Sam Harris' "The Fireplace Delusion"
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I agree about Harris, and think he's utterly revolting, but I don't know if blackened buildings in a city where most people burned coal in open fires, the conditions I knew as a child, have much to do with whether woodsmoke is worse than tobacco smoke. If true, that would merely mean don't generate woodsmoke in quantity for the purpose of inhaling it into your lungs. I agree with that as well, anyway.Wow, I actually can't stand Sam Harris, but I thought this was excellent. And unless y'all are joking, you've seriously proven his point.
truethat
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I think you are missing his point. I don't think he's trying to trash fireplaces. (Please tell me that you all didn't interpret it that way, please!) He is comparing the visceral reaction of those who like fireplaces with those who like their gods.
Then he's crackers. Unless he's talking about fires on altars of Zoroastrian temples or something of that sort.
I simply don't think it's very helpful to
I don't believe the two forms of devotion are normally comparable in the minds of sane people.
truethat
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Sam Harris's point is in trying to shift the parameters of the discussion away from the traditional mores of debate against which people have already built in defenses and thus are not able to see it from an "outsider's" perspective.
In using the fire place analogy, he is not debating the fire place really, he's asking people to examine their visceral reactions to that discussion and to juxtapose them with a religious discussion of the same nature.
In using the fire place analogy, he is not debating the fire place really, he's asking people to examine their visceral reactions to that discussion and to juxtapose them with a religious discussion of the same nature.
I tend to agree with the gist of that. But when he discussed 'the fire thing' he made points that were wide open to perfectly proper objections.
That made it a very poor subject for making his point and, I'd suggest, allowed him to include those making those "perfectly proper objections" in his count of irrational objectors. In short, he was pushing an agenda.
Turn it around ... let's count those commentators who claim kudos for "exposing irrationality by posing false dilemmas and highly debatable facts".
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I very much disagree with this. If Harris's reactionary viscera make him seem to be boosting tobacco smoke against wood burning econuts, well, that's what he means, I'm quite sure. He's not merely engaged in an elaborate mind game or extended metaphor. I agree with this comment from the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/08/religion-atheism He says it. He means it.
truethat
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You have totally misinterpreted his intended meaning. Go back and read it again as an allegory and demonstration in getting people to understand their reactivity through resonance in a different situation.
I often use this approach in my classes teaching Special Education teachers to break away from existing protocols.
Ex.
I'll ask them a question
Why is it important for students with disabilities to be educated in inclusion classrooms.
Inevitably the answer will be
"Because special education students can benefit from exposure to non disabled students and learn from them."
I will then ask them to consider the same question but change the student from "disabled" to "black"
Why is it important for black students to be educated in inclusion classrooms?
You would never say
"Because the black students will benefit from exposure to white students and learn from them."
My question has NOTHING to do with black students. It is an exercise in shifting the perspective.
Sam Harris's post has nothing to do with fire places. He's talking about the REACTIONS people have when he has the conversation with them. The desperate clinging to tradition. The cognitive dissonance. etc.
Try reading it again.
I often use this approach in my classes teaching Special Education teachers to break away from existing protocols.
Ex.
I'll ask them a question
Why is it important for students with disabilities to be educated in inclusion classrooms.
Inevitably the answer will be
"Because special education students can benefit from exposure to non disabled students and learn from them."
I will then ask them to consider the same question but change the student from "disabled" to "black"
Why is it important for black students to be educated in inclusion classrooms?
You would never say
"Because the black students will benefit from exposure to white students and learn from them."
My question has NOTHING to do with black students. It is an exercise in shifting the perspective.
Sam Harris's post has nothing to do with fire places. He's talking about the REACTIONS people have when he has the conversation with them. The desperate clinging to tradition. The cognitive dissonance. etc.
Try reading it again.
I have read it several times now, and researched the sources at some length.
Turn it around ... I could attend a bunch of dinner parties and tell the guests that Isaac Newton had it wrong about the whole mass/force/gravity/etc business in classical mechanics. Would that demonstrate their "desperate clinging to tradition ...cognitive dissonance" ? Well, no. It would demonstrate that I was talking utter bollocks.
If Harris wants to make a serious point he needs to be less wrong in the way he makes it.
truethat
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That would be different. We don't keep Isaac Newton in our lives because of tradition. He is not "outdated" as far as I know.
A fire place is a good example. I'm sure he chose it carefully. First of all a fire place is outdated in the US. It's not a clean burning fuel. It's dangerous and it really doesn't save money.
So it's outdated, it creates health problems, it's damaging to your neighbors and it's a tradition.
Pretty much the same gist as religion.
A fire place is a good example. I'm sure he chose it carefully. First of all a fire place is outdated in the US. It's not a clean burning fuel. It's dangerous and it really doesn't save money.
So it's outdated, it creates health problems, it's damaging to your neighbors and it's a tradition.
Pretty much the same gist as religion.
Piggy
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I hate to say this, but Harris is making a mistake I expect to see in freshman essays early in the term, but which I do not expect them to still be making by the final exam.
He is projecting his notions of what people do and don't feel and believe. And he should know better.
That's why I made my post.
Lots of folks know all of that stuff which Sam assumes they don't. Freshman mistake, compounded by argument from anecdote.
My response, in fact, is not at all what he says it should be.
I would also ask Mr. Harris what in the world he thinks becomes of cleared non-commercial-grade timber around here if it's not sold as firewood. (Answer: It's burned in the field, which I think is a horrible waste.)
If I were to compare the two phenomena, I might observe that both our enjoyment of a fireplace and our propensity to believe in gods come from how our evolutionary past has shaped our brains.
But in my experience -- hey, if he can argue from anecdote, why not me? -- the God delusion is much more profound and persistent.
truethat
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Sometimes you have to use baby arguments to get people who have a difficult time with critical thinking to understand.
I don't think he thought this was a bit of sophistry. Rather, a conversation to be brought up at a dinner table and get people really riled up about it and then turn on a dime and say...........seeee this is what it feels like when atheists try talking to you.
I don't think he thought this was a bit of sophistry. Rather, a conversation to be brought up at a dinner table and get people really riled up about it and then turn on a dime and say...........seeee this is what it feels like when atheists try talking to you.
Last of the Fraggles
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My only comment on this is that I'm glad I don't hang out with the people Sam Harris does. They sound like the kind of people I would probably set fire to before I looked at the firewood.
I hope his above comments about torture were actually trying to make a point about something other than torture being OK.
I hope his above comments about torture were actually trying to make a point about something other than torture being OK.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
His point about religion hinges on his having made a convincing rational argument to abandon wood-burning fireplaces, such that his friends cannot object to his conclusion unless they are irrational.
However, the general consensus in this thread is that he has failed to make a convincing rational argument to abandon wood-burning fireplaces. It's possible for his friends--like several members here--to mount rational counter-arguments. This renders his comparison to religion moot.
It also makes him sound like a dick who has no problem characterizing his friends as irrational idiots who cling to fireplaces because they can't bring themselves to accept his superior reasoning. In fact it's probably just as likely that his friends just disagree with the strength of his claim, and are probably reconsidering the friendship after reading the last line of the article.
As generalised statements go, that's false.
I have no doubt that there are plenty of places in the USA - and in many other countries - that are directly comparable to ours, here in Greece, where it makes total sense to burn waste wood for heating rather than necessarily burn it off in bonfires. Piggy made the same point upthread, did you see that?