What is the /his/ take on this guy?
Is there any merit to the ideas he presents?
I don't like him but that quote's pretty trill
>>358339
Is it though? I don't know how much it reflects reality.
The whole "use science for morality" turns into "wow it's fucking nothing" when you find out his points can be summed up to "with the help of neuroscience can approach utilitarianism with higher precision when applied."
>>358322
A prime example of a pseudointellectual.
Knows very little on the subjects he discusses, but still feels that he can arrive at a presentable conclusion. He can't and he doesn't.
>Inb4 PC alert!!1!
>>359082
>butthurt muslim detected
>>358339
Except that faith and determinism are not even neccesarily linked thos is a new case of:american atheist strawmans the shit out of religion
>>359099
this pretty much desu
listen to "Sitting Down With Sam" from Dan Carlin's Common Sense podcast to see Harris BTFO in every single subject by the based Carlin.
sam harris can present an idea well but he is very poorly educated/read. he has no perspective.
i'm a muslim btw and he really doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to Islam
>>359082
You are even worse for shitposting opinions and not backing them up with an example and your own perspective.
>>359119
Take his views on Islam for example. He criticizes the religion and calls it dangerous, but he never goes into great detail about how. I have not seen him even once mention wahabism or salafism as a cause of a dangerous islam. Instead he discusses the koran and says that moderate muslims aren't the proper muslims, which is essentially a no-true-scotsman. Then you have his "not all cultures are equal" argument which, although true, he uses to justify foreign intervention. Both of these cases point out how poorly he understands politics and religion, but he still parades around like someone who has the solution to these problems.
>>359193
all the problems from the middle east comes from perpetual violence, underdevelopment and ignorance
>>358449
This. His "response" to the is-ought problem is saying that suffering and pleasure will one day become objectively measurable by scientific instruments, but doesn't give any reason for why pleasure-pain should be the sole defining scale by which we make moral judgements, or why we should apply it in a utilitarian way.
>>358322
Is there any merit to whining about religion in front of a bunch of self-important college kids?
No, no there isn't.
>>359407
He's like all other positivists, just a tipping autist
>>359407
What do you think of Dennett?
>everything is apart of gods plan
>believing in predestination
>>359410
yea but, hitchens and dawkins at least have some logical construct they peddle around as a profound argument, but harris just has oppinions and evaluations in the place of arguments, and thats it, and from THAT he goes into bullshit like 'objective morality'
i mean its... its just bizarely retarded
>>359428
Many religious people do though.
>>359432
What's even stranger is that he's doing this while he's clearly a competent man, he have a bachelor in philosophy from Stanford and a doctorate in neuroscience where he compared people's brain activity with moral judgement iirc.
>Is there any merit to the ideas he presents?
No, none whatsoever
>>359421
hes a good scientist, you cant realy blame him if some of his conclusions are a bit fedoraish, but at least he bases his stuff on hard data
youll notice that when ''the four'' were in interaction he always seemed to be the most calm, realistic and the least autistic
only thing i have against him is ''bright''
ITT: religious apologists
Harris' arguments may be weak but his conclusions about religion are obviously correct to anyone with a brain:
>there is no god
>religious moderates enable religious extremists
>in a world of wmd's religious extremists are an apocalyptic threat to all humanity
>ergo we need to see the end of faith
Narcissistic idiot with chronic foot-in-mouth disease. His anus is still sore from the buttpummeling Noam Chomsky gave him. I mean it's been month and he still goes on radio and whines about him and how he'd rather vote for religious fundies than Chomsky.
Whenever he puts his foot in his mouth, which he never even fucking realize until other people are literally laughing in his face, he backpedals and claims people were "misrepresenting him".
And like all piece of shit autist STEMtards he worships utilitarianism, the shittiest ethical system of all.
>>359469
Nobody is even fucking talking about his atheism you fucking fedora tipping shitstain, people are talking about his grotesque attempts at "philosophy"
Go back to your cult you pathetic Harris acolyte.
>>359469
on this level of apstraction it does make logical sense, but real life does not so, there is very little correlation
>>359461
>hes a good scientist, you cant realy blame him if some of his conclusions are a bit fedoraish, but at least he bases his stuff on hard data
He's not really a scientist, he's a philosopher who places heavy value on neuroscience in studying theory of mind.
>youll notice that when ''the four'' were in interaction he always seemed to be the most calm, realistic and the least autistic
>only thing i have against him is ''bright''
Agree 100%, the word "bright" is intended to be positive but it really just comes off as smug. I also object to his usage of memetics, although he's backed down and said it's really not useful beyond analogy iirc.
>>359469
That's probably great but the main beef people have with him is how, if I dare say, unprofessionally he approach the concept of moral and ethics.
I wouldn't be surprised if he's in the forefront regarding the connection between utilitarian pleasures and neurology and that's really great, but it's explained to the common man as something it's not.
>utishitarian
>>359497
so much wish this was real
>>359434
Pretty sure that Predestination is a Calvinist thing only
>>359513
>Hitler
>Atheist
>>359513
>this picture
I don't even know where to begin
>>359528
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler#Hitler_and_atheism
Apparently Harris believes communism is a religion because it's "dogmatic"
>>359513
Do you really wanna do this?
>>359556
Did you even read the fucking link you quoted? Multiple sources say Hitler was a deist and had vague occult beliefs totally incompatible with mainstream Christianity, but he wasn't an atheist in any sense of the word.
>The Führer is deeply religious, though completely anti-Christian.
Straight from Goebbels, nigger.
More from your article:
>In 1933, the regime banned most atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany—other than those that supported the Nazis.
>>359584
yep, he believed in a ''god'' of sorts, but to him this ''god'' was what made the world a terrible hellish mess, and that was a good thing that must be accepted and dealt with
>>359556
Giving you A for effort, being so confidence you don't even bother reading the sources you cite.
>>359591
>yep, he believed in a ''god'' of sorts
So he wasn't an atheist. Case closed.
>>358322
I prefer Dan Dennett.
I read 'The End of Faith' recently. Very unimpressed, and I'm already a 'new atheist'. Plus toward the end it turned into new-age Buddhist gobbledygook.
He also got BTFO by Dan Carlin imo, and again I expected I'd agree with Harris. He's really a shitty debater and writer.
I checked him out after watching one of his appearances on Rogans podcast. I read a few of the articles on his website, watched his debate with Azlan and that 3hr debate with Cenk Ughyr. My impression is that he's a pop-intellectual ala Christopher Hitchens. He's not someone serious people would read if they're trying to educate themselves on Islam or religion in America. I doubt he shows up very often in bibliographies.
On the spectrum of intellectual seriousness he's a lot closer to Michael Moore or Ann Coulter than he is to Eric Hobsbawm. But he clearly tries very hard to look like an intellectual, and I think that suckers a lot of people who are looking for an entry-level political scientist.
Any time spent reading Sam Harris is time wasted.
>>360233
So what is patrician-tier new atheism then?
friendly reminder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuuTOpZxwRk
>>360318
The first 2/3 of his answer I had no idea WTF he was talking about
>>360318
So trying to cut through all the nonsense-speak of most of his answer, he assumes all moral choices are as simple as the "low hanging fruit" and essentially questions with a clear cut, black and white right/wrong tick box answer.
Jesus fucking christ.
Can someone summarize what Harris's theory on 'scientific morality' or whatever is?
Essentially, that things are bad that strike us in our guts as bad? And vice versa? Does that mean revenge is good since it's a natural instinct?
>>360283
Dennett is literally the only one. Most others just call themselves plain old atheists.
>>360397
Hedonistic Utilitarianism is correct.
Pleasure is or will be measurable with the help of neuroscience using brainscans and the like.
Following these two assumptions, neuroscience with the help of brainscans and the like will be able to pin-point with extreme accuracy what's morally right and wrong (i.e. what's pleasurable and what isn't pleasurable for someone).
>>360233
At least Hitchens, whether you agree with him or not, was charismatic and witty. Sam Harris is a joke. Even Chomsky made him look like a joke.
>>360445
Why do you need a brain scan to tell you what you like?
I guess I'd be a strict proponent of evolution if I resembled a lizard as much as he did. By the way, he's a neuro scientist. He's not a philosopher, theologian, physicist, etc.
His opinion is just as valid as Bill Nye's.
>>360473
According to his position, to accurately measure it because mental states correlates with physical states.
When you enter the hospital you're often asked to grade from 1 to 10 how much you are in pain. His position assumes that all you'd need to do is have a brain scan (or something similar) to give a much more accurate description of how much they are in pain.
So say that one guy says 4 and another one says 9. Say that they show an almost identical brain activity. His position would be that at least one of them are wrong, that they're both either have a 4 or 9.
Since the brain won't be lying, neuroscience provide an advantage above just asking how much pleasure and pain they are in.
>>359118
>i'm a muslim btw
Why? I'm curious
Too smug for my liking
As one smart guy once said, the stupidest people are always so sure of themselves, whereas the smartest people are always full of doubts
>>358322
Look its another image of some idiot's opinion with their picture in black & white for added "deepness"
Not even criticizing the quote I didn't read but wtf, this facebook tier garbage has to stop. Who the fuck is this and who cares? He's probably not even dead yet.
