Sam Harris

Our president and government just apologized on our behalf of us all for the burning of some holy books by our blundering military.  Barack W. Bush certainly doesn’t speak for me!  I don’t care and refuse to offer a shred of apology or concern.  Hopefully Sam will speak out on this!  This is the opportunity for some voices of reasons to rise up in the mainstream media and slam our government and the apologists.  I personally wouldn’t mind if all ‘holy’ books were ‘accidently’ ignited.

You’d care if you were over there. That’s what this is really all about. We are over there and as we found out today, some actions can piss off the people we have already entrusted with our own security. From any POV, that’s a bad tactical mistake.

I am all about “fuck religion” as much as anyone but that said, you have to pick your battles and this is not one we need to waste human life on.

The battle against religion and anti-scientific thinking is one that’s fought in speech and ideas, online and at dinner tables and on TV and in universities.. in civil society. We want to keep the violence to a minimum. Some part of that means not provoking people beyond their endurance if they also are in a position to pump a .45 into the back of your skull or the skull of someone who they’re pissed off at.

Gotta be practical to win a war.

We are fighting the wrong war and not being practical at all.  You imply that we are dealing with rational, reasoning human beings?  We have put ourselves in an impossible to win situation and apologizing is meaningless.  Our prime weapon should be primarily verbal and intellectual-  especially blasphemy!  But not with sitting human targets on the ground!  These are civilizations that should be fossils in the sand.  They are ill-equipped to survive but do so at our expense by cherry-picking our knowledge and science only when it benefits them.

I personally wouldn’t mind if all ‘holy’ books were ‘accidently’ ignited.

Who was it who said   “those who burn books soon burn people ‘’ ?

As a naturalistic humanist who prizes scholarship, reason and tolerance; I find the thought of burning the great religious works of humanity to be abhorrent.

We atheists must not lower ourselves to the level of the religious fanatics we are opposing.

Nobody here is advocating burning books but the act and the freedom to perform the act does not rationalize or legitimize murder!  Holy books should be preserved for purposes of cultural history and entertainment.  They can be enjoyed for the warped, deranged fantasies that they are.

We will just write off your comment in which you approve the hypothetical burning of all religious books as hyperbole then, but I reiterate, book burning is bad.
As to the main topic of this thread, the all too predictable over-reaction of some Muslim fanatics is deplorable of course. And as usual I’m still waiting to hear from the much vaunted Muslim moderates to condemn the killings and other acts of violence that have occurred since the Korans were destroyed.
That said, getting caught burning the Koran in Afghanistan is bloody clumsy of the American military.

Parts of the great religious works can be appreciated for their wisdom and literary value. I’m an atheist, not a philistine.

>> It’s irrelevant how we feel about book burning,  everybody has the right to burn any book they wish as long as it’s their personal property.  Yes, I’m against governments or authorities banning and/or destroying books.  Again, in this specific instance, we’re dealing with irrational human beings.

“Parts of the great religious works can be appreciated for their wisdom and literary value. I’m an atheist, not a philistine.”

>> All books, even MEIN KAMPF, are of historical and cultural value.  As for gleaning any ‘wisdom’ from a mystical/religious/occult tome, that seems like a contradiction to me.  Yes, it’s possible to be entertained by an occult tome but to be enlightened?  Probably not.

mormovies - 01 March 2012 02:13 PM

>> It’s irrelevant how we feel about book burning,  everybody has the right to burn any book they wish as long as it’s their personal property.

Yes, I’m against governments or authorities banning and/or destroying books.

Again, in this specific instance, we’re dealing with irrational human beings.

“Parts of the great religious works can be appreciated for their wisdom and literary value. I’m an atheist, not a philistine.”

>> All books, even MEIN KAMPF, are of historical and cultural value.  As for gleaning any ‘wisdom’ from a mystical/religious/occult tome, that seems like a contradiction to me.  Yes, it’s possible to be entertained by an occult tome but to be enlightened?  Probably not.

Sorry. I was trying to work out how to do that quote in a box thing and I seem to have reposted all of mormovies last post. Doh!

Yes, I’m against governments or authorities banning and/or destroying books.

This I agree with.

All books, even MEIN KAMPF, are of historical and cultural value.

Well the atrocious ramblings Herr Hitler are certainly of historical value. I disagree with banning the book as I think it is always better to counter intolerance and racism in the full light of day. These evils tend to fester when they are sent underground. In general, I think the only legitimate grounds for banning any form of speech is when it explicitly incites violence. But where ‘hate speech’ falls in this scheme of things is a difficult question to answer. For example here in England much good has come from stamping out racist chants and behaviour at football grounds but were those chants inciting violence? I’m not sure. Tricky ground.

  It’s irrelevant how we feel about book burning,  everybody has the right to burn any book they wish as long as it’s their personal property.

Yes it is your right to burn a book if it is your personal property. I defend your right to do so. Nonetheless I regard the destruction of religious texts or any culturally significant books to be wanton barbarism.

As for gleaning any ‘wisdom’ from a mystical/religious/occult tome, that seems like a contradiction to me.  Yes, it’s possible to be entertained by an occult tome but to be enlightened?  Probably not.

No doubt we will have to agree to disagree on the value of ‘sacred’ books. I think it is one of the joys of being a naturalistic humanist that I am free to appreciate the literary and religious genius of all the ages. Reject the mumbo jumbo and the morally reprehensible bits but keep the wisdom and the literature. Our world would be much impoverished if we were ever to lose the transcendent beauty of the Psalms , the Sermon on the Mount or the Diamond Sutra. The paradoxical brilliance of the Tao Te Ching or the elegance of the Koran need not be off limits to an atheist. After all, you don’t believe they are examples of supernatural divine revelation do you?

cosmobonobo - 29 February 2012 12:53 PM

I personally wouldn’t mind if all ‘holy’ books were ‘accidently’ ignited.

Who was it who said   “those who burn books soon burn people ‘’ ?

As a naturalistic humanist who prizes scholarship, reason and tolerance; I find the thought of burning the great religious works of humanity to be abhorrent.

We atheists must not lower ourselves to the level of the religious fanatics we are opposing.

 

In his 1821 play, Almansor, the German writer Heinrich Heine— referring to the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an, during the Spanish Inquisition — wrote, “Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.” (“Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.”)Over a century later, Heine’s own books were among the thousands of volumes that were torched by the Nazis in Berlin’s Opernplatz

or, in the german Wiki, for those who speak the lingo

„Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.”
Dieses Zitat Heinrich Heines aus seiner Tragödie Almansor (1821, erschienen 1823) behandelt – entgegen einer weit verbreiteten Annahme – nicht die vier Jahre zuvor durchgeführte Bücherverbrennung während des Wartburgfestes 1817, sondern eine Verbrennung des Korans während der Eroberung des spanischen Granada durch christliche Ritter unter dem inquisitorischen Kardinal Mateo Ximenes de Cisneros 1499/1500

It applies very well to the situation. The US Army acted stupidly in this matter, but Obama should have apologized as the supreme commander of the US military forces, not in the name of the american people, since we had nothing to do with it.