I'm sorry for the derail, I just love the absolute certainty of that question - I hope the sincerely religious feel the same way about god's existence.

Additionally, I am starting to worry that the problem is not that people refuse to consider that they might be wrong... it's that they don't care if they're wrong or not. It's literally an irrelevant thing to worry about. If the rest of us want to play that game where we match actual facts to actual words, that's fine - the truth of what they say is in the message, not whether or not the facts happen to match up. Not only are they immune to facts, but they really feel that facts are a second-rate measurement of truth.

I saw a fascinating video* on this once - maybe here - that discussed the ancient (Biblical) understanding of truth, vs the modern understanding of truth. If you have a great story with a strong lesson, the modern measure of truth is whether or not the events described in the story match any actual events, and the Biblical measure of the truth of the story is whether it teaches a strong lesson or not. Maybe it's my ivory tower elitism but that seems to be exactly what goes on in the GOP now - if a 'war on cops,' for example, is a powerful story, it's more true than if the statistics show that officers are safer now.

*It was probably this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL6E4eMX-4k (Reza Aslan on the Young Turks)

figured i would take this discussion to your page.

in response to this post:kinda,you are close,in the ball park.

the main reason why i injected my opinion in that thread was to add a dynamic that was not being discussed.

i wasnt actually offering a counterpoint but rather adding to the already complicated dynamic.

so i do not think we disagree at all.
one of the reasons islam has not changed much is due to there not being a reformation.this lack of canonization and core central philosophical tenants has left islam to a wide array of problems,many of those problems we see play out everyday on the world stage.

if you going to read any book on islam.i highly recommend reza aslans "no god but god".the entire book is an argument FOR reformation and you may recognize some of the arguments in the book from my commentary.

as always my friend,
a pleasure engaging and discussing with you.
stay awesome.

The interesting bit on ISIS with Reza Aslan is only about 15 minutes long.

Greetings. I watched and really enjoyed the Reza Aslan section at the start of http://videosift.com/video/whats-islam-got-to-do-with-it but then it wandered off onto other things that weren't quite as interesting... did you mean to include the whole show?

It's a right shame that we can't use the end= tag in the embed

I think we agree completely with Sam Harris in that Islam is in desperate need of a reformation. I won't bring Reza Aslan into this as I haven't read him, and it seems to be tangential at best.

But, acknowledge what you just said when you said that Islam is in need of reformation. You are saying what Sam is saying: That Islam contains some horrible ideas, and people are acting on those ideas, and we need to find a way to marginalize those ideas within the canon of Islam.

We could end the disagreement right there, except for where we stand in history at this point. If Christianity had undergone its reformation in a post nuclear arsenals world, who knows where we would be. It is because of this that it behooves everyone to encourage this reformation of Islam, and potentially to limit their access to apocalyptic weaponry until such a reformation has taken place. That's a different discussion though.

I think Sam's position is that one of the potential motivations behind suicide bombing is martyrdom and jihad. Real belief in those particular dogma alone is sufficient to justify suicide attacks. There are definitely plenty of terrorist actions that take place for completely non-religious reasons, and I bet that the bulk of them combine the two. But that doesn't refute Sam's point.

As for your last bit about literal interpretations, I don't agree there either, at least not entirely. How could you possibly explain the inquisition without resorting to what one would now consider to be fundamentalist readings of the texts? The same fundamentals you're saying weren't in vogue until 100 years ago is the very propaganda used to recruit soldiers to the caliphate's armies centuries ago. In any case it seems unrelated to the discussion when scriptural literalism came about, the fact is that it exists, making it more important that some books contain really bad ideas.

@Barbar
what you are speaking of in regards to the 2 religions (judaism/christianity) are the reformations they both experienced.

now there are a myriad of reasons why these reformations occurred:age of enlightenment, renaissance and a new way of thinking=secular philosophy.i could go on but those are the big three.

islam has yet to experience a reformation and reza aslan's book "no god but god" makes the case that islam is in desperate NEED of a reformation,to which harris dishonestly suggests that islam needs while in the same sentence accuses reza of ignoring.the man wrote an entire nook making the case for islamic reformation!

when you are going to criticize belief you have to also ask the "WHY" of that belief.if you strictly confine your arguments to a book then you are ignoring the multitude of factors to the origin of that belief and are actually formulating an argument with the very same absolutist and fundamentalist thinking that you are criticizing.

you are quite literally using fundamentalism to criticize fundamentalism.

example:
harris makes the point that suicide bombers blow themselves up because the quran glorifies martyrdom,with little thought to WHY those young men strapped bombs to their chest in the first place.

when the WHY is the most important question!

and the answer is NOT because the quran demands it of them but rather out of hopelessness brought on by oppression,murder,torture of their friends and family.

the quran offers a rationalization for the suicide bomber.a desperate person will grasp desperately at any thin straw to give their life meaning,but it most certainly not the cause.

this fundamental lack of understanding is why i find harris to be a mediocre atheist thinker.

literalism in regards to scriptural interpretation is a fairly new phenom,(past 100 years),and that includes muslims.

@enoch agree 100%. You got it.

@gwiz665 @Ashenkase @Taint Wow. Were you listening? Did we see the same video ? Harris made not one legitimate point.

Sam Harris has proven himself to be an ignorant warmongering bigot, holding one set of rules for Christianity and Judaism, whilst vilifying Islam in an utterly unreasonable way. The same acts carried out by Christianity and Judaism are excused. If a muslim had suggested the things Harris is quoted as saying there would be international outrage, water boarding or worse. As Cenk aptly put it, all religions are equally guilty.

Begging Cenk to pull the Reza Aslan video was just sad and sickening, crying that he had no chance at recourse whilst being interviewed for 3 hours.. pathetic.

this was a great discussion.
i was never a huge fan of sam harris as being a solid representative of an atheist viewpoint until a fellow sifter pointed some great essays by harris (waves to qwiz).my narrow opinion was mainly due to only watching short clips of harris,which is pretty unfair to harris and not indicative of his approach.

so i have gained a modicum of respect for harris in his ability to be reasoned in certain instances,though i may still disagree with many of his conclusions,for a multitude of reasons.

that being said i had two problems with this interview:
1.the first 5 minutes was harris whining and crying.that was total turn off.
2.at approx the 2hr mark he makes the argument that islam needs to experience a reformation,great argument and one i agree with,but in the VERY next sentence out of his mouth he criticizes reza aslan as not suggesting that islam is desperately in need of a reformation.

this is an out and out,bold face lie;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_god_but_God:_The_Origins,_Evolution,_and_Future_of_Islam

the entire book is an argument for reformation of islam!!

props to cenk for calling harris out on his draconian imaginary policies (if he were in charge).the arrogance of harris needs to be challenged at ever step and cenk did a great job.harris spent the majority of this interview back-pedaling.

there are some amazing atheist thinkers out there and throughout history,harris,at best,is mediocre.

i have read hitchens and harris is no hitchens.
*promote

Cenk: "You know he meant bigoted[not racist], stop nitpicking stuff like that.."

NO, thats a crucial fucking point. Its not bigotry nor racism, it is criticism of a RELIGION, not a race, not a people, not a population, not a country, not a skin color , not a sex, , not a language, not a philia, not a fuckin skull shape. A religion. There is a crucial difference. If you cant see the difference, then I'm sorry: Try again.

The thing is, criticizing a bad idea, or a collection of bad ideas can never be racist nor bigoted.

That not to say that some people aren't irrationally hating and bigoted towards muslims, or people who look like they might be muslims, but that is a COMPLETELY different thing.

Everyone understands this in politics: if you think the republican party sucks, that doesnt mean you hate people with a texan accent. Still, I'm sure some people think people with a thick texan accent are automatically to be considered as racist hillbillies who vote republican. That's stereotyping and bigotry. Being anti-republican is not.

BTW, anyone bamboozled by Reza Aslans fantasies about islamic countries being equality paradises shoud read Muhammad Syed and Sarah Haiders dismantling of his distortions right here : http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/05/reza-aslan-is-wrong-about-islam-and-this-is-why/

Exactly like the bible and torah.

Here's the thing. All religions started out as fire, brimstone and the sword, because that's what the prevailing culture at the time was like. The people who made up each religion were reflecting the cultural values of the time, hence the support for slavery, oppression of women and homosexuals, etc.

As humanity progressed and culture became more progressive, liberal and enlightened, the religions were forced to embrace some of those changes to stay relevant (usually a few decades or even centuries behind the prevailing morality).

Back on topic, it appears that Aslans facts are in dispute.

I think he has a point, I really do, however he's too dismissive of the whole problem. He claims there are 1.5 billion muslims in the world, and only a few countries are actually extremists. He mentions 3 in the video. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran. We know there are a few others (like Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc), but let's talk of these 3 only.

I actually added them up. The population in those 3 countries alone, is 300 million people. That's 20% of the 1,5 billion Reza Aslan mentioned.

At LEAST 20% of the muslims in the world are extremists (and this is a low number). This is not a fringe ideology for muslims. It is a big portion of them.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/A-Terrible-Interview-with-Author-Reza-Aslan

The others might be in here too...

A Terrible Interview with Author, Reza Aslan has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash.

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