Why Religion Should Be Replaced: Sam Harris on The End of Faith, Danger to Society (2005)
About | Information | History | Online | Facts | Discovery
Religious criticism has a long history. It goes at least as far back as the 5th century BCE in ancient Greece with Diagoras "the atheist" of Melos, and the 1st century BCE in ancient Rome with Titus Lucretius Carus' De Rerum Natura. About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393327655/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0393327655&linkCode=as2&tag=tra0c7-20&linkId=52b13865b36448343aecc749b816b03b It continues to the present day with the advent of New Atheism, represented by authors and journalists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Alternatively, "religious criticism" has been used by the literary critic Harold Bloom to describe a mode of religious discussion that is secular but not inherently anti-religion. Criticism of religion is complicated by the fact that there exist multiple definitions and concepts of religion in different cultures and languages. Critics often consider religion to be outdated, harmful to the individual, harmful to society, an impediment to the progress of science, a source of immoral acts or customs, and a political tool for social control. Richard Dawkins argues that religious belief often involves delusional behavior. Others such as Sam Harris compares religion to mental illness, saying it "allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy." There are also psychological studies into the phenomenon of mysticism, and the links between disturbing aspects of certain mystic's experiences and their links to childhood abuse. In another line of research, Clifford A. Pickover explores evidence suggesting that temporal lobe epilepsy may be linked to a variety of spiritual or 'other worldly' experiences, such as spiritual possession, originating from altered electrical activity in the brain. Carl Sagan, in his last book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, presented his case for the miraculous sightings of religious figures in the past and the modern sightings of UFOs coming from the same mental disorder. According to Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, "It's possible that many great religious leaders had temporal lobe seizures and this predisposes them to having visions, having mystical experiences." Michael Persinger stimulated the temporal lobes of the brain artificially with a magnetic field using a device nicknamed the "God helmet," and was able to artificially induce religious experiences along with near-death experiences and ghost sightings. John Bradshaw has stated, "Some forms of temporal lobe tumours or epilepsy are associated with extreme religiosity. Recent brain imaging of devotees engaging in prayer or transcendental meditation has more precisely identified activation in such sites — God-spots, as Vilayanur Ramachandran calls them. Psilocybin from mushrooms contacts the serotonergic system, with terminals in these and other brain regions, generating a sense of cosmic unity, transcendental meaning and religious ecstasy. Certain physical rituals can generate both these feelings and corresponding serotonergic activity." Keith Ward in his book Is Religion Dangerous? addresses the claim that religious belief is a delusion. He quotes the definition in the Oxford Companion to Mind as "a fixed, idiosyncratic belief, unusual in the culture to which the person belongs," and notes that "[n]ot all false opinions are delusions." Ward then characterizes a delusion as a "clearly false opinion, especially as a symptom of a mental illness," an "irrational belief" that is "so obviously false that all reasonable people would see it as mistaken." He then says that belief in God is different, since "[m]ost great philosophers have believed in God, and they are rational people". He argues that "[a]ll that is needed to refute the claim that religious belief is a delusion is one clear example of someone who exhibits a high degree of rational ability, who functions well in the ordinary affairs of life ... and who can produce a reasonable and coherent defense of their beliefs" and claims that there are many such people, "including some of the most able philosophers and scientists in the world today." In the early 1990s, sociologist Sara Diamond[208][209] and journalist Frederick Clarkson defined dominionism as a movement that, while including Dominion Theology and Christian Reconstructionism as subsets, is much broader in scope, extending to much of the Christian Right. Beginning in 2004 with essayist Katherine Yurica, a group of authors including journalist Chris Hedges, Marion Maddox, James Rudin, Sam Harris, and the group TheocracyWatch began applying the term to a broader spectrum of people than have sociologists such as Diamond. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_religion
Comments
-
It's not "Christians against Muslims," it's Muslims against everyone. So, I agree that throwing out religion is a good idea - we need to understand more that there are rational people against irrational people.
-
Yeah, every time people have replaced religion with something else, that's gone incredibly well.
-
If a man is happy with his backyard diamond, why should he stop believing in it? The diamond may or may not be there, but his happiness is real. You can't just tell people to stop having faith in something that comforts them without giving them an equally comforting alternative. Then what? we all accept that our lives are random and meaningless and after a short time on this hellhole we will die and thats that?
-
To take from the common people, their "stories", as an age-old knowledge system ingrained somehow in humanity from the very beginning! And as the ancient Greek tragedian Euripides tried to point out, (you might heed his understandings), that between reason/logic and the emotions/feelings/fears of mankind, the winner always will be the latter.... for you and your scientist friends, this inability of yours to tread the materialistic origins of your own "opinions" (what with the successes but always changes in science & theories}, in contrast with the needs of otherworldly, emotional, cathartic, subjective, mysterious & questioning realities (Platonic notions) is as much a part of living as all the things you preach about..... I am unsure what your main motivation is... ? to wish the end of faith? to see the end of religions? Orwellian existences? we are to throw all things out which are not science or logical or based on deductive reasoning alone? the Romantics reacted to the Kantian age of enlightenment with beautiful responsive expressions of nature & feelings! as if to restate that there was, as Euripides explained, two natures to our being! BOTH can exist together, and perhaps, BOTH are necessary for developing ideas including ideas of science???? There is more than BODY; there is also SOUL... There is more than BRAIN; there is "MIND" ...for me, you guys throw the baby out with the bath water! WHY?
-
Who else drew a dot on a piece of paper and did what he said?
-
Sam Harris you are the best very true informative thank you
-
Delusional. We have a mountain of evidence that as societies reject God they become measurably less virtuous. When atheists argue that the future can be brighter without religion, they are issuing a statement of faith that can only be described as absurd. No statement is more divorced from anything resembling evidence and reason. If you deny this simple truth you are no friend of truth or man. You are an ideologue and simply want to put a shine on atheism which its adherents are not worthy of. Virtue is measurable. This is the sad truth that atheists and anti-religionists are running from. The idea that man can be good without God is an absurd statement of faith with no support whatsoever.
-
No more Christmas then. Commercialism will suffer.
-
great speech, loved it, thank you for sharing! Sam Harris is awesome!!
-
ALL RELIGION IS A SELF INFLICTED MENTAL DISORDER!
END ALL WARS! END SUFFERING!! END ALL RELIGIONS!
HUMANS ARE BEING HELD BACK FROM PROGRESS! AS LONG AS RELIGION IS ALLOWED TO INTERFERE! -
good going Sam you destroyed 90 percent foolish people who are religious
-
I think we'll replace religion today... miraculous idea SH!
-
I love Sam but after a few videos, dam does he ever write anything new?
-
Religious dogmas can call for bloody vengeance.
-
Better we have (scientific) questions we can't answer, then (religious) answers we can't question.
-
Sam Harris is a pseudo intellectual
-
By what practical method could we as a society replace the traditional religions with something more realistic and humane? Something compatible with scientific understanding and intelligence, but open to the wonder of the cosmos? It's hard to get rid of old religions without force, which creates an authoritarian atmosphere of its own that taints one's original intentions.
-
Religion without the truth is like a light bulb without electricity. With the truth, religions will be reborn, and there will be an explosion in spiritual growth. Religions will no longer be based just on blind faith. For the first time ever the unseen truth in religion is revealed, it debunks the myths and teaches the real teachings of Jesus. Google TruthContest click on the earth icon and read the Present with Religion
-
How does this guy plan to get rid of religion? Eventual gas chambers? Note also that science is mostly a changing group of theories which do not touch but upon the more mundane issues.
-
Guy talks about evidence? There is a plethora of evidence showing the US and Israeli governments involvement in 9/11 and that zionists control the media, banks, and hence the world. This guy is rightfully calling out religious people for stopping conversations, but this guy is doing the same thing when talking about Islam.
I'm an atheist, I think religion is a mental illness, but if you are a man of science and evidence, you can see clear as day that the international banking cabal has torn this world to shreds. How can you say you believe in science and that poverty doesn't breed crime? Fuck this guy. Go back to Harvard and memorize more facts which are dictated to you and keep ignoring reality and science.
0m 0sLenght
1404Rating