Excellent talk. It annoys me to no end how the media is beating up on Sam right now. He's literally THE most lucid, intelligent, rational, AND ethically-minded public personality I can think of right now. And.............he's being called out as a *_bigot??_* What?? That makes me lose a tremendous amount of "faith" in public discourse...and the world at large. If _this_ guy is a bigot, then religious people are sociopaths. Is that really what they're willing to concede?
The most rational and ethically-minded person who doesn't morally condemn the Iraq war or Israel policy. It is good that his more problematic tirade is brought out to scrutiny, so the debate can form the needed depth that's been lacking.
yeah, I agree. It's brave to stake claims and arguments in public, knowing that 50% of the time people will hate you, disagree, ridicule. Aslan and others should respect that he talks out on important issues. He's a truth seeker and should not be dismissed as "unsophisticated".
It's not anything against Harris, even nobodies like me get called Bigots for speaking honestly about what the Quran says, which is all Harris is really doing.
***** It's not only frustrating but there is nothing you can do about it. If I where to say to someone "My name is cal" and they said"You just said your name is Steven, blaaaaaaaaaa" there is nothing you can do to reason with a mind like that but when you have a following like Harris does, you have to address every single stupid thing that people say about you.
***** So have I but it's so important that we talk about bad ideas in an honest and open way that it seems that we are just gonna have to take a deep breath and suck it up. It's for the greater good.
I love how, once the heckler who interrupted him toward the end of the video finally shut up, Sam just resumed answering the question completely unfazed.
Yeah, Sam's unflappable. It's clearly genetic, 'cause I wanna backhand all the idiots without hesitation, but he somehow caught the unflappable gene and just carries on. Such a spokesman, unequaled in my opinion. If we have to put up with FOX News, why not an Aheist TV station, with Atheist perspectives, discussion, and takes on world events from an atheist view??? Now THAT I'll sign up for faster than Showtime or HBO...
B Miller Sounds good to get rid of the bible thumpers. While they're heavyweights in the bullshit standings ... there's plenty of atheist contenders wearing nappyies round their chin in the world too.
At 36:00 Sam gives important personal advice on love, relationships and general well-being. I found this immensely valuable. "I think there is something more fundamental than love. Love is necessary, it's one of the best things you can have appear in consciousness, and is the foundation of any important relationship. But the reality is you're going to lose everyone you love. And there are many moments in life where they're not there in the room. What you have is consciousness first. And if your well-being is predicated on having the people you love near you and healthy; you are as vulnerable as you can possibly be in this world. Now, I'm not holding up as some value being totally invulnerable to grief and bereavement, which is surely coming, and has come for many of us. But the reality is we're alone in some fundamental sense even when we're with others."
Can we invite Sam to M.I.T. next time, where we could expect the microphones might work properly? Why does Harvard bother to construct such an insightful interview with Sam Harris and so horribly fuck it up with poor audio? I hope the soundman was drawn and quartered.
Yeah, the sound is killing me too. They both have mics. What they should have done is to record the audio from the mixer's line out. All you need is a cable.
Didn't notice problems with the audio. The video, especially at the beginning, was distracting though. Was the "artifacting" from the source video or is is something that happened after the upload?
Man....not only is the audio terrible(I literally can't hear 20% of what Sam...or the audience questioners...are saying) but there's a noticeable lag between the audio and video. You'd think the good folks at Harvard would nail down such problems before releasing something. Guess not. :/ Annoyance aside, great talk.
Don't blame the mic's; it's the room acoustics - obviously not suitable for speech although fine for music. A modest amount of properly located sound absorbing material should absolve the mic's.
No, it is not room acoustics, it is incompetence. The mic is fine, just turned off and the only sound pickup is from the camera position. You can tell based on the delay of initial sound 30-40ms later than the visuals. From 30-40 feet away, any sound is going to be a mix of reflected, multipath early reflections, the small amount of direct sound, and the reverberant field decay, all combining to make it a poor recording job, when he had a mic on that would have been in-sync and 80-90% direct if it had just been turned on.
Stan Jacox Hey Stan, I believe you're right. This seems to be a common problem with "community TV" broadcasts. There is no effort to properly combine sound from mic's on or close to the speakers with the video. The video mic obviously only picks up mostly reverberant sound. If the room had been overly reverberant, which I assumed initially, the speech sounds picked up by the video camera mic would not have been as intelligible as it is. Thanks for your clear explanation.
Sadly the sound quality is very poor. I have fiddled with my graphic equaliser and plugged in an external amplifier and speakers but I can't make it worth listening to. Shame the organisers paid no attention to the audience member who complained about the sound.
Having gone to a prestigious university, students there are used to being told that their ideas are original/fabulous, so they tend to voice them more often, even when inappropriate.
I have no idea, I had a hard time hearing what the man said. All I know is someone got very upset at just the idea of criticizing capitalism, which makes absolute sense at Harvard.
It's a very common thing in the most prestigious universities. Same at Oxford and Cambridge. Interrupting is generally more acceptable. It only works when you know there's a kind of minimum barrier of entry so you don't waste your time answering incoherent nonsense.
Happiness is not love. Happiness is any level of positive interest. Love is a high level of interest + any level of happiness. They are not synonyms. It is possible to be happy with something that you do not love, but it is not possible to love something that you are not at least somewhat happy with. This shows that they exist separately.
I had a thought while you were meditating. When religious people pray, they are thinking about all the stress that they wish to be removed. ex: please let my cancer screening be negative. please allow my daughter to deliver the baby safely, etc.. Instead of clearing the mind of stress and all worldly things, they are filling their minds with it. How can the religious prayers ever find peace or overcome paranoia? Just a thought...
A really nice freestyled guitar session will get me lost in thought as Harris explains. I thought it felt like meditation. I am going to try this meditation practice, and see how I do with it.
Thanks, Sam. Yes, we are still uncomfortable with the transcendence experience. My mind still adjusts itself with our given language to "justify" it, to make it OK. in our 'social context.
Spirit for me means mood that naturally follows your state of mind. Meditation takes training and practice. I consider the many miles I ran on nature trails (without headphones) (or the distraction of a god reading my every thought) to be a form of meditation that always improved my mood even towards a sibling that pissed me off before the run. Religious people won't understand that kind of freedom.
The host grossly overestimates the effect Japanese kamikaze pilots had during WW2. It was an action born out or desperation toward the end of the war and the amount of death and destruction from it was insignificant in comparison to when they were functioning better as a military might earlier in the war. Millions of people did not die by kamikaze's, not even close.
Very true, sometimes even when my eyes are close. I can visually see my surrounding as thou my eyes are still open. As if sound and concentration is giving me a transparent body.
I admit that activities like in 18:19 can have a positive impact on a human and his or her perception. It can potentially be beneficial for people with anger management issues. Still I remain very skeptical about such activities being useful on average for the populous as a whole. It is more of specialized case scenario.
Spirituality without religion is close to being an oxymoron...I hate how Sam pretends he is bringing something new and interesting to the table, when all of what he is saying is basically a rehashed mix of 19th century atheism/spiritualism, both of which were popular around that time, and the post 60s psychedelic movement, a la Mckenna, Watts, Leary, for fucks sake even Joe Rogan has been saying that shit forever, except he does it for free and sounds alot less condescending about it, and its much less militant and more openminded
A religion is a corrupted and mutilated interpretation of spirituality. And many voices spread the message. And your perception of Sam's intentions is not based on observable evidence.
Spirituality, in most people's understanding, is word used to describe a state of mind. It describes a feeling of being part of something that is bigger than oneself, of experiencing something not part of one's everyday reality. Harris is saying that a belief in organized religion is unnecessary in achieving this state of consciousness. All humans experience spirituality, it is one of the qualities that bind us together. In contrast, many of the organized religions turn spirituality into a contest, and a tool for social control
Edwar3505 That's all theoretically obvious, and has been said many times in different forms in history since the ancient Greeks, in fact its almost verbatim plagiarized from Buddhist philosophy. I could swear the hippies and the new-age 60s movement said the same thing. What you seem to miss, is that all of those who said the same thing and pretended to rebel, ended up organizing and forming some new form of religion. Albeit ,under new names and sexier slogans, yet all they prove is that religious experience in itself is ineradicable.... corruption of these new systems is just a manifestation of human nature, not an inherent quality in religion itself, after all anything can be corrupted
ElectricQualia Your counter argument is a real mess, dont have time to sift through all that. But to say that the "religious experience in itself is ineradicable" now thats just wishful thinking. While many desperately cling to these ancient ideologies, in reality, the non-religious demographic is the fastest growing worldwide. organized religion is in its death throes, thats why followers are becoming so desperate and aggressive
not so much a comment as an observation :is it just me or is practically any discussion or forum I watch or listen to seems to be always with terrible audio feed-which challenges my sustained interest no matter how interesting the talk 'could' be ? Also the 'meditation' class at the beginning -so boring and unnecessary-lots of better videos on this stuff - inconsistent with what Sam is.. a closet monk? Ironic that such a person attempts to get metaphysical-he would deny that perhaps but he is just sneaky about it-that's all-this is simply learning to focus that's all-mother giving a child a puzzle or building blocks -this is just basic stuff taught in a diversionary angle imho
Got sound kind of acceptable, well it's giving me less of a headache now. Cut 500Hz, 1k, 4k, 8k 16k. Boost 32Hz, 64, 125, 250, 2k. 500Hz echo 1k echo 4k echo and hiss 8k hiss 16k no difference, speakers are crap and I am probably too old anyway:-)
Historical contextual reference needs to be made in religions: the writings are always a process of interpretation based in the context of older ideological constructs that must give way to newer information in a reality of human understanding that becomes better articulated and supported as we see ourselves more clearly in the context of what naturally exists and the faith we forge that is relevant to our current time, having let perish the old and given birth to the new in our cycles of renewal and redefinition. Ignorance should never be the personage of any imagined god. Spiritually, we must transition into the intellectually proven, the better representation and projection of ourselves-awareness, or we will devour each-other until once alone the ‘self’ starves on one’s own misconceptions i.e. climate change, war, disease, and hunger. Religious faiths have to recognize its having been blind to complete truth, and it has to recognize that without observation ignorance knows less about god. (Be god nature, life, reality, love, patriarchy or humanity) truth is our best revelation of the decisions to be made. Meditation may help with processing, but education is the foundation of any processing worth devoting time to. Many declare there are perfect gods to perfect their own persuasion, and more, yet, declare their gods almighty to empower themselves over others. Their faith is an expression of themselves, whether they are kind, or violent, god is a delusional expression of their own will, an expression of which should end before the encroachment of other’s collective and/or personal non-harming free-expression of the knowledge they possess. Religions have to start being a mutually respecting entity or be treated as a pathological social-predator inspiring human self-destruction if, in fact, that is not to be our true natural expression of our past carried into the future. Perhaps to survive, we must freely educate the people whom our knowledge, like religion, grants us power over if we are to achieve a society capable of more than the education they receive at the submission to others, who also prey on ignorance, one in mass, the other in class. We should not be like a doctor vainly musing over a sick patient until both die of the infection of ignorance. For this reason, I thank everyone here, like Sam Harris, who makes current knowledge available to the those who are without its psychosocial (spiritual) nutrition and who are also, like me, in need of a better educational program than pervasive sociologically influenza traditions that are normative in blind faith. Gods may be something yet to be discovered, but are always the limited expression of what is or was known. Lets kill ill founded ideas, not people, unless in defense of humanity against the poison that is equally our own collective misconceived thinking---remembering, we are each and all an expression of the ideas that we possess and are the internal drive to bring those ideas to their own-logical conclusion as we seek to find the one reality that is truth and that which we collectively hunt in our uniquely complex predation.
This is quite sloppy thinking. #1 If you define humanism as "good atheism", then you might as well just call this whole thing "good atheism"; using the word "humanism", in this scenario, conveys no meaning whatsoever, other than it's good branding/PR. #2 If you define humanism as whatever "specific conception of being good based on reason, science, and XYZ", then great, you've made a specific, meaningful proposition (one that can be affirmed/falsified), and it makes sense to use the word. But if this is what you mean by humanism, then it's certainly true that we can say that some religious persons are humanistic (have a mode that emphasizes inquiry, reason, science) while other religious persons are not humanistic (have a mode that emphasizes experience, acting on instinct, intuiting the right thing, etc.). That's a useful meaning to give to a word (i.e., the word that is "humanism"), because it lets you make distinctions. The problem is, that if you define humanism in this specific way, then the word humanism no longer mutually excludes religion, which is precisely the kind of distinction atheists would care to make. So what this person does is take definition #1, because while it's intellectually sloppy and is basically a tautology with respect to "good atheism", it makes atheists feel good, creates good PR, and allows for some of that fun ingroup vs outgroup psychological pleasure (i.e., lets us set group boundaries of some kind). And most importantly, enough people will get confused over the vagueness of the word humanism such that you can always deploy it in whatever way is conversationally advantage in the moment, i.e., you can give it a bit of flavor of definition #2, then switch back to definition #1, then switch back again to definition #2, and of course, in this 2023 era of "short attention span / youtube / tiktok", the people who notice usually won't care enough to point it out, and those who don't notice, don't notice. It's textbook branding & word sneakiness. And it's a shame, because there's no shame in the word "atheist"; it's a perfectly fine, respectable, good word that means something specific and allows for meaningful distinctions. And hey, if you want to qualify it with "good atheist", go for it, that's meaningful too!
What is all this crap about transcendent, spiritual woo woo. Sam, I like most of what you say but carrying this mind altering message that actually has any practical benefit is just solipsism, and that should be illegal.
![Is religion to blame? | Robert Wright & Sam Harris [The Wright Show] (full conversation)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0dwD6XQ9Tsw/mqdefault.jpg)
Excellent talk. It annoys me to no end how the media is beating up on Sam right now. He's literally THE most lucid, intelligent, rational, AND ethically-minded public personality I can think of right now. And.............he's being called out as a *_bigot??_* What?? That makes me lose a tremendous amount of "faith" in public discourse...and the world at large. If _this_ guy is a bigot, then religious people are sociopaths. Is that really what they're willing to concede?
The most rational and ethically-minded person who doesn't morally condemn the Iraq war or Israel policy. It is good that his more problematic tirade is brought out to scrutiny, so the debate can form the needed depth that's been lacking.
yeah, I agree. It's brave to stake claims and arguments in public, knowing that 50% of the time people will hate you, disagree, ridicule. Aslan and others should respect that he talks out on important issues. He's a truth seeker and should not be dismissed as "unsophisticated".
It's not anything against Harris, even nobodies like me get called Bigots for speaking honestly about what the Quran says, which is all Harris is really doing.
***** It's not only frustrating but there is nothing you can do about it. If I where to say to someone "My name is cal" and they said"You just said your name is Steven, blaaaaaaaaaa" there is nothing you can do to reason with a mind like that but when you have a following like Harris does, you have to address every single stupid thing that people say about you.
***** So have I but it's so important that we talk about bad ideas in an honest and open way that it seems that we are just gonna have to take a deep breath and suck it up. It's for the greater good.
I love how, once the heckler who interrupted him toward the end of the video finally shut up, Sam just resumed answering the question completely unfazed.
What did he say anyone? I couldn't make it out.
ejw1234 I couldn't make it out either, though I heavily doubt it was anything worth hearing anyway.
wow, you have superpower hearing. thanks..
Yeah, Sam's unflappable. It's clearly genetic, 'cause I wanna backhand all the idiots without hesitation, but he somehow caught the unflappable gene and just carries on. Such a spokesman, unequaled in my opinion.
If we have to put up with FOX News, why not an Aheist TV station, with Atheist perspectives, discussion, and takes on world events from an atheist view??? Now THAT I'll sign up for faster than Showtime or HBO...
B Miller Sounds good to get rid of the bible thumpers. While they're heavyweights in the bullshit standings ... there's plenty of atheist contenders wearing nappyies round their chin in the world too.
At 36:00 Sam gives important personal advice on love, relationships and general well-being. I found this immensely valuable.
"I think there is something more fundamental than love. Love is necessary, it's one of the best things you can have appear in consciousness, and is the foundation of any important relationship. But the reality is you're going to lose everyone you love. And there are many moments in life where they're not there in the room. What you have is consciousness first. And if your well-being is predicated on having the people you love near you and healthy; you are as vulnerable as you can possibly be in this world. Now, I'm not holding up as some value being totally invulnerable to grief and bereavement, which is surely coming, and has come for many of us. But the reality is we're alone in some fundamental sense even when we're with others."
as illuminating as ever... been waiting for a nice long sam video for some time now!!! thankyouthankyouthankyou sam!!!!
aren't they a pleasure?
whenever I am feeling down and see the stupidity of the world and those around me, I watch a Sam Harris video on youtube and I feel so much better
ejw1234 they most certainly are!! and so helpful!! the new sam harris dan harris interview is amazing!!! have to check it out!!!
listening to sam has become like therapy to me!
Can we invite Sam to M.I.T. next time, where we could expect the microphones might work properly? Why does Harvard bother to construct such an insightful interview with Sam Harris and so horribly fuck it up with poor audio? I hope the soundman was drawn and quartered.
Sam Harris interviewed by ESPN commentator Trent Dilfer. They discuss the theological origins of the Hail Mary pass play.
ffs. sound is more important than video. sell cam, buy microphone.
Yeah, the sound is killing me too. They both have mics. What they should have done is to record the audio from the mixer's line out. All you need is a cable.
CristianKirk A cable, and a brain. Without a brain they could end up plugging the cable into anything, yes, anything.
I fuckin' hate hecklers. Love that Sam Harris can keep his cool.
I liked the way the conversation was also a bit confrontational. Good job to Greg
Always love to hear Sam talk. Such clarity and eloquence combined with incredible intelligence and knowledge.
I wish I could have been there, but thank you for uploading this. Sam and Greg are two of my favorite authors and teachers. Great video!
wow, ben stiller is really smart
Aren't we unique??
First time hearing or reading that. HAH!
Ha ha, I got a laugh out of your comment. Big Sam fan though
Sounds like a bunch of 8 year olds with tourettes syndome in the crowd. This is seriously harvard? Damn education in America has fallen.
Waited for new intervju with Sam for a long time myself. Sound quality and constant interruption by host is a bit annoying to me as well...
Didn't notice problems with the audio. The video, especially at the beginning, was distracting though. Was the "artifacting" from the source video or is is something that happened after the upload?
Man....not only is the audio terrible(I literally can't hear 20% of what Sam...or the audience questioners...are saying) but there's a noticeable lag between the audio and video. You'd think the good folks at Harvard would nail down such problems before releasing something. Guess not. :/ Annoyance aside, great talk.
Don't blame the mic's; it's the room acoustics - obviously not suitable for speech although fine for music. A modest amount of properly located sound absorbing material should absolve the mic's.
No, it is not room acoustics, it is incompetence. The mic is fine, just turned off and the only sound pickup is from the camera position. You can tell based on the delay of initial sound 30-40ms later than the visuals. From 30-40 feet away, any sound is going to be a mix of reflected, multipath early reflections, the small amount of direct sound, and the reverberant field decay, all combining to make it a poor recording job, when he had a mic on that would have been in-sync and 80-90% direct if it had just been turned on.
Stan Jacox Hey Stan, I believe you're right. This seems to be a common problem with "community TV" broadcasts. There is no effort to properly combine sound from mic's on or close to the speakers with the video. The video mic obviously only picks up mostly reverberant sound. If the room had been overly reverberant, which I assumed initially, the speech sounds picked up by the video camera mic would not have been as intelligible as it is. Thanks for your clear explanation.
Sound quality :(
*:(* is too tame, *>:(* is more appropriate.
Sadly the sound quality is very poor. I have fiddled with my graphic equaliser and plugged in an external amplifier and speakers but I can't make it worth listening to.
Shame the organisers paid no attention to the audience member who complained about the sound.
Why is that lady so hostile and defensive of Trungpa? His controversies are well recorded without Harris. Does she not think he was flawed?
Needs closed captions please.
What was up with the audience? Unruly.
Having gone to a prestigious university, students there are used to being told that their ideas are original/fabulous, so they tend to voice them more often, even when inappropriate.
I have no idea, I had a hard time hearing what the man said. All I know is someone got very upset at just the idea of criticizing capitalism, which makes absolute sense at Harvard.
It's a very common thing in the most prestigious universities. Same at Oxford and Cambridge. Interrupting is generally more acceptable. It only works when you know there's a kind of minimum barrier of entry so you don't waste your time answering incoherent nonsense.
Yeah, that was flabbergasting.
iamheasyouaremeandwe Nothing worse than liberal retards who think anyone cares about their politically correct horse shit
Ok the vid quality is great but wth on the audio??
Happiness is not love.
Happiness is any level of positive interest.
Love is a high level of interest + any level of happiness.
They are not synonyms.
It is possible to be happy with something that you do not love, but it is not possible to love something that you are not at least somewhat happy with. This shows that they exist separately.
how am I supposed to enjoy Sam Harris with this audio quality?? :)
damn audio is so low its a shame i cant hear any thing Sam says
I had a thought while you were meditating. When religious people pray, they are thinking about all the stress that they wish to be removed. ex: please let my cancer screening be negative. please allow my daughter to deliver the baby safely, etc.. Instead of clearing the mind of stress and all worldly things, they are filling their minds with it. How can the religious prayers ever find peace or overcome paranoia? Just a thought...
Can barely hear Harris. The interviewers mic is 10x louder.
sound quality is bad....
Don't make me say something profound; I could confuse or hurt myself. Thank you Sam Harris taking up the fight against ignorance...
A really nice freestyled guitar session will get me lost in thought as Harris explains. I thought it felt like meditation. I am going to try this meditation practice, and see how I do with it.
I really want to listen to this but the sound is horrible.
Was the person that interrupted on two occasions removed?
THE SOUND IS HORRIBLE.
Surrender to the bad audio quality.
Thanks, Sam. Yes, we are still uncomfortable with the transcendence experience. My mind still adjusts itself with our given language to "justify" it, to make it OK. in our 'social context.
1:35:25 - Love the comment about Ayn Rand at the end LOL. Reductio ad absurdum indeed...
that was one of my more favorite parts as well.
Anyone with better sound quality on their computer able to decipher what was being hollered near the end? At about 1:35 on the video...???
Spirit for me means mood that naturally follows your state of mind. Meditation takes training and practice. I consider the many miles I ran on nature trails (without headphones) (or the distraction of a god reading my every thought) to be a form of meditation that always improved my mood even towards a sibling that pissed me off before the run. Religious people won't understand that kind of freedom.
damnit...i did meditate a little and it was kind of cool i'll have to admit. i felt and heard my own blood flow. that's amazing.
The host grossly overestimates the effect Japanese kamikaze pilots had during WW2. It was an action born out or desperation toward the end of the war and the amount of death and destruction from it was insignificant in comparison to when they were functioning better as a military might earlier in the war. Millions of people did not die by kamikaze's, not even close.
Very true, sometimes even when my eyes are close. I can visually see my surrounding as thou my eyes are still open. As if sound and concentration is giving me a transparent body.
What was the guy saying when he was interrupting at 1:34:37?
I was at this event and it was basically just loud, incoherent rambling. He might have been on something.
One of Reza Aslan's minions?
Wish it wasn't so difficult to hear Sam. 😔
Damn, the sounds sucks. What's up with Sam's roadies ?
The illusion of self is the center piece of Hindu philosophy.
Those responsible for the lighting need to find another profession.
who is he talking about 44:55???
please help
1:35:00 i dont even know what this guy was saying or opposed
I love you, Sam.
I admit that activities like in 18:19 can have a positive impact on a human and his or her perception. It can potentially be beneficial for people with anger management issues. Still I remain very skeptical about such activities being useful on average for the populous as a whole. It is more of specialized case scenario.
Might as well re-state for effect: Sam's sound is SO cr*p, but Greg's is just fine. Odd...
Spirituality without religion is close to being an oxymoron...I hate how Sam pretends he is bringing something new and interesting to the table, when all of what he is saying is basically a rehashed mix of 19th century atheism/spiritualism, both of which were popular around that time, and the post 60s psychedelic movement, a la Mckenna, Watts, Leary, for fucks sake even Joe Rogan has been saying that shit forever, except he does it for free and sounds alot less condescending about it, and its much less militant and more openminded
A religion is a corrupted and mutilated interpretation of spirituality.
And many voices spread the message.
And your perception of Sam's intentions is not based on observable evidence.
Spirituality, in most people's understanding, is word used to describe a state of mind. It describes a feeling of being part of something that is bigger than oneself, of experiencing something not part of one's everyday reality. Harris is saying that a belief in organized religion is unnecessary in achieving this state of consciousness. All humans experience spirituality, it is one of the qualities that bind us together. In contrast, many of the organized religions turn spirituality into a contest, and a tool for social control
Edwar3505 That's all theoretically obvious, and has been said many times in different forms in history since the ancient Greeks, in fact its almost verbatim plagiarized from Buddhist philosophy. I could swear the hippies and the new-age 60s movement said the same thing. What you seem to miss, is that all of those who said the same thing and pretended to rebel, ended up organizing and forming some new form of religion. Albeit ,under new names and sexier slogans, yet all they prove is that religious experience in itself is ineradicable....
corruption of these new systems is just a manifestation of human nature, not an inherent quality in religion itself, after all anything can be corrupted
ElectricQualia Your counter argument is a real mess, dont have time to sift through all that. But to say that the "religious experience in itself is ineradicable" now thats just wishful thinking. While many desperately cling to these ancient ideologies, in reality, the non-religious demographic is the fastest growing worldwide. organized religion is in its death throes, thats why followers are becoming so desperate and aggressive
Edwar3505 Missing the point...reread what I said
what was the guy at the end saying?
Much respect to Sam Harris. He makes very great points. Funny how the only people that seem to bitch are those who misrepresent him
Where is Sam>?........He hasn't been around in a several years....very quiet........Not cool.
not so much a comment as an observation :is it just me or is practically any discussion or forum I watch or listen to seems to be always with terrible audio feed-which challenges my sustained interest no matter how interesting the talk 'could' be ? Also the 'meditation' class at the beginning -so boring and unnecessary-lots of better videos on this stuff - inconsistent with what Sam is.. a closet monk? Ironic that such a person attempts to get metaphysical-he would deny that perhaps but he is just sneaky about it-that's all-this is simply learning to focus that's all-mother giving a child a puzzle or building blocks -this is just basic stuff taught in a diversionary angle imho
Got sound kind of acceptable, well it's giving me less of a headache now.
Cut 500Hz, 1k, 4k, 8k 16k.
Boost 32Hz, 64, 125, 250, 2k.
500Hz echo
1k echo
4k echo and hiss
8k hiss
16k no difference, speakers are crap and I am probably too old anyway:-)
this interview was frustrating to watch
Sam is a neuroscientist, not an economist (even though he just played one on TV).
First question is @ 5:50.
Pretty amateur not getting Mike levels right! I’m assuming these people paid for this presentation!
Anyone notice Sam Harris always wheres the same outfit? I wonder if it's for a reason.
Listening to Epstein is flat out brutal.
what was said in that audience around 1:34:00
the interviewer as all harvardians is soo fucking narcissistic.
Spirituality :P
I fear that Sam is way ahead of his time.
Historical contextual reference needs to be made in religions: the writings are always a process of interpretation based in the context of older ideological constructs that must give way to newer information in a reality of human understanding that becomes better articulated and supported as we see ourselves more clearly in the context of what naturally exists and the faith we forge that is relevant to our current time, having let perish the old and given birth to the new in our cycles of renewal and redefinition. Ignorance should never be the personage of any imagined god. Spiritually, we must transition into the intellectually proven, the better representation and projection of ourselves-awareness, or we will devour each-other until once alone the ‘self’ starves on one’s own misconceptions i.e. climate change, war, disease, and hunger.
Religious faiths have to recognize its having been blind to complete truth, and it has to recognize that without observation ignorance knows less about god. (Be god nature, life, reality, love, patriarchy or humanity) truth is our best revelation of the decisions to be made. Meditation may help with processing, but education is the foundation of any processing worth devoting time to.
Many declare there are perfect gods to perfect their own persuasion, and more, yet, declare their gods almighty to empower themselves over others. Their faith is an expression of themselves, whether they are kind, or violent, god is a delusional expression of their own will, an expression of which should end before the encroachment of other’s collective and/or personal non-harming free-expression of the knowledge they possess. Religions have to start being a mutually respecting entity or be treated as a pathological social-predator inspiring human self-destruction if, in fact, that is not to be our true natural expression of our past carried into the future.
Perhaps to survive, we must freely educate the people whom our knowledge, like religion, grants us power over if we are to achieve a society capable of more than the education they receive at the submission to others, who also prey on ignorance, one in mass, the other in class. We should not be like a doctor vainly musing over a sick patient until both die of the infection of ignorance.
For this reason, I thank everyone here, like Sam Harris, who makes current knowledge available to the those who are without its psychosocial (spiritual) nutrition and who are also, like me, in need of a better educational program than pervasive sociologically influenza traditions that are normative in blind faith. Gods may be something yet to be discovered, but are always the limited expression of what is or was known.
Lets kill ill founded ideas, not people, unless in defense of humanity against the poison that is equally our own collective misconceived thinking---remembering, we are each and all an expression of the ideas that we possess and are the internal drive to bring those ideas to their own-logical conclusion as we seek to find the one reality that is truth and that which we collectively hunt in our uniquely complex predation.
This is quite sloppy thinking.
#1 If you define humanism as "good atheism", then you might as well just call this whole thing "good atheism"; using the word "humanism", in this scenario, conveys no meaning whatsoever, other than it's good branding/PR.
#2 If you define humanism as whatever "specific conception of being good based on reason, science, and XYZ", then great, you've made a specific, meaningful proposition (one that can be affirmed/falsified), and it makes sense to use the word. But if this is what you mean by humanism, then it's certainly true that we can say that some religious persons are humanistic (have a mode that emphasizes inquiry, reason, science) while other religious persons are not humanistic (have a mode that emphasizes experience, acting on instinct, intuiting the right thing, etc.). That's a useful meaning to give to a word (i.e., the word that is "humanism"), because it lets you make distinctions. The problem is, that if you define humanism in this specific way, then the word humanism no longer mutually excludes religion, which is precisely the kind of distinction atheists would care to make.
So what this person does is take definition #1, because while it's intellectually sloppy and is basically a tautology with respect to "good atheism", it makes atheists feel good, creates good PR, and allows for some of that fun ingroup vs outgroup psychological pleasure (i.e., lets us set group boundaries of some kind). And most importantly, enough people will get confused over the vagueness of the word humanism such that you can always deploy it in whatever way is conversationally advantage in the moment, i.e., you can give it a bit of flavor of definition #2, then switch back to definition #1, then switch back again to definition #2, and of course, in this 2023 era of "short attention span / youtube / tiktok", the people who notice usually won't care enough to point it out, and those who don't notice, don't notice. It's textbook branding & word sneakiness. And it's a shame, because there's no shame in the word "atheist"; it's a perfectly fine, respectable, good word that means something specific and allows for meaningful distinctions. And hey, if you want to qualify it with "good atheist", go for it, that's meaningful too!
I love Sam, but when it comes to the study of consciousness he did not bring almost no different than Nietzsche and Freud spoke.
Thank Christ we can hear the host loudly.
Humanist Chaplain ?...SMH.
Wow! No religion? What he is doing here?
What is all this crap about transcendent, spiritual woo woo. Sam, I like most of what you say but carrying this mind altering message that actually has any practical benefit is just solipsism, and that should be illegal.
lol @ the crazy chick defending Trungpa. the guy was a fraud, do some basic reading lady.
That host is horrible. Does he think that people came to see him?
stevekap8 they did. He's the head Humanist Chaplain of the Harvard Humanist Hub. They invited Sam Harris. Many are there to hear both.
I can hear both men just fine. Sam is great, but dances around Greg's questions at times. And I prefer Greg's writing to Sam's any day.
Wow this host is so obnoxious and full of himself.
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Man, the Harvard humanists are little children!