Sam Harris lecture:Believing the Unbelievable

Been listening to it. Pretty cool dude.

 

Dude, there was absolutely no reason to post this video here at all. I watched part of it this morning, and although I disagree with his content, that's not why I make my opening comment. I am a firm believer in letting people believe what they want to believe when it comes to spiritual matters, and this post strikes me as nothing more than trying to jam atheism down my throat. Ordinarily, I wouldn't think too much about a post like this, but when I first saw it this morning, it literally made me mad enough that I didn't reply until 12 hours later. It strikes me on the same level as people who pass out the pamphlets with all sorts of biblical verses and all the other crap people do in the name of their religion.

Honestly, I'm all about faith and spirituality. I mean, I'm a non-denominational Christian, and I have friends that are everything from Buddhist to Wiccan to Christian to Atheist to Can't really be classified by one label, and the thing I've learned is that you gotta let people do their own thing. Like Paul McCartney said, live and let die.

 

Hey... lets not get to angry with each other. Negasta... not everyone is libertarian minded. On another note... have you been following Ron Paul's campaign?

 

Good.

Exchanges of views are fine and can make for very interesting discussions, but when it gets personal then it's unacceptable.

Challenge the opinion, not the person who posted it.

 

For the record, my comments were absolutely not about the content of the video or the ideas presented therein. My comments were driven by the fact that it was posted at all, as a conversation starter, with no apparent purpose other than to tout the virtues of being atheist/anti-religion/whatever. I can't recall one other occasion on these boards where someone posted, without some other prompting, some video link touting the virtues of [belief system] and saying how wonderful and superior it is. I would have the exact same opinion if the link were to a Christian presenter, or a Muslim presenter, or to a Hindu presenter, or whatever.

Like I said before, I don't terribly give two shits what you believe, and I'm not going to give you any static about it or try to force some other beliefs down your throat. I ask and expect that others will have the same courtesy.

I have to apologize, but the op didn't strike me as putting this up for discussion, but instead as putting this up to market this author guy and his message, hence my response.

 

I've gone back and read the original post a few times wondering if I was missing something. Negasta simply said that he liked it. I don't see that as shoving anything down anybodies throats. If you disagree, then let's have some respectful dialogue about it.

 

Honestly, Negasta wasn't shoving anything down anyone's throat. I thought it was very well put, the arguments in the recording were very well put, concise, and easy to understand. It made perfect logical sense, and supported everything I've been thinking of, myself.

If anything, I'd say Christians and Muslims are the ones shoving religion down everyone's throat, with their message to bring faith to everyone, their missionary services, and even just assholes berating you for being atheist.

Regardless, though, I don't see how that response was necessary or even applicable - no one was shoving anything down anyone's throat, in any response or post here.

I couldn't really put things better than what's already been said, though.

On the subject of Ron Paul, he's pretty awesome. I was just talking to Emperor about him last night. Too bad he doesn't have much of a chance. I'm a pretty big Libertarian, although I suspect I will register as a Democrat come February (I generally lean more towards them because they're not controlled by religious super-conservative radicals, although their radicals are just as bad...).

 

I'm going to take a few moments to ramble on with a couple of personal anecdotes that are tangentially relevant, and then I'll use those to hopefully illustrate why I made the comments in this thread that I've made.

When I was a freshman at college, several people and I became good friends, as is the nature of people who are college freshman. In our group of friends, we had an atheist, a few non-religious average American types, a Buddhist, and a couple of devout Christians, of which I was one. Of course, someone would make a comment with no regard to the rest of the group, and some member would take offense. We had these wonderfully constructive and, to be honest, rather interesting debates about the various virtues of our respective belief systems. Of course, if one of us saw some video or story or whatever that supported our viewpoint, we would naturally show it to the others. This continued for awhile until finally of the atheists in our group got angry and flat out said that if any of us sent any more stuff to him, he was going to block our emails and tell us to go f--- off. It was at that point that we all realized that we could believe in something without trying to convince everyone else to believe in it.

Now, the group of friends that I game with on a weekly basis is composed of three atheists, a Wiccan, and me. The beauty of it is that we're all respectful of everyone else's beliefs enough that if we start to get off on a tangent, one of the other members of the group will interject themselves and gently remind the errant person of who's there.

As promised, I had a couple of rambling segments, so now the payoff... If you demonstrate what you believe in, you don't need to go the extra mile to show everyone else propaganda for your side. In the case of the op, his avatar and signature are enough to demonstrate that he has some degree of contempt for religion, and although I don't agree with that, that's his business and he's perfectly entitled to demonstrate that. However, once that foundation is established, distributing propagandistic materials, in my view, crosses from showing something of interest to attempting to, in essence, sell me on your viewpoint. Perhaps my phrase "Shoving down my throat" was a bit excessive, but the principle is still the same, and the bit about "demolishing" the arguments for religion do add an aggressive tone, as well.

Consider this scenario. A group of people are standing on a street corner with a banner from Savior Baptist Church and wearing shirts with Jesus fish and an accompanying bible verse on them. You're walking and minding your own business, and one of them approaches you and gives you a pamphlet telling you to repent and accept Jesus as your personal savior. Are they being friendly and trying to show you something interesting, or are they trying to sell you on their viewpoint? Personally, I'm a Christian and I find that annoying.

 

:roflmao:

I almost spit out my chips while reading this. I think I love you.