Comments | crispy47: why did I write this?

crispy47

why did I write this?

Jun 18, 2007 22:05

A couple years ago, a just-published book called The End of Faith got a lot of attention. As the title implies, it is an somewhat flamboyant attack on religion in general. An unpromising concept, but the book is much better than I expected. The author, Sam Harris, is surprisingly rigorous and mature, though a few lazy fallacies1 early on overshadow ( Read more... )

Comments 5

Why did I comment :) anonymous June 20 2007, 09:49:12 UTC

Peace ( ... )

Re: Why did I comment :) crispy47 June 27 2007, 08:04:08 UTC

I don't think you'd have a tough time convincing Harris of this point at all. Harris believes that all religious faith is based on unreason, so the idea that faith can be derived linguistically wouldn't strike him as especially strange.

He does respond to your point in particular, but briefly:I cannot judge the quality of the Arabic; perhaps it is sublime. But the book's contents are not. On almost every page, the Koran instructs observant Muslims to despite non-believers.
But here Harris is discussing the social and historical influence of religion, not faith itself, so it doesn't respond directly to your point ( ... )

Re: Why did I comment :) anonymous June 28 2007, 19:15:23 UTC

The Quran describes it in a single word: Faseeh. Meaning "expresive", and it is very expresive. Scholars of the Quran are both poets and poetry criteques but the Quran itself contains no poetry, nothing but very expresive talk ( ... )

Impressive... anonymous June 23 2007, 09:03:59 UTC

I've but a few comments on the eloquent posters opinions on 'The End of Faith'. The lazy fallacies he brings up, while lightly covered in Harris's books, are delved into much more deeply in many of his colleges, such as Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett ( ... )

Re: Impressive... crispy47 June 27 2007, 08:29:57 UTC

Thanks for the compliments.

I agree that Harris' discussion of torture is surprising and good. It's a shame that he once again uses a stupid and hypocritical assumption as the basis of his argument-that we don't need evidence or justification for certain ethical standards, that we can simply look within ourselves and find that we've known the Truth (allusive capitalization intended) all along.

He mentions that we don't need "evidence" to show that 1+1=2, or that physical events have causes and effects, but in fact he is wrong. We can see that 1+1=2 really easily-hold up one finger, then hold up one more, and you have two finger. Duh. As far as causes and effects, we absolutely do need evidence of this, and we spend our first years outside the womb collecting it. This is one reason why children-and some adults-are stupid ( ... )