Sam Harris & Ben Affleck: What happened there?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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On Bill Maher’s show recently, the two got into it. Ben was visibly upset, Harris seemed blindsided, perplexed more than anything.

Harris doesn’t need help defending his ideas, as much as I love Maher, anything he could add would only obscure what Harris would say to steer the conversation back to Earth. So I’m not going to comment on Maher or lump him together with Harris. Here is the transcript. I do give Maher huge credit for creating a forum for this kind of topic.

realclearpolitics.com/video/ … ge_article

I’m glad this exchange happened. It’s the exact point I brought up in a previous thread about Religion At The Center Of Middle East Violence. It can’t be resolved in soundbites on TV, but it needs to take place. It’s the kind of thing that can make smart people on both sides really heated, which tells me it’s a good topic.

Sam Harris is simply pointing out that one can draw a straight line from the ideas in the Koran to some pretty nasty things certain Muslims do, from beheadings, stonings, murder, prosecution, etc. Things they do to women, blasphemers, cartoonists, defectors, are atrocious, but also fully condoned, even instructed, in the Koran. Suicide bombers are often deeply spiritual men with PhDs seeking an afterlife. Can we not discuss Islam as the precondition, the substrate from which these bad ideas emerge?

Sam Harris believes we are morally obligated to call out fundamental religion for the evils it leads to. To dust over it and instead blame economy, politics, power struggle, etc., is morally reprehensible. They’re all factors, sure, but the most toxic factor is the religious piece, because it operates on a diff plane of logic and puts the afterlife ahead of the real one.

I think Ben misunderstood what Harris thinks and says. He overreacted. What do you think happened there?

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What happened is that thing I told you about in that other thread- somebody blamed the acts of Muslims on the tenets of Islam and presented them as an enemy that needs to be stopped, and they were treated as though they were a racist bigot. If you say anything of this sort, the politically correct/progressive response nine times out of ten will be to come up with some ridiculous analogy that the US is just as bad like Ben Affleck did, or to shift the emphasis on the quiet, non murderous Muslims who we are free to imagine do not support the radical agenda, as that other guy did. Anything, ANYTHING to avoid the politically unhygienic conclusion that there is a particular group of people who are a global threat, and that we might have to condemn another culture’s religious tradition in the course of understanding/opposing them.

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“We might have to condemn another culture’s religious tradition in the course of understanding/opposing them.”

I don’t think we’re opposing the culture of Islam. I think we are opposing certain barbaric ideas in Islam that somehow make it into the behavior sets of some modern Muslim factions.

Keep in mind, and HARRIS would agree: certain ideas of Islam are no worse than certain ideas of Chistianity or Judaism. The difference is, Jews & Christians for the most part have jettisoned the absurd stuff written in their doctrines. Let’s make no mistake, the actions of ISIS are plausibly sanctioned by the Koran, as is 9/11.

I applaud the modern liberal muslims who condemn such atrocities, but I criticize them for behaving as if it’s a misreading of the Koran. It’s actually an EXACT reading. It lacks the sensitivity and forethought of cleric scholars who have managed to soften and interpret the violence into a marginal metaphoric place, as did the rabbis and priests in their religions. But the doctrines as written ARE barbaric. If a bunch of jews stoned a woman to death for being caught on tape choosing to have sex before marriage, and admitting it proudly, would a bunch of liberal jews and rabbis be up in arms over the stoning by the crazy fringe group of so-called Jews who warp the Torah? Of course. They’d say “this behavior of stoning adulterers is not a Jewish behavior and is reprehensible.” But they’d be wrong according to the Torah. It is perfectly sanctioned.

It’s time somebody said it loud and proud w/o worrying about being called racist. Politicans can’t say it, many journalists can’t. Sam Harris and Bill Maher can. That’s all Sam Harris is doing. The ideas in religion are dangerous when taken SERIOUSLY. And Islamic people, as a whole, and as a FACT, in the 21st century, take doctrine more seriously and more literally than other religions do. Why is that? That’s a good question that could eventually tie back to issues of race (all options are open, it could be political, cultural, even genetic to a degree, if zealotry or embracing Sharia-law and dictatorship had survival value in past two centuries) but Harris didn’t create the facts. He just has the courage to talk about them.

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Maybe. The trick to that is that it’s not for us to decide. Only the Muslims can tell if the aspects of their faith which lead to them trying to kill us are fringe ideas that don’t have a place in the 21st century, or are at the absolute center of their religion (or somewhere between). We can’t make that call for them.

Right, and the proliferation of that sort of talk is precisely why Ben Affleck responded the way he did. I’m sure he’s up to his eyeballs in people saying “Now now then, Islam isn’t really that bad compared to what some Christians say and do!” which is precisely why he reacted with massive indignation when somebody dared to suggest that Islam is uniquely problematic. Now, I realized you said certain ideas and not the whole kit and kaboodle, and I realize you aren’t really equivocating. But that’s not what people hear in today’s PC age.

Sure. I’m not defending Ben Affleck’s response, or his role as Bat-Man. I’m simply explaining how crazy shit like this ends up happening.

Why? A person can’t speak the truth about crime, or affirmative action or Ebola or immigration or education or any of a dozen other subjects without being called racist, why should this be any different? Just tune it out like we conservatives have been doing for decades. You speak your mind, the social justice warriors natter ‘racistsexisthomophobe!’, you ignore them and carry on.

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Granting his information is good about the number of Jihadists and Islamists (20%), and conservative Muslims and what they believe, Harris made sense. Ben Affleck honestly seemed a little drunk or something the whole show. Although charismatic as ever, his responses to Harris were largely incoherent.

I have never read more than a few pages of the Bible, and I’ve read nothing of the Torah or the Quran. Is the Quran more fundamentally absurd and bad than the holy texts specific to Christianity or Judaism? Or is it like you said, that Islamic people today just take their religion more seriously?

Perhaps Christians and Jews had an easier time updating their religions because they didn’t have an alien East or West culture invading their own, but it was the developing culture and modernization of their own countries and societies that prompted changes in religious tradition. For Muslims, it is probably much harder to take ownership of modernization if it has been in large part due to Western influence.

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Harris was certainly sharper than Maher. He immediately distanced himself from labeling all Muslims as extremists:

Then he said that about 20% of Muslims had extreme views.
Then :

Not Maher:

But look at what else Sam Harris has written about Islam:

samharris.org/site/full_text … y-of-islam

Will the real Sam Harris please stand up. :smiley:

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Cool comments guys. On that last point, I’ll agree, Phyllo, and it’s because Harris is actually special in the talking head game b/c his primary MO and business is criticizing religion. He has a plan of attack against every corner of religion, and reserves special venom for liberal and modern religion, precisely b/c it can create a buffer, a validation, a flagship, for the fringe. Harris never wrote that the non-fringe Muslims are ok by him, and he never said it on Maher. He is a very consistent guy. I believe in the inerrant word of Harris. What he said was that there are significant portions that are not directly involved with or supporting of armed jihad. That’s about as cozy he gets with them, saying, these guys aren’t actually murderers. But he is far from respecting them. And more to the point, the mainstream liberal Muslim tends to be what we’d term as orthodox in other religions. So while they’re not militant armed groups per se, they still pray and bow five times a day, they still believe in the Quran. And when their fringes do bad things, the mainstream tends to hold their tongues and meditate as if to think “who am I to speak out against our zealots. Perhaps they are as Pinchas…” Not to mention threat of death.

Some speak out, but they are the rare exception. And it’s strange how the American media doesn’t put their energy into making the ones who stand up a household word. The only cure will be when orthodox religious sects in Islam speak out against the armed jihad and terrorism. When they articulate the laws about trying to get what they want through peaceful and political ways. And when they end human rights abuses among their own people, like the Jews & Christians have done for the most part.

A word about liberalism… I reject the idea that all liberals are bleeding heart dogmatic babies like Affleck appeared to be. That kind of thing is a human trait, not a liberal trait. You can be liberal, like Maher, and still think Affleck made a douche of himself. Harris is about as socially liberal as one can get. On the show that day, Affleck was not representing Liberals, he was representing Fallacy. Liberalism attracts all kinds of people, smart and dumb. So does conservativism. Nothing we can do about that.

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'Liberal' is to "Bleeding heart dogmatic baby" as 'Muslim' is to 'dangerous hate-filled zealot one bare ankle away from blowing himself up for Allah'.      Every group has it's exceptions, every group has it's lunatic fringe making the rest look bad, and etc....but you trying to spread around Affleck's problem like all groups are equally culpable and it's not a lefty thing....well, ironically that would be you pulling a Ben Affleck.
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Always bad. Expecting errors from humans is the rational approach. :smiley:

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Liberals aren’t the only people who get confused from time to time. Affleck’s fallacy can be looked at in a vacuum, removed from “liberalism.” I don’t have my fallacy dictionary handy, but I’m sure there’s a name for what Affleck did, and I’m sure it happens all over the place.

I like that, “fallacy dictionary.” I’m still waiting for that dispassionate entity who runs statements thru a fallacy detector and reports the fallacy honestly, without partisanship. Philosophers could do it if they could put aside their politics for two seconds and focus strictly on pointing out fallacy in rhetoric. Actions are hard to analyze, but words, we should at least be able to get a handle on the words.

We can know whether Affleck’s accusation and words were founded or not in the same way we can check the math on a restaurant ticket. But there’s not a qualified man with balls out there who can do it, b/c everyone is too pussy-attached to their politics to ever do that.

I could do it, but I’m not a good enough philosopher, or not disciplined enough. But since my only value is clarity and reason, I’d otherwise be perfect for the job. Perhaps we can get a robot to do it. Or perhaps Sam Harris. Which is why I like him in the first place. He’s the closest thing we have to a dispassionate voice of reason.

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Affleck 'got confused' in a very particular, recognizable way to those of us who, like Bill Maher, deal in reality.  What he did, specifically, is react to somebody condemning radical Islam as if it was hate-speech and worthy of scorn regardless of how true it was, because he has a knee-jerk reaction that either everything must be the USA's fault, or else that holding brown people responsible for their actions is immoral. Pick one, it is very much a lefty thing either way.  When you said "Can't we talk about this without being accused of being racists?" who is it that you think you were imploring to stop calling you a racist? Pat Buchanan?  You get called an Islamophobe by many Republicans lately, have you?  If you're going to create a thread about dealing with the reality of the situation, you need to [i]deal with the reality of the situation[/i], and again, pretending that all parties are equally guilty of what Affleck did is....doing what Affleck did. 

Yes, if you have a specific motivation to avoid criticizing the left, it most certainly can. Or, you can look at the actual situation that actually happened, and see that Affleck was responding the way liberals have trained him to respond.   Do conservatives have something that they do that can be compared to this if you take it to such a high level of abstraction that you're calling it something like 'being confused' or 'committing a fallacy'? Yes, without a doubt.  But that would be like saying the forest is no different from the desert because they both have 'terrain'.
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The recent and ongoing GamerGate events made me think more about how I might feel if I were Muslim.

"Seeing crime or violence in terms of identity is convenient; it’s easier to just arrest someone for attending a mosque or wearing an Insane Clown Posse T-shirt than it is to actually track down real perpetrators. But while it’s convenient, it’s also fundamentally unjust. Even if you’re not actually arresting or policing anyone, stereotypes are unfair. As someone whose outgoing and good-hearted 10-year-old is obsessed with video games, I rather resent the suggestion that games are somehow particularly associated with bitter, backwards, social pariahs.

Moreover, linking bad or dangerous behavior to identity can have the perverse outcome of increasing, or to some extent legitimizing, that very behavior. When you criminalize someone’s identity or sense of self, you back them into a corner. While they can condemn certain actions, they can’t reject their selves, so one of the only options that remains is to fight."
psmag.com/navigation/books-a … lem-90518/

The last part in particular seems like a big issue for the proposition that “the doctrine of Islam is bad.” The distinction between condemning people and ideas is of value, but it may not really help when religion is most certainly the type of thing that becomes an almost inseparable part of a person’s identity.

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First I’m not a liberal. I don’t understand what a liberal even is. My experience is there is sound and valid reasoning or not. As a value system, I believe in human rights, but so do conservatives. My point is, Afflect used a straw man fallacy, he equivocated with shifty jew comment, etc, and he didn’t disagree with Harris as much as he downright misunderstood him.

If there are problems unique to liberalism, I’m ok with that. But I refuse to except that liberalism is a fallacy. If anything it’s a value set, which is why it’s hard to ever reach agreement. Of course along the way there is plenty of fallacy, but it’s on both sides. Straw man, excluded middle, ad hom, post hoc ergo, etc, it’s really not party specific, and it’s immature to argue that it is. You are being too partisan. Ben’s fallacy is a common liberal fallacy but it has a name independent of liberalism. Keep in mind fallacy is like a mathematical operation (addition, mult, algorithm) and the content is the numbers. Maher is an example of a liberal and he was vexed by Afflects math.

Harris has always said all religion is bad. That’s his constant thesis, take it or leave it. His distinction is that islam right now has a disproportionate number of fundamentalists and therefore is a disproportionate threat. He’s frustrated that politicians don’t talk about how armed jihad is to a degree a religious problem. Because we are not ever allowed to talk about religion being a problem.

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video: youtube.com/watch?v=Suxc_9n8r8k

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Do you understand how many liberals say that?

Anyway, if you don't understand what a liberal is, then I guess you'll just have to take my word for it that Ben Affleck's behavior is a classic example of liberal political behavior.  Unless you'd like to go on to say that you don't understand what a liberal is, [i]and furthermore neither does anybody else. [/i]

You don’t have to accept it, because nobody said it. That would be a straw man, my reason-valuing friend. What I’ve put forward is the idea that Affleck’s reaction is a classically liberal reaction. The idea that it’s a fallacy came from you, not me, and the idea that liberalism itself is a fallacy came from nobody at all until you just now brought it up. The concept of ideologies being fallacies doesn’t even make sense to me.

Speaking of [i]ad hominem[/i]! Anyway, you can call me whatever you like, it doesn't change the fact that Ben Affleck's reaction was a classic liberal reaction, and not the kind of thing you see from conservatives.

I never said Ben’s behavior was liberalism itself, I said it was something liberals do- because it is. Because of the left’s preoccupation with class and equality, statements like “We need to do something about the Muslims” really rub them the wrong way. Statements like this rub American leftists the wrong way especially because they think of Muslims as poor and brown, and the idea that poor, brown people can be the bad guy is completely alien to the American leftist’s norms.

Right. Maher is an exception to the trend, and I’m sure he’d be the first to admit that it’s the left that gives him shit about his comments on Islam far, FAR more than conservatives do.

And yet it's all I fucking see everywhere I turn, UNLESS that religion is Islam.  Tell me please, where it is you live, and what is it you read, such that you feel criticism of religion is some rare thing?  Tell me so I can go there. 
 If Harris was shit talking Christianity, nobody who has the media spotlight would have cared, least of all Affleck.  It's not about religion- in case you haven't noticed Harris is just one of a gang of people doing what he does, and he's not even the most popular or influential. Him, Dawkins, Hitchens and so on get the attention they do and there is nobody with a contrary message getting half as much attention.  If 'nobody was allowed to talk about religion being a problem', then why are these people treated like cultural super heroes every fucking place I look, despite none of them actually have a formal education to justify them pontificating on the subject matter that makes them so famous? Dennet's the only one with the semi-certification to run his mouth about religion and of them he was always the most sedate. 
No, the problem is that Islam specifically is seen as being a religion of poor brown people, and liberals in the West won't let you criticize [i]them.[/i]  If we were at war with a group of radical nordic Christians, the conversation would be 100% different.
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Its nice to see somebody else watching Gamergate. We need a thread about it, please!

For me we have a rather simple logic here.  Are some behaviors bad?  Seems like a no brainer.  Are ideologies major drivers of people's behaviors? Seems like another no-brainer.  Then, can't we conclude that some ideologies promote mostly bad behavior, or enough bad behavior that the ideology itself needs to be curtailed? I shouldn't even have to argue for this, as I assume any reader can think of a number of easy examples.   So, then, if some ideologies can be on the balance bad news that we have to get rid of, why can't Islam be one of them? I mean, [i]maybe it isn't[/i], but given world events and my above argument, it's certainly a question worth considering. The above quote makes it sound like we can't condemn a demographic such as an ideology because that would be close to a 'generalization' and we all know generalizations are bad things that people shouldn't do. Which is shuddersomely close to saying "Here is a question we shouldn't ask because it would be rude", which is not only dangerous sentiment on a world stage where lives are on the line, but an idea that nobody who calls themselves a 'philosopher' should have. 

Is it an unfair stereotype that Nazi's don't like Jews?

Muslims are blowing themselves up and cutting people’s heads off for minor offenses as we speak. They are plotting to annihilate Western civilization. Not all Muslims, but enough of them that they are a real, credible threat. Now, it MAY BE that the Muslims doing this are a wacky outlier completely corrupting Islamic teachings and the faith as a whole shouldn’t be judged according to their actions. But I refuse to believe it purely on the grounds that to do otherwise would violate some obligation to equality. What does the evidence show?

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Oh man, the GamerGate thing has so many different parts: gaming influenced behavior, gaming and sexism, feminism, game journalism, the future of gaming, the gamer, etc. I thought about starting a thread, but I figured the first response would be some type of dismissive quip. Pretty much how I feel about ILP.

Certainly it would be absurd if we did not criticize bad ideas for fear of hurting feelings or sounding prejudicial. There are still two problems.

  1. My question remains: Is the Quran more fundamentally absurd and bad than the holy texts specific to Christianity or Judaism?
    Look at what Fareed Zakaria said – I quoted him above.

  2. It’s tough to attack any ideology that gets internalized as part of a people’s identity without backlash. Unless you have incredible tact and grace, a lot can go wrong. More of a cautionary note than a disagreement.

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I won’t dismiss it quippishly, I’ve been dying to talk about it.
1.) I don’t think so. I think the main difference comes in the role the book plays for Muslims compared to Christians and Jews. You’ll often hear atheists say “Pfft, if Christians were really consistent they’d stone people for wearing clothes of two fabrics or lying to their parents” and so on, but the reality is there are solid theological reasons why Christians are the way they are, and I suspect why Muslims are the way they are.
2.) You’re certainly going to have backlash…but even the nature of that can be telling. So for example, this website has people shitting on Christianity all day, every day, non-stop, and pretty much has had this for a decade. So do a forum search and find me some Christians advocating that the atheists who say such things ought to be beheaded! I don’t even think Wizard or that death-threats guy we banned recently went so far. And this website is just a tiny slice. I don’t think you can say “Well, there’s going to be backlash” as if Islamic backlash is the same thing as Christian or Jewish backlash. Even the gamergate thing has been comparatively tame, unless Sarkeezian was stoned recently and I didn’t hear about it. Muslims react differently to criticism, and there must be a reason.

EDIT: Fareed seems basically correct, except for the last bit where we have some obligation to ‘liberalize’ other people’s religions by manipulating them psychologically. I’m more than willing to accept that the problem is one of “Muslims these days” and not “Muslims since the beginning.” But that doesn’t really get them off the hook, or justify acting as though our enemy doesn’t have a name and an ideology.

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Okay, so perhaps the major difference between Islam and its relatives are theological and not doctrinal. Does that make a difference in how one should approach the situation?
In an MSNBC airing, Harris was given a chance to respond and he said something along the lines of wanting to effect or influence a reformation of Islamic ideology. So it seems he does not think (or is not now willing to say) Islam is inherently bad. But that wasn’t clear to me from what he said (or what little he was able to say) on Maher’s show.

Yes, the nature of backlash is telling. Indeed that is part of the point. If you want to have a positive impact, you should be careful not to waste your time alienating moderates. The approach matters and can cost/save a lot of time and pain.

[tab]

Not stoned, but this happened.
In other news: polygon.com/2014/10/14/69790 … an-threats
standard.net/.media/1/2014/1 … cf8df0.jpg

And now some, including Sarkeesian herself, pursue the gun control dimension to this…[/tab]

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No, and I don’t think Fareed was saying Muslims get a pass at all. What he said hinted about a theological revolution that outsiders might be able to encourage. All of this attacking bad ideas and arguing is psychological manipulation…and so is speaking at all about anything.

I wonder how Harris would respond to Fareed.