@Barbar
i do not know if you are aware,but you actually made my point in regards to justification.specifically your third paragraph.

as for the disagreement in regards to religious texts being inert and neutral.this should not really be an issue and should be plain for all to see.religious texts are amalgamations,musings,stories,philosophies all jammed into a canonized text.they are often hypocritical and contradictory.it is the reader that interprets and injects their own subjective understandings based on their own proclivities.

which then makes religious text a subjective text.so if you are violent,then your interpretations will be violence,which would lead to justifications based on those interpretations.

unless you are using fundamentalism as a fulcrum.which sees religious text as the unerring word of god,which brings a whole new conundrum into focus:contradictory philosophies which are in diametric opposition.which is an impossibility to reconcile,but again brings us to my main point:justification.(by way of mental gymnastics).

and harris does not just smell like apologist BS,he IS an apologist.now this is understandable when seen through the lens of nationalism,but it engages in the same wishful thinking harris accuses many religious people of engaging in.

we WANT to feel we are the good guys.
we WANT to think that what we are doing is for a higher,and more morale purpose.
we WANT to think all this violence and bloodshed is ultimately for a better and more prosperous future for everybody involved.
we WANT to believe that our government is not just destroying and destabilizing whole communities with wanton destruction just so our corporations can have a new market to exploit,or to control the oil fields for BP and chevron to control.

but thats not the reality.
our wants are just wishful thinking and an inability to accept that we cling to these wants to justify horror,destruction and death.

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/the-radically-changing-story-of-the-u-s-airstrike-on-afghan-hospital-from-mistake-to-justification/

so what is OUR justification?
so just like the more moderate and secular muslims who look the other way when faced with horror.we too,look away at the truth of things,because to recognize the reality means to accept responsibility.
we have blood on our hands....all of us.
as do those muslims who also look away.

but the allure of justifications....
to have the ability to turn horror into righteousness.
it is extremely powerful,and we ALL participate.
even sam harris.

@SDGundamX

We can criticise religion generally - for it's falsehood, for it's stultifying effect on the mind, for the shadow the faithful cast over an enlightened world.

We can criticise religions individually - for the divine exhortations to genocide in each of the abrahamic canons, for the promise of infinite torture by a benevolent god in both christianity and islam, for their arbitrary or bigoted taboos, and particularly of the newer creeds - islam, mormonism, scientology - for what we know to be the bad character of their founders.

And, as you say, we can criticise the behaviours of individual believers, communities or sects - catholicism on condoms and the spread of aids, genital mutilation in africa (which you're quite right to point out has cultural roots that pre-date islam, though it would be disingenuous to claim religion has no reinforcing or propagating effect on that practice).

I wholly disagree that this last is the only or most meaningful critique to offer of religion. There are fundamental tenets of these ideologies on which all their denominations, however fractured, can be said to agree.

Allow these people their diversity, their specificity and their subtle variation of interpretation and you're in danger of chasing a thousand little fish at once, in a thousand different directions, while the religious school as a whole shifts, shimmers, dazzles and slips away. I prefer to play the dolphin pack: surrounding, corralling, squeezing and finally devouring the enemy entire.

String Quartet Plays Pachabel's Canon During Traffic Jam has been added as a related post - related requested by nanrod on that post.

The Pachelbel Rant - Never look at the Canon in D the same has been added as a related post - related requested by nanrod.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/The-Pachelbel-Rant-Never-look-at-the-Canon-in-D-the-same

Three things I have to say, @bobknight33:
1. You're complaining about christianity being attacked. Ok, fine, I'll tell you something: I am tired of your religious beliefs invading my life like an middle eastern dictator a small, oily country. Oh, I have it good, I'm a straight, white middle-european man, I'm fine so far. Others are not. They're tired as well.
I can go on a meth-bender, marry one of the Kardashians in Vegas and annul the whole affair in less than a week. If I win the lottery, I can post on Craigslist and get myself a nice gold-digging whore who'll sign a certificate that makes us husband and wife if I'm willing to trade lackluster blowjobs for money. Best part, it ain 't prostitution if you're married, legally worldwide. Heck, I can even become an abusive piece of shit as long as I can beat her well enough so she won't complain to others.
Because marriage is sanctimonious.
If I was gay and would like to marry the guy of my dreams that I've been with for 20 years, that isn't possible. Because the book doesn't approve.
If my sister got raped, you people would force her to birth the child of her rapist. Her concerns don't matter, life is a holy gift from god. Care to explain to me the position of the catholic church (you know, those christians that make up the majority of christianity) on slavery during centuries slavery? How holy was life in all those european colonies back in the day with all these missionaries teaching the good book? What exactly was their statement as an organisation when millions or people were murdered during the third Reich?
All that silence but when it comes to abortion, you people show up with guns and show the value of this great gift by murdering doctors. Fuck my sisters concerns, right? It just rape, walk it off.
I'm well of, I could join the club as a full member anytime. As long as I'm not calling the cops on the pedophile priests and the self-loathing faggots can stand on their pulpits and tell little children they're broken. I could be among you.
But I have a conscience. I can't buy all that talk about love and forgiveness and ignore all that hatred and cruelty that is in the very basis of your beliefs, that wretched, old bible of yours.
I have to look that man in the mirror in the eyes.
The only way you can impose all that crap on me anymore if through the government. I believe your faith has as much place in there than Tom Cruise's. None.
The Prodigy said it best and I think the people who lived at the time the bible was written would agree: Invaders must die.
Your religion invades my rights as a human being.

2. Did he rise?
Nope, little, brown Jewish got killed. End of facts, begin of story. I don't trust the testimony of men (and I said this before) who consider a walkman witchcraft. People at that time could be convinced that they farted because they swallowed an angry spirit that wants to escape.
You book did a terrible job of explaining how the world came to be (we're golems that had so much incest that they inbred mankind), makes up the worst disastermovies (everything turns to Waterworld but we have a boat with a pair of every animal in existence [imagine all those different kinds of ants alone] and then incest till population is back up) and turns mushroomtrips/mental illness in supposedly accurate future predictions (you know it's the end of the world because none of the riders is called "Incest").
The only reason people buy into the mythology and the extended universe (where's that bible chapter about Satan ruling the Sarlac Pit and Santa being canon again? ) is because for centuries children were taught it at a young age. And then you told them not to question it as heretics get the stake. Ashes yes but not the quick Buffy way.
Don't get me wrong, I like that Jesus fellow and I'm willing to believe his basic message but let's be honest. If J.K. Rowling was born 2000 years earlier, we'd pray to Harry Potter and wear lightning shaped jewelery around our neck. You guys got big because the Roman empire made you relevant. That's it.

3. What's up with '53'? Is that the christian answer to '42'?

See, here's the difference between you and me: you need to be told but I have to know.
While you march wherever you religious leader tells you to ("Looking at those horrible gays! And pay no attention to the man behind the curtain or what he does with the altarboy."), I just ask myself how I'd feel if somebody treated me like I treat others. It's call empathy.
Of course you don't need that, you have somebody to tell you when it's ok to stone someone to death or how to treat your slaves. I actually have to think about that, consider my actions and try to understand how their consequences affect others. Sometimes I even have to be reminded I am an asshole and have to deal with the fallout of making the wrong choices but you don't have to fear that. You have a book that is several hundert years old written by various people who lived at a time where a Walkman would've been considered witchcraft. And since it has been translated and edited a couple of times, it got only better, especially in the expanded universe fan-fiction edition that you consider canon today. How dare those heathens to question you?
It must be great if everything is so clear cut, so black (phew, nearly typed a nasty word...) and white. I actually have to fear backlash if I mistreat the human beings around me. You on the other hand only have to fear that a man (of course, a man), who really, really loves you, condemns you to eternal torture because you kissed a boy and liked it.
You and your damned, old book. Your standard of morality is no better than that of the Quran.
I have to know I did the right thing, you just need to be told you did good. That's the difference between our morality. That's the difference between relying on your faith or relying on your humanity. That's why I refuse to tell a gay kid it's broken and needs fixing or strapping a bomb to my chest, because that shit is wrong and I just know it. No matter what somebody like you tells me.
Get the fuck out with your claims of morality and go clean your temple from the child molesters.

I will watch all the Marvels. Except the Disney Channel S.M.A.S.H. show. Fuckin' wit my Marvel canon all toddler cartoon like.

Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. "Mutants". Brother and sister. In Marvel canon, Magneto's son and daughter.

Isildur wears it while escaping his ambush by orcs, and does indeed turn invisible before it slips off his finger. Unfortunately the argument is available that he, like the hobbits, has every reason to value stealth in that moment. It's notable that both he and Frodo are made aware (in Frodo's case by Galadriel) that the ring's real strength is beyond them.

Bombadil wears it briefly as well, of course, and doesn't vanish. But he's a pain in the ass. Others might say it's because he's an ainu, duh. Or shut up, he's a deliberate anomaly. I'd claim, not with a tremendous amount of canonical justification it has to be said, that it's because he's all physical; a personification of middle-earth and even the ring can't shove him into the shadow world.

Correction:
Camera: Formerly a Canon VIXIA HF R500

Canon manages it by strobing the flash repeatedly though the moving slit. This is called HSS flash as I recall.

It lets you shoot super fast exposures, get huge apertures and still use some fill.

High Speed video of Canon DSLR Shutter - Smarter Every Day has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash.

Ultra High Speed Video of Nikon D3 Shutter Action has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash.

And that's why you have a slowest "flash sync speed" - if you shoot at faster shutter speeds than the flash sync speed (typically 1/200s-1/250s), the whole sensor wouldn't be exposed at once, and the lower part of the frame would be dark.
*related=http://videosift.com/video/High-Speed-video-of-Canon-DSLR-Shutter-Smarter-Every-Day
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Ultra-High-Speed-Video-of-Nikon-D3-Shutter-Action

Sadly Disney already stated that the extended universe is non canon and in one stroke disregarded all the books written. I've always wished for a Thrawn Trilogy movie series myself