The moral landscape

https://www.proginosko.com/2019/11/craigs-modal-critique-of-harriss-moral-landscape/#more-4039

Disillusioned atheism

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/01/25/the-train-wreck-that-was-the-new-atheism/

Tse on Harris

Peter Ulrich Tse is a neuroscientist (PhD, Harvard) as well as an atheist (naturalism). Tse writes the following about Sam Harris:

Eddy, I just read your incisive review of Harris' book. I agree 100%. Please do not take Harris to be speaking for neuroscience or neuroscientists. As far as I can tell he does not lead a lab and is not a tenured or tenure-track professor of neuroscience at any university, although he did get a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA after getting a BA in philosophy, according to wikipedia, and has a couple of scientific papers using MRI to look at religious belief in the brain. He seems to primarily be a writer of provocative books who has some background in neuroscience. But judging from the way he writes about brain events in his pugilistic pamphlet 'Free Will,' it is not a very nuanced view of the astounding complexity of causation among neurons. I think most people in the neuroscience trenches running experiments day in and day out would have assumed he was more of a philosopher or public debater than a professor of neuroscience.

Outgrowing God

One atheist trope is that Christian faith is childish. We have a duty to wean ourselves from immature belief a celestial father-figure. 

To that many things could be said, but for now I'd point out that the very atheists who say this often adopt a paternalistic tone of disapproval. They themselves assume the role of father-figures. If you refuse to heed their fatherly advice, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, Dawkins, Coyne, Stenger et al. will be disappointed in you. Don't you wish to make them proud of you?

Essentially, then, they become substitute father gods. They play on the very psychology they impute to Christian believers. 

Fact-checking Sam Harris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENtlW-LEqu8

A secular philosopher on the skeptic/atheist movements

Reflections on the skeptic and atheist movements

by Massimo Pigliucci

The Harris-Chomsky exchange, in my mind, summarizes a lot of what I find unpleasant about SAM: a community who worships celebrities who are often intellectual dilettantes, or at the very least have a tendency to talk about things of which they manifestly know very little; an ugly undertone of in-your-face confrontation and I’m-smarter-than-you-because-I-agree-with [insert your favorite New Atheist or equivalent]; loud proclamations about following reason and evidence wherever they may lead, accompanied by a degree of groupthink and unwillingness to change one’s mind that is trumped only by religious fundamentalists; and, lately, a willingness to engage in public shaming and other vicious social networking practices any time someone says something that doesn’t fit our own opinions, all the while of course claiming to protect “free speech” at all costs.

Let me give you some examples and name some names of big boys who can take the criticism and who will keep doing what they have been doing regardless of what I write anyway.

I have already mentioned Harris, who writes about ethics with little acknowledgment (or understanding, or both) of just how complex a topic it is, and how much literature there is out there to engage with. As he infamously wrote in the first footnote of chapter 1 of The Moral Landscape, “Many of my critics fault me for not engaging more directly with the academic literature on moral philosophy … [but] I am convinced that every appearance of terms like ‘metaethics,’ ‘deontology,’ … directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe.”  Why are we taking such a brazen display of anti-intellectualism as anything more than a clear mark of an overinflated ego? But far from that, Michael Shermer then builds on Harris’ point (or perhaps simply restates it, at much greater length), coming out with yet another “revolutionary” book about the science of ethics, predicated on an argument that had so many holes in it that I felt a bit embarrassed having to explain them in a public forum a couple of years ago [15].

Then we have Neil deGrasse Tyson. Great science popularizer, but also prone to anti-intellectualism in the form of dismissing an entire field (philosophy) of which he knows nothing at all [16], not to mention his sometimes questionable behavior when it comes to intellectual fairness, as even my colleague (with whom I often disagree) Jerry Coyne has firmly pointed out [17]. That particular episode had to do with yielding to the whims of yet another physicist/anti-intellectualist who has become a darling of SAM: Lawrence Krauss [18].

And speaking of great science popularizers who are very much adored within SAM: Richard Dawkins has actually gone on record as trashing yet another field (besides philosophy) of which he knows nothing, namely, epigenetics: “I am heartily sick of the ‘epigenetics’ bandwagon and almost look forward to the next one, whatever it turns out to be.” [19] Luckily, that so-called “bandwagon” (actually very sound, cutting age biological research) keeps going regardless of Dawkins’ opinion, producing thousands of papers every year and securing tens of millions in funding from evidently profoundly misguided federal agencies. And let’s not go (again) into the exceedingly naive approach to religious criticism that has made Dawkins one of the “four horsemen” of the New Atheism.

One can’t talk about either Dawkins or the Horsemen without at least in passing mentioning Christopher Hitchens, a brilliant polemicist, very funny and caustic writer, who however couldn’t make up his mind about his politics, ranging from Trotskyism to neoconservatism, all the while being universally eulogized by SAM as a genius and a saint (both of which he would have laughed at heartily) when he died [20].

(You may have noticed that the only prominent New Atheist I don’t take to task is Dan Dennett. That’s because I honestly think he is a better intellectual than the rest of them combined, and he also happens to be a genuinely pleasant individual. The fact that moreover he is the only philosopher of the group may or may not be coincidental, we don’t have enough data points to make that judgment.)

Last, but certainly not least (dulcis in fundo, as the Romans used to say) one cannot conclude this parade without mentioning P.Z. Myers, who has risen to fame because of a blog where the level of nastiness (both by the host and by his readers) is rarely matched anywhere else on the Internet, and who has lately discovered (together with a number of others that I don’t need to mention here) both social progressivism and feminism (or perhaps he invented them?), and has immediately proceeded to confuse them, somehow, with tenets of atheism.

I hope others equally worthy will not feel too bad about being left out of the above list. These are just examples of what I think has been an obvious general trend in SAM over the last decade or more.

https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/reflections-on-the-skeptic-and-atheist-movements/

Sam Harris's scientific credentials

http://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/neuroscientist-sam-harris/

Fallen idol

And here I thought all the misogynists were Bible-thumping fundies:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/richard-dawkins-sexist-atheists-bad-name/print

On God genes and extra estrogen vibes

I also asked Harris at the event why the vast majority of atheists — and many of those who buy his books — are male, a topic which has prompted some to raise questions of sexism in the atheist community. Harris’ answer was both silly and then provocative. 

It can only be attributed to my “overwhelming lack of sex appeal,” he said to huge laughter.

“I think it may have to do with my person slant as an author, being very critical of bad ideas. This can sound very angry to people..People just don’t like to have their ideas criticized. There’s something about that critical posture that is to some degree intrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women,” he said. “The atheist variable just has this – it doesn’t obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men.” 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2014/09/12/can-atheist-sam-harris-become-a-spiritual-figure/

The Moral Landscape

http://bnonn.thinkingmatters.org.nz/sam-harris-moral-landscape-challenged/

Gorilla warfare

Sam Harris was right. Religion is dangerous. This is why religion must end. If it weren’t for religion, we wouldn’t have wars around the world. Religion lies at the root of human aggression. Just look at these religious fanatics on the rampage. Good thing we’re not related to them:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8400000/8400019.stm

http://kibalechimpanzees.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/why-do-chimpanzees-fight-with-their-neighbors/

Ten questions for Sam Harris

http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2011/08/ten-serious-questions-for-sam-harris.html

Sam Harris on Breivik

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/christian-terrorism-and-islamophobia/

The utility monster

The argument from evil may be the most popular argument for God’s nonexistence. In addition, some prominent infidels (e.g. Richard Dawkins, John Loftus, Richard Carrier) have been touting Sam Harris’s recent book on secular ethics. Likewise, many infidels been defending Harris in his debate with William Lane Craig.

Well, here’s a striking expression of Harris’s ethical outlook:

Nozick draws the obvious analogy and asks if it would be ethical for our species to be sacrificed for the unimaginably vast happiness of some superbeings. Provided that we take the time to really imagine the details (which is not easy), I think the answer is clearly “yes.” There seems no reason to suppose that we must occupy the highest peak on the moral landscape. If there are beings who stand in relation to us as we do to bacteria, it should be easy to admit that their interests must trump our own, and to a degree that we cannot possibly conceive. I do not think that the existence of such a moral hierarchy poses any problems for our ethics.

Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape (Simon & Schuster, 2010), 211.

Suppose we substitute “God” or “Yahweh” for “superbeings.” Mind you, I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of Yahweh, yet many infidels view Yahweh as a kind of “utility monster.”

Where does that leave the argument from evil? Again, I’m just addressing the atheist on his own terms, viz.

Would it be ethical for our species to be sacrificed for the unimaginably vast happiness of Yahweh? Provided that we take the time to really imagine the details (which is not easy), I think the answer is clearly “yes.” There seems no reason to suppose that we must occupy the highest peak on the moral landscape. If Yahweh stands in relation to us as we do to bacteria, it should be easy to admit that his interests must trump our own, and to a degree that we cannot possibly conceive. I do not think that the existence of such a moral hierarchy poses any problems for our ethics.

The Self-Stultifier

"As long as a person maintains that his beliefs represent an actual state of the world (visible or invisible, spiritual or mundane), he must believe that his beliefs are a consequence of the way the world is. This, by definition, leaves him vulnerable to new evidence. Indeed, if there were no conceivable change in the world that could get a person to question his ... beliefs, this would prove that his beliefs were not predicated upon his taking any state of the world into account" - Sam Harris, End of Faith, p.63

i) What about a person's belief in the law of non-contradiction? Is he "vulnerable" to new evidence? Could there be a "conceivable" change in the world that could get this person to question his belief? Isn't the LNC part of what allows something to even be conceivable in the first place?

ii) What about a person's belief in her existence? Is there a conceivable change that could get a person to question her existence? Who would be questioning it?

iii) What about Harris's belief on this matter? Is there a way the world could be that would make it false? Then it would still be true since this new belief a "consequence of the way the world is." A conceivable way the world could be that would make Harris question this belief would affirm his strictures and thus not make him "vulnerable." But a consequence of this view is that your beliefs must be "vulnerable" in this way.

Yawn, the "New" atheism.

Go Sammy, it's your birthday!