Tag Archives: Sam Harris

Is Atheist Sam Harris Sexy? Nagarjuna’s Opinion–And Thomas Aquinas’

Sam Harris is sexy, right? Perhaps you agree. But think again. How you answer this question says a lot about your orientation. Not your sexual orientation. Or at least not just your sexual orientation. It reveals something about how you … Continue reading

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David Berlinski defends God’s role in the Holocaust: “God did not protect his chosen people…[but] did…smite their enemies, with generations to come in mourning or obsessed by shame.”

Here’s David Berlinski defending God’s role in the Holocaust (from page 31 of his book, The Devil’s Delusion): “[T]he thousand year Reich…lies buried in the rubble of German cities smashed to smithereens,…[I]f God did not protect his chosen people precisely … Continue reading

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Teaching What to Think vs. How to Think: Former Pastor Tim Prowse Offers His Confession to Sam Harris

Tim Prowse, a former United Methodist minister, has an extraordinarily honest exchange with Sam Harris at Sam Harris’s website. Here’s Prowse recounting to Harris how the practice of critical thinking brought him to a loss of faith: An interesting thing … Continue reading

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Blogging a Great Debate: Sam Harris vs. William Lane Craig at Notre Dame (Accompanied by the Ghost of Nietzsche)

Sam Harris recently debated William Lane Craig at Notre Dame, and here it is. The first eight minutes are devoted to the moderator’s introduction, then Craig goes first. The topic is moral reasoning: __________ Here are the highlights that I took … Continue reading

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Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris Debate Two Rabbis

The following was a recent debate on religion in Los Angeles. Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris assume the atheist prosecution of God and rabbis David Wolpe and Bradley Artson take up the burden of God’s defense. In the genre of public … Continue reading

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Nightline’s Recent Sam Harris Segment

Pretty interesting:

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Damon Linker Owns the New Atheists

Damon Linker, a contributor to the New Republic, is, to my mind, one of the more insightful writers on religion and irreligion writing in the United States today. In a recent interview with The Economist, Linker offers what I can only describe … Continue reading

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Free will denial watch: Jerry Coyne calls himself “a molecular puppet”

In a recent blog post, evolutionary biologist, Jerry Coyne, doesn’t flinch at spelling out the implications of strict naturalism for the idea of free will: We simply don’t like to think that we’re molecular automatons, and so we adopt a definition … Continue reading

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The Doubting Thomas Award: Who Would I Give a Prize for Being a Model Doubter?

In a world where God is not there (or, at the very least, is not talking plainly), the two things that redeem existence from being a very, very large mistake are just two things: morality aesthetics By morality I mean … Continue reading

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The Is-Ought Distinction: What Would Nietzsche Say to Sam Harris?

Sam Harris has of late generated a lot of public discussion by reopening this can of worms: In the realm of values, is Hume right that no “is” should be governing our “oughts”? Put another way: Can science ever really arbitrate a human moral question? If science, for … Continue reading

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Nietzsche’s Revenge: PZ Myers v. Sam Harris on whether science can assist a person in deriving an “ought” from an “is”

PZ Myers, backing the physicist Sean Carroll in the argument, says no: Sam Harris recently and infamously proposed that, contra Hume, you can derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, and that science can therefore provide reasonable guidance towards a moral … Continue reading

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Fyodor Dostoevsky foresaw how God would die

Not by closing the gaps in our knowledge of heaven and earth—in which God is increasingly found to have nothing to do—but via the progress of neuroscience, in which spirit is progressively vanquished from the skull. On page 41 of Steven Pinker’s … Continue reading

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Adventures in New Atheistland: Jerry Coyne Calls Out Robert Wright for Being a “Blame America First” Muddle-Head in the War on Terror!

University of Chicago atheist biologist Jerry Coyne, at his blog today, summed up Robert Wright’s recent piece in the New York Times this way: The title of Wright’s piece is “Who created Major Hasan?”, and of course the answer is “America!” Coyne then … Continue reading

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A Recent Debate on Atheism v. Theism

And an interesting match up. Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris v. Robert Wright, Dinesh D’Souza, and a rabbi, Shmuley Boteach:

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The Hamlet Syndrome (“to go or not to go”): Should I Attend the International Atheist Conference This Weekend in Burbank, California?

Dang! Check out the speaker line-up for the International Atheist Conference being held in Burbank, California this weekend! It’s close to where I live. And it’s at the same Marriot Convention Center as the UFO conference that I went to just a … Continue reading

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Atheist Sam Harris, Evangelical Francis Collins, and the Soft Bigotry of Strict Naturalism

In a recent piece for the New York Times, atheist Sam Harris has told us that he isn’t comfy with Francis Collins being appointed by President Barack Obama as the new director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH): Francis Collins is an … Continue reading

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The Atheist Bus Ad Campaign Moves to Germany

So says Spiegel today: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The brightly colored ads were part of a provocative campaign on British buses. Spain reacted with its own string of atheist slogans, and now a … Continue reading

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Santi Tafarella v. PZ Myers: An Agnostic Urges Liberals, Secular and Religious, to Boycott PZ Myers

University of Minnesota biologist, and now illiberal iconoclast, PZ Myers, has managed to get hold of a consecrated host and desecrate it. Here’s his post on it: OK, time for the anticlimax. I know some of you have proposed intricate … Continue reading

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Pissing on Baal’s Temple, Burning the School of Socrates, Breaking Icons in Calvin’s Geneva, Blowing Up Buddhas, and Desecrating Crackers: Why PZ Myers Should Apologize—and Why He Probably Won’t

Iconoclasm is the destroying of what is held to be sacred by others. And given the disturbing history of iconoclasm throughout human history, it raises the question of how troubled thoughtful people should be by the University of Minnesota biologist, PZ Myers. … Continue reading

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California Gay Marriage Hysteria Watch: Yuriy Popko Compares Gay Marriage to Soviet Tyranny

Yuriy Popko, a Russian immigrant, and California anti-gay marriage protester, was quoted on June 17th in the Sacramento Bee, comparing gay marriage to judicial tyranny in the Soviet Union. Here’s the quote, and the context around which the quote was … Continue reading

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