Originally Posted by rhaikh
Originally Posted by Sini
Rhaikh, what are key ideas Harris is known for? Before I engage with you on this topic, I want to make sure we are actually talking about the same person.


I think it's sufficient for the purposes of this conversation to distill him down to these facts:

- As a philosophy and neuroscientist he rose to cultural prominence for views on atheism / religion
- He started forming let's say less-than-politically-correct ideas on Islam and subsequently collected some paychecks for TV appearances and faced backlash from the left
- He then found kindred spirit in Murray for what he observed as a similar unfair challenge to his ideas from the left
- He then went on to debate the merits of propping up the scientific racism Murray was peddling with Klein in an effort to collect even more paychecks


Sam Harris, if distilled down to only few interests is known for advocacy of atheism, interest in free will, and relationship between science and religion. Only your first statement is even remotely neutral, the rest is knee-jerk ideology. Considering that you earlier agreed that Islam isn't a religion of peace, why is sudden regression and backslide to political correctness in your critique of Sam Harris? If we all agree that Islam is not a good thing, we only Harris is guilty of wrong-think?


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Fitting my mold of liberal willing to lend exactly just enough legitimacy to the basis of alt-right ideology in order to collect a paycheck, without admitting to holding such beliefs himself


Alternatively, Sam Harris could be largely accurate in his criticisms of Islam and it is irrelevant whether alt-right agrees with him or not. It is also very telling that you consider that anything alt-right happen to agree with is automatically wrong and reprehensible. They probably also believe in gravity, does this make gravity a racist oppressive force that keeps minorities down (literally and otherwise)?


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Originally Posted by Sini
do you realize that logical conclusion of this position is to conclude that racism isn't a big deal? After all, if X is a natural trait someone is born with,


Both racism and conservatism are learned, not natural traits



I am glad we both agree that racial priming theory is a bunch of bunk.



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