The latest Counterpunch misstep

Will Solomon, writing at Counterpunch, was apparently impressed by Glenn Greenwald more recently than I was, and by Sam Harris far more recently than I was. I say "apparently" because it's paywalled, as that site continues to slouch toward Gomorrah. (The title is about how "tech billionaires have bought the loudest voices on left and right.) 

I would pay to read THAT?  Some Captain Obvious shit that may imply that, in years past at least, Glennwald was a leftist, too?

Beyond the likely nature of this piece, it's not the first one that's a semi-Captain Obvious one that St. Clair and Cockburn have paywalled in the last three months or so as part of getting more aggressive in general with paywalls.

Seriously, I need to get that updated blogroll done and my old one hauled down.

Buddhism — not so nonviolent; listen up, Sam Harris

I've blogged before about this, in noting some of Sam Harris' wrongness but per something on Facebook I saw a few days ago, it needs yet more commentary.

Buddhism, contra Sam Harris, and contra the many disciples of him who thinks he knows no wrong, does not have any special claim on nonviolence.

From that blog post, I noted:

The 969 Movement in Burma is murderously Islamophobic; more here. And Bodu Bala Sena is an Islamophobic movement in Sri Lanka.

But, it's time to take that far back into the roots of Buddhism.

Here, without mentioning one particular sutra, is an overview on Buddhists' wide varieties of thought on the use of force, within both Theravada and Mahayana traditions.

Wiki talks about the concept of Upaya, an old Sanskrit one and thus early to Buddhism, behind that first sutra. Let's look at this:

Upaya-kaushalya is a concept emphasizing that practitioners may use their own specific methods or techniques that fit the situation in order to gain enlightenment. The implication is that even if a technique, view, etc., is not ultimately "true" in the highest sense, it may still be an expedient practice to perform or view to hold; i.e., it may bring the practitioner closer to the true realization in a similar way. The exercise of skill to which it refers, the ability to adapt one's message to the audience, is of enormous importance in the Pali Canon.

In short, this is a Buddhist equivalent of utilitarianism, obviously. And, per that overview link above, it's often used by many a Buddhist not only to justify violence in self-defense (vs. running away from an aggressor) but offensive violence. In that sense, it's like a Buddhist equivalent of utilitarianism run through a filter of Shi'ite, or even more, Druze beliefs about the acceptability of lying.

The last sentence is also important. The Pali Canon is the core scripture of Theravada. So, this isn't some late grafting onto Buddhism, it's a starting point. Or, since we're comparing Buddhism to other religions, it's like Paul talking about being "all things to all men," or, better yet, a spin on that (which Paul might have accepted, "make your appearance as seeming to be all things to all men.")

Wiki's entry on capital punishment in the world's great religions, specifically the Buddhism sub-section, talks more about how active violence in Buddhism can be, and is, justified by the idea of upaya.

Beyond that in general, the "utilitarianism" of upaya is clearly behind the Two Truths Doctrine, which theoretically allows Buddhists to engage in various types of dissembling about their ultimate beliefs or intents if deemed necessary.

The subtlety of Buddhism, combined with this utilitarianism at its core, should make one take all claims of the inherent nonviolence of Buddhism with multiple grains of salt. So, too should the violence used as part of teaching by Zen monks. So should Kung Fu, which arose from Shaolin monastic martial arts.

I claim no expertise on Buddhism. It overall seems less violent than the monotheistic religions of the west, but it's certainly not nonviolent in general. Not even Jainism, at least going by that religion's graphic hells, is totally nonviolent — it just defers a much greater chunk of violence to the afterlife.

And, if a Sam Harris knows as much about Buddhism as he tries to make his disciples think he does, then he knows all about this, and therefore is spreading myth about Buddhism. And, if he doesn't know this, then he should stop pretending to be so authoritative about Buddhism.

In either way, I just heard a petard cranking up, once again, for old Sammy Boy.

#SamHarris: Being dishonest about #Buddhism once again

I've already reviewed his new book, based on long excerpts he posted on his website, and found it wanting.

But, he doubles down on now-stereotypical Sam Harris traits in an interview with Gary Gutting, editor of "The Stone," an ongoing philosophy column at the New York Times.

Harris shows himself, IMO, to be his usual tendentious self, namely, where he claims to .... well, where he claims to know the difference between Hinduism and Buddhism much better than many other people who actually know a cardinal difference.

G.G.: But it seems to depend on who’s looking. Buddhist schools of philosophy say there is no self, and Buddhist meditators claim that their experiences confirm this. But Hindu schools of philosophy say there is a self, a subject of experience, disagreeing only about its exact nature; and Hindu meditators claim that their experiences confirm this. Why prefer the Buddhist experiences to the Hindu experiences? ... 

S.H.: Well, I would challenge your interpretation of the Indian literature. The difference between the claims of Hindu yogis and those of Buddhist meditators largely boil down to differences in terminology. Buddhists tend to emphasize what the mind isn’t — using words like selfless, unborn, unconditioned, empty, and so forth. Hindus tend to describe the experience of self-transcendence in positive terms — using terms such as bliss, wisdom, being, and even “capital-S” Self. However, in a tradition like Advaita Vedanta, they are definitely talking about cutting through the illusion of the self.

However ...

Wikipedia notes that Advaita has been strongly influenced by Buddhism.

And, beyond that, it's arguable that Harris is engaged in an overinterpretation of Advaita, and that, even to the degree he's right about it, it doesn't represent the majority of Hindu thought.

I think most Hindus and most Buddhists alike would agree on this differentiation on the issue of a personal self:

Now though Buddhism and Hinduism share the concept of rebirth, the Buddhist concept differs in details from the Hindu doctrine. The doctrine of rebirth as understood in Hinduism involves a permanent soul, a conscious entity which transmigrates from one body to another. The soul inhabits a given body and at death, the soul casts that body off and goes on to assume another body. The famous Hindu classic, the Bhagavad Gita, compares this to a man who might take off one suit of clothing and put on another. The man remains the same but the suits of clothing are different. In the same way the soul remains the same but the psycho-physical organism it takes up differs from life to life. 

The Buddhist term for rebirth in Pali is "punabbhava" which means "again existence". Buddhism sees rebirth not as the transmigration of a conscious entity but as the repeated occurrence of the process of existence. There is a continuity, a transmission of influence, a causal connection between one life and another. But there is no soul, no permanent entity which transmigrates from one life to another.

Well put.

Meanwhile, later on, Sammy admits that Buddhists hold metaphysical beliefs, and ones that can be wrong:

Buddhists also make claims about invisible entities, spiritual energies, other planes of existence and so forth. However, claims of this kind are generally suspect because they are based on experiences that are open to rival interpretations. 

Per my definition of "religion," these are metaphysical "matters of ultimate concern," about which practitioners engage in certain ritual and practice to align themselves better. Hence, once again, Buddhism is still a religion.

Meanwhile, per one of my overall philosophical heroes, David Hume, one can engage in speculations about the seeming intangibility of human nature without going down a "spiritual but not religious" road or any like it.

I want to add Hume’s famous comment from A Treatise on Human Nature here:

When I enter most intimately into what I call myself I always stumble on some particular perception or other….and never can observe anything but the perception.

A few issues relevant to this discussion come up.

1. Hume makes this statement without engaging in any metaphysics.

2. Per my comment elsewhere that “the only good Buddha is a dead Buddha,” note that we have “I” used three times and “myself” once. If one is an arhat, similarly, how does one talk about that without the use of first-person pronouns, thereby undercutting the idea of a no-self, and certainly, the idea that one is enlightened enough to have already achieved no-selfhood?

I’m now going to move to a different section of his comment:

If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of our lives; since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time.

3. NOT directly related to this, but going back to classical Greece: On the word “when” in the first statement, and this …

How “thin” does one slice time for one sensation, perception or impression to succeed another? In other words, are we at an internalized, psychologized version of Zeno’s Paradoxes of Motion?

#SamHarris dives deeper into the empty pool of faux #Buddhism

Without explicitly seeing the "Buddhism is just a psychology" comment from his "End of Faith," that appears to be part of the general thesis of Sam Harris' new book, "Waking Up," which gets a long overview at his site.

For example:

One can practice most techniques of Buddhist meditation or the method of self-inquiry of Advaita and experience the advertised changes in one’s consciousness without ever believing in the law of karma or in the miracles attributed to Indian mystics. 

One can, but that's not true to the spirit of Buddhism. In fact, riffing on "The Lotus and the Robot" by Arthur Koestler, Sammy undercuts himself:

While now generally viewed as a system of physical exercises designed to increase a person’s strength and flexibility, in its traditional context hatha yoga is part of a larger effort to manipulate “subtle” features of the body unknown to anatomists. 

On the flip side, Harris then says he won't entertain such discussions about traditional Eastern belief. Well, sure, if I use a chainsaw as an ersatz scalpel, I can call any religion a philosophy, Obama a liberal, or other mush.

Besides, contra this:

One can speak about Buddhism shorn of its miracles and irrational assumptions. The same cannot be said of Christianity or Islam. 

I can practice Stoicism out of Judaism, via Ecclesiastes, or even, just barely, some sort of pre-Rawls moral philosophy from Christianity via the Sermon on the Mount. Also, Harris ignores the likes of Reform Jews and Unitarians.

Of course, it's full of other stereotypes about Buddhism, namely that Buddhists are never violent in the name of religion. And that is incredibly untrue.

The 969 Movement in Burma is murderously Islamophobic; more here. And Bodu Bala Sena is an Islamophobic movement in Sri Lanka.

In addition, contra Harris, Buddhists have even persecuted one another for "heresy." Hindus and Taoists have persecuted Buddhists. Say what you will otherwise about Chris Hitchens, but he gets the reality of Eastern religions right in "God is Not Great," devoting one chapter to Eastern religions. Buddhism and other Eastern religions are also, in their way, as anti-intellectual as traditional Western ones, and, "detachment" aside, as capitalistic as Western ones.

Unfortunately, Harris has read Hitchens, without comprehending, understanding or accepting:

I will have something to say in this book about many of the things that might have justified Hitch’s opprobrium, but the general thrust of his commentary here was all wrong. Several Eastern traditions are exceptionally empirical and exceptionally wise, and therefore merit the exceptionalism claimed by their adherents.

Harris' chainsaw at work again. 

And it gets worse.

And when engaged as a set of hypotheses by which to investigate the mind and deepen one’s ethical life, Buddhism can be an entirely rational enterprise.

The first claim, about "investigate the mind"? Tosh. It's not rational at all, because those hypotheses are built on metaphysical claims. Above all, they're built on an explicitly anti-naturalistic stance that not only goes against philosophical naturalism, but also against the methodological naturalism that underlies the scientific method.

In short, because it's a LONG piece, I'll summarize by saying that Harris seems to be doing a long-winded, attempted but not succeeded version of what many a first-generation Western Buddhist convert does, and that's in ultimately making this statement:

"Item or Action X is not 'real' Buddhism."

Combine that, the chainsaw as scalpel, and the fallback on ineffability (which Harris seems to circumspectly hint at in spots), and sure, "Buddhism is just a philosophy" or "Buddhism is just a psychology."

As for the idea that it takes any religious, or even "spiritual," discipline to reach certain mental states? More tosh. I've "gone deep" myself in self-hypnosis. Deep enough to "see" spiraling mandalas. All with purely Western, secular mental techniques. If one wants to read more along this line, without Harris' mumbo-jumbo, I recommend John Horgan's "Rational Mysticism."

Meanwhile, it gets worse:

In one sense, the Buddhist concept of enlightenment really is just the epitome of “stress reduction”—and depending on how much stress one reduces, the results of one’s practice can seem more or less profound. 

What pablum. 

And, I've covered some of this in a more generic sense here, just recently.

More scary is the hypercapitalist side.

Harris talks about having journal-type exercises in the book. Can a workbook be next? CDs? DVDs? He is offering lectures, after all.

It is reminding me of a less intellectual, though vaguely similar new book, "10% Happier," in which the author also offers a "franchise" of additional tools, all at the right price, to help with meditation, etc.

Terrorists - white and well right here in Texas, #Islamophobia #SamHarris

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?

Another #SamHarris fail: #Muslim profiling by #TSA at airport

Sam Harris is, more and more, becoming a parody of a scientist, or certainly, a parody of a social scientist. He talks about his secular liberal friends, but between his Islamophobia and his cluelessness about human nature and free will (not to mention his cluelessness about philosophy and his practicing of scientism), I'm surprised Faux News hasn't given him a gig yet; after all, his "they look Muslim and so they scare me" is the same schtick that helped get Juan Williams booted from NPR, then welcomed with open arms at Faux.

Having read his latest argument for Muslim profiling, which is largely and easily shot down by Bruce Schneier to the satisfaction of most people not named Sam Harris and his pseudo-liberal Gnu Atheist fellow travelers, I think I have to agree with Facebook friend Michael McRae:

the more I read of Harris, the more I think he develops his opinions half baked based on how he feels things should be rather than how they are.

And, I'll add that he's willing to stack the deck, too. Anybody who is supposed to be as educated as he is, and will claim with a straight face, as he did in "The End of Faith," that Buddhism is just a psychology clearly is cutting corners. (And, no, don't try to claim that I'm wrong; whether an individual soul or a "life force," if something metaphysical is being reincarnated based on metaphysical guiding principles, it's more than just a psychology.)

But, back to the argument between Harris and Schneier. First, based on previous emails, Harris seems to whine that it's bad pool for Schneier to have brought up Tim McVeigh or the Unabomber. And why? AFTER 9/11, we had the tax protester Andrew Joseph Stack in Austin, Texas, highly akin to the likes of McVeigh, fly a private plane into the Austin IRS office. Before 9/11, we had the Libyans bombing the Lockerbie plane for nationalistic reasons, albeit not while flying.

And, of course, as Harris  knows but refuses to rationally discuss, the religiously Hindu Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, not Muslims, invented the modern idea of suicide bombings. Here's his irrational dismissal:

And I am not proposing a mere correlation between extremist Islam and suicidal terrorism. I am claiming that the relationship is causal. There are many ways to see this, and not too many ways to credibly deny it (though Robert Pape keeps at it by skewing his data with the Tamil Tigers).

So, it's causal. But, it's not ONLY causal for extremist Muslims. We just happen to be the U.S., with huge numbers of airplanes, not Sri Lanka.

That said, Harris is, arguably, either clueless or deceived about the reality of American airport security in general and the Transportation Security Agency in particular, as Schneier readily points out:

 Your intuition on the efficacy of an airport profiling system is wrong.  The psychology of security is complex, and there is a great deal of of research about how our brains systematically get security decisions wrong.  This is an example of that.  Profiling at airports gives us less security at greater cost.

Harris then tries to conflate behavioral and ethnic profiling, only for Schneier to bust him again:

You can disagree, but I assure you that the Israelis understand the difference between ethnic profiling and behavioral profiling.  Yes, they do both together, but that doesn’t mean you can confuse them. 

Beyond the competency level of the TSA in general is the American idea of solving problems with technical fixes rather than spending money on human operations. We could possibly do real profiling, like Israel, but the U.S. Congress would refuse to spend the necessary money to do that intense of personal screening albeit while not profiling on religion. Let's also not forget that, again speaking of people, the NSA possibly, and the CIA possibly, could have prevented 9/11. The NSA could have done that with other cases, if it had the people to pay for all of the data sorting that's needed. Harris and Schneier both appear not to focus on this issue, but it's an additional part of the puzzle.

Anyway, back to the looking Muslim. Anybody who has followed revelations about al-Qaeda in general, and who knows that what Harris is getting at is "looking Arab," also knows that Osama bin Laden was recruiting non-Arab, non-Arab-looking Muslims for exactly this reason. And, as far as names falling under "sounding Muslim"? Jose Padilla didn't look Muslim and "Jose Padilla" doesn't sound that way. Neither does "Richard Reid."

Worldwide, off the top of my head, I'd say that a solid one-third of Muslims are of non-Arab ethnicity, to a degree that they wouldn't look Arab. I include Indonesians, Uighurs in China, Turks in Turkey and Turkic people in central Asia, sub-Saharan blacks and more.

And, because Islamophobia runs so strong and deep among A-list Gnu Atheists, Sam Harris' vapid maunderings show, or hint at, the degree of intellectual bankruptcy among Gnus. It's a long read, but, if you want to see how clearly Harris refuses to admit he's wrong, consistently moves goalposts and other things, read his whole blog post.

To put it another way,  he's engaging in what Dan Dennett has repeatedly, in other areas of human mentality, called "folk psychology." And, as Dennett also noted, folk psychology is often wrong. (Of course, Dennett himself is a Gnu who lied about why he and Richard Dawkins devised the word "bright," but that's another story altogether.)

#SamHarris: behavioralist

John Horgan just nailed it. And just "nailed" Sam Harris. He's the modern day version of B.F. Skinner in his ardent, even strident, denials of the existence of free will:

He is a throwback to the old behaviorists, who pretended that subjective, mental phenomena—because they are more difficult to observe and measure than planets and protons—don’t exist. 

And, if that's not enough, Horgan fires both barrels, again, with perfect accuracy:

Dwelling on Harris depresses me. All that brainpower and training dedicated to promulgating such bad ideas!  He reminds me of one of the brightest students I’ve ever had, who was possessed by an adamant, unshakable belief in young-earth creationism. I did my best to change his mind, but I never succeeded. I probably won’t change the minds of Sam Harris and other hard-core determinists either, but it’s worth a shot.

Now, not all Gnu Atheists reject free will, but it's getting to be an ever-more-common stance. And, Horgan's first comment, at least, is applicable to them, too.

That said, Harris is also, per Horgan, a kind of voyeuristic thrill to watch digging ever deeper into the same holes. I'll probably engage in more of it, tho not to the point of spending money on a 96-page "book."

My own thoughts on how free will VERSUS determinism is a totally false dichotomy are here.

Now, to the degree that it seems, at least, that a fair amount of leading light Gnu Atheists have a prediliction for determinism, the question is, why? It seems to go hand in hand with scientism, in Harris' case. And, some leaning that way seems to be another "joy" of many Gnus.

Harris himself, with an undergrad degree in philosophy, theoretically has no excuse, unless, like Horgan's creationist, he slept through half his philosophy classes.

As for Gnus in general, I think scientism is the fundamental "ism" of it as a movement, or social-cultural group structure (can't call it a religion!) for many.

I'll probably have further thoughts down the road.

Chris Mooney hearts Sam Harris - yikes!

I think Chris Mooney has had some good research on statistical information about psychological differences, on average, between liberal and conservative thought processes, etc. But, I'd agree with both Massimo Pigliucci and even Jerry Coyne that, basically, Mooney is making a couple of mistakes as he goes further down this road.


The first is that he's committing Science Error 101: Conflating statistical and causal correlation.


The second is that he's leaning too hard on the "nature" side of nature vs. nurture, including not noting that, to the degree some of these psychological differences evolved, they did long, long before Aristotle said man was an animal of society, let alone one who formed political parties and alliances.

Lesser critiques are that he's relying on thin reeds of single studies, and that he presents stuff, then won't defend it, claiming he just threw it out there. Another thicker reed is that Mooney may be getting too wrapped up in the agenda of a liberal think tank -- in other words, he's "pulling a Chris Mooney," engaged in the same time of motivated reasoning he's pointed out in other individuals and groups; stay tuned on this one.



But, that's nothing compared to Mooney saying this:

I’ve been in vigorous debates with the “New Atheists” in the past; but frankly, researching The Republican Brain pushed me a lot further towards their camp than I had been before. They’re upset with religion; I’m highly critical of psychological conservatism; and there turn out to be big overlaps between the two. Indeed, conservative religiosity also appears to have a genetic component to it. Liberal religiosity strikes me as also being psychologically liberal, and therefore quite a different beast; but conservative or authoritarian religion reflects much of the rigidity (and denial of reality) of psychological conservatism.

In other words, I’d be surprised if the New Atheists–especially folks like Sam Harris, who have tried to figure out the neuroscience of the religious mind–weren’t in agreement on this one. More soon.

 Good fucking doorknob.


Fiorst, Harris' "research" has largely pushed the envelope of "scientism," as Massimo, for one, and me for another, both well know.


Second, many Gnus don't regularly distinguish between more liberal and more conservative versions of religion. (Example A: P.Z. Myers' twisting poll results to claim atheist were more sexually liberated from guilt than anybody, when Unitarians and Reform Jews actually topped them.)


Third, Gnus in general have never cracked a page of a book on psychology or sociology of religion. Ergo ...


Fourth, re religion and genetic influences, they make the same types of mistakes as Chris appears to be making on Point No. 2 above the pull quote.


Nice company, Chris.

The Dark Side of the Internet: #Gnus, #skeptics, #strawmen

As Gnu Atheists and "professional skeptics" exemplify, setting up strawmen isn't just the provenance of the Religious Right, antivaxxers or New Agers.

And, as they also exemplify, they can engage in some specific strawmen that they should know better about, if they're as rational as they claim.

One in particular is the "you're jealous" phenomenon.

Recently, on Google+, I heard somebody claim that philosopher/real skeptic/humanist/traditional nontheist Massimo Pigliucci was jealous of Gnu Atheist Jerry Coyne, in part over their different takes on Christopher Hitchens. When I commented that I agreed, and posted my blog link about Hitch being a "brat" on smoking in non-smoking areas, etc., he said I must be envious of those who get more comments on their blogs than I do. Of course, John Loftus pulled that when I one-starred his review of Sam Harris' "The IMmoral Landscape." Supposedly, "professional skeptic" Ben Radford is doing this a bit. I imagine this was done a bit in pre-Net days, but I think it's gotten a lot worse now.

And, a second point: Where do some of the more libertarian "professional skeptics," or libertarian Gnus, get some of their money from? Michael Shermer has known racialists on his masthead at Skeptic. Does a place like Pioneer Fund send him money? Or, on another bent, does a neocon like Sam Harris get money from, say American Enterprise Institute?

That said, there are some better "professional skeptics."

Bob Carroll of the Skeptic's Dictionary comes immediately to mind. To the degree he ventures into skeptical issues, Pigliucci does, too.

Even more proof #SamHarris is a #neocon

Due to a friend on social networks, I found this great essay deconstructing much of New Atheism's stance toward religion, with a particular focus on its stance toward Islam as exemplified by Sam Harris.

Among its links and footnotes? A 2004 column, "Mired in Religious War," that he wrote for ... the Washington Times.

Now, he's not a regular guest columnist there, tis true. Nonetheless, Harris is no idiot or naif on the political scene; he know the Times is a wingnut outfit.

And, not just a political wingnut outfit. There's the irony and hypocrisy of attacking a caricature of Islam in a paper that's not just conservative loony, but run by religious loonies.

Beyond that, Harris' crusade (no other word for it) against Islam is absolutist. And, it's part of a larger absolutism. What else could one say about column entitled "Science Must Destroy Religion"? Both the "must" and "destroy" are absolutist words.

Upon further reading, what I'm asking for is more skeptics to be like Scott Atran
.

I cited the evidence that atheists are as likely as religious people to scapegoat others, to hold dogmatic beliefs, and to condone violence because Harris and company repeatedly emphasize in one form or another that, all things being equal, atheism bests religion for tolerance, openness, and opposition to violence. Again, I see no evidence this is so (though I certainly wouldn't mind if were so).

That exactly sums up my take on the moral smugness of Gnu Atheists. It's no wonder Harris has used him as a reference without ever attempting to understand him.

Even more, Atran notes that Gnu Atheist types tend to believe, yes, believe, in a fundamental core of rationality no less than Chicago School economists:

I find it fascinating that among the brilliant scientists and philosophers at the conference, there was no convincing evidence presented that they know how to deal with the basic irrationality of human life and society other than to insist against all reason and evidence that things ought to be rational and evidence based.

Well, it's not.

#ChrisHedges: The good, the bad, the ugly

All three attributes of much of Hedges' recent writing are encapsulated in his Truthout post about the Norway terror attacks, entitled, "Fundamentalism Kills."

The "good"? Yes, fundamentalism kills.

The "bad"? Claiming that most scientists practice "scientism."

The really, really "ugly"? A short sidebar screed against urbanization.

On the "bad," as in his anti-atheism book, Hedges simply fails to distinguish between a few scientists, or a few skeptics on the edge of science, just as he failed to distinguish between a few "Gnu Atheists" and the great many.

The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik.

Those two don't totally represent all Gnu Atheists, let alone all atheists in general.

Beyond that? Science isn't a second fundamentalism. "Scientism" may be, but science isn't. Ditto that "Gnu Atheism" may be a fundamentalism, but atheism in general isn't.

That said, the "bad" doesn't come out of nowhere. When a third "Gnu," P.Z. Myers, claims Hitch and Harris aren't conservatives, he refuses to face that Gnu Atheism has a messaging problem, fails to admit that this affects all atheism, and propagates both of those problems.

So, while Hedges is (once again) guilty of shoddy, shoddy thinking, I can understand his passion.

Beyond that, though, the bad leads into the ugly.

Here's Hedges on urbanism:

The Industrial Age has provided feats of engineering and technology, yet it has also destroyed community, spread the plague of urbanization, uprooted us all, turned human beings into cogs and made possible the total war and wholesale industrial killing that has marked the last century.

The problem of the evil side of urbanization, whether overstated or not, is mankind, not 'urbanization."

Otherwise, the invention of agriculture "uprooted' us from nomadism. And it turned humans into cogs more than 10,000 years ago.

It's also the only way the planet supports more than a few hundred million people, not more than 6 billion.

And that's why people like Hedges are more than a touch hypocritical. Does Hedges want to take a raft, kayak or Kon-Tiki to all his war journalism reporting? And, does he want to stop writing on the Internet? Stop taking his prescription medications, etc..

And, if we need to reduce world population by 90 percent as part of getting rid of "urbanization," is he volunteering to be part of that 90 percent?

Even if we concentrate on the last 100 years, urbanization has brought economies of scale, a flowering of the arts, etc. if Hedges doesn't like 'urbanization," he can move to North Dakota of his own free will. If he doesn't like that, he can join the "90 percent" that need to leave this planet.

More proof Sam Harris is a #neocon

Anders Breivik, self-photo

I've blogged before about how famous "Gnu Atheist" Sam Harris, with the intensity of his Islamophobia, how that seeped into his book "The (IM)Moral Landscape," including authors in his bibliography and more, are clear signs he's some sort of neoconservative. (His stance on other aspects of moral issues, outside of Islamophobia, kind of gives tangential credence to that, too.) I blogged about P.Z. Myers trying to claim Harris isn't a religious conservative, which Zed continues to refuse to accept.

More circumstantial proof is now in. Harris tries to defend Norwegian bomb/shooting suspect Anders Breivik against claims he's a Christian fundamentalist.

Here's an extract from Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto that seems to be pretty clear evidence he's a fundamentalist.

When I initiate (providing I haven’t been apprehended before then), there is a 70% chance that I will complete the first objective, 40% for the second, 20% for the third and less than 5% chance that I will be able to complete the bonus mission. It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past. (p. 1344)

If a Muslim bomber/shooter said that, Harris would be mad-dog foaming at the mouth.

Instead?

Here's Harris trying to explain this all away:

(T)he above passages would seem to undermine any claim that Breivik is a Christian fundamentalist in the usual sense. What cannot be doubted, however, is that Breivik’s explicit goal was to punish European liberals for their timidity in the face of Islam.

Harris then goes on to show how he and Breivik have further neocon backgrounds.
I have written a fair amount about the threat that Islam poses to open societies, but I am happy to say that Breivik appears never to have heard of me. He has, however, digested the opinions of many writers who share my general concerns—Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Samuel Huntington, et al.
The last four are clear neocons, sometimes virulent. So is Lewis. Kaplan's on the fence. Warraq? Has other issues at times. I've not read too much of the others.

Sam Harris, you have now fallen into an even lower circle of any Dantean secular hell consignments that could exist.

Update: Andrew Sullivan uses his old term "Christianist" for people like Breivik. That said, without naming names, he has a word or two for the Sam Harrises of the world:

A pseudo-believer, he nonetheless favors the arch-authoritarianism of the Old Catholicism rather than contemporary Protestantism (just like the atheist neocons). He loathes all transnational institutions and reads at times like an incarnation of Richard Hofstadter's brilliant description of the "pseudoconservative". He is also Christianist in the new way. There was a time when the extreme Christian right in America was anti-Semitic; now the extreme right is fanatically pro-Israel as a vanguard against the real foe, Islam. And not Islamism, but Islam. They have long since dispensed with that critical distinction, leaving George W. Bush's scruples in the dust.

Sully, while I disagree with you a fair amount on some things, I couldn't have said that one better myself.

#PZMyers and the #Pharyngulacs: religious idiots too

Earlier this week, partly in response to blogger P.Z. Myers, aka Pharyngula, laughably claiming that Sam Harris, author of "The IMmoral Landscape," was not a conservative, I wrote a post calling him a political idiot.

Well, he has a new post up attacking the idea of atheists working with interfaith groups, which show there's religious idiocy in the air too.

What started it all? An attack on non-Gnu Atheist Chris Steadman, specifically a blog post of his on working with interfaith groups, including the pejorative that he was a "faithiest."

Well, one Pharyngulac, early on, claimed to see crosses all over Chris' blog page.

The reality? As I posted on Pharyngula:

What's funny/paranoid ... Chris' rows of plus signs breaking up posts, or subthoughts within posts, being called "crosses." Some of you people see what you want to see.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ohh, I'm typing "crosses." I must be a "faithiest."

But, apparently sarcasm is OK only when you're dishing it out in-group.

I followed with a more serious comment:

More seriously, folks like PZ and his (self-?)brainwashed "cadre" seem to to think that a member of the wingnut fundamentalist Church of Christ can be lumped in the same gropuing as a member of the semi-unitarian United Church of Christ.

Of course, that's totally wrong.

OTOH, many nonatheists would do the same with atheism, trying to lump all secular humanists with deliberately combative Gnus.

That's why I tend to use the word atheist less and less these days.

And at least one Pharyngulacs got more than a bit touchy.

Ahh, yes, the descent to four-letter words and pejoratives. It's self-perpetuating.

In a follow-up, to tie in with the politics angle, I noted that Sam Harris lumps all Muslims together in the same way, which gets back to the post I linked up top, about Myers' political idiocy.

The "idiot" part is where he claims Sam Harris isn't a conservative, not even on his Islamophobia. Well since he quotes a prominent "dhimmitude" neocon and apparent Zionist and references her more than one in "The IMmoral Landscape," you're flat wrong, P.Z.

The author I'm referring to is Bat Ye'or (that's a pseudonym for "Daughter of the Nile"), author of "Eurabia." (Sidebar: Bat Ye'Or blaming Egypt for the problems of Jews in Cairo after the Suez war is disingenuous at least in part. One scholar of her work, Joel Beinin gets it right with saying: "Bat Ye'or exemplifies the 'neo-lachrymose' perspective on Egyptian Jewish history."

So, on mixing religion and politics and getting both wrong, Harris cites as support for his Islamophobia a Zionist neocon.

Finally, while I do not believe atheism is a religion, Gnu Atheists of P.Z. and the Pharyngulac ilk certainly act like the Tar Baby equivalents of religious fundamentalists.

Here's a checklist:
1. Black-and-white thinking;
2. Rigid in-group vs. out-group;
3. Doctrine/dogma ... as exemplified in the post linked above, on how to think about "faithiests," "accomodationists" and others;
4. A concept of "heresy," arguably ... people like those in point 3 aren't real atheists; ditto on the political side, where P.Z. hints that he believes political conservatives aren't real atheists.

====

That said, the Gnus DO have a partial point. Right now I am reading "The World as It Is" by Chris Hedges. I 110 percent agree politically/socially with Chris, a truly liberal, as in third-party supporting liberal, person. (P.Z., you need to be listening!) He's also religiously liberal, and a Harvard Divinity grad.

BUT! ... He has vehemently excoriated atheists in previous writings. As in egregiously so. I'm not saying he's highly representative of liberal Xns or liberal ppl of faith in general ... but I don't think he's a total outlier, either. And, I don't think his stereotyping is primarily due to Gnu Atheists.

On the third hand, though, some of Hedges mischaracterizations/straw men, at least when applied to Gnu Atheists, aren't totally disconnected from reality.

I think Hedges, in part, in his book, conflated atheism and Kurzweil-type futurism. Blame a Michael Shermer for that.

OTOH, if one looks at Sam Harris, rabid in his Islamophobia and "informed" by neocons, one could argue that Harris is also influenced by Pop Evolutionary Psychology to some degree.

Second, not all atheists are "Gnu Atheists." Gnu Atheism does, speaking as a non-gnu who rarely uses the word atheist in part due to them, have quasi-religious aspects at times — not "beliefs," but "praxis" and organization. I think Hedges' debate with Hitchens, plus the mindset of many Pharyngulacs, Coyneheads (Jerry Coyne), etc., show that same "sociology of religion" stamp of a secularist fundamentalism.

That said, even the most strident Gnus, like P.Z., aren't the straw man Hedges makes out.

And, certainly, non-gnus aren't. And, Hedges, possessor of a Harvard Div degree, was intellectually lazy in not making better distinctions.

At the same time, Hedges' beliefs are so mushy — even more, the real-world application of whatever he may believe religiously — that I don't know why he calls himself religious.

As for his debate with Hitchens ... he is right on the

#PZMyers, political idiot

In two posts at his blog in the last week, Gnu Atheist P.Z. Myers first shows himself to be a political idiot, and then to be a craven one.

The "idiot" part is where he claims Sam Harris isn't a conservative, not even on his Islamophobia. Well since he quotes a prominent "dhimmitude" neocon and references her m ore than one in "The IMmoral Landscape," you're flat wrong, P.Z.

The author I'm referring to is Bat Ye'or (that's a pseudonym for "Daughter of the Nile"), author of "Eurabia." (Sidebar: Bat Ye'Or blaming Egypt for the problems of Jews in Cairo after the Suez war is disingenuous at least in part. One scholar of her work, Joel Beinin gets it right with saying:

Bat Ye'or exemplifies the "neo-lachrymose" perspective on Egyptian Jewish history. According to Beinin, this perspective has been "consecrated" as "the normative Zionist interpretation of the history of Jews in Egypt"

So, there you go; Harris is not only a neocon; he pals around with at least one Zionist.

The real reason P.Z. doesn't want to admit that Harris is a conservative (Hitchens isn't, contra the blogger to whom P.Z. is responding, he's just an oft-drunken muddle) is that he's already told his would-be "cadres" that he supports a purge of atheist conservatives from the real atheist movement.

So, to admit Sam Harris is a conservative would be to admit that he's ... well, a Trotskyite deviant compared to the Gnu Stalinist leadership of P.Z. Myers.

Oh, and Pharyngulacs appear to be quite sensitive about being accused of black-and-white thinking.

In this case, it's about being told that, in opposing atheists working with "interfaith" groups, they lump all Christians together as one. I said, on that post:

"(F)olks like PZ and his (self-?)brainwashed "cadre" seem to to think that a member of the wingnut fundamentalist Church of Christ can be lumped in the same gropuing [sic] as a member of the semi-unitarian United Church of Christ.

But, it's true!

In a follow-up, to tie in with the politics angle, I noted that Sam Harris lumps all Muslims together in the same way.

The "craven" part? Where he says that he guesses he'll have to vote "Obama/Biden." I guess he's too craven to consider third-party alternatives.

Or, despite pooh-poohing the War on Terra, too fear-stricken by our current Repubicrat president claims about how it could be worse.

Oh, and he and the cadre of Pharyngulacs are religious idiots, too.

Glad I delinked Pharyngula from my blogroll.

====

That said, the Gnus DO have a partial point. Right now I am reading "The World as It Is" by Chris Hedges. I 110 percent agree politically/socially with Chris, a truly liberal, as in third-party supporting liberal, person. (P.Z., you need to be listening!) He's also religiously liberal, and a Harvard Divinity grad.

BUT! ... He has vehemently excoriated atheists in previous writings. As in egregiously so. I'm not saying he's highly representative of liberal Xns or liberal ppl of faith in general ... but I don't think he's a total outlier, either. And, I don't think his stereotyping is primarily due to Gnu Atheists.

On the third hand, though, some of Hedges mischaracterizations/straw men, at least when applied to Gnu Atheists, aren't totally disconnected from reality.

I think Hedges, in part, in his book, conflated atheism and Kurzweil-type futurism. Blame a Michael Shermer for that.

OTOH, if one looks at Sam Harris, rabid in his Islamophobia and "informed" by neocons, one could argue that Harris is also influenced by Pop Evolutionary Psychology to some degree.

Second, not all atheists are "Gnu Atheists." Gnu Atheism does, speaking as a non-gnu who rarely uses the word atheist in part due to them, have quasi-religious aspects at times — not "beliefs," but "praxis" and organization. I think Hedges' debate with Hitchens, plus the mindset of many Pharyngulacs, Coyneheads (Jerry Coyne), etc., show that same "sociology of religion" stamp of a secularist fundamentalism.

That said, even the most strident Gnus, like P.Z., aren't the straw man Hedges makes out.

And, certainly, non-gnus aren't. And, Hedges, possessor of a Harvard Div degree, was intellectually lazy in not making better distinctions.

At the same time, Hedges' beliefs are so mushy — even more, the real-world application of whatever he may believe religiously — that I don't know why he calls himself religious.

===

Life is complex, including in the world of nonmetaphysical philosophy. Rather than "atheist," even "skeptic" with its pseudoskeptical problems, even "philosophical naturalist," maybe I'll just follow Hume and call myself an "empiricist."

Karma — as offensive as hell

This extended CNN blog, with broadly multifaith comments on "why suffering" in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear worries, following the Japanese tsunami and eaerthquake, makes the case well for me.

Is it any worse for a fundamentalist Christian to say:
1. God is inscrutable;
2. Original sin brought on this disaster for you;
3. It's God's prerogative to damn some people to hell.

Or a hardcore Buddhist to say:
1. Karma is inscrutable;
2. Your past life that you can't even remember brought on this disaster for you;
3. It's a cyclical universe's "prerogative" to damn some people to recurring rounds of bad karma.
(The Buddhist version is more offensive than the Hindu version because it claims that not even a person or personality, but just a "life force" is reincarnated and the "self" [nonexistent as it allegedly is] is STILL punished in a new life.)

I know of people who are skeptics, and atheists, even, in the sense of not believing in a western monotheist divinity, that still believe in the metaphysics of karma. Well, sorry, but, karma's as offensive as the heaven-hell of western monotheism.

Beyond that, both western and eastern religion offer the same pablum when confronted with the problem of evil.

And, a "shout out" to "it's not a religion" Buddhist Sam Harris — what say you now?

The opposite of "scientism" is???

I have had no problem labeling the thought processes of people like P.Z. Myers and Sam Harris with the tag of "scientism" at times when it was clear they were trying to address nonscientific issues from a scientific point of view. Especially with Harris, allegedly a philosopher because he has a degree in the subject, it's frustrating, off-putting, undercuts the "cause" of secularism and more.

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci also has no problem pegging people like that.

So, it's a bit disconcerting when he says social science research into people's moral judgment thinking not only is not philosophy, but that it can't even lead to philosophy, in his perspective.

And, so, I ask, the opposite of scientism, in this case, is ...

"Philosophism"?

His argument, in a nutshell, is in a comment of his near the end of the comment thread:

Similarly, we evolved the ability to make moral judgment, but that doesn't begin to equip us for professional-level moral reasoning ...

I saw "professional-level moral reasoning," which I inadvertently shortened to "professional moral reasoning" (though I don't think that significantly changed anything) and ... well, I cringed.

It's like Massimo wants to do data-free, research-free philosophy. And, even if (I'm not going to say "even though") he may not have meant it in an elitist way, it sure comes off that way, which is the main reason I cringed.

Sam Harris' Immoral Landscape

Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape," much lauded by many reflexive, relatively unthinking New Atheists who have made him into a rock star of the movement, falls far short of its hype. In fact, I one-starred it on Amazon.

What's wrong? Harris is a Platonic idealist in drag. He also engages in scientism. Related to both of these, despite his having an undergraduate degree in philosophy, he really appears not to understand a lot of philosophical issues relevant to this book's subject. Or else, he doesn't care to.

Beyond that, his Islamophobia in the early part of this book seems to largely come straight from the neoconservative playbook. Possibly related to that, he creates straw men out of liberals all allegedly being moral relativists.

Sam Harris tries to draw a hard-and-fast dichotomy between science-based morals and ethics and religious-based morals and ethics in this book.

However, this is the real world, not a Platonic idea (Harris comes off as quasi-Platonic in more than one way in parts of this book), and so, it's not totally amenable to Harris' bifurcation.

Take abortion. Many religious people support at least some right to abortion, but noted atheist Nat Hentoff is 100 percent prolife. Ditto on end of life issues. And, if I looked a little bit, I could surely find atheists and agnostics with less enlightened views on gay rights than many religious people.

Now, as to the science part ... the idea that we can have a science-based morality? Harris offers little in the way of actual neuroscience studies on the brain processing moral issues.

We may well get oodles more such studies in the future, but that's not today. Harris also doesn't address the issues of what MRIs measure, how well this correlates with thought output, etc.

Likewise, he discusses little in the field of well-done evolutionary psychology (to distinguish it from Pop Evolutionary Psychology).

Beyond that, he simply ignores that the study of the human mind, whether from the POV of cognitive neuroscience or evolutionary psychology, is at best in the Early Bronze Age and is arguably, at least on the matter of morality and ethics, still in the Neolithic.

So, while science may at some point (far?) in the future offer us significant oversight on specific moral issues, it doesn't today because it can't. And, per the specific moral issues I listed above, it may never be able to.

Indeed, with reference to that, Harris' approach to science and morality smacks of a fair degree of scientism. And, I write this as an irreligious, skeptical naturalist.

That said, there's several other problems with this book. Read on at the jump for the details! I'm going to address several overview issues first, before making any page-by-page critique of the book.

First is the matter of Harris' Islamophobia. Since Islam is in general cited regularly for examples of immoral behavior and beliefs, we need to examine this.

First of all, it seems much of Harris' Islamophobia comes from the neoconservative political playbook. He favorably references an off-the-wall neocon writer, Bat Ye'Or, whose book on Islam's alleged takeover of Europe was one-starred by me.

Secondly, he's confusing a static historic snapshot of history with a moving picture. If we went by snapshots, 900 years ago, Christian Crusaders would have been the poster boys for immoral behavior. 750 years ago it would have been pagan/animist Mongols. 600 years ago, polytheistic Aztecs.

Finally, if we confine ourselves to today, the Hindu Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka killed 30,000 in their civil war, far more than al-Qaeda has killed.

Second, whence comes Harris' moral stance, ultimately? I believe he is not just a moral objectivist, albeit a consequentialist (a stance more often associated with moral relativism but compatible with objectivism too), but a moral absolutist -- specifically a Platonic Idealist moral absolutist. There's irony there in spades, since the early and middle Platonic dialogues were devoted to Socrates, deconstruction of other people's definitions of moral issues such as justice. (Of course, Socrates usually doesn't offer his own idealist definition back; such things arise only in later dialogues.)

Third, what of Harris' claims to be examining morality and its foundations from a scientific perspective? 

First of all, he's not the first to do so. He didn't invent sociobiology or evolutionary psychology. (Let me be clear here -- much of what passes for science in alleged evolutionary psychology is actuallly the pseudoscience of Pop Evolutionary Psychology. However, unlike a P.Z. Myers, there is legitimate work being done in this field, albeit little and far between.) So, Harris isn't new in his effort and he's certainly not new in his hope.

That said, for someone who wants to be scientific, he seems often lacking. (No shock here; I saw the same problem way back in "The End of Faith." First, from an evolutionary standpoint, Harris doesn't address issues of individual vs. group selection. Now, I'm not as bullish on group selection as, say, David Sloan Wilson, but I do think it deserves more consideration than many evolutionary biologists give it. Second, Harris doesn't devote any scientific examination to cultural evolution. Admittedly, there's not a lot to really nail down ant this intersection of biology and sociology, but Harris doesn't even get into what is out there.

Beyond what I mention above, for someone with a graduate degree in neuroscience, he spends about ZERO time referencing actual neurological study of the brain. No V.S. Ramachandran here, folks! Not even close.

Fourth, Harris and philosophy, not just the "is-ought" issue, but certainly including that.

First of all, for people who have read previous works of his, and not embraced him as a bundle of light, his arrogance in dealing with the philosophical background should be of no surprise. But, it still needs quoting.

Page 197, footnote 1: "Many of my critics fault me for not engaging with the academic literature on moral philosophy. ... First ... I did not arrive at my position ... by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical implications of our making continual progress in the sciences of the mind. Second, I am convinced that every appearance of (academic terminology) directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. ... (T)he professional philosophers I've consulted seem to understand and support what I'm doing"
Let's unpack what's wrong with this quote.

1. Harris might actually have learned something by engaging with other moral philosophers either of today or the past. That would include wrestling more with Hume's is-ought; that would certainly include a provocative AND nontechnical book like Walter Kaufmann's "Beyond Guilt and Justice."
2. Is Harris saying he's either too dumb or too lazy to "translate" language of academia to a general audience? Or a too-arrogant mix of both? One of the best classical philosophers on moral issues was Hume, precisely because he wrote in a way for the general public (of a certain educational level) to understand.
3. Neuroscience is a "hard" science with plenty of its own technical language. That doesn't stop Harris from wanting to focus on advances in scientific discovery, albeit while, rather than discussing them in a nontechnical level, not discussing them at all. I smell a HUGE steaming pile of hypocrisy here.
4. In light of what I noted above about Socratic dialogues, Harris never discusses what happens when two big moral issues, like "fairness" and "compassion," collide. This is one of the brilliancies of Kaufmann's book mentioned above.

In light of all that, let's look at Hume's famous is-ought issues.

Hume discusses the problem in book III, part I, section I of his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739):

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

Hume calls for caution against such inferences in the absence of any explanation of how the ought-statements follow from the is-statements. But how exactly can an "ought" be derived from an "is"? The question, prompted by Hume's small paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory, and Hume is usually assigned the position that such a derivation is impossible. This complete severing of "is" from "ought" has been given the graphic designation of Hume's Guillotine.

See Wikipedia for more on the "is-ought" issue.

Several issues here:
1. "Ought" is multivalent. Sometimes, most notably in ethics, it has an explicitly moral tone. Other times, far from that. For instance, in late 19th-century physics, scientists said the ether, the luminiferous ether, "ought" to weigh a certain amount, even though experiment rebelled against that.
2. In the case of ethics, to worry about "is-ought" is to approach the issue the wrong way. Rather, staying within Hume, one can ask what ethics can be naturalistically devised and supported. In this case (contra what Harris seems to say) we turn to evolutionary psychology **properly done** (and not Pop Ev Psych), as well as evolutionary biology of non-hominids. We can, through cultural anthropology, partially reinforce hominid ev psych findings. That then said, we would note that often, there is not one "right" ethical answer to some issues of ethics. We also should note, per someone like Walter Kaufmann, sometimes there is no right answer at all, or that a "right" answer may be culturally determined, or that a "right" answer for an individual may be the "wrong" answer for society. In this last case, no science gives us "the answer" as to whether individual needs or societal needs should prevail. And, for that matter, different religions may give us different answers, or the same religion may give us different answers at different times, as they do on other issues such as collective guilt.

Re a critic of my Amazon review, who invited me to look at a Harris post on Huffington Post.

Harris' "refutation" of his critics actually confirms much of what they say about him on the Islamophobia. Ditto on his .... gullibility, for want of other words, on the credibility of the psi folks.

As for his stance on Buddhism, it seems clear he's trying to have his cake and eat it, too, by purporting to be on a search for "the authentic Buddha," in essence. Shades of Albert Schweitzer!

That said, the review by John Horgan, which Harris loathes? I think Horgan goes too far in taking science to the moral woodshed, but, in a general way, he's right. To this day, Western scientists still have few problems with exploiting indigenous peoples, for example. One might fault Horgan for failing to distinguish science from individual scientists, but this is part of connecting Harris' stance to scientism, I think.

On the good side, though, he does some great petard-hoisting on Harris:

Some will complain that it is unfair to hold science accountable for the misdeeds of a minority. It is not only fair, it is essential, especially when scientists as prominent as Harris are talking about creating a universal, scientifically validated morality. Moreover, Harris blames Islam and Catholicism for the actions of suicide bombers and pedophilic priests, so why should science be exempt from this same treatment?

And more:

Harris asserts in Moral Landscape that ignorance and humility are inversely proportional to each other; whereas religious know-nothings are often arrogant, scientists tend to be humble, because they know enough to know their limitations. "Arrogance is about as common at a scientific conference as nudity," Harris states. Yet he is anything but humble in his opus. He castigates not only religious believers but even nonbelieving scientists and philosophers who don't share his hostility toward religion.

Finally, Horgan raises the same concerns about neuroscience I do:

Harris further shows his arrogance when he claims that neuroscience, his own field, is best positioned to help us achieve a universal morality. "The more we understand ourselves at the level of the brain, the more we will see that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human values." Neuroscience can't even tell me how I can know the big, black, hairy thing on my couch is my dog Merlin. And we're going to trust neuroscience to tell us how we should resolve debates over the morality of abortion, euthanasia and armed intervention in other nations' affairs?

Indeed. But, that, too, is part of Harris' scientism. That said, P.Z. Myers and Vic Stenger, on their claims to have proved the nonexistence of god, show that Harris isn't alone among New Atheists in falling into the pit of scientism.

Religious belief may just be irrational

AND linked with a continuum of other irrational beliefs, per a new study in Finland.

It sounds like a very interesting article. Now (and not to oversell MRIs) it would be interesting to take this to the next level. Are their brains functioning differently in some specific ways?

And, if at least "opennmindedness" to religious belief does pair with the other beliefs, who will tell New Atheist "guru" (not in MY book he ain't) Sam Harris, already on the record as accepting the possibility of psi phenomena?

‘A religion of peace’ will kill you if you disagree

Sam Harris puts it well. Radical Muslims claim to be a religion of peace, up until the moment critics actually take a look at what radical, literalistic Muslims believe.

Dutch politican Geert Wilders knows. Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard knows.

He also notes that U.N. President Ban-Ki Moon, other European politicians, the editorial board of the Washington Post and that of science tome Nature are all ready to whitewash Islam’s sins, too.

Unfortunately, Sam Harris is secular humanism’s flip side of the coin, since his ultimate answer is atomic weapons raining down on the heartland.

And, while Chris Hedges went way too far in calling New Atheists in general neoconservatives, Sam Harris comes off as an interventionist paleoconservative, if you will.