cenk is so outgunned in this, it's cringeworthy.

You must be joking.

I'm amazed at Cenk's balanced approach. He let's Harris speak his piece but utterly destroys him on every single point.

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

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, October 24th, 2014 12:15am PDT - promote requested by enoch.

*controversy *religion

Adding video to channels (Controversy, Religion) - requested by MrFisk.

I think the first 5 minutes was the most important part of the conversation. It's bigger than both men and he's got a point. The burden of proof in "journalism" has been on a downward trend for the last 10-20 years and sites like Salon have decided to just throw it out the window outright.

What they've discovered is that spreading "based on a true story" style journalism is much more profitable than traditional journalism and their (relatively) new and growing religion allows them to do it without sin.

This religion is much more damaging than any popular, established religion in practice today. This religion doesn't need buildings or ordained practitioners. This religion creates its own propaganda as a side effect of its practice. Its worshipers can often hide in plain sight and subvert civilization for years without direct personal repercussions; in fact they are often rewarded for their behavior.

The religion is Objectivism, and its deity is "the invisible hand". When your morality is judged by your profit than you've undone a core pillar of civilization. The damage of all other practiced religions in the modern era pale in comparison.

The first five minutes of this video were the only part of this conversation that were relevant to the real challenges of our times.

Sam Harris is sharp as ever. Cenk loses damn near every point. I can genuinely not see how anyone can think Cenk "won" this debate.

@enoch I must say that I'm disappointed if that's what you're walking away with from this clip. Cenk seems to misunderstand most of what Harris is trying to say, and when he explains further Cenk brushes it off and changes the subject in, to use the wording from the video, a scatter shot way. Grabbing parallels or examples from seemingly random and unrelated ways. It feels like Harris is fighting an uphill battle which is tiring him, so there's a lot of repetitions to try and hammer the points home. Sadly they seem to fall on deaf ears.

I don't see any arrogance in the video, granted I'm missing the last 30 minutes or so.

@Truckchase
i was referring to how harris was crying on how he is so misunderstood and how everybody is getting his ideas wrong,or misrepresenting them.
i agree with him when he postulates that some people may be misrepresenting him to further their own agenda but i found it beneath him to whine due to disagreements with certain people who were just espousing their opinion based on his words.

maybe write clearer and more succinct in order to convey your ideas?

as a philosopher he should be accustomed to this,it is practically expected but it can further the discussion.

meh..thats how i took it anyways.just my opinion.

@gwiz665
you were the guy who encouraged me to look further into harris work.which i did.
and happily so..i found him far more reasonable and nuanced than my original impression.

so thank you my friend.

the arrogance i am speaking of is in the latter part of the video where harris does the two-step when cenk calls him out on some of his positions in regards to foreign policy.

you cannot acknowledge that certain historical events were monsterous and then double back and suggest we still have moral authority to USE the very same power structure,that only a second ago you admitted had perpetrated inhuman crimes,to impose your own sense of what a society should be.

and THEN,when cenk doubles down and calls you out AGAIN,suggest that what you are REALLY asking is just a hypothetical "philisophical" question.not actually offering a policy solution.

another point harris got stuck on and,in my opinion,where his REAL arrogance was exposed,is to suggest that democracy is the best form of government but islamic nations are not ready and would need a 20year buffer and maybe the western worlds could place a leader in order to help the transition towards democracy.

check,point.match.

this is where harris always loses me.i understand his criticisms of religion,others have done it far better than him but when he dips his toes into foreign policy,history and politics he wades into waters where his expertise is revealed to be severely lacking.

harris makes many exceptional points and i love that when given time (which cenk gave him) a lot of his ideas are allowed to flourish and blossom.this is a good thing.i may not be a harris fan but i am most certainly not a harris hater either.

i just dont think he is the best atheist thinker out there.

One of these guys knows how to debate, the other 2+2=6. Agree, Cenk's rebuttals are cringe worthy.

I can't believe Cenk couldn't understand Harris's point that there's a difference between a disagreement and factually misrepresenting another's viewpoint.

Cenk also then fails to understand the nuance in religious beliefs and how those differences matter. I mean, this seems really obvious. Yes it matters how many layers of improbability people layer on their belief system since it's their belief system we're concerned with.

That's why Harris treats Islamic doctrine differently, because it's so obviously different then the other major belief systems and deserves the extra attention.

Then Cenk goes on to say lay the blame of WW2 on Christianity? Yea Germany and Japan attacked their neighbors due to their Christian beliefs. Seriously? He smugly says: "oh when Muslims do something it's because of Islam but when Christians do it, it's complicated."

Cenk is so out of his depth throughout this interview that it's embarrassing.

I can't believe someone wrote that Cenk won this "debate". Get your head checked, this isn't even a debate, this is Harris trying to get Cenk to understand basic concepts.

@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.

@billpayer The distinction is how direct of a line you can draw between belief and behavior. All religions are certainly not equally guilty.

Judaism is not an aggressively spreading religion, in that while the old testament is fairly horrible, the main purpose is to sit around and wait for the messiah to return to smite all of us. The action this leads to is sitting around and waiting.

Islam, on the other hand, is to be spread by the sword, so the action lead from that is to aggressively spread it.

The whole problem of Martyrdom changes the rules for everyone as well. If you want to die and genuinely believe that you will go to heaven if you kill yourself if you take infidels with you, then we have to stop you. This glorification of death is disturbing.

Rewatching it I still get the exact same feeling. Cenk is flaundering and Sam is trying hopelessly to explain his points to him.

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by eric3579.

I'm finding it was a fair discussion on both sides. Harris is clearly more knowledge in the subject but Cenk came up with enough counter-examples to keep the discussion interesting.

Ultimately I think they've spent far too much arguing on the part/predominantly Islam to blame and whether Islamic is worse than certain other religions. Both are very subjective positions and I feel Harris comes off dogmatic here. He may be well placed to argue that people will undersell the role of Islam (perhaps due to political correctness) but to take a very absolutist position cheapens his argument.

I'm only half way but I feel they skipped over socio-economics far too quickly. The reason a middle class citizen in a western country can be radicalised by Islam (say ISIS) is because of the wellspring of specifically radical Islamic communities on the internet relative to other religions. This makes the chances of an impressionable individual stumbling on these much higher than say on a radical Christian call to action which I'm sure exist. As an area, the Middle East is also far more conflict prone and engender an immediate need to respond.

That Islam is so important in many Middle Eastern countries is in itself a product of their low socio-economic level. I suspect that in societies where religion rather than the nation state (which is corrupt or ineffectual) is the main cohesive entity and where low education may make many events we attribute to science unexplainable, it is no surprise that religion (Islam) is taken more seriously and literally. For example insofar as there being no effectual system of law and punishment to more humanely deal with criminals. Also because religion is such a more important glue of community, it's strictures are enforced more rigidly - more varied interpretations would lead to disagreements and risk breaking the community apart (or alternatively, I am saying that only communities with rigid ideologies have survived).

The reason why a Palestinian Christian behaves less radically than Palestinian Muslims on average may also have manifold explanations if it is true. If we accept that many religious groups are linked globally, it is arguable that western countries with their more moderate Christian view are a moderating influence relative to the more radical average global interpretation of Islam. Perhaps with suicide bombings being such an Islamic stigma, it is an activity they as a community have actively tried to avoid? Perhaps anthropologically being in the minority in a community engenders less radicalism and more passive behaviour?

Hmm I think I'm coming around to Harris on profiling. A statistical approach that takes into account all factors (whether it be race or religion, however in/significant they may be) would certainly have the best outcome. Although frankly the sample size mix of confounders would not really be sufficient to draw very strong conclusions.

As a matter of policy I do see the logic in saving lives being placed above political correctness where the cost is inconvenience (and yes some loss of dignity). As far Cenk's point on what profiling leads to, I'm not really sold. It feels too much like a slippery slope argument (a bad analogy would be suggesting gay marriage leads to polygamy).

I guess the problem is though, while in theory at no point should 'Muslim being a contributing factor to selection' be interpreted as that the policy believes all Muslims are terrorists, it is all but certain that this is what people would choose to believe. Even something like a subsidised flight in lieu of inconvenience would not really help here.

But yes, he should stay out of foreign policy. Benevolent dictator, wow.

@RedSky profiling is dumb. I thought that exactly as Harris mention the old granny in the wheelchair who shouldn't be searched. Guess what, if that was the case where do you think they will hide the next one ? It's so dumb. If the bad guys know you will not search children or old people, who do you think will be used for smuggling next ?.
Your other post, Radical Christians are just as happy to die and go to heaven. it's called the Military, and yes they forcibly proselytize and recruit from the poor and minorities and yes they murder people of other religions on a massive scale.

@gwiz665 No. Judaism is just as bad. Judaism also suffers from Racism. That could be argued is why it does not spread. Look up Jewish intermarriage. Their doctrine preaches the disregard and manipulation of the 'GOYA' or 'animals' because they are lesser human beings. That is why they do not inter-marry or recruit. That is why over 90% Israeli's support bombing defenseless Gazans including targeting children. That is why Israel is imprisoning or forcibly deporting Africans. That is why Israel treats Israeli Arabs like sub humans.

ALL RELIGIONS ARE EQUALLY AWFUL.

@billpayer
i do not think it is fair to judge so harshly based on so little.@RedSky and @gwiz665 are far from dumb,quite the opposite.they are just expressing their opinions,which you are free to disagree but to dismiss them so readily removes the opportunity to discuss WHY you may disagree.(ok,you did but the tone was a tad..harsh)

i quite enjoy sparring with both of them.they bring perspective and a sharp insight to many discussions and im glad your post brought qwiz out of retirement.

i think @RedSky made an excellent point that the argument by harris lacked the inclusion of socio-economic factors (i would add historical context as well).while your disagreement with @gwiz665 is that he made the argument that jews do not proselytize,which while true,is a highly reductionist way to condense a religion.there are soo many factors which contribute to a religion,sacred texts being only one,single factor.

the real fight is absolutist thinking,a rigid adherence to doctrine and dogma that is the true enemy of humanity.be it for a religion or nationalism,both should be questioned and criticized.

which is exactly what we are doing here yes?

and just a side note,because i think you may not be aware:i am not an atheist

Ah hahaha. you are right. edited my post, decapitlized and a little bit calmer. Thank you.

@enoch. Sorry you misundertood. I'm not calling any poster dumb, merely Sam Harris's position and argument.

I love you sifters !

What I'm getting here is that pretty much everyone agrees with nothing. Some thought one guy won, some others thought the other guy won.

Let me break this down very quickly, it doesn't matter who won. No it really doesn't.

Yeah I think they both make pretty intelligent points on profiling. It is silly to check little old ladies and toddlers, but it would be inflammatory if only Muslim men were singled out (not that they don't have better reason to be inflamed than airport inconvenience). Still, if we exempted the least threatening 30% of travelers I don't think the other 70% would feel outraged by that.

Sam makes a great point about the failure of journalism, and I love that he calls out Cenk on the issue at the start. Call it whining if you like, but he's so spot on with his criticism that it alone makes the viewing worthwhile in my opinion.

All Sam is really asking for (not the profiling part) is to acknowledge that it matters what people believe. I'm amazed that this is somehow hard for people to swallow. I think most people would agree with him, fundamentally on this point.

Having accepted the above point (that people are motivated, at least in part, by their beliefs), one of the next things to do is to identify some of humanity's worst ideas, and try to undermine them. It so happens that the horrible ideas Sam is tackling, in general, are in the holy books of the 3 big monotheisms. Since 2 of those 3 have already internally dealt with the most horrendous of their ideas, it leaves the latecomer, Islam, to fall under the microscope. It doesn't help that islam, at it's foundation, attempted to bake in a proof against future refinement and growth.

This seems almost as uncontroversial as a logical chain of thoughts could be, yet somehow people manage to misunderstand them.

"Since 2 of those 3 [religions] have already internally dealt with the most horrendous of their ideas"

Now that is fucking funny, and the crux of Sam Harris's ignorance

""Since 2 of those 3 [religions] have already internally dealt with the most horrendous of their ideas"

Now that is fucking funny, and the crux of Sam Harris's ignorance"

To think that they haven't, it would seem to me, is to be either forgetful, or ignorant of their pasts and just how horribly they behaved.

To pretend that you've made a point by sneering dismissively is just juvenile. Explain your stance.

The wholesale, unabashed genocides in the old testament seem to me to be more horrible than anything that jews are doing, for religious reasons in the present day. And that is taking Israel into account.

The picketing of soldier's funerals seems altogether less bad than the spanish inquisition.

It's not to say that Judaism and Christianity don't still have some work to do. Of course they do. But they've already climbed quite a distance.

@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.

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
i think we agree more than we disagree my friend.

i started writing a very long history prior to the inquisition and the politics behind it and the consequent reformation and how that was able to transpire and i realized i was writing a lecture as if you were a student in my class.

lol...i figured i would save you the boredom.

you used a very apt word:justification.
and on that we agree.

@enoch

Cheers.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pakistani-christian-couple-burned-alive-kiln-torching-quran-n240751

@billpayer tell me again how all religions are equally bad.