The Lies of Sam Harris

Great Debates
101

I was thinking of Stalin’s persecution of the church. from Wikki

“Stalin’s role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937–1938”

I think that qualifies per my response about a charismatic leader.

102

I get it. I think we were talking past each other on different tangents. NP
My point is this, I believe whatever mechanism it is inside people that allows them to committ such moral crimes is seperate from belief or non belief. It seems IMO to be linked to the dogmatic, “My way is the only correct way” kind of thinking. certainly that exists within religion but we also see a lot of religion that isn’t that way. We also see examples of that mind set in groups outside of religon such historical communism, extreme nationalism, and politics. That leads me to conclude that the argument that religion is evil to be incorrect in the way it inaccurately oversimplifies the position. It seems to me that religon, politics. natioalism, whatever, where we see examples of the rigid mindset, are merely the vehicles of whatever drives those atrocities and not the culprit. Labeleing the vehicle as the problem rather rather than the driver is inaccurate IMHO.

103

No

Sure, we must make judgment calls, but people do not always agree on what is good, bad, or in between. This is a non answer.

uh huh Things are rarely that black and white.

Then maybe you need a better source than dictionary.com. Dogma tends to be more rigid than tenets of belief
Dogma

Churches can have doctrine and tenets of belief without being considered dogmatic.

Maybe you need to get out more. In most religions there are conservatives and liberals, practicing and non practicing. A book is an inanimate object and cannot be evil . Period.

I’m not rationalizing anything and this statement from you contains no logic. I clearly said that dogma exists within those interpreting the book, not the book itself.

Well the statement just above this one is a doosy.

The problem is you can’t provide any real evidence that there’s a casual link between theism and evil acts committed by religious people. I’m saying the issue is not theism but something else that can and does exist in believers and non believers.

Then stop making the comparison. A religion is a belief system, often held by theists. Atheists also have belief systems , just currently more individualistic.

Not what I said. Try again.

I’m making no claim that atheism caused Communism or anything else. I’m saying atheism doesn’t protect one from the dogmatic mind set that can lead to moral crimes. You have yet to show a casual link between theism, organized religion, and moral crimes with religious justification.

Which, as I already said, is interesting, and I’m glad to be corrected on that detail but not all that relevant to my point.

Irrelevant! Not all communists commit or support the historical crimes I’m referring to. The fact that many did indicates to me that the casual link to moral crimes like those is neither atheism or theism. I understand the point you making. I just don’t think it means what you think it means. It doesn’t change of affect the point I’m making.

By us, you mean people that don’t know any better? You corrected me and I appreciate it. Do you need to play games now rather than admit you were incorrect on a minor detail? A dictionary is not a convincing cite to declare Buddhism is not a religion.

104

But he and his followers were not motivated by atheism, as has been explained at length repeatedly, over and over again on these boards. :rolleyes:

And no - he wasn’t ‘charismatic’ either.

105

Save your roll eyes and try reading for comprehension. I never claimed they were motivated by atheism. I merely stated a leader who was an atheist could commit such acts. You created the motivated by atheism bit, not me.

If you don’t think Stalin qualifies as charismatic you might want to check out the “Cult of Personality” section in Wikki

106

Didn’t mean to skip this. It deserves a response.
Even faith isn’t really the cause of religion. Lot’s of people have faith without belonging to an organization. I think perhaps it is merely the desire to be a part of a like minded group for some common purpose that causes organized religion. The sense of purpose and belonging that it invokes. We see similar things in other groups don’t we? “I’m an American and we’re the greatest country in the world”
“I’m a Democrat and those dam Republicans are idiots and ruining this country”
“I’m a Hutu and you dam Tutsis have got to die.” {note=these examples are because of subject matter. It could easily be I’m a Buddhist and I’m one with everything"}
Atheists can certainly belong to organizations even if the basis isn’t atheism. Then again, it might be. http://www.atheists.org/ and http://www.atheistalliance.org/

Your no gun thing. Don’t you see where that leads? If there were no cars or planes nobody would die in a car accident or plane accident but we’d also lose all the benefits of that kind of transportation. Guns are used for personal defense and in defending others. If there were no guns people would use knives swords and bows and arrows like they used to. That’s not a solution.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. It doesn’t matter what the vehicle is, guns, knives, clubs, bare hands, or religion, politics, nationalism, greed, lust for power, whatever. The vehicle is not to blame for the decision to commit a moral crime.

107

That just means that faith alone isn’t generally sufficient for religion, i.e. that you can conceivably have faith without that leading to establishing a religion/following an established one. But, there are no religions that don’t exist because of faith (even money-making schemes like Scientology and certain televangelist churches can only exist because of the faith of their followers, even though in this case it was probably more the faith in money that got them going. Generally, however, faith is necessary for religion.)

No. But for the ease with which it is committed. Religion, brought about by faith, gives you the tools with which to control great masses of people with relatively great ease; abusing these tools is still you moral responsibility, of course, but nevertheless, if they weren’t there, they couldn’t be abused. Atheism doesn’t give you any such tools to abuse. Furthermore, it’s just not a black and white ‘either you do or you don’t’ – regardless of the means necessary – decision to commit any moral crime, the ease with which it can be done plays a great role in determining whether or not it will be committed at all. So the means, perhaps, aren’t totally blameless, even though the decision is yours alone.

108

Yes, and… ?

One more time, equating a system of beliefs such as a religion, and atheism, is an unfair comparison. The proper comparison is atheism to theism. Although theism is usually a component of religion there’s no way to link simple belief to a moral crime with religious justification.

Furthermore, on organizations religious or otherwise, regardless of how you phrase it, you’re blaming the car for the accident. It doesn’t makes sense and it’s not a realistic solution.

109

…and thus, faith leads to religion.

Which, of course, leads to religion – at least to the theistic ones. I’d also say that atheism is actually opposed to all forms of faith, be they theistic or not, but since the religions we’re mainly dealing with are all theistic in nature, I won’t belabour that point.

The link lies in the existence of religion – there’d be none without that ‘simple belief’.

I’m very explicitly not. The car example isn’t apt, by the way, let’s keep it to weapons, since one generally doesn’t use cars the same way; crimes perpetuated with religious justification aren’t accidental, but intentional. I’m not saying that because the knife stabbed somebody, the knife is at fault, and your attempt to knock down that strawman accomplishes nothing. But without the knife, there wouldn’t have been a stabbing. True, the killing might have then just been a strangling, but it’s considerably harder to strangle somebody than it is to stab them. That’s where the weapon becomes important, and similarly, that’s where religion becomes important.

I’m not trying to solve anything, just stating how I see things.

110

I wouldn’t put it that way. Eggs are a part of a cake recipe but it wouldn’t be accurate to say eggs lead to cake.

Disregarding my objection to the term “leads” I don’t see that theism can be held as a casual of some moral crime justified by religion.

Starting from theism, adding faith, and the desire to be part of some organized religion we still have a big question mark. Many religious folks express their theism and faith by helping others. IMO that means there’s some other casual ingredient{s} that lead to moral crimes. Not theism and faith. I’m also suggesting those other issues that may lead to violence in religions can exist and do exist in other organizations and whether the person is a theist or an atheist doesn’t matter.

I understand that but the analogy is woefully incomplete. If all theism and faith led to moral crimes you’d have a pretty valid point. Knives also serve many useful purposes. If you decide to get rid of knives to prevent stabbings your not dealing with the real issue and you’re likely causing as much harm as you’re preventing by removing a tool that also does much good. Get rid of guns and shootings disappear and stabbings go up. Get rid of knives and stabbings disappear and clubbing goes up etc. etc. Unless you deal with the proper issue removing religion to stop religiously motivated crimes would only mean the same violence would occur and take on a different name.
Hey, since science helps creates more advanced weaponry let’s get rid of science. Doesn’t sound to practical does it?

Fair enough

111

Well, religion certainly isn’t assembled from a list of ingredients, but it grows from an initial proposition – from faith. The comparison would only be apt if eggs naturally grew into cakes occasionally, and in that case, I’d certainly say that eggs lead to cakes. Religion from faith is an evolutionary process, basically – the starting point (faith) does not exclusively determine the end point, but the end point is certainly predicated on the starting point.

How not? If, when there’s no faith, there’s no religion, then it’s not possible to give a religious justification for some moral crime.

I’ve never claimed that there aren’t – in fact, I’ve been careful to point out that I don’t buy into the whole ‘root of all evil’-thing when it comes to religion.

I’ve also never claimed that no good can come from religion – as I said before, if all the followers of some religion are all about love, peace & harmony that’s a great thing, the problem is just that so few really are, and also that the network established by religion can be equally well used to spread moral corruption.

Look, the original assertion as raised in this thread was that since communism is to atheism what religion is to faith, it’s as possible to commit atrocities in the name of atheism as it is in the name of faith. I’ve argued that that’s not the case, not because atheists can’t be every bit as fucked up as the worst religious fundamentalists, but because atheism doesn’t give rise to communism (or any other ideology) the way faith gives rise to religions. I actually thought we were more or less on the same page there.

I’ve never once argued for religion to be removed. In fact, I believe you’re right, we’d find other means and reasons to kill each other. But they won’t be atheistic in nature the way killing someone because they have the wrong altar in their house is religiously motivated, and hence, ultimately, follows from faith.

A little hypothetical: Say we’ve got a situation where one person is violently angry at another, perhaps because the other slept with their spouse, or stole them some money, or whatever. They’re both confined into the same space for some period of time. Do you think the situation would lead to the same consequences if one of them has a knife as it does when there’s no knife? Don’t you think, on average, the consequences will end up being worse in the case with the knife? Surely, one of 'em might end up dead in both cases, but thanks to the ease of killing the knife provides, I’d wager that that’s more often the case if the knife is present.

Religion is like the knife: not in itself bad, but easy to abuse to perpetuate bad actions. Atheism is like the lack of knife: not in itself able to prohibit committing bad actions, but at least it doesn’t make them any easier.

112

See, I don’t think this is accurate. Why are people religious? The obvious answer is that their parents and community are religious, and they teach kids to be religious. The kid doesn’t acquire faith and then from there become religious. It’s more the other way around. He’s dragged to religious rituals, sits around bored while people talk, is dressed in uncomfortable costumes, and so on. He becomes a member of the religious community without understanding any of it. Faith isn’t the genesis of his religion.

And when we go back and ask ourselves where did these religions come from that these kids are being brought up in, the answer isn’t faith either. All these religions evolved from older ideas about religion or the supernatural, and those ideas from older ideas, and so on, back to the religious ideas of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. And these guys didn’t believe in spirits and monsters and magic out of faith either. When a kid asked his hunter-gatherer dad about what we call religious ideas, the kid wasn’t told to have faith in the existence of the river spirit.

It was more like, the river exists, it’s constantly moving, therefore there must be some sort of something animating that river, therefore the river must be alive in some way, therefore the river has feelings and emotions akin to human emotions, therefore you have to be polite to the river just like you have to follow rules of politeness in human interactions, and grandpa always said that the river likes to be given a gift of feathers, and that’s why we always drop a bundle of feathers into the river every time we cross the river, and because he didn’t do it right that’s probably why Timmy angered the river and drowned when he tried to cross the river last spring.

It’s not faith that drives this sort of idea, it’s mistaken but plausible understandings about the nature of the world. The idea of faith is a late addition to the history of religion, and peculiar to certain religions. The idea that you should have faith in God and God’s teachings because God told you to have faith in God and God’s teachings is obviously a circular one. This sort of notion isn’t the historic origin of religion, or the cause of religious belief in a human child, it is a post-hoc rationalization applied after one already believes in the religion. The memetic value of the idea that you aren’t allowed to leave or question a religion is obvious, but those memes only work once you’re already a member of the religion.

113

Well, I think fundamentally, faith comes from superstition, and superstition is a form of behaviour – think of Skinner’s pigeons: they were randomly given some food at some time, and after a while started to associate behaviours they’d been randomly engaging in when they got fed with getting fed, thus repeated these behaviours in an effort to make the food appear again. Mistaken causal attribution, same thing you’re arguing for, basically. But is this (essentially unsubstantiated) belief that a certain kind of behaviour leads to certain results, even though it actually doesn’t, really that different from faith?

You’re arguing that religion directly springs from these misattributions – fine. But I’d say that the belief in these misattributions is pretty much just that what we normally call ‘faith’. ‘God did it’ is a mistaken (if there’s not actually a god) but plausible explanation for natural phenomena; the belief that ‘god did it’ is the right explanation is faith.

Are there any religions that are not founded on faith, though? That’s a honest question – I couldn’t think of any.

114

Well, maybe we’re using the word “faith” differently, because I don’t think any religion is founded on faith, as I argued earlier. Individual humans don’t become members of a religion because they first had faith in that religion and then joined it. Religions weren’t invented because one guy had faith in a new religion and founded it, and then other people got faith in the religion and joined it.

If we decide that belief in certain behaviors leads to certain results is faith, then everything is faith.

I’d rather say that faith is something that people talk about AFTER they already believe something, it’s a memetic characteristic of certain religions that acts to prevent people from leaving the religion. It’s a sustaining characteristic of religion, not the origin of religion. You are taught to believe in Jesus as a child, and so you do. Then you start asking questions about Jesus, and they tell you that even though they can’t answer your questions you should just have faith in Jesus anyway. And so you stop questioning and just believe. But you didn’t start believing in Jesus because you had faith in Jesus, you started believing in Jesus because your parents taught you to believe in Jesus, or you met some other people who convinced you to start believing in Jesus.

So “faith” is a characteristic of certain types of religions, and one of the reasons that religions of this type are very common around the globe. If you’re a polytheist there’s no problem when some stranger comes into your village to talk about this new god named Jesus. But if you’re a Christian and a stranger comes into your village to talk about Freya, then there’s a problem.

115

I’m not sure I know any other definition of faith other than ‘unsubstantiated belief’ – unsubstantiated in the sense that it isn’t sufficiently indicated by evidence or simply can’t be shown to be true, either because it just isn’t, or because its object is supposedly intangible to a degree that makes it inaccessible to the common methods of ascertaining truth. Perhaps you should give your definition, if it is in conflict with mine?

116

But how do you substantiate any belief? Every belief we have about the universe is contingent, because we are fallible finite beings who constantly make mistakes. The guy who believes a river god drowned Timmy last spring doesn’t believe it on faith, be thinks he has pretty good reasons for his belief.

Now, we can say that we know that his belief is incorrect, that there is no such thing as a river spirit, and the river spirit didn’t get angry at Timmy. But his belief isn’t unsubstantiated, rather it is incorrect.

If we define “faith” as any unsubstantiated belief then we’re going to find very few people who have any sort of faith, unless we define “unsubstantiated” as “something I personally judge to be weakly substantiated”.

I agree that many religious ideas are examples of superstitious behavior as Skinner defined it. I just don’t think calling superstitious or incorrect beliefs “faith” is helpful. Did you drive through that red light because you had faith that it was green? No, you just didn’t notice it was red. Did you drive through the green light because you had faith that green lights are safe? No, you just didn’t notice the truck running the red light and the last 10,000 times you drove through a green light it was safe so you didn’t pay any attention to whether this particular one was safe. Do you knock on the dashboard three times before you drive through a green light because you have faith that knocking will keep you safe? No you don’t have faith that knocking keeps you safe, you have a mistaken belief that knocking keeps you safe, which you arrived at because the last 10,000 times when you knocked nothing bad happened so therefore the knocking must keep you safe. Whether you knock three times or ask Jesus to keep you safe, they are examples of the same type of behavior.

117

You are wrong… in fact, you are wrong according to the very source you are citing as authoritative! Shame on you! :stuck_out_tongue:

Ok, maybe the first listing doesn’t apply to buddhism. But so what? Just because it’s listed under definition #2 doesn’t make it any less valid. The word “set” has a 119 different listings, and I dare you to argue that only listing #1 is valid!

118

I’m going to stand by what I wrote in my last post – by supporting it with evidence, or showing it to be true, at least as far as such a thing is possible (which it is, at least in some cases – some mathematical statements at least can be shown to be true within a given framework). I can substantiate my belief in the existence of black sheep by discovering one, for instance.

How is believing either the knocking thing or Jesus will keep you safe not faith? What, to you, would be faith, if not this?

119

I notice that another poster just just pointed out to you that some people are exposed to the organization and told it’s “right” before they have faith. I think religion and the nature of a what particular religion a person joins is based on a mix of factors that could be compared to a list of ingredients pretty easily. Regardless, I think we’ve exhausted the subject.

It depends on whether the goal is to prevent violence or just change the description of the violence. Let’s keep this no faith, no religion comment in mind for later in the post.

Great, but when you advocate, no gun, and make a statement like, no faith, no religion, what do you mean? Your argument seems pretty inconsistent.

So few are? Any data to support that statement? Almost any organization can be corrupted. I fail to see your point.

We’re not. I mentioned a ways back that we seemed to be on tangents. I thought perhaps we had cleared that up. Evidently not. I’ve said several times that I wasn’t claiming atheism caused communism or that the moral crimes committed by Stalin were done in the name of atheism. What I’ve been saying is the the real driving force behind such crimes seems to be something not linked to either theism or atheism. If that’s true,that means the issue of faith causes religion but atheism doesn’t cause communism, and what justification was used, be it religion, or communism, doesn’t matter. If I’m correct then those factors are no longer relevant to any goal of eliminating that type of violence, or assigning responsibility.

Then you need to read your own posts more carefully. I’m not sure what other implication I can take form your “take away the weapon” analogies or your statement above about “no faith no religion”

This analogy fails. I’ve allowed the weapon analogy even though it’s imperfect but let’s keep in mind that religion is not a weapon. Christianity also teaches forgiveness and mercy. so the knife seems equally likely to keep violence at bay.

And here again you’re comparing the complexities of a belief system {religion} with something that is not a belief system. It doesn’t work. Stop doing it.

Not only that the analogy is flawed. The knife is just as useful as it is dangerous. Are you saying atheism isn’t useful or dangerous?

120

Thanks for pointing that out. I thought the whole semantics bit was so lame I didn’t even bother to go to dictionary.com.