Israelis and Palestinians join forces to combat Ebola

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/12/14 at 3:14pm

That other thread was getting kinda cranky so I thought I'd start another one, on a more hopeful note.
YAHOO NEWS: Israelis and Palestinians join forces to combat Ebola

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/13/14 at 10:02pm

Long, but interesting article on the "Orientalism" inherent in Sam Harris' argument. This is a longer--but more precise--version of what I have been saying about Harris all along: he stacks his own argument by insisting that the only true form of any religion is the fundamentalist account.

http://weeklysift.com/2014/10/13/sam-harris-and-the-orientalization-of-islam/

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/13/14 at 10:05pm

(Confidential to PJ: I took it from your comment that you wanted to continue the Middle East conversation here. Obviously, my post has nothing to do with ebola.)

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/13/14 at 11:28pm

Yesterday there was a possible Ebola case in Braintree, MA, and the person was brought to -- and isolated in -- a hospital where just two months ago I cancelled a scheduled podiatry appointment. The patient was discovered not to have Ebola but really, it's too close for comfort. It could have been me.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/13/14 at 11:52pm

Actually that's not what Sam Harris says at all. That's just a reductionist misreading, probably purposeful and undoubtedly intended to discredit him.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/14/14 at 12:00am

I'd just like to put in a plug for the other (more fun) Sam Harris, whose book "Ham: Slices of a Life" was my favorite light read of 2014. I still giggle whenever I load the front loading high efficiency washing machine and/or when I think of Harris's account to Liza's last wedding. The one to David Gest. That one.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/14/14 at 1:51am

Actually that's not what Sam Harris says at all. That's just a reductionist misreading, probably purposeful and undoubtedly intended to discredit him.

Sorry, PJ, but that's EXACTLY what Harris says in THE END OF FAITH. And I recognized the problem when I read the book, well before ISIS was in the news. It isn't just how Harris approaches Islam, but how he defines ALL religious views. Instead Harris argues for spirituality-without-religion without ever explaining how the average person would achieve that.

As for being "reductionist", the writer lays out his argument in far greater detail than you or I or anyone has done here. And he couldn't possibly be more reductionist that Harris himself.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/14/14 at 8:31am

Well, who's reducing whom?

Meanwhile, back in the cradle of civilization, the Sunni vs. Shiite who-will-dominate-whom schism rears its ugly heads again, this time with Saudi Arabia rattling its scimitar against Iran, accusing Iran of helping other Shiites in the area.




AP: REPORT: IRAN SAYS SAUDI COMMENTS MAY DAMAGE TIES

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/14/14 at 1:18pm

Am I too cynical in my belief that if the West weren't concerned with keeping Middle East oil flowing, we'd just let the Sunnis and Shi'a slaughter one another at will?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/14/14 at 1:26pm

And the Turks continue to slaughter the Kurds, even as the Kurds fight ISIS, because the Sunni Turks don't really mind Sunni ISIS...



AP Report: Turkish Jets Hit Kurdish Rebel Targets

[bethnor]

Posted: 10/14/14 at 8:15pm

Instead Harris argues for spirituality-without-religion without ever explaining how the average person would achieve that.

actually, the "new atheists" have been saying so for awhile... and freely acknowledge that the arguments are not "new."

everyone has to learn to separate culture from superstitious nonsense. i believe you identify as jewish. surely you know that for the first few thousand years, the men of your religion woke up each morning thanking god for not making them a woman or a gentile. without knowing you, i would guess you don't do that.

that is superstitious nonsense, as are the injunctions against self-gratification and homosexuality and the shame that permeates all the monotheisms in general. we don't need a kinder, gentler version of this, the shame that ALL the monotheisms infiltrate into human sexuality is flat out wrong and unnecessary and damaging wherever it goes.

even until very recently, most liberals still thought the teaching, "hate the sin, love the sinner," was reasonable. it is actually unethical and immoral. it amounts to a holy injunction to grow old and die alone without knowing intimacy for something that cannot be promised (i.e., if you do so, yahweh will give you something better after you die, a flat out lie).

the music of bernstein and copland is culture. it is real and beautiful. one doesn't have to wake up each morning, thanking god that he is not a woman or a gentile, to recognize the beauty of that music.

we can and do have one without the other. this is the great project before us, and unless we undertake it soon, all of civilization, the only world that we have, could be brought to an end by sinister nonsense.



Updated On: 10/14/14 at 08:15 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/14/14 at 11:30pm

bethnor, I only wish I were Jewish. I was raised an evangelical Christian (Disciples of Christ).

I left the church in my late teens when I decided all dogma was merely received superstition. And in one sense, it is.

But as an adult, I can recognize the good that religion often inspires. I don't think anything or anybody has "discredited" Harris, but I disagree that religion is inherently intolerant just because most of the major religions date from periods where transubstantiation was worth dying (and killing) for.

Look at Japan, where people pick and choose from various religions (Shinto, Buddhism, Christianity) for different purposes as if they were ordering off a menu. They aren't killing their neighbors over baptismal rites.

(BTW, my children are atheists and my daughter and her husband are raising the grandkids as atheists. I feel no need to pressure them to do otherwise.) Updated On: 10/14/14 at 11:30 PM

[bethnor]

Posted: 10/14/14 at 11:48pm

gaveston, that is untrue.

only now are the members of the regime of pol pot facing justice. most of them are too old and too demented to get serious prison time. it's not often talked about with the way the middle east consumes most international news, but if you recall, the regime slaughtered a quarter of their own population.

for awhile, there was resistance to the trial. the reasoning from some buddhists? everyone who died must have sinned in previous lives and deserved their fate.

ppl really ought sit down and think about what that means. we have their stories now. children were dragged off by the khmer rouge in the middle of the night. they watched the regime torture their parents by beating them. they begged the torturers to stop, and when the confession was unlawfully beaten out of the victims, they were struck at the base of the skull with bamboo sticks and then their throats slit. then the children were killed.

on any level... to even suggest these children and their parents deserved this horrible fate... is evil beyond comprehension and a moral surrender. careful contemplation will demonstrate that millions of people have been consigned to poverty, sickness, and death, because of the evil idea that they were sinners in previous lives, which are basic tenants in buddhism and hinduism.

this is why even its most mild form, this nonsense is not healthy. most average americans don't buy into their religions, but they wish to believe that there is some form of "karma," where the "good" people are protected and "evil" people punished. this sort of thinking has retarded social justice for centuries and continues to do so.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/15/14 at 12:10am

That hoary old "the good that religion often inspires" really does begin to crumble on inspection.

[bethnor]

Posted: 10/15/14 at 1:56am

ebola is actually a great example of how superstition is the enemy of civilization.

take for example burial rites. we are so afraid of death, and so afraid to have a grown up conversation about it, that huge numbers of people think it's true. you think that you'll somehow be aware of your funeral arrangements. you think that if your body is treated a certain way, you will go to some theme park with lots of clouds and harp music.

there is no evidence, none at all, to believe this proposition.

what should be happening over in africa is, the minute a patient dies from ebola, the body should be cremated at temperatures known to inactivate the virus. i am 100% certain that when the bodies of the deceased are treated in certain ways, they don't go to some special "place." in fact, the only thing that happens, as far as i can tell, is that more people get ebola and the cycle is propagated.

and everyone can bet your bottoms that those people over there are deeply spiritual and deeply believe that there is something watching over them. the fact that ebola is slaughtering them in such a cruel way, no matter which version of christianity or animism or islam they subscribe, should at least hint to the conclusion that we are completely on our own.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/15/14 at 4:22pm

Um, bethnor, you do know the difference between Cambodia and Japan, yes?

I never said there is no violence among Buddhists; in fact, I believe Buddhist monks are running amok in Burma even as we write here.

I merely said the Japanese have found a way to use multiple religions peacefully.

The history of religious violence in Japan is largely intrasectional: one Buddhist temple attacks the monks from another. But those were political struggles primarily, not theological.

Updated On: 10/15/14 at 04:22 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/15/14 at 4:29pm

That hoary old "the good that religion often inspires" really does begin to crumble on inspection.

Namo, any claim crumbles when you pick and choose contrary examples.

I am by no means claiming that organized religion is the only source of morality. (In fact, often the opposite is true.)

But I have known hundreds of people for whom religious faith inspires righteous behavior and, yes, even tolerance of those with differing viewpoints.

May we move on now? I didn't sign up to play Defender of the True Faith. I don't even belong to a church and I have serious doubts that Jesus ever existed except as a metaphor.

I'm just saying that using ISIS (or Westboro Baptist) to represent ALL religion is stacking the deck.

[dreaming]

Posted: 10/16/14 at 11:18am

I agree Gaveston. I am a Christian-but a liberal one. I don't like extremists of ANY denomination-they make me very uneasy.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/16/14 at 1:42pm

In this Daily Beast interview, Bill Maher sounds off on Ben Affleck, Ebola, the Clintons, Rand Paul, and he responds to the people calling him a bigot.



DAILY BEAST: Bill Maher on the ‘Corporatist’ Clintons, His Tussle with Ben Affleck, and Drinks with Rand Paul

[dreaming]

Posted: 10/16/14 at 2:37pm

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Geez.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/16/14 at 9:35pm

I'm sorry if this sounds like waffling, but nobody asked me to frame the question in the first place.

I think calling Bill Maher a "bigot" goes too far. (Nor do I believe that's what Affleck said; I believe Affleck said a certain statement was racist, he wasn't summing up Maher or Harris.)

Bill Maher sees all religion as inherently problematic. It's just that Islam has been more dramatic of late.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/16/14 at 10:03pm

Remember when this thread was about ebola?

[bethnor]

Posted: 10/17/14 at 12:29am

Um, bethnor, you do know the difference between Cambodia and Japan, yes?

the point is irrationality is no better in the east than the west.

and actually, hirohito, the third part of the axis, actually WAS a god. before the atom bombs were dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki, the japanese were making peace overtures to the US through the soviet union. their only condition was that they be allowed to continue acknowledging hirohito as a god. so your point is just as invalid in japan, as this is yesterday in terms of human history.

But I have known hundreds of people for whom religious faith inspires righteous behavior and, yes, even tolerance of those with differing viewpoints.

this is a tired point that has been tread by the "old atheists," but claimed by apologists that the "new atheists" are putting forward. for instance, some people are going out to the ebola hotzones because their religion tells them to. medicine sans frontiers goes out there because it's the right thing to do.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/17/14 at 6:11am

Your arguments against me are making less and less logical sense, bethnor.

I never said religion in the East was more rational than in the West. I merely said the Japanese Buddhists, Christians and Shintoists have found a way to coexist and even combine religious rites from all three traditions.

And, uh, Cambodia is hardly the West, except in Ho Chi Minh City.

The Japanese lived peaceably for 500 years with their god-emperor until they acquired doctrines like capitalism and fascism from the West. Yes, they employed the emperor as a figurehead (and Hirohito himself was not as blameless as we later decided to pretend he was), but their concept of monarchy was hardly the CAUSE of anything. Even the delay in surrender you mention was caused as much by internal arguments among the emperor's aides as it was by concern over losing the emperor as head of state. There was a very real fear the emperor would be assassinated before he could announce the surrender; he actually recorded the broadcast the night before and the record was hidden in case Hirohito didn't survive the night.

So much for belief in the emperor's divinity (which is not to say the common person in Japan didn't worship him, just as the Germans "worshipped" Hitler without any religious justification whatsoever).

***

Why is it only atheists get to pick and choose their anecdotal evidence? Whenever Bill Maher talks about religion, he talks about the Crusades, 9/11 and thetans, not the Little Sisters of the Poor. In the U.S., slaveowners thought themselves righteous, but so did abolitionists.

I will never argue that religious faith is a necessary foundation for ethical behavior, no more than atheism is some sort of express train to evil. But neither is the converse true. For every jihadist, we can find a religious believer who sends humanitarian aid to Africa.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 10/17/14 at 8:17am

Remember when this thread was about ebola?

Remember when it was about Israelis and Palestinians coming together?