Sam Harris

Fellow nontheists, I will just make sure to tell you that this is my first post. The chief reason for my registration, besides me being very fond of Sam’s books and essays, was that his blog post “Christian Terrorism and Islamophobia” really struck a chord with me. As a lot of you may know, Norway was a victim of an atrocity not matched since WWII. If you are not aware of this, I suggest you go and read Sam’s blog post, and then, I’m sure, we can be on the same page. In this post I also want to address Norway’s atheism, something I think a lot of people are curious about.

First, I think I should inform you of my standpoint to prevent any confusion from arising: I am best described as the Christopher Hitchens-esque anti-theist: I have been a non-believer pretty much all my life, but after reading his books in addition to Dawkins’s and Harris’s books, I found myself to be an anti-theist.

Onwards to Norway’s atheism: There are, as you have heard, a lot of secularists in Norway; however, there are not as many atheists and agnostics as people are purporting there to be. One finds the predominant views here to be liberal religious, or non-believers with a tedious habit of defending religion like the most avid of the fundamentalists. In fact, the people I have encountered most criticism of my religious views from, have all come from the latter. I am rarely “blessed” to meet people who share my view points, but I have no trouble being a lone wolf. If anybody wants to know anything else about this subject, just ask and I will try to address the matter as best as I can.

Now to the terrorist attacks: At first, I, like so many others, had my suspicions of a terrorist attack by Al Qaida because of their strenuous promise to revenge Osama Bin Laden’s death; nevertheless, I did not want to draw hasty conclusions based on mere suspicions, so I decided to wait for the data to come in. After Andreas Behring Breivik was caught, it really came as a shock to hear that he had, in the span of only 1-2 hours, killed over 80 young, political active people. A bomb attack on Norway I have actually thought was just a matter of time, but I did not foresee the severity of this callous, appalling tragedy.

Like the anti-theist I am, I reject all religion, but I think we can say that, for the time being, Islam is the one religion that poses the biggest threats. Now, I have to clarify that I am NOT a racist, at all. Nor do I have anything against Muslims personally; I have some Muslim friends – liberals and fundamentals. The aftermath of this, I fear, is going to severely restrict my ability to not get labeled as an Islamophobic person. And it is for this reason I find it hard to, like Sam said, be open and candid about the truth.

Nevertheless, all kinds of different people over the ages, who have had controversial and subsequently accepted view points, so I think that this is just an even more important reason for me to make my case, and I know, judged by my own merits, I am not a racist, or anything remotely of the kind.

I’m forced to read that dammed manifesto now. A lot of students are going to have questions about it when I return to my school. I knew this would happen: put the blame on those who criticise fundamentalism for something a fundamentalist did. This lunatic was fully aware of the potential usefulness religious belief would assemble in deeds such as his, he even wrote about it. Yet, it’s the non believers who point out this questionable “usefulness” of religion and the harm it leads to that get the blame.

Read more of that mind poison?  The brief excerpt in Sam’s blog post made me queasy.  It sounded like the nutter was planning a video game strategy, extremely detached.

But, forgive me, as an American woman, I just don’t feel as directly threatened by Islam as I do by the local x-ians who are cutting off my only access to an affordable pap smear by de-funding Planned Parenthood.  That’s the worst kind of terrorism, subtle and creeping.  Our local Congressional districts have just been redrawn by the x-ians to negate my vote, but, even without that nasty twist, the US Supreme Court has ruled that ‘money talks’ louder than votes.  I’m running out of legitimate options and no one is listening.  Yet, oddly, the last thing I want to do is go shoot a bunch of x-ian kids just to make some bullshit point.  Men.

As a teacher I can’t indulge myself in the luxury of not reading “poison”. Kids are going to have questions and I’m sure that one or two will quote it. If I don’t make an effort in knowing what I’m talking about in the classroom I would do lesser harm by not showing up at all.

As for Christian politicians that have a unhealthy, uneducated and manic obsession when it comes to things like abortion, evolution and the age of the earth, I can only feel sorrow over the fact that the worlds oldest democracy (besides San Marino) has to wrestle with religion and that people vote for fundamentalists.

Where in the Bible does it show that God is against abortion?

We have a Christian party in Sweden (gets about 5% or 6% of the votes) A reporter asked the party leader during the last election, “How old is the Earth?” The party leader was very embarrassed, laughed and said that he couldn’t answer that question. There’s a reason for that. But for how long? USA is not like Las Vegas – what happens in USA usually do not stay in the USA.

Norwegian black metalists need to burn down some more churches, imo. Rolex Replica Watches Swiss Replica Watches Replica Watches Fake Rolex

Nice…

ok…

rabbit - 03 August 2011 06:42 PM

Read more of that mind poison?  The brief excerpt in Sam’s blog post made me queasy.  It sounded like the nutter was planning a video game strategy, extremely detached.

But, forgive me, as an American woman, I just don’t feel as directly threatened by Islam as I do by the local x-ians who are cutting off my only access to an affordable pap smear by de-funding Planned Parenthood.  That’s the worst kind of terrorism, subtle and creeping.  Our local Congressional districts have just been redrawn by the x-ians to negate my vote, but, even without that nasty twist, the US Supreme Court has ruled that ‘money talks’ louder than votes.  I’m running out of legitimate options and no one is listening.  Yet, oddly, the last thing I want to do is go shoot a bunch of x-ian kids just to make some bullshit point.  Men.

Well I’ll give you one worse. The eco-terrorists AKA deniers, who are right now intent on destroying the habitability of the earth itself .

So what’s the problem here? Is it that conservatism and civilization are fundamentally incompatible?

But there are conservatives who are very religious who we are not threatened by- the Amish and the Quakers (uh, maybe Nixon excepted) . They’re conservative and they’re religious.

My own idea is that this is not really problem with conservatism or religion , it’s a problem with the sociopathic / authoritarian personality type. In the US (and wherever else they can spread their disease like Uganda) this type is either Christian Fundamentalist Conservative or Libertarian Conservative. This is just what these psychopaths have attached to and developed possibly for uninteresting historical reasons that could have gone the other way- i.e. it could have been secular psychopaths ... but it’s not.

I do agree that the mere presence of anti—rational and hateful verses in scripture are extremely unhelpful but I can’t help but think that they’re overlookable also. in fact, the headcases DO overlook those that they want to, such as the ones about not suffering witches to live and killing people who pick up a stick on the Sabbath.

And it’s as you said, where in the Bible does it say life begins at conception or abortion is wrong?

What we have here is a psychopathic culture that has found refuge in and transmits itself under the guise of ,religion.

Is it genetic? Consider Germany and Japan pre and post war.  Did the gene pool change? can the gene pool have changed since then ? Not likely. But the pre and post war members of these societies are totally different. No 9not many) German today would brook Hitler for even one second. Ditto Imperial Japan.

Results like “conservatives are low IQ” which I saw Sam tweeted are true- for America today. But do they generalize as an explanation for fundie culture?. Conservatives have always been stupid - JS Mill noted this in the 19th century. Not all stupid people are conservative but if you’re conservative, you’re likely stupid.

I think in the West, we have something separate from religiousity or even conservatism at the heart of this. What we have is a culture that appeals to,  reinforces and justifies narcissism, greed, stupidity and self righteousness and also validates   sick psychological mechanisms like self-justifying fantasy projections (Jesus wants me to X.. be rich mostly ) and hostility and self righteous anger and aggression to an out group- blacks, Catholics and lately gays.

Don’t get me wrong. I have as little use for revealed religion as the next guy but I am not sure that it is in totality the source of the problem; it’s the place the problem has taken refuge in.