Christopher Hitchens won me over in this clip. His reasoning was the best articulated here concerning never knowing when and where an apparently benign religion is going to have unforeseen malignant consequences. And this unpredictability is inherent because of the systematic way all religions approach things - by relying on faith over reason, by surrendering the one thing that makes humans truly superior to other primates.
I am amish and I recently started to self educate and embrace freethought,secretly of course,Imagine being in my shoes were all of a sudden the doors to reason open up and you find yourself in a sixteenth century fundamentalist church were even the length of your hair and the colors of your curtains are dictated.Imagine that my friends.
I thought "wtf" when Hitchens didn't agree that not all religions are equally dangerous, but I was totally convinced after hearing about Zionism and the Quakers.
That's because they run excellent schools in a liberal (in a classic sense, not a modern American political sense) tradition. Hitchens was just being his usual equivocating self. He was a brilliant thinker but he had a real weakness for sophistry when it suited his purposes. OF COURSE pretending that all religion is EQUALLY rotten, false, corrupt, etc. is specious thinking. It punts the ball on the question of militant Islam as much as he claims the Quakers did back during the Revolutionary War.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use." -Galileo Galilei And if he did, then I'm okay on my own :)
"To surrender ones mind to something is a human state." You're going to have to be more specific here. I don't "surrender" my mind ever. That to me is a complete inability to do your own thinking. If you mean something else, such as "contemplating an idea that you didn't think of," surrender is hardly the word to describe that. Moreover, you say that you refuse to surrender your mind to the authors of these books, but do to another book?
"Call it what you want then: Accept, incorporate, assimilate into ones subconscious to access at will." You're babbling. I read book. I gain knowledge. I educate myself. None of that is "surrendering my mind." So explain what the hell you're actually talking about.
You seem to be big on surrendering your mind to something. That seems like the easy way out. To just surrender and believe, to just accept, incorporate, and assimilate. Personally I question, no matter your faith, you should question. Question what you beleive, and what you do not. If you accept something, question it.
"This is a bit of a straw man eh?" Uh, no. You said that you don't accept the authors the videos show -- yet you accept the bible. You reject other books, but surrender to another. It's hypocrisy (for whatever nonsense you ARE actually talking about).
Christopher Hitchens won me over in this clip. His reasoning was the best articulated here concerning never knowing when and where an apparently benign religion is going to have unforeseen malignant consequences. And this unpredictability is inherent because of the systematic way all religions approach things - by relying on faith over reason, by surrendering the one thing that makes humans truly superior to other primates.
if i were sitting @ this table with these gentlemen, i'd be too fascinated to say anything, with my heart pounding excited at the conversation
I am amish and I recently started to self educate and embrace freethought,secretly of course,Imagine being in my shoes were all of a sudden the doors to reason open up and you find yourself in a sixteenth century fundamentalist church were even the length of your hair and the colors of your curtains are dictated.Imagine that my friends.
I thought "wtf" when Hitchens didn't agree that not all religions are equally dangerous, but I was totally convinced after hearing about Zionism and the Quakers.
They don't know how to update or change; whether it is clothes, morals, traditions or science.
I love Hitchens, but I find it interesting that he sent his daughter to a Quaker school given his comments toward the end of this clip.
That's because they run excellent schools in a liberal (in a classic sense, not a modern American political sense) tradition. Hitchens was just being his usual equivocating self. He was a brilliant thinker but he had a real weakness for sophistry when it suited his purposes. OF COURSE pretending that all religion is EQUALLY rotten, false, corrupt, etc. is specious thinking. It punts the ball on the question of militant Islam as much as he claims the Quakers did back during the Revolutionary War.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use." -Galileo Galilei
And if he did, then I'm okay on my own :)
That was a good point.
"To surrender ones mind to something is a human state."
You're going to have to be more specific here.
I don't "surrender" my mind ever. That to me is a complete inability to do your own thinking. If you mean something else, such as "contemplating an idea that you didn't think of," surrender is hardly the word to describe that.
Moreover, you say that you refuse to surrender your mind to the authors of these books, but do to another book?
"Call it what you want then: Accept, incorporate, assimilate into ones subconscious to access at will."
You're babbling.
I read book. I gain knowledge. I educate myself.
None of that is "surrendering my mind."
So explain what the hell you're actually talking about.
Fine. But some are more dangerous than others.
You seem to be big on surrendering your mind to something. That seems like the easy way out. To just surrender and believe, to just accept, incorporate, and assimilate.
Personally I question, no matter your faith, you should question. Question what you beleive, and what you do not. If you accept something, question it.
should we tolerate sam harris? if he's not as suave as Christopher Hitchens? would that be unevenhanded?
"This is a bit of a straw man eh?"
Uh, no.
You said that you don't accept the authors the videos show -- yet you accept the bible. You reject other books, but surrender to another.
It's hypocrisy (for whatever nonsense you ARE actually talking about).