Sam Harris on "Islamophobia"

[AlBell]

Which also includes the ones who don't blow up themselves and other people, you know.

The problem is the 100,000,000 or whatever number you accept, as islamofascist bombers and/or supporters.

 

[AlBell]

...

If I warned against letting these people into the country, by arguing that Christianity is a special evil because Christians are stoning adulturers, burning homosexuals, repressing women, committ terrorism and try to get political power to enact religious laws, and that the evidence is right there to see, in their religious texts, Breivik's terrorist attack in Norway and all across Africa and South America - would you say that I'm making a good argument?

...

Not until you have a list of those behaviors occuring and the resulting deathtoll and value of destruction. But we both knew that.

 

[A'isha]

The problem is the 100,000,000 or whatever number you accept, as islamofascist bombers and/or supporters.

Blaming all 100% for what 6% of them are doing strikes me as the very essence of bigotry.

 

[Ryokan]

Not until you have a list of those behaviors occuring and the resulting deathtoll and value of destruction. But we both knew that.

I have no idea what you mean by that.

But I'm sure if we add it all up, the numbers will not make the Christians look at all good. Bosnia? Rwanda? How many lives have been lost due to terrorism in South America the last decades?

Does this say anything at all about my Pentecostal neighbour?

 

[metacristi]

The fact that you speak of Islam and Muslims as a whole, but specify only fundamentalist Christianity, is the perfect illustration of the problem with your line of argumentation.

We have already been on these waters before but probably usually you do not pay attention to my answers, who do you believe applied in practice, and extended till its logical end, the notion of secularism? A special category of 'secularists', inexistent in the Middle Ages? It was Christians, especially moderate ones. As historian Chadwick puts it:

once concede equality to a distinctive group, you could not confine it to that group. You could not confine it to Protestants; nor, later, to Christians; nor, at last, to believers in God. A free market in some opinions became a free market in all opinions ... Christian conscience was the force which began to make Europe ‘secular’; that is, to allow many religions or no religion in a state, and repudiate any kind of pressure upon the man who rejected the accepted and inherited axioms of society ... My conscience is my own.

Why we have modern science and not creationist science (Christians could have obstinate to add infinite epicycles to save the Bible with all costs and still they didn't, not a mystery why) Moderate Christianity is not a problem in the sense islam is (besides it is strong in numbers and has extensive internal logic in the basics of Christianity to resist all attacks from more dogmatic approaches) whilst in islam we still wait for their counterpart. All your good intentions aside but no we still wait for a viable liberal islam. Don't take me wrong, actually I'm not your enemy, but I don't think it is intellectually honest to label 'moderates' people who still believe that Adam and Eve are the first humans.

 

[Ryokan]

Ah, the claim that secularism is a Christian thing. Give me a break. Secularism came into existance despite Christianity, not because of it. Christians are still fighting it.

As for your comment about still believing in Adam and Eve, I wouldn't be surprised if there are Western countries where the majority of people believed in that. I tried to find a poll online on the question, but there was none. However, creationism is in the same chapter in the bible, and on that matter I did find this.

 

[A'isha]

We have already been on these waters before but probably usually you do not pay attention to my answers, who do you believe applied in practice, and extended till its logical end, the notion of secularism? A special category of 'secularists', inexistent in the Middle Ages? It was Christians, especially moderate ones.

And the development of secularism had nothing to do with anything inherent in Christianity, but with the shattering effect of the Reformation. Meanwhile, thanks to the Wahhabiyya stranglehold on one of the pillars of Islam and its access to the nearly limitless Saudi oil wealth, fundamentalist salafism is consolidating its hold on the Muslim world.

All your good intentions aside but no we still wait for a viable liberal islam.

It exists. No thanks to both fundamentalist Muslims and so-called "critics of Islam" who are united in their desire to label them "not real Muslims" who are getting the tenets of their religion all wrong.

Don't take me wrong, actually I'm not your enemy, but I don't think it is intellectually honest to label 'moderates' people who still believe that Adam and Eve are the first humans.

"Moderation" is not something that can be measured with any accuracy on a single-line axis.

 

[metacristi]

Ah, the claim that secularism is a Christian thing. Give me a break. Secularism came into existance despite Christianity, not because of it. Christians are still fighting it.

As for your comment about still believing in Adam and Eve, I wouldn't be surprised if there are Western countries where the majority of people believed in that. I tried to find a poll online on the question, but there was none. However, creationism is in the same chapter in the bible, and on that matter I did find this.

How was that possible then in a time when much more Christians were conservative than now? You confuse Christianity is directly responsible with secularism (there are however some hints in the new Testament) and letting much more 'holes' than islam for example for the development of entirely new ideas which is what I suggested (via those healthy secular spaces I talked about in a previous post here, universities especially) and those who did that were nonetheless Christians. If you had read history more carefully you'd have understood that those who played with the notion first in the West where not only Christians but also very devout Christians and still the result was not a theocracy.

 

[A'isha]

How was that possible then in a time when much more Christians were conservative than now?

Because not all "conservative Christianities" are alike. Again, "moderation" is not something that can be measured on a single axis...one can be moderate in one thing and conservative in another.

You confuse Christianity is directly responsible with secularism (there are however some hints in the new Testament)

Just as there are similar hints in the Qur'an.

If you had read history more carefully you'd have understood that those who played with the notion first in the West where not only Christians but also very devout Christians and still the result was not a theocracy.

Even in the Islamic world today, there are a lot of countries that are run by very devout Muslims, but I can count the number of actual theocracies on one finger.

 

[Ryokan]

There were Christians who promoted secularism, sure. But then, there are Muslims who did so as well. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whom I often call Europe's Thomas Jefferson, for one.

But secularism didn't take hold until the American and French revolutions, when it was promoted by deists and atheists (Or those from religious minorities, fearing continued presecution from the religious majority).

Secularism also continued to climb, or really religion declined, with the general wealth and prosperity of the people. I don't think it's a coincidence that we see that the countries with the most prosperity of the general people are where religion is smallest - like in Scandinavia.

There also was a time when the Islamic countries were way more tolerant of religious minorities than Christian countries, so I don't think either of these, secularism or religious intolerance, are special traits of either religion.

 

[DC]

Christians could have obstinate to add infinite epicycles to save the Bible with all costs and still they didn't,

interesting to see how you here clearly exclude a minority and take the majority of christians as to what christians believe, despite there being a pretty large number of christians that actually still stick to creationism.

but when it come sto moslems, you see it differently , there you look at the minority of what moslems believe.

very telling.

 

[metacristi]

Deists and atheists who could not have existed anyway in the open without the existence of those, de facto, healthy secular spaces I talked about before. And without the active participation of the Christians themselves in the 18th and 19th century it is doubtful it would have resisted for long in practice. Ataturk is not really representative here since he is the late product of the traumatic impact of Western world against traditional islam, maybe ibn Rushd, who developed a precursor idea, but since his ideas did not resonate well in the Islamic environment it was lost. We can continue like that ad infinitum but a better approach is to give Christianity what belong to Christianity: it was definitely a much better medium to develop an Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution and Modernity than islam. Especially due to its view on Reason (catalysing intellectual curiosity), existence of de facto secular spaces like universities since Middle Ages and the fact that its basics are much easier amenable to Modernity (also Protestantism had a great impact over the literacy levels in the West).

 

[A'isha]

Deists and atheists who could not have existed anyway in the open without the existence of those healthy secular spaces I talked about before. And without the active participation of the Christians themselves in the 18th and 19th century it is doubtful it would have resisted for long in practice. Ataturk is not really representative here since he is the late product of the traumatic impact of Western world against traditional islam, maybe ibn Rushd, who developed a precursor idea, but since his ideas did not resonate well in the Islamic environment it was lost. We can continue like that ad infinitum but a better idea is to give Christianity what belong to Christianity: it was definitely a much better medium to develop an Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution and Modernity than islam. Especially due to its view on Reason (catalysing intellectual curiosity) and the fact that its basics are much easier amenable to Modernity.

That's all pretty much special pleading ********.

 

[metacristi]

That's all pretty much special pleading ********.

Rationality forced me in this direction. But of course there is no way to force someone to become rational. Anyways I know well what I am talking about, read for example Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective and The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West to understand why I say what I say.

 

[A'isha]

You've cited Huff before. He's hardly the final word on the subject, though (one just needs to read his exchanges with George Saliba to see that). And, as a sociologist, he naturally focuses on cultural factors, but other academics have done quite interesting work on exploring other reasons for why things developed the way that they did in Europe, China, and the Middle East (see, for instance, Ian Morris' Why the West Rules - for Now).

 

[Craig B]

... Don't take me wrong, actually I'm not your enemy, but I don't think it is intellectually honest to label 'moderates' people who still believe that Adam and Eve are the first humans.

Papal Encyclical Humani generis 1950, Pius XII.

37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that ... Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

Anyway, why are such ignorant believers not "moderates" in the sense under discussion? The Amish are ignorant bigots who literally believe in Adam and Eve, but in social terms are perfectly moderate in their behaviour. Traditionalist Catholics, of whom there seem to be very many, venerate Pius XII; but most of them are moderate by any reasonable standard.

 

[Mister Agenda]

This makes it even worse, and allows for any horror to be justified as good simply by verifying that it was spoken by some child-rapist 1300 years ago. It's the worst kind of suppression of critical thinking, encouraging - even demanding - complete obedience to an unchanging, backwards screed.

It's the hadiths that are the source for the story of Mohammed's child bride. The Shia reject Aisha being so young, which also means the Shia have no scriptural justification for child marriage.

Not that there aren't far too many Muslim fundamentalists to whom your points apply.

 

[Mister Agenda]

A skin rash, a broken leg and a bullet thru the chest are all medical problems but we generally treat the gunshot wound first.

But in aiming your 'treatment' at Islam in general, you are in effect going after all the medical problems at once, while those who make distinctions between different groups of Muslims are the ones suggesting the bullet wound be treated first.

 

[AlBell]

Blaming all 100% for what 6% of them are doing strikes me as the very essence of bigotry.

Where do you cite me declaring all moslems islamofascists?

 

[AlBell]

I have no idea what you mean by that.

Strange that. Your English seems good enough.

But I'm sure if we add it all up, the numbers will not make the Christians look at all good. Bosnia? Rwanda? How many lives have been lost due to terrorism in South America the last decades?

Go ahead and add it up. That's what I asked for.

And are you suggesting South Am terrorists were motivated by Xianity?

Does this say anything at all about my Pentecostal neighbour?

Provide some numbers and we'll have something to discuss. But I doubt it.