Sam Harris

wahoo - 24 July 2009 10:14 PM

I’m not putting this forth as a worldview superior to yours, but rather suggesting that to me it is a worldview more conducive to happiness.

“Me, me, me, me, me, ...”

clayforHim648 - 25 July 2009 01:09 AM

. . .
Which has to make you wonder why bronze age tribesmen would come up with monogamy doesn’t it?  It’s amazing how flippantly you can brush away all moral certitude.  What exactly is inherently right or wrong?  And if nothing is, how and why should anyone be punished for any behavior?

Suppose you have a daughter and another man rapes her while she’s coming home from school.  Has he done anything wrong?

Bronze-age tribespeople aren’t the only creatures to have landed on monogamy as something that may be a worthwhile survival skill. Some creatures even have lower divorce rates than us.

CFH, you know very well that rape of one’s daughter is a disgusting, horrifying and criminal act whether in the opinion of the parent or an unrelated reader of a newspaper. What does it really add to the situation to regurgitate ancient religious terms to describe such a heinous act? Other words are more realistic and thereby cut more sharply.

wahoo - 24 July 2009 10:14 PM

I’m not putting this forth as a worldview superior to yours, but rather suggesting that to me it is a worldview more conducive to happiness.

Don’t forget that individual humans come in a great variety of personality types and quirks. I see your happiness path as being quirky and unfathomable no less than you probably see mine as being quirky or worse.

unknown zone - 25 July 2009 03:24 AM

I see your happiness path as being quirky and unfathomable no less than you probably see mine as being quirky or worse.

The real point is he doesn’t want anyone else to have their own happiness path apart from his, or one that he can sign-off on.

clayforHim648 - 25 July 2009 01:09 AM

But you’re right, I don’t want to say the same things over and over again.

Then why do you do it? Like the nonsense you’ve posited below. How in the world do you think that you’re having any kind of intelligent discourse? We don’t want to hear this kind of shit. (Well ... probably some people do.) It is quite evident clay, to me at least, that you really need the bible, your church cronies, and god knows who to tell you what to think and how to act, lest you have grave difficulties functioning in society.

Suppose you have a daughter and another man rapes her while she’s coming home from school.  Has he done anything wrong?  I mean, he’s simply broken the social contract right?  He hasn’t done anything inherently wrong, according to your model.  There is no such thing.  Should he really go to jail?  Should he be killed?  Should he get a slap on the wrist?  Why stop him from doing it again? As a human being, he’s simply doing what’s natural right?  He’s ensuring the survival of the species?

As I gracefully pass into middle age, and having had the opportunity to observe many family friends and acquaintances for the last fifty-some years, I have come to the conclusion that religious people are categorically full of shit. In every case I have observed, when the decision to either truly trust in the power of their God to cure the sick, aid the poor or downtrodden, right the wrongs and protect them from whatever mischief might befall them, they nearly always hedged their bets on prayer and admonitions to said God with human intervention. In the cases they didn’t, the outcome was predictable, people died, the poor continued to be poor and mischief prevailed. What a surprise. If some tragedy befell another believer, then it was God’s will, or Satan or the Devil was implicated, they just could not seem to admit that sometimes shit happens, and there is no blame to place or reason for it to happen. If their God allows bad things to happen to good people, then pardon me, but he’s a prick, and quite obviously doesn’t give a shit about them. Those who promulgate religion on the ignorant masses are charlatans con artists, plain and simple.

All this touchy-feely drivel about being full of God’s spirit and the love of Jesus makes me want to gag. It has been programmed into people from birth and it is so much easier for them to believe lies than to face up to the truth, because the truth scares the shit out of them, precisely that there is no God, no Jesus, no salvation, no Rapture, no Heaven or afterlife, and when they die, that is it, they’re dead. Period. D E A D. Just another blob of biological material to be recycled back into the biosphere.

Case in point: On the local news tonight, a report of a man on his motorcycle was on the way to work on Sunday morning and was killed when an oak tree fell on him. The tree was apparently healthy and no one has an explanation why it fell at the precise moment he passed by, there was no wind or no other apparent contributing factor. So, did God drop the oak tree on him just for shits and giggles? Maybe God hates Hondas?

Religious people are full of crap and aren’t smart enough to admit it. They just can’t bear to get rid of their psychological crutch.

Grow up, get over it.