[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by New Era

First off, thanks for the thoughtful debate!

Indeed. I missed this when you posted it so I'll respond but apologize for the necrobump.

Actually, it isn't. Human beings are emotional animals. That is what drives us, not our intellect. Again, there is a ton of research in this area. See Lakoff, Tonegawa, Westin, etc. The results of this work is used in advertising, political communications, in propaganda campaigns, and so on. We see it in mass media all day long. Emotional appeals are vastly more effective than logical ones. You can move nations to do incredibly irrational things by using emotions, like fear or anger. That is where Harris runs into problems. He expects people to behave rationally when they are driven by their emotions and are easily manipulated by using those emotions.

Actually, it is (this is fun!)

You're conflating two things: the quality of an argument, and its reliance on appeals to rationality to achieve the goals of the person putting it forward. This is a clear error of reasoning. Arguments cannot be "too rational", and it matters not at all whether human beings are emotional animals, or animals at all. B either follows from A, or it doesn't. Two plus two equals four, it equaled four before there were any humans and if the sun blows up tomorrow and wipes out our species, two plus two will still equal four.

What your problem seems to be, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, is that while Sam's arguments are logically consistent (in other words, he's clearly correct), those arguments cannot persuade people who are not inclined to behave rationally. Appeals to think logically won't work, emotional appeals might, but Harris doesn't deal in emotional appeals and is poorly situated to engage in that sort of thing as. Hence, he does not offer any real solutions. I don't think you're doing him justice if this is your perspective. The recent book he wrote is essentially aimed right at practical solutions. The concession is that he's not going to convince people to all become atheists, so what's the best path forward? It's probably religious moderation and a discussion within the faith about how it should be practiced. Contrast this with Dawkins, whose entire MO is "abandon your faith or you're a moron for the following reasons, and I'll be as ascerbic as possible in expressing this to you". If the response to that is "this isn't helpful", I see where that response is coming from - though I do think there's a place for that style too. Ali Rizvi was recently quoted as saying that the sort of Maher-style bluntness resonates with apostates in Islam-dominated countries who are frustrated with their societal situation.

The other possibility, I guess, is that you're saying his arguments are not rational because they fail to fully account for irrational behaviour. If so, I think you're utterly wrong as they're predicated on expectations of irrational behaviour, but in any event if this is what you're saying you haven't expressed it clearly enough to respond fully.

I don't disagree with what you're saying. Islam must go through a reformation. I think we agree on that. The problem is that Christianity didn't go through those reformations until people started to get educated. Without education the reformation does not take place. Therein lies the rub. Until Islamic countries develop education systems that open the eyes of every man, woman, and child, the potential for a reformation of Islam is nil. How we get Islam to adopt a period of enlightenment is open for debate. One thing that is for certain, you can't do it at the end of a gun or from 30,000 feet in the belly of a bomber (which is terrorism in its own right).

I think we're on the same page here. There are a number of things that would speed this along, one being an educational revolution and another crucially being some sort of muslim women's emancipation and empowerment movement. I don't know that these things have to happen for the conversation to start, though. These things have already occurred to varying degrees in various places - the status of education and women's rights differs in West Africa, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia. And a large part of the conversation can happen outside the muslim world anyway.

The irony is arguing that one religion is dumber than others is a dumb argument. They are all dumb, and he should leave it at that. Quantifying the stupidity of faith is a worthless exercise.

I completely disagree in the strongest possible terms. You can't engage a set of doctrines as a monolith. Hell, we're constantly being told, correctly, by moderate Muslims that Islam is not a monolith. There's no one "true" version of Islam. There are differences and those differences yield different results. As stated, you've already conceded this: Jainism is different from Christianity leading devout Jains to behave differently from devout Christians. A fundamentalist Muslim has no scriptural basis for blowing up an abortion clinic, but he does have a scriptural basis for stoning someone to death for adultery. We (well, more accurately, probably Muslims) have to recognize and parse these specific beliefs to figure out what should be strictly adhered to and what shouldn't. No one's attacked for working on the sabbath anymore. Progress can be made on these issues.

The only way you can move someone off of an entrenched belief is allow the person to discover the counter belief themselves.

This, I think, is utter nonsense. I've heard a lot of it recently, in one form or another, usually expressed as "you can't reason people out of unreasonable positions". Bull####. People are reasoned out of unreasonable positions all the time. Talking about things does in fact alter people's perspectives. This can be difficult because of the way we're wired in terms of biases - I certainly hear you there - but these biases are obviously not impossible to overcome. Otherwise, your earlier point about education would be moot.

Moreover, what does your suggestion here prescribe? Abandoning millions of women and countless gays, apostates and other innocent groups of people to living under theocratic systems of oppression that want them subjugated or in many cases dead until their societies wise up and come to the conclusion that their beliefs are wrong? These people need support, and the left-wing, which they ought to be able to reliably look to for support, is failing them completely.

Worse, a lot of the left seems content to side with their oppressors, for fear of offending anyone or being seen to be on the same side of an issue with political conservatives. Given that people are being tortured, raped and murdered on religious grounds, this is farcical.

Tell that to all the Mexican Americans impacted by SB-1070 in Arizona. Tell that to Palestinians who are legislated non-entities in their own communities. That is legislated terrorism and it has horrible impacts on families, just like acts of violence.

Well, you've certainly followed your own advice with your appeal to emotion, here, in particularly soapboxy language. But I'd be happy to tell those people that those items of legislation are not terrorism or anything like it.

I'm certainly be willing to be convinced (and may not need to be) that all of those pieces of legislation are bad, and shouldn't be law. I'm even willing to concede that they have horrible impacts on families. But they're not "terrorism" any more than they are "genocide". Words have specific meanings. You don't get to pick a loaded term with a negative connotation and just apply it to anything you don't like. Why, that would be terrorism against the English language!

Anecdotal evidence can't be used to draw conclusions and make generalizations? Oh boy, I guess schools can close up shop on several sciences that use that exact method to inform their research!

In light of my earlier long-form attempt not to put words in your mouth, I'll invite you to point to where I said anecdotal evidence can't be used to draw conclusions. However, I will maintain that an anecdote isn't generalizable - it's an example of something happening. Great, fantastic, it stands on its own - we're talking about broad issues here, not instances. Consequently, anecdotes are unhelpful and often misleading.

Anything done by Muslims is immediately considered bad and evil. A similar action done by a Christian is justified in some way and considered the act of lone lunatic. Even when a guy admits he shot and killed people at an abortion clinic because of his religious beliefs, a clear act of terrorism, he gets a free pass on the terror link. I don't know how you can't see the negative consequences of this coverage.

I don't think we're really disagreeing here. To the extent media coverage misrepresents an event, I'm obviously against that. Particularly when a "guy admits he shot people at an abortion clinic because of his religious beliefs", I absolutely think the link between belief and behaviour should be stressed and established. I think it's more complicated than you're making it out to be, because in my view when one of those instances occurs, the Christian religious motivation behind it isn't denied by anyone. If anything, it's used by some total dickheads as some sort of egalitarian measure to say, "see, stop bashing Islam; every religion has people like this". Um, no, I'll bash the bad ideas in Christian doctrine that led this guy to kill people, just as I will every other religion. No set of ideas gets a "pass".

Islamaphobia is a direct result of this media coverage. So yes, media coverage and understanding it is very important.

That's anti-Muslim bigotry, it's terrible, and I don't think you have any argument from me on this point.

However, if your suggestion is that no one should talk about problems with Islam because some #######s may respond to such discussions taking place by illegally assaulting people - and I am not saying that this IS what you're suggesting, only that it seems implicit - you're wholly wrong. Shutting down discussions increases hysteria. People assume if you won't let an issue be heard, you're probably hiding something from them.

The more these issues are calmly and rationally discussed, the less fear there will be. Right now, ignorant jerks seem to think there's no difference among Muslims, and that the benign, not-particularly-devout believer who lives down the street from him holds the same set of beliefs as ISIS. If we can just f***ing talk about this stuff without being irrationally accused of bigotry or islamophobia or whatever the hell else, we might be able to get people's basic impressions to change somewhat.