/lit/ - Literature

>>6488828
1. Consequentialism isn't a prescriptive way of looking at morals.
2. He hasn't, stop lying or read his shit retard.
3. Hyperbole and other fallacies.
4. Nonsense, Chomsky was the one acting like a child, considering he is like 70 Chomsky only made himself look like a retard.

https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/594369453418131456

>>6474019
The joke is that you're EMBARRASSING yourself by not recognizing her

>>6473991
>she looks pretty cute

Sam fuck off.
Just stop dude. Stop.

>>6361196
Except he had no power in Mecca you retard, he was an outcast, a schizophrenic merchant and still got people to follow him into rebelling against 99% of the Arab population.
They were living on the edge because if Mohammed's friend had died it would have been over for Muslims immediately.

>>6361178
When will this meme-philosopher leave, the Richard Dawkins of neo-/lit/ (Dawkins made some proper contributions but he's liked for petty reasons)

>>6361157
That was after he had moved to Medina and defeated the Meccans, the argument is how did Jesus accumulate such a mass-following if he didn't perform any real palpable magic?
The counter-argument is: Mohammed did the same so there must be another reason.

Also there was only one incident of Mohmamed murdering people of another tribe AFAIK, and they were Jewish men.

>>6361072
What the fuck, look into the early inception of the Islamic movement in Mecca, they were a heavily persecuted minority, only saved from getting killed off immediately because Mohammed had an influential friend at the time.
They were driven out of Mecca and were followed by Meccan Arabs all the way to Medina because they wanted to kill them.
They were jobless and bordering on extinction in Medina because they could no longer engage n the trade that sustained their survival in Mecca previously.
People sacrificed their comfortable lives to join a cult-leader that drove them out of their homelands and pissed off the rest of Arabia.

Mohammed's prophetic visions were actually well-documented, and it's very likely Mohammed actually believed to be some sort of prophet because he was schizo/epileptic.

The Islamic canon is much more believable than the Christian one, which says almost nothing.

>>6326447
"God", "immortality of the soul", "redemption", "beyond" -- Without exception, concepts to which I have never devoted any attention, or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them?
I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: It is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers - at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!

>>6236736
Hedonism =/= Epicureanism

>>6095470
I'm quite confident the guy who attacked me and made the assumption that I'm a hypocrite for attacking female genital mutilation while approving of male circumcision is a Muslim, yes.
With this guy, I'm not so sure.

>>6095460
Explain it, stop throwing around random shit without actually addressing anything with intellectually sound arguments.
You keep doing this with your low-case typing, be an intellectual Muslim and defend your case.

>>6095456
Sacrifice in this context is dying to protect others, see you have provided an explanation for this type of behaviour.
Find me an explanation for people running into cities and blowing themselves up and killing large groups of innocents, what agency is there if not a religious one?

You are simply not providing any arguments here, the reason why suicide bombing occurs in Islam is because Islam specifically talks about Martyrdom, it is the religion of the death cult.

Islam teaches you that you will receive divine reward, your 70 something virgins if you die in the name of Allah.
I can't understand why this concept is difficult to understand.

>>6095390
>Why? Why can bad things done by Muslims ONLY be rooted in their faith? This is the idiocy that lies at the core of Harris's take on religion.
Because what they are doing happens in accordance with what their religion dictates, again, there is no other possible explanation for suicide bombing, no man would willingly kill himself and others if he didn't believe he will receive divine reward if he does so.
No man would want to kill another man for leaving his religion if he didn't believe in divine reward and that what he's doing is the correct thing.

I ask you again, what other motivation can there be if not a religious one?

>>6095390
First of all, when I say "Muslims" or "Islams" clearly I'm not making a 100% generalization, this should be obvious but you you seem to be thinking that I actually tried to say this.
>Why do people who have obviously never studied Islam or its history (e.g., you, Harris...) feel like they can make sweeping claims like this?
When has Islam experienced a dissection and questioning of the Quran, and eventual acceptance of the fact that it was man-written, like it has happened with Judaism and Christianity?

>Define 'violence',
The everyday understanding of inflicting physical harm upon others.

> define 'Islamic societies'
Islamic nations and Islamic communities in Western nations.

>prove that more violence exists in Islamic societies
I have to reword this, Islam is more approving of violence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01/64-percent-of-muslims-in-egypt-and-pakistan-support-the-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam/
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/egypt-worst-arab-state-for-women-poll-shows.aspx?pageID=238&nID=57813&NewsCatID=359
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/

Hitchens worded this well: The suicide bombing and Apostate killing community is almost exclusively an Islamic one.

>and prove that this is solely or primarily because of 'Islam.'
What other cause could there be?
Islam permits these acts of violence, Mohammed himself has engaged in these acts, which makes the probability incredibly high that this is the fault of Islam.
What other political context could explain these things?
What non-religious reason could justify the murder of homosexuals and people who left Islam?

>This has only been associated with Muslim groups for the past several decades
The Islamic issue of today is Sam Harris' major concern.

>There is no command in the Qur'an to 'conquer the world.'
Yes there absolutely is.
>61:9 It is He Who has sent His Messenger forth with the guidance and the religion of truth, to make it triumph over every religion, even though the idolaters may be averse. (An Interpretation of the Quran, New York: NYUP, 2004

There is no doubt that Mohammed himself was an imperialist warlord.

>Appending 'sex' to 'slaves' is deliberately misleading and plays into a long tradition of attempting to shit on Muslims by portraying them as lecherous.

Again, the Quran approaches this.

>Qur'an (23:5-6) - "..who abstain from sex, except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess..."
>Qur'an (4:24) - "And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess."

>>6095384
>reaction image counter-argument
I am amazed that /lit/ harbors Muslims like this, I am seriously amazed at this.

>>6095362
> it's the specific practice and manifestation of Islam that we see in these cultures.
Based on the superficial meanings extracted from Islam.
I can only urge you to read the Quran and about Mohammed.
Mohammed is the supposed role-model in Islam, he's not only the Messenger of Allah but also the prime example of a good Muslim according to Islam.
And the facts about Mohammed are that he murdered non-believers, apostates, had sex-slaves and took the virginity of a nine year-old girl.

The assumption that every Abrahamic religion is equal in 'quality' or in violent content is laughable, not only does this claim fall apart once you actually read into this subject, on a probability basis it already sounds ridiculous.

And again, and again and again, I do believe that Islam is much more violent than Christianity in general, but this ultimately does not matter.
The issue is that Islam is violent -today-, at a time where we absolutely cannot have religious extremists roaming this world when it's possible for a single man to potentially murder thousands of people on his own.

>>6095372
>Slaves like you bash FGM but are completely fine with circumcision because it happens to appear in your holy book as well.
I'm an Atheist, you have not provided a singular argument against anything I have said.
It is forbidden to dissect the Quran like it has happened with the Bible.
You simply cannot refute the things I say, because I'm rarely making value judgments, I'm posting absolute facts such as poll results and if you wish I could also post Quran verses with would clarify things for you.
This isn't my opinion, these are literal facts.

I can't believe Muslims like you actually browse /lit/.

>>6095300
Did you read the rest of my post?
This coupled with the fact that Islam is inherently violent is the reason why we find such extreme manifestations of evil in Islamic communities.

Do I really have to post Quran verses like some asshole?

>>6095305
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery

>"you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets...You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?"
>—Matthew 23:31-33

These aren't problematic at all though because Christianity has moved on a long time ago.

>>6095278
You greatly misunderstand Sam Harris' aim, he's calling for a reformation in Islam, Sam Harris almost never focuses on what the Quran says or what Mohammed says, Sam Harris focuses on what is happening in the Islamic world, and why it's happening (this is where he will talk about the Quran or Mohammed's teachings).

Sam Harris always mentions poll-statistics that show what Muslims actually believe, and they do believe insane things which can only be rooted in their faith.
What political context drives people to supporting the mutilation of female genitalia or the murdering of apostates?

>>6095265
>>6095278
>The idea that the text of any scripture is constitutive or determining for any culture frankly just seems prima-facie ludicrous.
How so?
Islam hasn't gone through an enlightened period of exigesis and dissecting the Bible like Christianity, or even the Jews went through, in many ways a large portion of Muslims still view it as a literal understanding of God's words.
>So I have a hard time taking that argument seriously. Similarly, I have a hard time taking seriously the argument that because a given Islamic society is violent, Islam as such is necessarily violent.
You have your causal relations mixed up, Islam is violent, and for that reason Islamic societies and communities tend to be more violent, I have to ask: Have you ever even read the Quran, or the Hadith?

>I mean, if you go back to European society between 1618 and 1648, I don't think it would have been hard to construct a parallel argument about Christianity.
Sam Harris is also a great opponent of Christianity, however the Christian scriptures contain much less violence than the Islamic ones.
Jesus is a pacifist hippie after all, Mohammed was a warlord who kept sex-slaves and advocated murder, there is a great asymmetry in dogma that you cannot equate so easily just because Christianity had its dark times.
Sam Harris responds to this in this way: We don't have centuries to wait out until Islam fixes itself, especially not in our current times when technology has made it possible for the single person to inflict greater damage than ever.

There are passages in the canon of Christianity that justify for example slavery and anti-semitism, however in terms of frequency, Islam contains more violence, not only in their scriptures but also in their real-life manifestations of their doctrines.

To be sincere, you sound incredibly ignorant and naive, the very first sentence of your post is so incredibly baffling, you do not understand the extend to which Muslims obey to their religion.
Let me say this again: There is no other community than the Muslim community, which advocates the murder of Apostates to this extend, which has suicide bombers or practices female genital mutilation.

You simply do not find this level of evil in any other religious community, the Quran is the imperative that calls for the conquering of the world, to consume everything in the name of Allah.

Neither Judaism nor Christianity demand the same thing in their current translations of actions.

I'm going to go so far and call you an evil person for tip-toeing around this issue so much and defending Islam, when there are clear and absolutely palpable issues with this religion, which you are blindly defending because of sheer ignorance and naivety.
People are getting murdered, raped, mutilated and you are not contributing at all to changing this.

>>6095228
Sam Harris' claims on Islam are that it's inherently more violent than other Abrahamic religions, and that the Muslim community is also much readier to engage in violence acts because of this violence-approving scripture, and also because Mohammed himself was an advocate of violence, such as murder and rape.
He cites verses from the Quran and the Hadith to back his argument, aswell as statistics that show that +70% of Egyptians believe that Apostates deserve to be killed and so on.

I think his construct of arguments is really solid when it comes to Islam.

>>6095215
Because I said 'fuck'? That massively increased the level of anger in my post?
I think that's not true.

>>6095200
It's funny because you made the same kind of post prior to mine.