/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7885729]

Did he finish philosophy?

[Anonymous No.7885767]

yes

[Anonymous No.7886266]

>>7885729
>>7885767
>>>/reddit/

[Anonymous No.7886271]

>>7886266
not even that, it's more like conversations on richard dawkins twitter feed

[Anonymous No.7886284]

Indeed he did

[Anonymous No.7886313]

>>7886266
why dont most of /lit/ like him?

[Anonymous No.7886352]

>>7885729
Really /lit/? Fucking really?

Sam Harris is a pop-philosophy hack. He was one of the first Atheists to write about Atheism when Atheism became popular. That's about it. He doesn't give religion the respect it deserves, and judges the past from a modern perspective. The man is pleb tier

[Anonymous No.7886354]

>>7886352
>He doesn't give religion the respect it deserves

[Anonymous No.7886359]

>>7886313
>>7885729

he's a hack

[Anonymous No.7886369]

>>7886354
Harris argues that religion has been a force for bad in society. Lets take a look at the past for a sec. Before religion: Animals. After religion: building civilization.

Religious belief has been around in all cultures since the dawn of civilization; that should be an indicator that it played some necessary role. Call me crazy.

[Anonymous No.7886370]

>>7886369
Correlation != causation.

[Anonymous No.7886372]

>>7886359
Sam Harris is retarded, but so is that cartoon.

[Anonymous No.7886377]

Literally burst out laughing. I love /lit/.

[Anonymous No.7886397]

>>7886359

i wish the creation of webcomics was a punishable crime

[Anonymous No.7886400]

>>7886370
True, but that sword cuts both ways. Harris claims about religion can be answered the exact way.
So either we just throw our hands up in the air and say we'll never know, or we use probability to make an educated guess. Up to the present all societies practiced religion. Some of those societies failed, some succeeded. Some were repressive, some were open minded.

Its almost like religion isn't the source of all evil, but a stabilizing force in society that unites massive groups of people under one ideology.

Claiming religion is bad is like claiming human's animal disposition towards violence is bad- Yeah, it is right now, but we would never have gotten here without it.

[Anonymous No.7886441]

>>7886400
>unites massive groups of people under one ideology
>implying this is a good thing

[Anonymous No.7886449]

>>7886369
>After religion: building civilization
Civilization existed way before Judeo-Christianity came along.

>Religious belief has been around in all cultures since the dawn of civilization; that should be an indicator that it played some necessary role
Really? Since the dawn of civilization? What time-machine did you use to establish this? And which year specifically defines "the dawn of civilization"? You should know this, after all, you travelled there.

Individuals throughout history have killed millions under the influence of religion. It distorts your beliefs of the world to the degree of lunacy and absurdity.

>Call me crazy.
You are.

[Anonymous No.7886455]

>>7886397
existential comics is worse than reddit atheists really

[Anonymous No.7886463]

>>7886397

[Anonymous No.7886481]

>>7885729
He didn't even start it.

[Anonymous No.7886485]

>>7886441
> i'm such an individual, muh dick muh dick muh dick

[Anonymous No.7886539]

>>7886449
That's why I said religion, not Judeo-Christianity.

Civilization has some general characteristics like writing, agriculture and political structure. But I'll amend that and say recorded history so we're on the same page. Since recorded history there has been religion and spiritual beliefs, and probably prior to that as well.

>Individuals throughout history have killed millions under the influence of religion. It distorts your beliefs of the world to the degree of lunacy and absurdity.
In hindsight, yes a lot of religion is absurd. 2000, 1000, or 400 years ago when our understanding of the world was almost non-existent, it was a useful tool to give people needed peace of mind. Do you realize how arrogant it is to judge the religious beliefs of people who knew nothing about the world when you can look at a tree and know that it is comprised of cells, molecules, atoms etc? You don't even realize how much you know about the world.

They saw a ton of effects, and had to extrapolate causes. I could argue that relgion served a good purpose, but I'll just go the necessity route- could man, as a rational being who understands cause and effect, have gone thousands of years just saying "we don't have a good explanation for that, maybe we'll find out when civilization advances?" Fuck no. The creation of religion shows that we had the capacity to ask these questions- which seems retarded now that we know much of the answers, but was absolutely groundbreaking when compared to other animals that were run purely on instinct.

Religion served a necessary and good purpose- the evils of history were justified with religion, but weren't caused by it, they were caused by human nature. Religion has slowly advanced towards morality- we went from animals to people who could interact with people we had never met before. Do you know how groundbreaking that is?@?@? people who know nothing about each other, through shared language and belief system, can now interact without fear of death? HOLY SHIT!

You don't even realize how narrow your fucking world view is. Life hasn't always been this way, humanity hasn't always had all the answers. Give some respect to the belief systems that allowed us to get this far

[Anonymous No.7886551]

>>7886400
>Claiming religion is bad is like claiming human's animal disposition towards violence is bad
Our disposition to violence isn't in itself bad, it is the consequences (which Christianity accelerates) of violence that are bad. There are plenty of reasonable and infinitely better ethical frameworks than Christianity which provide us with a set of axioms for regulating our disposition to violence.

>Yeah, it is right now, but we would never have gotten here without it.
But that doesn't necessarily hold, for Christianity is a mere historical contingency: there is no reason to think that had it not existed humanity would have magically ceased to exist. Such states of affairs could have spawned many different possibilities.

>stabilizing force in society that unites massive groups of people under one ideology.
Your 'force' is outdated and contains a cluster of paradoxes and mutual inconsistencies. The masses need to be educated and shown that frameworks such as Aristotelian ethics, Deontology, and Utilitarianism, exist, and that you don't have to necessarily latch onto Christianity.

[Anonymous No.7886587]

>>7886284
such a ghoulish figure

[Anonymous No.7886598]

the Sam Harris meme is growing on me

[Anonymous No.7886603]

>>7886587
child abuser as well, m8

[Anonymous No.7886623]

>>7886551
>Our disposition to violence isn't in itself bad, it is the consequences (which Christianity accelerates) of violence that are bad.

Washing 43 sleeping pills down with a jack and coke isn't bad, its the certain death that follows that's bad. This is what you just said you retard.

>>7886449
>But that doesn't necessarily hold, for Christianity is a mere historical contingency
Now this is for both you faggots because you both jump to Christianity when I say religion. Your jump to Christianity when I'm discussing religious belief in general for society in general shows how fucking caught up you are in modern shit flinging. Christianity is not the only religion, and is not unique in the purpose it served. Its part of an evolving string of belief systems that generally goes animism-> pantheon of gods-> Monotheism. Stop focusing on where your culture is in the present, it only reveals how shallow and prejudiced your understanding of the subject is.

>Your 'force' is outdated and contains a cluster of paradoxes and mutual inconsistencies.
>>7886539
This goes into why that was necessary at the time. We can move on and create new belief systems, but we shouldn't blame past religions for serving a purpose that was completely necessary.

[Anonymous No.7886638]

>>7886485
>this triggers the collectivist

[Anonymous No.7886649]

>>7886551
>using "the masses" unironically

The navel gazing is strong here. You truly are an enlightened individual. Our true and only Savior, even.

[Anonymous No.7886659]

>>7886539
>Do you realize how arrogant it is to judge the religious beliefs of people who knew nothing about the world when you can look at a tree and know that it is comprised of cells, molecules, atoms etc?
There were plenty of natural philosophers (= scientists of their day) in the history that refuted much of the Christian ideas and even back then, when no discoveries had been made about elementary particles, they refused to listen to the evidence. Bruno, Galileo, etc. The churchmen and churchwomen just didn't give a fuck about challenging their preconceived worldviews. Plus, I wonder why you had to go back as far as 2000 years: just look at contemporary US; as far as I know, most are some Christian stripe or another, which, of course, comes with a suitable disbelief in evolutionary biology. And US is just one among the many countries that still take this stuff to the T.

> rational being who understands cause and effect
But we really don't understand cause and effect a priori. One must give a logico-mathematical theory these days if you claim to have "understood" causality. Neither are we rational beings by nature. Far from it.

>just saying "we don't have a good explanation for that, maybe we'll find out when civilization advances?" Fuck no.
Indeed, instead, they just went ahead and produced a bunch of rubbish in its strictest sense, and many people fell for it. The consequences of that are obvious: scientific progress was put on hold.

>The creation of religion shows that we had the capacity to ask these questions-
>was absolutely groundbreaking when compared to other animals that were run purely on instinct.
Not really; you only need sufficiently rich language to articulate your intuitions about the world. It is the creation of *language* that was ground-breaking, not religion.

>Religion served a necessary and good purpose- the evils of history were justified with religion, but weren't caused by it, they were caused by human nature.
Interpreting a single passage of The Bible could be the end of somebody's life. There's your The Bible, the cause of innumerable deaths. Not human nature. Religion.

>Religion has slowly advanced towards morality- we went from animals to people who could interact with people we had never met before
It was Plato and his dialogues that set forth the agenda for Western Philosophy to figure out ethics, not religion. Judeo-Christian morality on the other hand is ridden with inconsistencies.

>You don't even realize how narrow your fucking world view is
If you say so.

[Anonymous No.7886669]

>>7886623
>Washing 43 sleeping pills down with a jack and coke isn't bad, its the certain death that follows that's bad
That's not analogous (the part about sleeping pills has nothing to do with violence), I'm afraid.

But even if it was: Yes, death in those circumstances is that's bad because it gives rise to suffering to the people that knew you.

Care to try again?

[Anonymous No.7886671]

>>7886449
>before Judeo-Christianity came along.
>Judeo-Christianity

Spotted the redditor

[Anonymous No.7886679]

>>7886671
Spotted the angry christfag that consistently fails to come up with a constructive objection.

[Anonymous No.7886680]

>>7886659
You do realize that even without religion people still commit murder on a genocidal level.

Hitler's Nazi Germany, Stalin's Communisy Russia, Mao's Red China all atheistic ideologies that killed millions.

[Anonymous No.7886687]

>>7886680
But that's completely besides the point, honey. We aren't arguing about Hitler or Stalin here, nor there is any reason to believe that atheism had any influence on their deeds. It is a completely different can of worms.

Stop bringing up irrelevant shit; shit that religious people especially have a tendency to do in debates like these.

[Anonymous No.7886691]

>>7886669
>That's not analogous (the part about sleeping pills has nothing to do with violence), I'm afraid.
I don't know why I'm doing this to myself, because you're obviously retarded. But here goes

You said our violent disposition isn't, but that the consequences of it are. But the cause of something is intimately linked to the effect; in a way they have the same value.

So if I know the consequences of a violent disposition are bad, I would probably call that violent disposition bad as well- insofar as it causes violence that I don't want or like.

So when I said "Drinking sleeping pills with jack CAUSES death," I was attempting, through analogy, to reveal the absurdity of your idiotic statement. Your claim that it isn't our violent nature that is bad, but the consequences thereof, is the same as saying drinking jack with sleeping pills isn't bad, but the consequences (death) are!

I hope this lesson in analogies is helpful in the future. Fucking autist.

[Anonymous No.7886695]

>>7886659
>scientific progress was put on hold.
>falling for the le dark ages meme

>Interpreting a single passage of The Bible could be the end of somebody's life.
And interpreting a single passage of the Bible could save somebody's life. Your point being, then, that interpretation, a human act, is the cause of the death, and not what is written in itself, no?

>It was Plato and his dialogues that set forth the agenda for Western Philosophy to figure out ethics, not religion. Judeo-Christian morality on the other hand is ridden with inconsistencies.
The dialogues which survived through the Church. And about the inconsistencies, give an example.

The people in the US who are creationists are a small minority who don't really study or even read the Bible. You are just making generalizations as you please, and falling for historical ruses, as in Galileo's case.

[Anonymous No.7886697]

>>7886687
this atheist got btfo

[Anonymous No.7886699]

>>7886687
My point was just that even without religion people would commit genocide in the name of any idealogy they see fit.

[Anonymous No.7886701]

>>7886687
>Your examples cannot be linked to atheism
>But wars that happened prior to 1700 were certainly caused by religion and not economics or safety

Why are people so retarded

[Anonymous No.7886708]

>>7886687
Of course atheism had an influence on their deeds. They were modernists and they believed that they could create their own history since they were in charge of it, not God. They believed that they could shape a nation and the humans within it, based on an Enlightenment understanding of the natural world and the human role within it. There was no such thing as a religious eugenicist. These are modern, atheist ideas.

[Anonymous No.7886713]

>>7886697
nah not really

[Anonymous No.7886718]

>>7886659

>There were plenty of natural philosophers (= scientists of their day) in the history that refuted much of the Christian ideas

And there were even more that supported or were outright told to investigate scientific claims by the Church itself. No single institution in the history of the world has done more for the advancement of science than the Catholic Church.

>Bruno, Galileo, etc. The churchmen and churchwomen just didn't give a fuck about challenging their preconceived worldviews.

You never read a history book did you? The only reason Galileo was excommunicated was because he presented his findings when specifically asked not to. Why? Most of the chuch hierarchy agreed with Galileo but they only wanted him to present MORE evidence for his theory. The pope even went as far as to tell Galileo that if he could present more evidence then scripture would be reinterpreted as necessary. This wasn't the case of the Church being anti-scientific. If anything the Church was being MORE scientific than Galileo. They wanted more evidence, not less. Galileo sperged out like the shitlord that he was and was excommunicated for it. Get your fucking facts straight.

>which, of course, comes with a suitable disbelief in evolutionary biology
hahahaha. WTF are you on about? Orthodox belivers and even most mainstream Protestant churches accept evolution as a valid scientific theory and even agree that it's mostly true. You're generalizing your entire critique of religion on a small minority of evangelical scriptural literalists, which is a meme generated by the media and pushed by atheists to build up strawmen to make their claims seem superior.

>One must give a logico-mathematical theory these days if you claim to have "understood" causality.
wtf is logico-mathematical? And regardless, you still must rest your faith on the principle that logic and mathematics are metaphysically true and valid to even begin to utilize them to analyze materialistic contingencies. You are literally putting faith into metaphysical principles when you try to summon up logic and mathematics.

>It is the creation of *language* that was ground-breaking, not religion
So you're claiming that a society can't be religious without language? How do you define language? Is art language?

>Interpreting a single passage of The Bible could be the end of somebody's life. There's your The Bible, the cause of innumerable deaths. Not human nature. Religion.
But you atheists do the same thing when you appeal to a higher moral authority without justification. You put just as much faith into a "greater good" which is scientifically untestable as a fundamentalist puts into literalism. Also,

>Implying all religious groups adhere to strict literalism.

>It was Plato and his dialogues that set forth the agenda for Western Philosophy to figure out ethics,
you mean the Greek who theorized about an eternal actual and metaphysical monotheistic "good"?

[Anonymous No.7886730]

>>7886718
tfw another anon takes over the fight cause you can't handle anymore autism

[Anonymous No.7886735]

>>7886718
Shouldn't you be off molesting a choirboy or something? You repugnant papist scum.

[Anonymous No.7886746]

>>7886691
>But the cause of something is intimately linked to the effect; in a way they have the same value.
Okay, it seems that you're pretty confused about how conditionals work. Causal claims have parts, and each of its parts need not necessarily have "the same value".

There's a thread somewhere on /lit/ that is gathering manpower to tackle some logic book, together; should clear up the confusion right away.

The rest of your text is borderline incoherent.

>>7886695
>falling for the le dark ages meme
It isn't a meme. It's history you are so unwilling to accept.

>And interpreting a single passage of the Bible could save somebody's life.
Sure, but that's besides the point, whatever "save somebody's life" means.

>Your point being, then, that interpretation, a human act, is the cause of the death, and not what is written in itself, no?
But that's not what I said, though. The written text causes a particular interpretation which in turn causes a particular action.

>The people in the US who are creationists are a small minority who don't really study or even read the Bible.
But I wasn't referring to the creationists *only*. I said "some Christian stripe or another".

>You are just making generalizations as you please,
Learn the distinction between a generalization (= "all") and the quantifier "most". There are statistics, too, if you need them.

>>7886697
If you say so.

[Anonymous No.7886772]

The sad thing about public intellectuals today is that you don't have to have accomplished anything of note in your respective academic field to get television appearances and fame: public intellectuals are now just celebrities.
Look at Noam Chomsky's contribution to linguistics, or Richard Dawkins' contributions to evolutionary biology. Very different thinkers, but they actually did something. Compare that to Neil deGrasse Tyson or Sam Harris. Nothing. These guys are nobodies - certainly not important in any academic study, and yet people worship their opinion on matters about which they know even less.

[Anonymous No.7886775]

>>7886746
>when the atheist side is just some reductionist with no claims to objectivity

[Anonymous No.7886776]

>>7886746
>It isn't a meme. It's history you are so unwilling to accept.

/r/inging the monk scribe greentext. Show me proof, then. Historical facts.

>Sure, but that's besides the point, whatever "save somebody's life" means.

How the fuck is that beside the point? The same could be said about your "point". And it means what it means.

>The written text causes a particular interpretation which in turn causes a particular action.
And that interpretation can be different from person to person, and is not inherent in the text. That why it is called an "interpretation". And the other thing called "misinterpretation" happens when someone doesn't even interpret at all and takes it at face-value, such as creationists and atheists with the Bible.

>"some Christian stripe or another".
And then you assumed that that comes with a suitable disbelief in evolutionary biology, which only creationists adhere to.

>Learn the distinction between a generalization (= "all") and the quantifier "most".

Your "most" refered to US citizens, of which "most" are Christian of some sort. The creationists among them are a small percentage. Saying that a majority of people believe something that a small but vocal minority do is a generalization.

[Anonymous No.7886778]

>>7886772
Nig deGreasy is 100% affirmative action. He's retarded.
Harris is just smarmy, which is what atheists actually strive for. They don't even know what intellectualism is, much less how to emulate it.

[Anonymous No.7886792]

>>7886746
Have you ever read a single book about the Middle Ages or are you just 100% MUH EMPIRICISM fedora?

[Anonymous No.7886795]

>>7886718
Galileo didn't just get excommunicated. He was arrested. He died on house arrest. So I guess they were just so scientific they had to put him on house arrest because they disagreed with him.

[Anonymous No.7886796]

>>7886792

Come now, anon. You already know the answer. If he actually believes the middle ages were a period of significant scientific oppression, he's more brainwashed than a fundie.

[Anonymous No.7886797]

Why is positivism bad?

[Anonymous No.7886799]

>>7886797
Self contradiction, inability to explain phenomena.

[Anonymous No.7886801]

>>7886796
It's a red herring to focus on scientific oppression or achievement as a standard of judgement for any age. It shows a meme-level of understanding. He's locked into a specific world-view, probably brainwashed by his big dick god Harris.

[Anonymous No.7886815]

>>7886795
>mixing law with science