Many, especially religious supporters of gay rights, pacify their consciences by writing this off as an isolated incident; that these are the words of one ill-tempered preacher who simply misspoke.  But I feel that this type of passive-aggressive persecution in religious communities is more widespread than most are willing to admit. One simply needs to read the official positions of the major US religious sects toward marriage to understand the breadth of this problem.  Am I wrong here? Will these states ever evolve to afford people basic rights?

The full article discussing the roots of intolerance is here if you’re interested:

http://ology.com/post/77369/roots-of-prejudice-part-1-the-survival-of-intolerance

Brian

I think everyone in America should read it. It’s a real story and gives a lot of perspective on the Islam-West conflict. .

Although many still don’t realize it and some wouldn’t believe it if they were told the truth, it’s a fact that we are at war with Islamic radicalism. *

Some have finally come to be aware it really exists , but it’s easy to just but the whole thing on the back-burner and become complacent . Wilders book will help bring the reality of Islamization into focus again.

Say what you like about Wilders- he has his flaws, but he is still one of the greatest freedom-fighters and innovaters of retaliation against Islamic imposition that this century has had. In Europe especially. He has been a great inspiration for those who were formerly intimidated to speak out and protest .

“Marked for Death”

by Geert Wilders

Regnery Publishing Co. USA

Sheba * He says there really is no difference in “radical ” Islam and regular Islam . Quote : “there is no such thing as moderate Islam” “There are moderate Muslims but not Islam ” I agree .

I, almost always agree with you Sam, but on this one, I have to go with the opposition.  Schneier makes some very good points in his blog, but offers no alternative.  I would like to: 

It isn’t WHAT a person looks like that tells you what he is going to do, but very often, it is HOW he looks.  The Israelis figured this out a long time ago and so did many airport officials in Northern Europe.  The key to identifying dangerous people is body language and interviews.  Granted, it doesn’t work 100% of the time.  Nothing does, but it is far more accurate than profiling, Xraying luggage, and body scans. 
 

Rule one is that the worker doing the interviews is well trained in all the subtle nuances of body language and interviewing.  It really is an art and requires a lot of training.  Actually, the idea is very similar to what prey species do instinctively.  How a predator behaves tips them off far more often than what they look like.  This is very true when applied to humans as well.  A person trained in spotting all the minutia of movements that we all do subconsciously, movements we really cannot control well, is far more valuable than a scanner.  Couple that with a brief interview from the same trained person (usually one lasting only 30 seconds is sufficient), and people to be pulled out for further screening are easily picked up.  In fact, professional screeners say it is glaring! 

These methods are tried and true.  Our US TSA program of hiring thousands of minimum wage McWorkers to run elaborate magnetic and Xray screenings is so easy to game it is useless.  It would be far better, and probably cheaper, to train interviewers FULLY, and pay them a living wage.  It would also move the lines a lot faster. 

I have traveled a lot and have seen this done, and it really does work! 

It’s a pretty amazing thing that we humans exist. Each of us individually, has a very limited time in which we will live here.  Use it wisely, and never be afraid to state what you believe.  The people who believe in god are, in my opinion, confused about the nature of existence, but still, this is simply my opinion.  And unfortunately, at this time in human evolution, when it comes to god, opinions are all each of us has.

The scientific method tells us much more about the nature of existence than do the superstitious religious musings of long ago, so I’ll put my trust in science every time.  But our science will likely look very rudimentary to future generations of humans – if we survive long enough to advance our science beyond its current state of toddlerhood.  There is so much more to learn, and to do. We have not yet scratched the surface of our potential, or of the knowledge which waits to be discovered by humankind.

Our scientific advancement has to a great extent been misdirected by the nationalistic imperatives of our governments in order to develop weapons used to kill and maim in the noble cause of protecting us from ourselves.  Many of the advances science has put forth for the benefit of mankind have started off as military advancements. The militarization of science has to a tremendous degree perverted science from its true goal – the pursuit of knowledge, and redirected funding and research in ways that, were we a less fearful, and wiser species, could have put us on more beneficial pathways.  We humans can learn to stop fearing each other.  Nature offers us plenty to be frightened of.  Humans of the future might not need to fear other humans.

We just need to all “grow up” a little bit more.  I know that sounds naïve, but it might be true anyway.  Someday in the future, if we evolve down one possible path, perhaps human evil can be filtered from the human genome.
 
Yet even today, the question is, can we stop expending so much of our resources on defending ourselves from ourselves, in a traditional military sense, and start spending all that and more on protecting this planet and all of its inhabitants -especially humans - from the plethora of natural challenges that await us? It’s just a small shift in our thinking and our behavior.  But I believe it would be a huge leap in our evolution.

I have become aware of much of the critical litterature through sam harris’ site, but I am curious what the other side has to say.

Can any of you guys recommend any books / authors that I check out if I want ‘the other side of the story’? Or at least if you know what books are generally in good standing among people who oppose Sam’s view on islam.

I appreciate it.

First of all before i go on to talk about what this topic is really about - the debate format…..was unbelievable. An actual proper debate. A debate where opposide sides Got to talk, at length, on a Specific issue, where ‘the good side’ (harris/sherma) were allowed the chance to deal with specific points Chopra was making, or to pin him down on particular words he was using, and to gain a common definition, to then respond to. And, for once, the mediator didn’t keep chiming in going ‘oh we’re short on time here’ ‘oh i’m going to have to cut you off there’...

It was an actual proper debate. What is it with America, and these weird debate systems you see on virtually every other youtube video - ‘you get 5 minutes. Then I get 5 minutes’. Its one of the dumbest things ever - and nothing ever gets resolved or concluded.

Anyway - about this topic. What Deepak’s fundamental message boiled down to was this:
‘How can we just be flesh and bone? How can we just be a material object, with a material brain, eventually leading to death and nothingness? How can we ever reduce the human ‘experience’ (whatever that means) down to scientific data on a graph? We are so much more than that! WE are so special!’

EGO. Nothing but EGO, from start to finish. Only a massively ego centric, self centred, insular person can think that. That there is more to life than birth and death, that we are more than our mere material brains.
Deepak can try as hard as he likes to differentiate it from your orthodox religions, but the thought processes which give rise to what Deepak believes in, are EXACTLY the same ones that give rise to the beliefs in religious people. Deepak would never admit it, but he finds value in exactly the same ideals as religious people, Coated in a layer of ‘new age’ waffle.

Whats even more amazing is, he contradicts himself constantly. 1 minute he’s applauding whenever Harris/Sherma acknowledge ‘the unknown’, but He himself is then hypothesising that there is a mind and a soul, a concious being which lives outside of the material body!

Its all about ego, and I guess, horror of the inevitable. I for one couldn’t care less if I was reduced down to sets of data on a piece of paper, if I was reduced down to a series of complex genes and molecules, all interacting with each other. That IS all we are, and the more that neuroscience develops, The more that That view - that all our human experiences are happening in the material brain - is holding true.

you cannot define ‘a higher purpose’ the way Deepak is trying to. Our experiences are all subjective (though happening in an objective material brain), and therefore life is simply what you make of it - we are ultimately constructs and conditioned by the environments we grew up and live in, and therefore there could NEVER be a specified, defined, written in literature higher purpose and meaning that Deepak subscribes to.

one persons higher meaning and ‘spirituality’ could be entirely different from another persons spiritual enlightening.

In a way Deepak is more dangerous than ANY priest or Imam, because he spouts the same values as religion (the same nonsense) but shrouded in a sea of mumbo-jumbo, which people will take more seriously. His play on words is frightening, and he has this uncanny ability to frame words into a sentence that is so woolly, that it almost numbs a sceptical mind - you’d struggle to even argue against it, because his semantics of words were so different to Harris/Shermas/a rational person.

very worrying indeed. I was even more alarmed when he started talking about ‘diabolical science’. This is EXACTLY the kind of sentiment that religious people will cling on to, to defend their faith. Science in of itself is a methodology, the use of it for destructive purposes has got absolutely nothing to do with science itself, and more to do with politics and selfish human interest, and lack of education.

i hope Sam writes a book one day that completely dismantles this new form of religion, which is in some ways a more potent weapon against humanity than any of your established religions.

I think that Sam makes a lot of cogent points in this article.  My biggest problem with it is that he does not address the fact that Islamic terrorists can and will USE people to meet their objectives.  The children or elderly couple obviously seem innocent enough but would you put it past a delusional Muslim to plant a device on a senior or on a kid?  I wouldn’t!  These were my thoughts when I read “In Defense of Profiling”.  I had to agree with many things Sam said but this one point was like a “splinter in my mind” to quote The Matrix.

To paraphrase the self-writing book metaphor: “...if I did not choose to write it, this book would not have written itself…”.  If the above is true, then it was at least extremely probable that the book would have come into existence regardless of any choice.  If there is no choice, then influences are unaffected by anything but probability.

Please validate or refute my understanding.

Thanks!