Sam Harris irks me for many reasons.
First, he's a shallow thinker in general who got lucky to hit the initial surge of Gnu Atheist fandom with "The End of Faith."
Second, he's either ignorant of philosophy of religion, psychology of religion and sociology of religion, or else he's a liar. In that book, he claimed Buddhism was just a psychology. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Even atheistic Buddhists still almost to a man or woman believe in two metaphysical principles — karma and reincarnation — and conduct social practices geared toward how they stand in relation to those two principles.
Third is his Islamophobia.
A: Contra fellow Ig-Gnu-rant Atheist Jerry Coyne, Islamophobia exists. It's the Gnu Atheist Christianophobia taken to a further level of stereotyping.
B. Contra Coyne at the same link, Harris has advocated torture in the "War on Terror."
B1: He's done so in cases beyond Alan Dershowitz's stereotypical "ticking time bomb."
B2: Even Dershowitz's stereotypical case doesn't make torture right morally.
B3: Torture doesn't work.
B4: Harris has also discussed the possibility of using nuclear weapons in the "War on Terror."
Now it's true that, contra Al-Jazeera, Islam is not a "race."
But, by wanting to use race along with allegedly Islamic looks in clothing, Sam Harris has touted airport security profiling of Mooslims, even when he's been shown that it won't work.
Why doesn't Sam Harris want to profile theoretically Christian white extremists as much as Moooslims?
After all, in the last couple of years, they've probably killed more Americans than Moooslim terrorists.
A federal assistant DA has withdrawn himself from a case in Houston against Aryan Brotherhood, based on the shooting last week of the Kaufman County state DA, and the ADA for the county earlier this year, confirming, it appears, that Aryan Brotherhood is a prime suspect. More backstory here.
I know that the Aryan Brotherhood doesn't dip into the bible to try to help justify its white supremacist claims, but other militant groups and individuals do.
Tim McVeigh ring a bell?
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