Bill Maher and Sam Harris arguing with Ben Affleck about Islam

I had never actually heard of it before.

 

The actual full quote is:

BETHANY: Norman Fisher, a Zen teacher, wrote this in a recent issue of The Sun: “It seems to
me, there is a human need for religious expression and practice. For me, religion is not
something that is imposed from the outside. It comes from within. A natural outgrowth of our
human nature.” What you think about this idea of religion being a natural outgrowth of our
human nature?

SAM HARRIS: Well, I think that is almost certainly true. But everything we’re doing is a
natural outgrowth of human nature. Genocide is. Rape is. That’s not an argument for the
normativity of any particular expression of human nature. And even if you had a detailed story
about all of the essential purposes religion has served over the years, even if we admitted that for
50,000 years, we just would not have survived, say, without believing in a creator God, that, in
and of itself, does not suggest that it’s a good thing to believe in a creator God now, in the 21st
century, with a world that has been shattered into separate moral communities on the basis of
religious ideas. One example I occasionally use is the phenomenon of rape. There’s no question
that rape is a natural propensity of primates. Not even just primates. And there’s no question
that it has served an evolutionary function. I mean, you can easily tell a story as to why a species
that occasionally practices rape is reproduced more than one that doesn’t. But that no one will
even think of arguing that this makes rape an essential feature of a civil society, and therefore we
should tolerate it.

BETHANY: How rape would rape be evolutionary benefit?

SAM HARRIS: Well, it’s just that you would think that men, over the eons, who have been
aggressive enough to occasionally rape women, will have more successfully gotten their genes
into the next generation. So, whatever genes that may underwrite rape, will have been selected
for in that kind of environment. If you look at it among chimpanzees or orangutans, it’s a
strategy for simply just getting your genes to survive. But it’s one of the more abhorrent
practices in a civilized society. And we’re wise to do everything we can to prevent it. But I
think that also central to [Norman Fisher’s] quote is this idea that religion is the receptacle, in
some sense, of really good and ennobling and well-being-promoting features of our psychology.
And I would agree with that. At least, religion has traditionally been the only area in which
people talk about contemplative experience, and ethics. And I do think contemplative
experience and ethics are absolutely essential to human happiness. I just think we have to now
speak about them without endorsing any divisive mythology.

BETHANY: The rape analogy is pretty inflammatory. Is that intentional? Are you making an
analogy between organized religion and rape?

SAM HARRIS: Well, I can even be more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic
wand and get rid of rape, or get rid of religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion. That’s
how bad I think religion is. I think more people are dying, and will die, as a result of our 2
religious myths, than as a result of any other ideology that I can think of. I think it is the most
dangerous thing we are doing. Not to say that it’s the only dangerous thing we’re doing. I
would not say that all human conflict is born of religion, or religious differences. But the way in
which the human community is necessarily fractured on the basis of religious doctrines, these
doctrines that are just fundamentally incompatible, in an age where the most dangerous weapons
are proliferating, and are bound to proliferate, is a very scary scenario. And I don’t think we’re
serving ourselves in the developed world, and I don’t know we’re serving people elsewhere, to
indulge this kind of political correctness, which suggests that really, our religions are
fundamentally benign and not fundamentally divisive.

http://www.isthismychair.com/CompleteSamHarris.pdf

 

You should read the full quote. But I suspect it will fly right over your head, like pretty much...everything.

 

I edited the post to add the actual full quote. As I said, I do not expect you to understand it.

 

Yeah, seems that way. As I said, having read enough of your posts over the years, I didn't expect you to understand what he is saying anyway.

One can agree or disagree whether his choice of using that example to make his point is wise (I don't think so), but it is pretty obvious you would be intellectually incapable of even understanding it to a degree where you could address his argument.

 

I actually bolded it for you.

Maybe you should just stick to falsely predicting who will show to the world next that he is on Durant's level.

You have been embarrassing yourself for years on this BBS.

 

You are grasping at straws. You are mentioning isolated incidents of some Yazidis in 2007 and a crazy Tea Party guy saying something, as if that means anything. There is a huge difference between that and the majority of Muslims in three countries with a combined population of 300 million supporting (and, in fact, doing it) stoning as an accepted method of capital punishment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajm

Guess what all these countries have in common. Yep, Islam. Your desperate googling of isolated incidents of other individuals having supported the practice in 2007 doesn't measure up.

No, that certainly sounds like you being an idiot once again. Because of one lunatic Tea Party idiot and because of some Yazidis in 2007, you want to compare that to 12 Muslim countries (there are no non-Muslim countries where it is an accepted form of legal punishment). In Pakistan - where Islam is the state religion - people are in fact stoned all the time.

"Ironically", what are you trying to tell us? It's okay because it "is only a few countries"? Fact: Subjugation of women is worse in the Muslim world than anywhere else, on average.

It doesn't take much intellectual effort to school you. It never has.