3 Common Defenses of Religion

[KipBond]

Sam Harris spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival where he discussed 3 common defenses of religion. [download video here]. I hope that NotReady & other believers will watch this video with any confirmation bias minimized, and then respond here with their thoughts.

Sam Harris discusses these 3 defenses of religion:

<ul type="square">[*]A specific religion is true[*]Religion is useful, and might be necessary[*]Atheism is essentially another religion[/list]
I think Sam does an exceptional job on the 2nd point in his discussion of morality.

I'd really like to see what some of the more thoughtful religious believers on here can find the most fault with in Harris' arguments. So, that is the challenge to believers: listen to Sam's speech, and return here with the top 3, specific, most egregious faults with his arguments.

[NotReady]

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I'd really like to see what some of the more thoughtful religious believers on here can find the most fault with in Harris' arguments


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I got about 8 minutes in where he's attacking Christianity and says basically, there's no contemporaneous account of Jesus' resurrection, and even if there was , blah, blah, blah ... no need to go further.

[KipBond]

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I'd really like to see what some of the more thoughtful religious believers on here can find the most fault with in Harris' arguments


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I got about 8 minutes in where he's attacking Christianity and says basically, there's no contemporaneous account of Jesus' resurrection, and even if there was , blah, blah, blah ... no need to go further.

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Wow.

So, you didn't even listen to the very next sentence following his: "Well, why not?"

Wow.

EDIT: By the way, he's talking about Jesus' miracles, not his resurrection. You must not have been listening very closely -- just looking for the first excuse to hit 'stop' and not question your irrational beliefs. Sorry for not being nice, but you are being looney and I'm trying to help you snap out of it.

[im a model]

i think notready is saying that the speaker is obviously an idiot and not worth listening to because he said "even if there WAS" and failed to use the subjunctive, making all further points irrelevant.

[Duke]

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I'd really like to see what some of the more thoughtful religious believers on here can find the most fault with in Harris' arguments


[/ QUOTE ]

I got about 8 minutes in where he's attacking Christianity and says basically, there's no contemporaneous account of Jesus' resurrection, and even if there was , blah, blah, blah ... no need to go further.

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Wow.

So, you didn't even listen to the very next sentence following his: "Well, why not?"

Wow.


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hahahhahahha

[Duke]

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i think notready is saying that the speaker is obviously an idiot and not worth listening to because he said "even if there WAS" and failed to use the subjunctive, making all further points irrelevant.

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I doubt he would have really heard any of the talk past that point, even if he tried.

This would be a decent psych project for someone. Gather up 50 or so really faithful people, and show them 2 videos. One video completely ignores religion across the board, and then give them a test to see what they can recall.

Then show them another video. One that starts out bashing the entire concept of faith from many perspectives, and ends with some unrelated topic. Test them on their recall of that unrelated topic.

My guess would be that the latter case would yield far worse results than the first. This is based on my idea that the only way to preserve that sort of thought process at all is to hard-wire in some sort of shorting mechanism to prevent attacks of it.

I could easily be wrong, but I think it'd be interesting to test. The other point would be that they can't know what's going to happen, either, or they could follow along to the second video randomly without really listening except to detect when the subject matter shifted, and then try really hard to remember everything from that point forward - harder than they tried the first time - to skew the results.

[siegfriedandroy]

**deleted until poster sobers up**

-wacki

[siegfriedandroy]

**deleted until poster sobers up**
-wacki

[bunny]

I wouldnt claim these are the most egregious errors, but I have some criticisms.

My first is that Harris/Dawkins/etc state they are attacking religion when I think their arguments are much more applicable to religious certainty. I have a number of outlandish religious beliefs with very poor objective evidence. The only evidence I have is my own interpretation of internal, mental, subjective experiences I have had - evidence I readily admit is very poor (pretty much the worst class of evidence I can think of which I will still deem evidence of some sort). I expect I am wrong about some of my beliefs. I encourage people to attack my beliefs and point out internal inconsistencies as well as contradictions with other, more strongly justified claims about the world. So I am in the position of following a religion I expect is wrong in some way (although obviously I dont know exactly where I am mistaken). I do claim faith, but dont claim certainty. Furthermore, although this position is not often stated, I do not think it is an uncommon one.

I am only interested in commenting on the "there is a true religion" defence as I think that's the important one. I dont want to follow a false religion just cos it's useful. I'm more interested in being right than being happy. Similarly, I dont understand the atheism is a religion claim. I think there are some similarities (circularity, for instance) which atheists sometimes dont acknowledge, but I dont think they are relevant except to point out that some attacks on religion are misguided.

Mentioning a couple of specifics regarding the "true religion" defence (I only watched the first few minutes as I dont currently get broadband access at home [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] so am somewhat limited in my ability to hear it all)...

He claims that the divine inspiration of the bible is deemed credible because it is so profound it couldnt possibly have been created by a human mind. I dont think this is a fair statement of a christian's reason for believing in the bible. This next bit is going to seem easy to shoot down, but please read the whole thing before replying [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]... Christians believe the bible was written by many people over several centuries and that it contains no errors or contradictions. I think it is that belief that is far more of the reason for believing in divine authorship than a supposed lack of imagination amongst humans.

Another minor point, although I think relevant is a mischaracterisation of the ten commandments. Of course, he has entertainment and rhetorical goals as well, I dare say he would correct himself if confronted on the issue, but nonetheless, I think details such as this matter: He invites his listeners to consider the second commandment regarding not making graven images. He then asks "..is this really the second most important thing upon which to admonish all future generations of human beings?" This makes a number of false assumptions, in my view. First, I dont remember it being claimed that they were ranked in order of importance (certainly when Jesus was asked which was most important he answered with two completely different ones, although it is argued they were 'summaries' of the ten) - it makes the joke funnier, but isnt completely honest. The other, more serious error, is the claim that all future generations of human beings are to be admonished by this. You may not like the theological squirmings which occur within churches, nonetheless, it is not the mainstream christian view that one should not "make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." There are all kinds of religious discussions regarding this - different churches have different views, however there arent many that say it is a sin to make a carving of a bird. Religions use the bible as their source of inspiration, but they dont claim that taking snippets out and citing them as moral statements of fact is going to yield anything meaningful.

He goes on to point out that this commandment was used to justify atrocities. It is certainly true that a lot of awful things have been done in religion's name - nonetheless, that isnt the fault of the one true religion (assuming for the sake of argument that there is one true religion and a host of false ones with "evil" agendas).

[Nielsio]

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I'd really like to see what some of the more thoughtful religious believers on here can find the most fault with in Harris' arguments


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I got about 8 minutes in where he's attacking Christianity and says basically, there's no contemporaneous account of Jesus' resurrection, and even if there was , blah, blah, blah ... no need to go further.

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Hold on..

You think that the resurrection of Jesus is a historical event? Jesus represents the sun, which is at its lowest point for three days during December and then starts rising again.

It's a story celebrating the cycles of the year.


Who told you Jesus is a historical character? How does that make any sense? Die and resurrect?

Please elaborate.