Amazing new speech by Sam Harris about death and consciousness (translation, after life)
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I was specific and there really is no escape route for the major blunder pointed out... Can be more specific, no problem.
My comment...His whole message is when you pass on, there is zero. So what could anything be, however, about zero.
was referring to the opinion in the quote I was speaking to.
Ok so I will go back to the clip and pull out quotes from Harris and provide a time marker. That clip was a 3 move check-mate.
That is all you got from this speech? As I said, it seems like you only watched the first and last 5 minutes of the video because he barely talks about what happens after death. On the contrary, almost the entire speech is about living in the present moment.
You still haven't mentioned a single thing that Sam Harris specifically said that you disagree with, let alone provide any reasons for why you disagree with him.
That is all you got from this speech? As I said, it seems like you only watched the first and last 5 minutes of the video because he barely talks about what happens after death. On the contrary, almost the entire speech is about living in the present moment.
You still haven't mentioned a single thing that Sam Harris specifically said that you disagree with, let alone provide any reasons for why you disagree with him.
Get to the point and stop hijacking this thread.
I'm posting on the go and mentioned earlier that I have things to do and will get a post in prob by tom morning when I saw the next clip introduced....thats why I'm posting this now, to let you know.... plus I watched the whole clip.
Not sure I understand the objections to the video. Mainly because they are unsubstantiated and vague I guess. Though the fact that they are being written by someone who clearly does not have English as a first language is not helping either and I am having more than a little trouble parsing the posts. The inclusion of pointless language like "Reverend" in those posts does little more than to leave the reader suspecting a troll rather than a genuine user interested in discourse.
To me the video itself seems to be made up of three main parts.
The first is quite simple. It is pointing out the role of death, and peoples fears and impressions of it, in fueling the propagation of religious belief. I have little disagreement with that per se, though Sam's claim here is that most, if not everything, related to religion is reducible to that. I would not go that far as I think the motivations behind religious belief are more numerous that that one basis.
The second appears to be Sam suggesting that if Atheism ever wants to be a real force in the world it has to address the idea of replacing SOME (but not all) of the things religion gives us as a species. A coping mechanism for death for one. Religion also gives humans a narrative in life and we as a species do seem to require/desire that and atheism has no firm replacements for it.
The third then is an exploration of some Meditation techniques as a tool for promoting human well being... as well as going some way to helping replace some of the things mentioned in "part two" above. Many people have indeed come out of various forms of meditation and contemplation espousing all kinds of levels of well being and ethical intuitions which are very interesting and further exploration of the topic is indeed warranted and interesting.
Broken down into those three areas I am not seeing where the objection to the talk is. All he is really saying is that there are certain consolations offered in religion that do not often have secular equivalents and atheism specifically, but our species generally, would do well to explore and develop further some of the possible equivalents on offer.
To be fair, I don't know how I would've handled that question differently. The woman points out that ever since she became an atheist, she is more upset with the loss of life due to deliberate actions of others because she no can longer rationalise this as something that was just 'meant to be'. What can you say to that? I agree with Sam Harris that the only way to deal with this kind of suffering is to not get lost in this train of thought but to train your mind to stay connected to the present, no matter how difficult this is when something horrible happens to you or to someone you love. What else can you do?
How would you have answered that question?
That she should put her cognitive dissonance to good use and do something meaningful to stop evil in this world without becoming a meaningless hobo as the Buddhists suggest. She should befriend the evil doers and be the path they must take to appreciate good. The way to deal with the problem is definitely NOT to make our country one full of self-indulgent lazy scared hobos that do nothing to help their neighbors or children. Detaching oneself is the most demonic thing to do. Instead of training your mind to disconnect from a solvable problem, you should train it to NEVER GIVE UP and to actually be able to solve problems. The problem is obviously her meaningless over-reaction. She should have been told this straight up.
1)Philosopher Sam Harris believes the reason people believe in God is because they are afraid of death. He makes this very clear in the first 5 minutes in OP clip.
He also suggests that people think, if they do the right thing following a God belief, there is no reasonable likelihood for the expected outcomes to happen.
I'd say people have a god-belief because they allow for a comprehension of a Higher Power, a creator.
A marked focus in a supreme being, who is in dominion of our known reality.
People get married, initiate their babies into life, cross youth into adulthood sharing with God in the belief.
Happenings and outcomes the believer has no control over, are also shared by letting go & giving it to God, in his presence, in what would be possible.
People are tougher then what Sam Harris is suggesting.
Man has a bottle of courage, it is given in our endowment of infinity which allows for our thought process to begin, as mentioned briefly in earlier post...we are born with it. Man is inherently courageous and enjoys understanding this value. Theater, appreciation in community hero's..Man has an endless appetite for realizing and noticing this bottle of courage built into our beings.
So my point in opinion is people have more courage then what they may think in an experience which makes reference, to this subject of death.
Loss which Sam Harris talks about later, is another aspect in this subject.
The idea of fear connected to death is not the reason that people believe in God. The reality of an afterlife is either true, or it is not true. What is believed throughout the life journey cannot effect the outcome in this question, at least from a workable premise for reasonable progress in a discussion.
People believe in God because its natural in all manor of life experience. If Sam Harris can show belief in God is un-natural in all manor of life experience, then perhaps he can begin to try and make a point with respects to his theme in fear, which is administered in an un-natural morbid way by absolute concede to fear....regardless of disposition in faith or otherwise..... Until then, in my estimation no rational point is possible.
Last edited by stargazzer; 07-04-2012 at 08:18 AM..
It is something of a gross misrepresentation to reduce the entire speech to thinking that Harris was saying people believe in god only because of a fear of death. If that is all one gets from the speech then the point has been missed entirely.
More accurately what Harris is saying is that the subject of Death itself, not just fear of it, is at the base of much, if not all, of the reasons people think there is a god. That is a massively different thing to the straw man above. This is not limited to fear of death, but includes consolation related to the deaths of others and also very much includes how the fact of death defines the boundaries and meaning of our lives.
It is a very easy thing to do to distill an entire speech down into a massive over simplification and then debunk that simplification, but it is not useful to do so.
Even then the simplified debunking of a simplified speech turns out also to be false. the counter claim leveled against the straw man is "The idea of fear connected to death is not the reason that people believe in a God.". This claim simply is not true for all cases.
There are a host of reasons for thinking there is a god. Each believer can be a result of any combination of any one or more of these. Fear of Death very much is one of them. But there are many others. Wishful thinking, Confirmation bias, Narrative Need, Hyperactive Agency detection, The Intentional Stance, simple ignorance, Childhood indoctrination.... the list goes on and each individual will be different as to which ones fit to them.
I see nothing natural, directly anyway, for a belief in god. More accurately I find belief in god to be the by product result of things that are natural. Natural or not however the fact still remains that at this time it appears such a belief is not just slightly, but ENTIRELY baseless and unsubstantiated.
It is something of a gross misrepresentation to reduce the entire speech to thinking that Harris was saying people believe in god only because of a fear of death. If that is all one gets from the speech then the point has been missed entirely.
More accurately what Harris is saying is that the subject of Death itself, not just fear of it, is at the base of much, if not all, of the reasons people think there is a god. That is a massively different thing to the straw man above. This is not limited to fear of death, but includes consolation related to the deaths of others and also very much includes how the fact of death defines the boundaries and meaning of our lives.
It is a very easy thing to do to distill an entire speech down into a massive over simplification and then debunk that simplification, but it is not useful to do so.
Even then the simplified debunking of a simplified speech turns out also to be false. the counter claim leveled against the straw man is "The idea of fear connected to death is not the reason that people believe in a God.". This claim simply is not true for all cases.
There are a host of reasons for thinking there is a god. Each believer can be a result of any combination of any one or more of these. Fear of Death very much is one of them. But there are many others. Wishful thinking, Confirmation bias, Narrative Need, Hyperactive Agency detection, The Intentional Stance, simple ignorance, Childhood indoctrination.... the list goes on and each individual will be different as to which ones fit to them.
I see nothing natural, directly anyway, for a belief in god. More accurately I find belief in god to be the by product result of things that are natural. Natural or not however the fact still remains that at this time it appears such a belief is not just slightly, but ENTIRELY baseless and unsubstantiated.
This is only part 1 as mentioned in the first sentence. Tonight or tom morning I will continue. Quickly looking at your comment....To say belief in God is un-natural contradicts what man, well in the majority has been doing for 25,000 yrs.... moreover notice in this fact is framed in attention to his complaint re fear...
Last edited by stargazzer; 07-04-2012 at 07:56 AM..
You are welcome to ignore (run away from) anything you like. Not my concern.
Again however you have distilled my entire post... just as you did with Sam Harris' speech... into something that is not actually being said. As Sam Harris once said about William Craig Lane "He has an amazing ability to summarise your points in a way that leaves them entirely different to what you actually said". To do so you had to totally ignore words like "directly anyway" and "more accurately" in my writing. If you are not going to reply to what people actually said, I wonder why you post at all. Though perhaps much of this has to do with the obvious fact English is not your first language. Maybe you simply misunderstand much.
What I am not saying is that it is natural or unnatural per se but that it is probably a by product of other things that ARE natural.
Take the common cold for example. We have been catching it for much longer than we have been doing religion. That does not make it directly natural to being human however. More accurately the virus has evolved to take advantage of aspects of the human condition to further it's own survival. Catching the cold is not directly natural for us but is therefore something that is a natural by product of being human. By product is the important term here, I repeat, lest your next summary deliberately leave out the key words as your usual ones tend to.
Similarly "natural" is not measured by how long we have been doing something. So "25,000 yrs" is entirely irrelevant. There are things that ARE natural to our species, such as agency detection and the intentional stance and much more and our religions are a by product of that and take advantage of that to perpetuate themselves and survive.
And finally, as noted, whether it is natural or unnatural, 25,000 years old or 250,000, this does not change the fact that it is still unsubstantiated nonsense with no reason to think any of it true.
You are welcome to ignore (run away from) anything you like. Not my concern.
Again however you have distilled my entire post... just as you did with Sam Harris' speech... into something that is not actually being said. As Sam Harris once said about William Craig Lane "He has an amazing ability to summarise your points in a way that leaves them entirely different to what you actually said". To do so you had to totally ignore words like "directly anyway" and "more accurately" in my writing. If you are not going to reply to what people actually said, I wonder why you post at all. Though perhaps much of this has to do with the obvious fact English is not your first language. Maybe you simply misunderstand much.
What I am not saying is that it is natural or unnatural per se but that it is probably a by product of other things that ARE natural.
Take the common cold for example. We have been catching it for much longer than we have been doing religion. That does not make it directly natural to being human however. More accurately the virus has evolved to take advantage of aspects of the human condition to further it's own survival. Catching the cold is not directly natural for us but is therefore something that is a natural by product of being human. By product is the important term here, I repeat, lest your next summary deliberately leave out the key words as your usual ones tend to.
Similarly "natural" is not measured by how long we have been doing something. So "25,000 yrs" is entirely irrelevant. There are things that ARE natural to our species, such as agency detection and the intentional stance and much more and our religions are a by product of that and take advantage of that to perpetuate themselves and survive.
And finally, as noted, whether it is natural or unnatural, 25,000 years old or 250,000, this does not change the fact that it is still unsubstantiated nonsense with no reason to think any of it true.
Do you not know what Part 1 means..?
Well the cold analogy...what can I say Nozz? If fighting a virus is not natural to human existence what the heck is?..
Another meaningless one liner answer then. Expected as much.
Again I never said it is not natural to human existence. I never said it in post #26. I never said it in post #28. I explained at length in #28 how I never said it in #26. And yet here you are still acting like I said it.
I am now unsure whether you are just trolling, straw manning, or simply do not understand what I am saying.
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As I said, it seems like you only watched the first and last 5 minutes of the video because he barely talks about what happens after death. On the contrary, almost the entire speech is about living in the present moment. 
