know why he's there

>>5579232
Kenan Malik also said:
>Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as "adaptation", "speciation", "homology", "phylogenetics" or "kin selection" would "increase the amount of boredom in the universe". How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument?

>dey took my quote out of context!
>the full quote is actually worse

lol @ all the butthurt responses he's written to people who don't like him. He should meditate (in a totally non-religious way!) on how fragile his fucking ego is.

>never geard of him
>got introduced only by the link OP gave, and other entries on his blog and site
what a terrible douchebag imposter

>>5579281
>Never heard of him
You have nothing to add to this thread, shitlord.

>>5579284
well, just gave the information, that if you give the guy the possibility to introduce himself he really appears as the idiotic warmonger pseudo-intellectual he whines about being portraited as.

whereas your addition to the thread was very valuable indeed.

>>5579258

>On Monday, the 13th of October, a cowardly 4chan "user" attacked me from behind a veil of anonymity. Calling me "butthurt," he is apparently unaware that I've disproved this claim in numerous angry, long-winded blog posts. He is most likely a dirty Muslim.

>>5579232
he just couldn't help himself. he doesn't have free will.

>>5576715
>if you can't communicate on soundbite, don't communicate at all

>>5579324
>portraited
Still nothing, pleb.

>>5579364

>>5579232
haha his 'worst possible universe ever' thought experiment is like a retarded sadist version of Rawls's veil of ignorance

>>5579232
>for that reason we can ignore much of what has been said in moral philosophy

>>5578915
I think that it teaches an important lesson to cartoonists with their opinions on quick-draw: if your comic can be edited to say "JEWISH SODASTREAM CONSPIRACY" and nothing seems off, your comic isn't good. Tatsuya Ishida for example, especially given that he outright uses matrix analogies.

I read this entire thread thinking it was about Sam Hyde for some reason

>>5579469
I can see how you'd make that error.

I read Sam Harris' blog about Brazilian jiu-jitsu and thought he was cool. I read his books and think he's wrong about so many things, but I could talk to him about BJJ.

>>5579720
>but I could talk to him about BJ
lol

I think the difference between random internet retards doing it and this is that people take Glen Greenwald and Reza Aslan seriously.

>>5579192
Also, smiting all foes with a spinning side kick. Dude can kick silly bitches in half.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs4uQ6DfKV8

The sad part here is that they make Harris look like a dangerous retard for the wrong reasons. The problem isn't that he thinks that there might in principle be beliefs so dangerous that the believers can be killed ethically (this is problematic, but not the worst part). The real problem is that he thinks America is waging a 'war of ideas'. Yes, you are defending freedom :^). Sam Harris has the understanding of global politics of the average Nascar fan.

>>5579720
haha gay

>>5580795
>The real problem is that he thinks America is waging a 'war of ideas'
So he rehashes Huntington's Clash of Civilizations?

Wow /lit/, I thought you were better than this. Sam Harris is fucking smart if you actually listen to what he's trying to say. The problem is that 99% of the people that read or listen to him are massive pussies who scream and cry when he suggests that maybe the people who are beheading social workers and slaughtering children subscribe to shitty ideas.

So what happened that tricked both Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens into supporting the side they do in current wars and politics?

am i just too stupid to understand we have to have a crusade?

>>5581976

This so much

It's really disappointing to see normally smart people like Glenn Greenwald rush to side with those bashing Harris just because he said that Islam needs to be reformed because of how the Quran sanctions the rape and murder of infidels

>>5579013
Ben Garrison went to /pol/ once after hearing about their nonsense racist remarks and antisemitism.

He used to create all kinds of threads asking for proof of their beliefs etc etc.

He was a changed man. He saw the proof, and he became antisemitic himself.

The reason why some people feel bad for it is because /pol/ is literally one big meme, all of it, and he was convinced by falsified info about the holocaust that dedicated /po/tard neckbeards pieced together on the days they didn't have enough welfare money to buy Steam games with.

>>5578818
>>first guy to comprehensively refute the is/ought gap
[citation needed]

>>5579457
>implying that a comic that deals with power can't be edited into a jewish conspiracy one

>>5578796
AHA HA HA HA! OOH WOW! THAT WAS A CLEVER ONE ANON! REAL FUCKING FUNNY THERE!

>>5582066
Hitchens died long before the inflatable 'ISIS' muslim enemy. All Hitchens said was that, based on the pre-war evidence given to us that Saddam had committed mass genocide, that a substantial Iraqi percentage wanted a new government, and that Saddam was generally a cunt, that he supported the quick and efficient removal of a clear dictator. He didn't support the way the war turned out, and obviously his deceased status has no bearing on this carefully fabricated ISIS crusade.

>>5581976
How is that smart? That's a majority opinion. Muslims = bad people has been ingrained in the public consciousness for years.

>>5582138
>normally smart people like Glenn Greenwald

lmao.

>Islam needs to be reformed

Why would a belief which admits to eternity reform based on the ideals of the present?

>hur dur sam harris is a nice guy and he has some good ideas hur dur why all the hate

>>5576715
>Sam Harris
stopped reading right there

>mfw people think they are so enlightened because "Muslims are good"

>mfw it is the duty of enlightened people to speak up about this barbaric fucking religion

>Et que nous entendions dans les plaines voisines
>Le cliquetis confus des lances sarrasines.

I love this. America will start a war on Islam. Every Islamic state, and hundreds of thousands of US muslims, will get involved. America will lose.

Seems like a good defense to me.

The power that belief has over our emotional lives appears to be total. For every emotion that you are capable of feeling, there is surely a belief that could invoke it in a matter of moments. Consider the following proposition:

Your daughter is being slowly tortured in an English jail.

What is it that stands between you and the absolute panic that such a proposition would loose in the mind and body of a person who believed it? Perhaps you do not have a daughter, or you know her to be safely at home, or you believe that English jailors are renowned for their congeniality. Whatever the reason, the door to belief has not yet swung upon its hinges.

The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. 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 to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.

>>5576715

>Reza Aslan

Stopped reading there

>>5582357
Ah so you don't like to listen to opposing views to your god on earth Sam Harris? How surprising.

>>5582282
>A war of ideas

What the fuck does that even mean? Someone mentioned 'Clash of Civilizations'.

>>5582162
Is this true?
Because he hasn't made any comics in a while so I wouldn't be surprised.

>>5581976
Oh, please, Nobody here is defending Muslims. We just think Harris' philosophical ideas are shit.

>>5581976
>Sam Harris is fucking smart if you actually listen to what he's trying to say.

He's a fucking idiot if you actually listen to what he says.

>when he suggests that maybe the people who are beheading social workers and slaughtering children subscribe to shitty ideas.

"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 to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas."

He describes Muslim casualties of Western powers—past, present, and future—as inevitable and 'justifiable' results of 'self-defense.' On top of this, he literally believes that we're involved in a 'war of ideas.' He's essentially saying that Western military action against Da Muslims will continue to be legitimate until 'Islam' disappears or turns into something that Sam Harris deems acceptable. Even if we ignore how silly his essentializing view of Islam is, this is a profoundly stupid and dangerous message.

>>5582138
>just because he said that Islam needs to be reformed

What allows Sam Harris (or you, or anyone else) to adjudicate between all of the competing claims to Islamic orthodoxy and discern a TRUE Islam that MUST be 'reformed'? What the fuck does he know?

>>5582215
>Everything must either be good or evil for the world to make sense to me

>>5582549
Islam can never be trusted because of the doctrine of taqqiya and must be eradicated. It's easily the worst of the Abrahamic religions.

>>5582400
>What the fuck does that even mean?
it means >muh freedoms. It's about believing the lies about exporting freedom and democracy, when the truth is obviously power politics and war profiteering.

>>5582587
The Kikes have a similar doctrine, should we gas them too?
Oh wait

He's totally right. Islam needs to go in its entirety.

>>5582587
>Islam can never be trusted because of the doctrine of taqqiya

...which permits dissimulation if revealing one's religious identity will result in being killed? This was a practice associated with early Shi'ites when they were a fractious, persecuted minority rebelling against Sunni caliphs.

By pretending that this allows you to assume that Muslims are devious liars, you are effectively saying that you aren't open to any exchange of words or ideas—only killing. And you'd have me believe that you're on the side of civilization.

>must be eradicated.

What have you done today to further this impossible cause, young keyboard warrior?

>>5578796
Indeed a master baiter.

>>5582660
I love how Harris writes a book about morality and ethics then proceeds to say shit like that. If those people are neurologically happy in their situation, it isn't right for us to cause them misery by removing them from that situation.

As for Islam, I think the most dangerous tenets of it should be removed or revised. The entire thing does not need to be eradicated(nor its people) but rather the dangerous parts of it.

>>5582671
No, like all religion it all has to go.

>>5582671
How are you going to force people to edit a religion?

And even if you manage to do so what is to stop them from forming a new branch that reinstates the tenets that were previously removed?

If his arguments are so easily dismantled why don't you guys debate him? You'll be famous assuming you aren't totally full of shit :>)

>>5582687
Well that's the problem. How could someone do that. Specifically, if it involves making people suffer to do it, is it not then immoral to change those tenets? Our well-being goes up when we kill dangerous muslims, but we have just destroyed their well-being! Aren't we being immoral according to the neuroscience point of view of Harris? Shouldn't the whole world try to be happy? He speaks of things like that yet then says shit like 'we need to eradicate' blah blah. If they're happy in their situation, how can we eradicate them? Why? Because we have more power than them and they are effecting our well-being so since we have that power we destroy their well-being for our benefit? What if the 'power level' so to speak was reversed? Wouldn't the Islamic people destroying us be the right thing to do because we are effecting their well-being?

>>5582671
>As for Islam, I think the most dangerous tenets of it should be removed or revised. The entire thing does not need to be eradicated(nor its people) but rather the dangerous parts of it.

This raises a number of difficulties. How do we determine which practices or behaviors are dangerous? How do we link them conclusively to certain tenets of the religion? If we manage to do this, how do we actually go about changing these things?

I think proposals like this overlook the discursive, mutable character of the world's major religions. Outside of a small core of essential dogma and rites, any given religious ideology or religiously-motivated act has at least as much to do with the social/political world of the individual believer as it does with anything inherent to that person's religion. If we don't like ISIS's ideology, we will damage it far more by changing the conditions that allow it to exist than we will by insisting that it's intrinsically Islamic and attacking the religion accordingly.

This is one of the most crucial things that people like Harris fail to understand.

>>5581976
>>5581976
I used to love Harris. I was all for that New Atheism stuff and thought everything he said was just self-evidently true. But as I grew up I realised things just weren't that simple. Harris' views are unsophisticated and lacking in any real depth. And I know it's silly but: he's so fucking boring. His view of the world is so plain and flat

>>5582704
This.

>>5582704
>>5582772

Yeah, great idea. I'll fill out a "debate Sam Harris" application and mail it to him right away.

>>5582787
lmao

While I don't agree with his conclusion, the idea he raises about dangerous beliefs is interesting and deserves further analysis.

>>5579232
>Except Krauss who I honestly don't know why he's there

Underrated statement

>>5582849
>Implying Sam Harris' beliefs on morality which are completely unsupported by any scholarly philosophical text because he ignored every single one, isn't dangerous

>>5579249
Same is just making a joke though, and he has studied moral philosophy, he has a degree in philosophy...

>>5582859
>he has a degree in philosophy...

An undergrad degree. Once you get one of those, you'll understand how little it means.

>>5582859
He has a fucking B.A. give me a break. It's useless. He never did any graduate work. He's essentially a pleb when it comes to philosophy.

Non-murrican here. Who is this guy and does he actually matter?

>>5582875
He's a neuroscientist who fancies himself an expert on philosophy and religion. He's nobody and no he doesn't matter. Just another stupid fuck american who thinks the West and its values should police the entire world and that the values of the rest of world are only good if they agree with the West's.

>>5582687
Co-opt the religious leaders with CIA plants, fund the project with drug money. In a few decades change would be had.

>>5582883

Oh this guy was on Bill Maher with Ben Affleck right?

>>5582884
Right because the West has the power and should dictate the values of the world and its people. Very moral view you have there.

>>5582892
>geopolitics
>morals
lmao
Stay mad

>>5582787
Pay a private investigator to find out where he and his extended family lives and send notes to all of them informing him of the challenge...

>>5582891
Yeah he was. Ben Affleck was embarrassing though.

>>558884
>psyop fantasies
/pol/ pls.

>>5582896
No actually all you have to do is light a Crucifix-signal into the sky and Sam Harris will see and come to debate you on how God isn't real.

>>5582866
>>5582873

Fair enough, I honestly didn't realize it was merely an undergrad, I don't know why I was operating under the assumption that it was more.

Maybe because he has publicly mentioned the fact that he "has a degree in philosophy", doesn't he realize that sort of discredits him when he makes those statements?

>>5582895
>Implying Sam Harris knows anything about politics much less geopolitics

>Implying his universal well-being theory doesn't extend to the world and thus its people and values

>tfw you prove the point that Sam Harris is a fucking retard

lel

>>5582912
>implying I implied anything other than that there are no morals in geopolitics
>implying I was the original person you replied to
TOP lel

>>5582892
I didn't say it was moral or otherwise, I was simply providing a way it could be potentially done, a way that hurts a very limited number of people.

>>5582911
Yes that's why he says 'Degree'. If someone is on T.V. and has a huge public presence, suddenly that degree turns into a PhD issued by Socrates himself. He's a fucking fraud just like Dawkins. They are great at what they do IN THEIR FIELDS. But in others, its like watching a goldfish in a shark tank.

>>5582919
Maybe when I grow up ill be a cult-ish fraud too...

>>5582884
>Co-opt the religious leaders with CIA plants

There's no formal central authority in Sunni Islam. Nothing to co-opt.

>>5582912
>geopolitics
Could this be THE buzzword of 2014?

>>5582916
>Implying I was replying the original person when I wasn't

>Implying that your implication of implying that there are no morals in geopolitics implied that Sam Harris' bullshit extends into that arena had nothing to do with anything and I was just making a point to discredit him

TOPPER lel

I don't even know what I just wrote.

>>5582926
>>Implying that your implication of implying that there are no morals in geopolitics implied that Sam Harris' bullshit extends into that arena had nothing to do with anything and I was just making a point to discredit him
But I never implied that
TOPPEST lel

>>5582924
Exactly. It's just a bunch of religious leaders with their own followers doing whatever the fuck they're doing.

>>5582930
okay you win because you got toppest lel.

>>5576715
Funny thing is, I disagree with most of Sam Harris's shit, but the bit about killing people being okay I do agree with. I mean, how else is war supposed to function if not in that manner?

>>5582942

>>5582947
I'm not a lolbertarian, I'm just not a pacifist. If there's a better way to change society I'd love to hear it, but I'm convinced violent revolution or violent insurrection are the only tools to guarantee societal change.

>>5582960

>>5582947
>and the decent people will loose

hahahahaha.

>>5582960
Usually they are. However according to Harris' moral philosophy he created when he was masturbating to MRI scans, war would cause the well-being of others to dwindle. How then is it moral? Why? Because we have more power than 'x' people so we are justified to destroy them because our well-being is effected by them? Don't they have a right to bomb our cities for the same reason?

>>5582968
>fuck, someone implied I tip hats, I guess my argument is over

Is not being a pure pacifist now worthy of fedora tipping? What next?

>>5582977
War and violence are not moral in and of themselves. They are more like tools to bring about societal change.

>>5583092

literally who?

shut up

I literally don't care

>>5583130
I'd implore you to do a little bit of thinking if that’s even possible for you to think before you do fucking hating on fedoras.

>>5583356
http://youtu.be/JUVOgPzXm7g

>>5582162
>He was a changed man. He saw the proof, and he became antisemitic himself.
Sounds like bullshit. Post proof or it didn't happen.

>>5578848
Yea arrowfag, He is the greatest skientist evah

>>5579052
You don't have to be a retard type of atheist to be irreligious.

>>5582162
Do those people on /pol/ literally believe all of the things they say or are they just pretending to be retarded?

>>5586140
Probably not initially, but then the b8 attracted enough bona fide stormfags and contrarian 8th graders that they are now literally a group who believes they are the "redpilled" ones in a society of sheeple.

You take the truism "talking about religion and politics creates unnecessary strife", then multiply it by 4chan, then what you get is /pol/.

>>5579079

>mfw woman priests
>mfw almost woman bishops

Is there no end to the protestant degeneracy

>>5583360
over the top b8 in my opinion

>>5586233
Relax chubby, your religion won't grow up in your lifetime.

>TFW JUST BROKE UP WITH GIRL I LOVE
>TFW SHE WAS ROMAN CATHOLIC
>TFW I COME TO /LIT/ TO SHITPOST ABOUT BOOKS IN AN ATTEMPT TO FORGET MY PAIN AND INSTEAD SEE THREE THREADS ABOUT RELIGION
>TFW REMINDED OF HER, OF HOW MUCH I LOVED HER, AND I DIE A LITTLE BIT MORE INSIDE
KILL ME
I
L
L

M
E

>>5578818
Now this is some bait I can enjoy

>>5586258
>you now manually realize that you will never smell her butthole again

>>5576715
Am I missing something or does harris' "context" of his phrase carry the exact same meaning it does when taken literally?