An American Atheist

81: Sam Harris is Wrong, Salman Rushdie Post-9/11, Interview with Lauren Lane

By Christopher Thielen on October 8, 2012 | Discuss

Tom, Mike, and Chris discuss Sam Harris’ recent lack of rationale, Salman Rushdie’s comment that his book ‘Satanic Verses’ wouldn’t be published in a post-9/11 world, and Tom interviews Lauren Lane of Skepticon regarding their upcoming conference.

81: Sam Harris is Wrong, Salman Rushdie Post-9/11, Interview with Lauren Lane [ 49 min 29 s ] Play in Popup | Download

81: Sam Harris is Wrong, Salman Rushdie Post-9/11, Interview with Lauren Lane [ 49 min 29 s ] Download

Islam and democracy

By Robin Marie on October 5, 2012 | Discuss

Following up on some of some of the issues I touched on in my last post, I thought to point our readers to a current roundtable over at the Times, which has several different people responding to the question, “Is Islam an Obstacle to Democracy?” Respondents include Reza Aslan, who we interviewed for the podcast a while back.

I’d also like to note that the responses to my previous post have been very thoughtful, and I hope to get around to continuing the discussion thread in the next week or so.

Is God fair?

By Mike G on September 27, 2012 | Discuss

Imagine you are a professor and you are renowned for your fairness. You have always upheld this as a central virtue because you teach a class that is of vital importance to the students. Your grading of the students in this particular class is highly correlated with their acceptance into top-tier graduate schools. As such, you take it very seriously that everyone has a fair chance and a level playing field. Your class eventually becomes so popular that you are given multiple sections of the same class to teach. As part of your effort to be fair, you make every reasonable attempt to provide the same level of instruction across different sections. We wouldn’t expect you to have everything be exactly the same, but we would expect it to be the same within reasonable limits. For example, class discussions might steer you in different directions, but you wouldn’t give one section a comprehensive study guide and not do the same for the other sections.

Reflect on this for a moment and see if you agree that it sounds plausible. What I specifically want to know is whether the professor’s attempt to provide very similar instruction across the board is a necessary condition of his/her being fair with respect to the students. If the professor did not make such an attempt, and consequently there were great discrepancies in instruction, then the professor would not be fair. Do you agree? If so, then there seems to be a compelling problem for many major religions. Continue reading…

Sam Harris is wrong.

By Robin Marie on September 26, 2012 | Discuss

“This is already an old and boring story about old, boring, and deadly ideas.” — Sam Harris

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece critiquing the tendency of the atheist community to analyze the nature and impact of religion through the exceptionally narrow lense of truth claims and discreet ideas. I summarized my position at one point by arguing that ideas, in and of themselves, have far less agency than atheists usually assume they do. Just as important as the contents of a certain idea is the social, economic and political context which gives rise to it. Atheists tend to ignore these, instead preferring to compose arguments which presume the dominance of ideas, and consequently often end up producing analyses of situations that they have less than stellar understandings of.

And then last week, along came Sam Harris, with this gem of an example of just what I was trying to argue against. Energized by the recent attacks and murders at US Embassies, Harris composed a stirring call for moral clarity – of the sort that comes only in shades of black and white.

Before I get going with what is wrong with Harris’s rhetoric and assumptions, let me state unequivocally that I agree with him completely on the issue of free speech – all nations which claim to value freedom of speech should not engage in any kind of censorship to appease anyone, be they Islamic radicalists or outraged conservative evangelicals or overly sensitive identity-politics laden liberals. Insofar as the liberals Harris criticizes really were recommending restriction of freedom of speech (enforced either through the government or social pressure), to address the problem of radical Islamic terrorism and, more broadly, Muslim alienation, they are wrong. First, it is unethical. Second, it would not work anyway. So let’s make it clear that we agree on that and move on from there.

However, I take serious issue with almost everything else about Harris’s approach to this question.

80: DNC/RNC and God, Innocence of Muslims Riots, Psychology of Religion

By Christopher Thielen on September 19, 2012 | Discuss

Tom and Chris discuss the week’s news, including the recent political conventions and their relationship with God, the tragedy in the Middle East over the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ film, and a brief stint into the psychology of childhood religion.

80: DNC/RNC and God, Innocence of Muslims Riots, Psychology of Religion [ 26 min 49 s ] Play in Popup | Download

80: DNC/RNC and God, Innocence of Muslims Riots, Psychology of Religion [ 26 min 49 s ] Download