Is Sam Harris the End of Faith religion, terror, and the future of reason book worth reading?

Dreamer

My opinion is that like most you can separate the wheat from the chaff. I think there is less mistakes and therefore the book is better than Christopher's Hitchen's book God is not Great.

Here's an example of the best of the Book. Page 57 

"If perfect coherence is to be had, each new beliefs, must be checked against all others, and every combination thereof, for logical contradictions. 11 But here we encounter a minor computational difficulty: the number of necessary comparisons grows exponentially as each proposition is added to the list. How many beliefs could a perfect brain check for logical contradictions? The answer is surprising even if a computer was as large as the universe ....  it would still be fighting to add a 300th belief to the list." 12

I haven't fact checked this but this is amazing content if true. This mathematically proves not only humans are illogical but it is impossible for us to be Vulcans. I really think this paragraph alone makes the book reading.

This goes hand in hand with the book Thinking Fast and Slow in how we are mentally lazy, have many biases and heuristics, and suffer from ego depletion. The reason why humans are so illogical is we simply don't have the raw processing power to be logical. This is why the infodemic, disinformation, and information overload are so terrible.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/

Dishonesty has its cost as linked below. To think that all children can resist Joe Camel via logic is extremely naive.

https://debateisland.com/discussion/comment/171383/#Comment_171383

That being said be sure to cross reference what Sam Harris has said. Otherwise you are taking what Harris said on faith. One flaw of my argument is Sam Harris takes the concept I quoted above from a book Labyrinths of Reasons I haven't read.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55436.Labyrinths_of_Reason

There are plenty of Salon article exposing his flaws.

https://www.salon.com/2021/06/05/how-the-new-atheists-merged-with-the-far-right-a-story-of-intellectual-grift-and-abject-surrender/

All in all I think there are many valuable lessons and their books are worth reading that can be taught from the new atheist movement but there are human in the end and therefore illogical. On the other hand there are better books that have many of the same concepts without the bigotry.

I'd read some CCDH and SBM articles first, Skeptics Guide to the Universe, Mistakes were Made but not by me, and Thinking Fast and Slow first.

JulesKorngold

Argument Topic: Try Sam Harris' Podcasts

I think they're great.

Dreamer

I am fact checking as I read and what Sam Harris writes about the Heaven's Gate cult is checking out.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-04-02-9704020119-story.html

Generally speaking if you have the time best to fact check as you go rather than take in a whole bunch of ideas and then try to go back and fact check them afterwards.

Barnardot

@Dreamer it is no big deal to make an effort or to rationize to read any book. And there’s no such thing as information over load. We know this because only a very small percentage of our brain is ever filled up with info . It’s just that people who are prone to being religious are very week and they can’t stop there brain from wandering all over the place. So there mortally scarred of reading complicated facts and reason and logic because they can’t get there shite together to digest the information. So it’s always a matter for them to accept the easy answer.
Which is God and it’s made easy for them by preachers telling them simple sugar coated crap that has nothing to do with the truth.

And being so lazy and simple mindered they just suck that easy lieing crap up like a milk shake.

So of course there not going to read the book even though they should. Because it over turns all the crap that they want to believe like being special and going to heaven.

just_sayin

Dreamer said:

My opinion is that like most you can separate the wheat from the chaff. I think there is less mistakes and therefore the book is better than Christopher's Hitchen's book God is not Great.

Here's an example of the best of the Book. Page 57 

"If perfect coherence is to be had, each new beliefs, must be checked against all others, and every combination thereof, for logical contradictions. 11 But here we encounter a minor computational difficulty: the number of necessary comparisons grows exponentially as each proposition is added to the list. How many beliefs could a perfect brain check for logical contradictions? The answer is surprising even if a computer was as large as the universe ....  it would still be fighting to add a 300th belief to the list." 12

I haven't fact checked this but this is amazing content if true. This mathematically proves not only humans are illogical but it is impossible for us to be Vulcans. I really think this paragraph alone makes the book reading.

This goes hand in hand with the book Thinking Fast and Slow in how we are mentally lazy, have many biases and heuristics, and suffer from ego depletion. The reason why humans are so illogical is we simply don't have the raw processing power to be logical. This is why the infodemic, disinformation, and information overload are so terrible.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/

Dishonesty has its cost as linked below. To think that all children can resist Joe Camel via logic is extremely naive.

https://debateisland.com/discussion/comment/171383/#Comment_171383

That being said be sure to cross reference what Sam Harris has said. Otherwise you are taking what Harris said on faith. One flaw of my argument is Sam Harris takes the concept I quoted above from a book Labyrinths of Reasons I haven't read.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55436.Labyrinths_of_Reason

There are plenty of Salon article exposing his flaws.

https://www.salon.com/2021/06/05/how-the-new-atheists-merged-with-the-far-right-a-story-of-intellectual-grift-and-abject-surrender/

All in all I think there are many valuable lessons and their books are worth reading that can be taught from the new atheist movement but there are human in the end and therefore illogical. On the other hand there are better books that have many of the same concepts without the bigotry.

I'd read some CCDH and SBM articles first, Skeptics Guide to the Universe, Mistakes were Made but not by me, and Thinking Fast and Slow first.

Loved that your post wasn't just links, but had some content.

I haven't read the book. I'll comment on the quote you provided.

"If perfect coherence is to be had, each new beliefs, must be checked against all others, and every combination thereof, for logical contradictions. 11 But here we encounter a minor computational difficulty: the number of necessary comparisons grows exponentially as each proposition is added to the list. How many beliefs could a perfect brain check for logical contradictions? The answer is surprising even if a computer was as large as the universe ....  it would still be fighting to add a 300th belief to the list." 12

Harris' view that one could logically review beliefs and then discard bad ones, is at odds with his view of free will.  Harris doesn't believe in free will and believes all actions and thoughts are ultimately caused by nature and we are not able to make any choices that are outside of what nature 'determines' for us.  So, it seems odd to talk about determining logical contradictions, when it is Harris' belief that you will believe what nature says you will believe and you can't change the course of belief that nature has determined for you.  With such a view, how can you know you made a truly logical choice, or if nature 'willed' you to make that choice.  Logically, by Harris' logic, he can't know if he made the logical choice - because he never had any choice in the matter to begin with.  

Claiming religion leads people to do immoral things, would also be illogical in Harris' world view, if he were consistent on the illogical things he believes.  Simply put, you can't talk about moral responsibility of anything if you don't have free will to make your own choices, as Harris argued in his debate with William Lane Craig.  Craig, spanked Harris in this debate, pointing out Harris' logical and moral inconsistency.  

Do you have any more quotes from Harris' book?

MayCaesar

Here is my general view on books by popular individuals. If you feel that their argument is difficult to understand/accept without going deep into the weeds, then it is worth reading the book in which they go far deeper into it than they can in their public appearances. However, when the argument is fairly basic and easy to understand, then reading a book might be a waste of time.

For example, to understand Friedrich Hayek's argument, you really want to read "The Road to Serfdom". His argument is very complex, rests on a number of suppositions that, in turn, require quite a bit of grounding - and the conclusions are very far-reaching and not obvious from the suppositions at all. When I read his book, my brain worked on overdrive, and I had to take regular breaks. It was a very intense and thought-provoking read, and I still, years after, come back to individual chapters every now and then to reexamine the arguments.
William McNeil's "The Rise of the West" is an even more challenging read. If you hope to read this book all at once, then, unless you are a professional historian with decades of experience of reading hardcore texts on history, you will likely fail and give up midway through. If you do manage to finish this book, your understanding of history will be phenomenal.

On the other hand, Ayn Rand's "The Virtue of Selfishness" was a big disappointment. Reading it, I was not intellectually challenged at all, she did not say anything that I would not already know she would want to say, her logical reasoning was very sloppy, and the whole book ended up a reiteration of the same point in various ways - the point which was very loosely grounded in reality.

I suppose, there are also books which are not particularly sophisticated, but which allow you to look at various manifestations of the same phenomenon, so you can appreciate the universality of the phenomenon. I would include Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" into the list of such books: the point of the book can be summarized in a paragraph, but reading the book is still useful.

Sam Harris' argument against religion and in favor of rationalism is fairly basic, so I do not feel that his book would add much to it. It is worth noting that the bizarre idea that morals can only be rooted in god is largely an American phenomenon, and this idea has not been taken by many seriously historically, nor is it taken seriously in most other countries. So Sam's argument targets a very particular audience that is deeply confused on this issue, and someone who is not this confused likely will find Sam's points to be self-evident. It takes a pretty high level of delusion to seriously think that the idea that murder is wrong cannot be arrived at without belief in a creature from a fantasy book, and, perhaps, people with that level of delusion would not be able to get Sam's argument anyway.
My experience of debating with people in the US who root everything in god has been quite poor... Sometimes it feels that we are speaking different languages. They seem to not be able to understand basic English sentences when they go against their presuppositions, so Sam would do better offering them some mushrooms instead.

Dreamer

@JulesKorngold

Do you have an episode you think is best?

Dreamer

@Barnardot

Choices exclude there are 129 million book according to the below link. 1.88 billion website.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-many-books-will-you-read-before-you-die

"An enormous number of papers published (1.3 million papers in 23,750 journals in 2006), but the number of competent peer reviewers available could not have reviewed them all"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4975196/

Of course information overload exists. We are being bombarded by message from media conglomerate according to Merchant of Cool documentary.

To watch Sam Harris' podcast is to exclude another podcast. To read his book is to not read another author. 300 pages takes about 15 hours for me to read. People with learning disability could take 60 hours to read. 15 hour is a large time commitment.

Dreamer

One interesting fact in Sam Harris' book is the blood libel qanon is from the 12 century. I thought it was something new. A lot of these "new" conspiracy theories are old wine new bottle. Another note is the Inquisition didn't end until 1800's at the end of the renaissance era. I always thought of the Spanish Inquisition as a medieval event.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/blood-libel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

JulesKorngold

Dreamer said:

@JulesKorngold

Do you have an episode you think is best?

I especially like episode #339 - The Infernal Logic of Jihad

Dreamer

@JulesKorngold

I'm going to finish Sam Harris' book and then I will listen to the podcast. An hour long w/o registering I wonder how long the full episode is.

This is where I am in internal conflict with woke. Often there is an element of truth to racial/ethnic stereotypes, yet we aren't supposed to stereotype. Therefore, the values of truth and anti-discrimination conflict. 

"In the 1950s the neurological disease kuru was discovered in the South Fore. The local tradition of ritual cannibalism of their dead had led to an epidemic, with approximately 1,000 deaths from 1957 to 1960."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fore_people

"Killing of a sorcerer – tukabu – was a ritualistic form of vendetta; it included crushing with stones the bones of the neck, arm, and thigh, as well as the loins, biting the trachea, and grinding the genitalia with stones and clubs."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4235695/

So much for the liberal stereotype of indigenous people of being pure and good, the racist stereotype of the noble savage. Seems institutionalized mass murder of witches is not unique to Christianity. Religion hybridizes I wonder if this how the killing of witches started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_African_Americans

 Even a "good" stereotype can be harmful, like the stereotype that all Black people are musically inclined.

Dreamer

Here's the problem with this book and why I don't know if I should bother to finish.

On page 92-93 Sam Harris states "Christians generally also believe that that Jews murdered Christ."

No source or anything, I don't think this is true about Christians. Only 26% say yes in 2004. Though this is still a disturbingly high number, not exactly 1-2% fringe.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2004/04/02/belief-that-jews-were-responsible-for-christs-death-increases/

RickeyHoltsclaw

@Dreamer ;  Sam Harris is "worth reading" if you desire to die in Hell in nihilism, but if you desire life eternally with peace and purpose, trust in Jesus as your Messiah and read this Book...begin in the "Gospel of John."

Dreamer

@RickeyHoltsclaw

On pages 96-97 Sam Harris claims the Bible is anti-Semitic quoting Thessalonians 2:14-16 showing that Jews killed Jesus.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1 Thessalonians 2&version=KJV

Then, John the gospel you recommended 8:41-45.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John 8&version=KJV

This passage demonizes Jews according to Harris.

RickeyHoltsclaw

@Dreamer ; If you follow Harris, you will follow him straight into Hell. Harris is a servant of Satan...

RickeyHoltsclaw

@Dreamer Though men like Dawkins, Ra, Harris, Gervais, Hitchens and a plethora of “worldly intelligent” men like them possess some intelligence in a specific field of study, these men are truly liars, idiots and borderline insane concerning Truth and evidence of design and the evidence mandating a Designer relevant to our supernatural World. These men are “the fools” of Eternity and anyone that pays them allegiance makes them self as much a fool as they. They are the tools and servants and useful idiots of Evil.

Factfinder

RickeyHoltsclaw said:

@Dreamer Though men like Dawkins, Ra, Harris, Gervais, Hitchens and a plethora of “worldly intelligent” men like them possess some intelligence in a specific field of study, these men are truly liars, idiots and borderline insane concerning Truth and evidence of design and the evidence mandating a Designer relevant to our supernatural World. These men are “the fools” of Eternity and anyone that pays them allegiance makes them self as much a fool as they. They are the tools and servants and useful idiots of Evil.

Matthew 5:22: But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister[a][b] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’[c] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

That's you ricky condemned to hell. The fool who didn't obey his master and shut his mouth around smarter people. Proverbs 17:28