Same here. It ranks up there with thinking or saying "don't call me Shirley" when someone begins a sentence with "surely ..". I just can't stop myself.
Sam Harris said it's okay to use illegal methods and terrorism to stop conservatives from holding political power. That's all I needed to know about him.
I mean, he said it’s ok to murder people who hold opinions he dislikes in this video. If I had to guess, this means anti-semites and radical Muslims. In other words, people he views as ethnic/racial enemies.
@@deanmccrorie3461I don't have a source, but Auron MacIntyre Uploaded A video in which He talks about When sam harris said " hunter biden would have the bodies of dead children in their basement and i would not have cared".
Sam Harris has always been cringe, even back in the 2000s he brought absolutely nothing to the table for his side. People like to ascribe good intentions to that movement in the spirit of charity but someone like Harris has never a day in his life had good intentions, he is just a subversive trying to tear everything down.
His comment about stopping Trump being elected -- and I have no brief for Trump or any politician -- threw him out of the pale of being recognized as a serious thinker. I have free enough will go ignore this overrated public intellectual. I think his sell by date has come.
That's exactly what I was wondering while watching the video. What's the point of discussing things, what's the point of coming up with solutions for social issues, if everything is predetermined? Might as well lean back, for this is what's predetermined that you'd do.
he thinks he can be the predetermined factor that alters your behavior. because of course he believes *he* has free will. nobody really believes *they* don't have free will. it's always other people
@@marvalice3455 That's the obvious explanation that I'm inclined to go with, too, but I'm trying to figure out how it'd work _within_ his belief system, and I'm coming up empty-handed.
@@marystone1526 If you're predetermined to lean back, then you will do so. If you're pre-determined to not lean back, then you won't so. There is no contradiction under this philosophy when it comes to doing stuff/not doing stuff.
Personal responsibility presupposes that we have a right to the Truth. And yet, not only are we lied to by our Media (for profit) and our Politics ( for power) and our academia ( for position and money), but that there is a purpose to it. Nothing from nothing, and nothing for nothing. A flaw common to all People, is that they align their values according to the values of those in position of highest authority. At one time, not that long ago, highest authority rested with God, and his word, the Ten Commandments, and the aim was reward in the next life. However because of the lie that is Darwinism = No Creator = No God = secularism. Instead of putting God first, we put self interest or money first. If money comes first, the one and only rule is to get paid. Get or take as much as can, for as little work as you can. Which leaves society wide open to special interests. If you look at the outcome, where we are heading, ( Diversity, Equality and Inclusion = open borders = mass Muslim immigration = Sharia Law) you will know the purpose and who is paying for the lies/propaganda that we now told.
Harris certainly has helped buttress my faith in God. The fact that he's held up as one of atheism's superstars and yet his arguments are so inept convinces me the atheist position is not very strong.
I'm hardly familiar with Sam so when I read Harris in your comment, my immediate thought was went to Kamala 😅 It took me a second or two but I could see someone brought back to church after listening to a few clips of her 😂
Malcolm Muggeridge recounts a conversation with a Soviet police officer about arresting innocent people. The police officer describes how that is a good thing because the people will worry; if an innocent man can get arrested, anyone can get arrested. It keeps everyone on their best behaviour.
@@Danaluni59 The Soviets didn't care about the good of the people. They were concerned with the good of the state. Good behavior, as defined by the state, is good for the state.
@@petermeyer6873 Overwhelming force by the state organ. The threat of death, or the threat of destruction of everything you love was the methodology of fear instituted by the Cheka, NKVD, MGB, and to a lesser degree the KGB. In the face of overwhelming force and cruelty almost everyone will give into pressure and acquiesce; they sowed the idea that no one can resist and no one can win. They achieved this especially by teaching soviet citizens to scapegoat each other with the (false) promise of being broken out of that cycle; innocence was secondary, and the Soviets in a sense purged the mind of the people who were left. It was the events and experiences of WW2 that gave the Soviet peoples a bit of a backbone again, and the leadership that had grown up and around the effects of that kind of treatment coming to power in the wake of Stalin and Beria led to the reduced the wantonness of the Soviet government.
Sam Harris is very confused. Sam having a public platform and held up as someone credible for being ethical is beyond the pale. Now if I had Harris’s moral outlook I could lock him up, destroy his career and place him in prison because it would be for the overall well-being of society. It does go both ways
@@Hammerhead137 because we don’t share the same moral outlook. Things can change later on though we’re people on the opposite side of Harris decide to use his playbook back against him
His "belief system," if you can even call it that, is circular. His reasoning for why things are morally wrong is literally "humans think thing is bad, therefore thing is bad, except those humans who don't think thing is bad, ignore them." There is no logic to it at all. It's just his personal opinions disguised with word salad and ridiculous metaphors.
Yeah, thats a circular argument, but that isn’t Sam Harris’s argument. He really just claims that “wellbeing” or whatever catch-all phrase you want to use, can, in theory, be measured neurologically. While impossible today, that claim seems irrefutable in principle. If that’s true, Sam says, then you can imagine morality as a landscape of wellbeing, with measurable peaks and valleys. In this landscape, you can compare different moralities based on their effects on wellbeing. That isn’t at all circular, but it is not “grounded” per se. It isn’t magical. The idea is to think about morality in the same way we think about medicine. The purpose of good medicine is to increase health, and the purpose of good morality (Sam would argue) is to increase wellbeing. They can be similar enterprises, if only people could stop demanding their morality be dictated to them by otherworldly beings. Imagine how that would go in medicine.
@@Williamwilliam1531 but in the case of weelbeing, would you be onboard with instituting the matrix, or pods where people are constantly feeling euphoric while an AI handles every real thing ?
@@Kamfrenchie no, because it’s not clear to me that the scenario you offered maximizes wellbeing. It might maximize raw pleasure or something like that, but wellbeing encompasses more than just pleasure and very well might include the virtues of suffering and of adaptation.
I like to do that with people who believe that most people are gonna get burned forever Just to be clear though Sam was indeed a loon with some of these comments no disagreement on that one.
Yeah, but couldn't they reply that the same goes for Christians defending slavery, or the worst parts of the Inquisition, or whatever? I think that what WE have is a superior metaphysics, and the Holy Spirit,not necessarily an unwillingness to support evil things
v replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
@@Greyz174 hell is real, act accordingly. We didn't make hell real, we're telling you to avoid it. That's the most moral thing to do, what atheists do by ignoring the evidence, spreading misinformation and disproven epistemology, is evil, because they are not helping people draw closer to God.
@@a.39886not really. If you are speaking for religion, you are right. Both are a nightmare, but God is not a religious concept but a philosophical one, and essential for realism. For example, natural law and morality are based in natural rights and the onotological value of the human being, not what religion says, but the objective reality and purpose of the human being.
One thing I know for sure: if any country were ever to become full blown socialist and planned society, the last person that should lead that country is Sam Harris or anyone who thinks that free will doesn’t exist and that everyone’s an NPC that only requires the right inputs to get the desired outputs of behavior.
Are you kidding? Sam Harris is exactly the kind of absolutist authoritarian that would lead any Marxist or planned society. Authoritarians, if they gain power by election, do so only when the election is heavily rigged to ensure their favored outcome.
Harris is a Jew. The Zohar teaches that human beings don't have free will, which is probably where the crypto-Jew John Calvin got his doctrine from as well as Muhammad.
he says people can choose their behaviour but people cant choose their desire to choose the behaviour , in other words choice exists but in limited context of your desires , and you cant choose your desires.
@@Anxh007 then how "can" people, or at least see them act against their best interests? He enjoys that juicy meal he just bought from restaurant. He sees a homeless person. Can he control his desire or wanting to have his meal, and turn it off? He despite that overrides that desire and give the homeless the meal. This isn't a science fiction movie where the protagonist jumps off the edge of planet to save his gf. THIS HAPPENS TENS OF TIMES IN REAL LIFE. This happens kver and over and over again. So yes, he can't turn off his will and desire to eat the me, yet he overrides it. And before you speak of the greater desire he has for humans to survive, people even if they knew this homeless person is going to die anyway, and this meal is nothing as we know he has a disease that would inevitably kill him in 30 minutes. So survivability goes down the drain here. Yet many, many people would override their eating desire and give the homelsss the meal, that they know for sure won't help him anyway survive and propogate his genes. And before you go the good is evil route, imma tell you beforehand I'm agnostic and have no good reason to believe in god. And I do even then believe morality is subjective. So please spare me the what-about-ism of (why did your god do X to Amalakites or whoever). Just because you're agnostic or atheist, doesn't give you a free pass to say whatever and be expected to walk over thiests scot free. If you remain silent on the net, no one I believe has the right to interrogate you what you believe. But as soon as you argue for a position or a group, you have to answer according to the topic you bring up or respond to. As the best advice I can give, it's absolutely fine to say (you know what? I don't know the answer of this question, and I doubt the theist's response. Or I'll think about it.) But please don't give a positive response or a claim (I assert X is the case, or is not the case. Free will doesn't exist). I personally don't know, but I'll refuse to remain silent when people go repeating some buzz words they didn't think through. And if you were suspicious I was secretly a religious person, yes god is immoral for punishing Amalakites and he could've destroyed their gods and taught them a lesson about their unjust children sacrifices, without the need to destroy all of them, children included and those who didn't agree with that but couldn't voice their objection. And if you think that was the only way god could resolve the situation, you believe in a god that can't knock off the idols, send rain or something, send an army to destroy the place and destroy the false idols as Christians call them and the temples where the atrocities were taking place. Destroy the tools of sin you could say, without killing any one, or with really minimum damages. That would be a truly merciful, loving god who is for repentance and giving sinners chance after chance after 1000 chances to repent before death. That god who does those actions is hundred times more merciful to destroy the work of evil, yet give the sinners and even children murderers a chance to repent. So no, the (your god committed atrocities) doesn't work to red her the conversation about how free will works, as I believe in (there could be a more merciful god than that, so by definition he's not the most merciful). I don't believe in that god, but I believe there could be a better god morally than that one, and no, I believe in neither god's existence.
@@reda29100 people can act against one desire because of another desire pretty simple you dont decide which desire is more valuable the desire decides its value
Scott Adams has been trying to convince his audience that free will isn't real. Recently he described an analogy where he picks up a wad of napkins and drops them, explaining that the napkins have no choice but to fall, per the laws of physics. I wanted to respond that he had just beautifully demonstrated the capacity for a causal agent (himself) to counteract the effects of physics by preventing the napkins from falling up until the moment he dropped them.
@@konyvnyelv. Allegedly, according to almost every Christian sectarian theology I've heard (maybe there are others), the Storm God of Isreal (YHWH) knoweth all things that will happen in the future, and all choices everyone will make, makes free will impossible since there is already a 'fix' in for every decision you will ever make. They can't have it both ways.
The idea of drawing a conclusion on how we ought to behave based on a deterministic universe is an oxymoron. It makes no sense to say "we shouldn't punish criminals because they had no choice." Why do we suddenly have a choice about how to react to people who didn't have a choice?
It makes sense once you grant the initial assumptions. These initial assumptions are also the thing that make it obvious Sam's moral claims are not objective. He is appealing to a human universal (or near universal) on moral intuitions.
he says people can choose their behaviour but people cant choose their desire to choose the behaviour , in other words choice exists but in limited context of your desires , and you cant choose your desires.
tragic misread. Nothing fixed and misunderstood should be used to determine anything. No less assume absolute determinism. This whole comment section is coping and willful ignorance void of any due diligence. Trent did a horrible, lazy, misapprehended read on this. Very very disappointed in allll of you. Lazy and wrong. If you want to be right- watch the JBP Harris debates. All 5+ hours; then tell me you have the right to paraphrase and summarize Harris with this drivel.
@theonetruetim The really is nothing quite so juicy and delicious as the irony of someone stomping about telling everyone how stupid they are while obviously not understanding. 🤣🤣
I’m not an atheist anymore, but his opinion seems reasonable to me. Harris seems to be someone deeply guided by ethical and moral principles. In this sense, I believe he’s searching for God and is unaware of it. It may very well be true that His Heavenly Father extends mercy and love to Him for seeking truth. Let us pray for Sam’s salvation.
@@Xpistos510 He is not searching for God, he thinks he is God. People should all obey Sam's moral law. He has no foundation in his beliefs about morality, just asserts them.
Sam Harris helped me become Catholic, precisely because I couldn’t satisfy my inquiry into the question of The Good with superficial answers like “well-being”. If the highest good is measured by the area under the curve of some formula like the product of happiness times health times quantity-of-people over some interval of time, then the most moral possible societies would look an awful lot like sci-fi dystopias. Imagine a world where most of the population is grown and lives their whole lives in sterile test tube like environments that prevent any sort of health malfeasance, and the people are inundated with euphoric drug cocktails that maximize “happiness for their entire life”. Humans who reach a certain age where the ROI of “well-being” vs maintenance cost drops below a threshold could be justifiably flushed and decomposed into more organic matter to feed the system, and a new test tube human could then be cloned and grown to maintain the optimal number of living humans. A small percentage of the population might be obligated to run the machines and harvest resources at first, but when it can be completely automated, not a single person would ever need to open their eyes, breathe real air, or interact with another human. Such a world would satisfy Sam’s definition of an optimally moral society, but most people would shudder just to think of it.
The problem with a 'no objective moral standards system' is that I don't think it's ever communicated effectively that it's the best we can do. It's not proposed as an alternative to an Objective moral system, its proposed because that doesn't exist. (At least, they don't believe it exists.) What does that mean? A lack of an objective moral system should mean one primary thing- it cannot be perfect. This doesn't mean we should automatically ignore any and all flaws, but it does reduce the point of pointing them out too. That said, my reason for saying this is that if you were to realize the inevitable imperfection of subjective moral systems, one may spend less time criticizing it for not being perfect and instead looking into how to make it better. Tldr; videos, and comments, like these are not worth much.
Ok so the thing is that this aldous huxley novel youre describing is obviously not going to maximize wellbeing and it's going to be terrible so we're not going to do that. Why would we have to do that if we're just trying to make people be optimally happy? Its not an optimal way to make people happy. No one said that micro managing is necessary for this
@@Greyz174 I don't think you're getting the purpose of the analogy. If you have everyone in test tubes that optimally preserve their health and all are connected to an IV drip that maximizes their happiness for their entire life, then you have an optimal world according to the world view that sees happiness/health/"well-being" as the summum bonum. So to the contrary, if the highest moral good is given by maximizing human "well-being", then the best world is one that maximizes the area under the curve of some formula like the product of happiness times health times quantity-of-people over some interval of time, and a world like the one I described perfectly fits the bill. There would be the highest possible number of the happiest and healthiest possible people at any given moment, yet such a world is obviously a nightmare, even though it satisfies Sam's thesis on what the best possible world would be.
@@kirkjungles4901 the reason that would be a nightmare is because trying it would devolve into a dystopia once practical reality kicks in and we know that by now. like, there would be a bug in the happiness drip system where 1% of alive people feel like they're getting tortured for their entire conscious experience. or people would do this as a front to shepherd humanity into manageable pods where they can use and/or dispose of us as needed. or we mistakenly are calculating the area under the wrong curve because we missed some detail or other. or whatever other outcomes we have endlessly created at this point in novels and movies about dystopia why would it be a nightmare if it actually worked?
@@kirkjungles4901 what would be important is for you to give a positive case for why a world that is actually like that would be a nightmare, since it looks like you're just appealing to intuitions. but intuitions are supposed to guide you to an explanation of their source, like what I offered about how this is obviously not going to work and you shouldnt try what's your explanation for why it would be a nightmare, beyond it just being obvious in your opinion?
Never been impressed with Harris. He's more antitheist than genuinely rational. He's dogmatic of the atheistic variant. He does not even try understand the view opposite him. He just assumes his opponent is just wrong, why? because his opponent disagrees with him. Period.
Well Sam really doesn't know the violent history behind his atheism. “of more than fifty thousand Orthodox churches on the territory of the RSFSR in 1917, fewer than a thousand were left in 1939.” -Victoria Smolkin, A Sacred Space is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, Princeton, 2018, (p. 49)
If Sam Harris's wife cheats on him with a dude that has a bigger dick than his, he would be understandably angry. But that anger is unreasonable and unjustifiable because now there would be two happier and better fulfilled people in the world, only at the cost of one man's bruised ego. The general "wellness" of the world went up, therefore the wife's actions were morally good. And I understand that his wife could say: "No, I love my husband, I don't want to have sex with a guy who has a bigger dick or who is better in bed, I want his dick and I don't mind being unfulfilled If it makes him happy" but she's not offering an alternate sexual, happiness based, worldview that we have to take seriously, she just doesn't get invited back to the conference about sexuality. ;)
I appreciate his honesty, most Atheists are unwilling to really lay out the truth that they do not value human life unless it furthers their pursuit of power. As one of the brothers Karamazov says, if there is no God, then we should live exactly opposite Christian values.
@@stevendouglas3781 that would be a non sequitur. The lack of an objective right and wrong doesn't mean we can't establish one based on things that are benefitial or detrimental to us, the planet and such
I like how these people literally believe we are just monkeys with an extra step but expect humans to behave in a perfectly and immaculate rational and flawlessly moral manner
@@ConcedoNulli no but they think it's possible to free humans from immorality (whatever that means for an atheist) once the rational points are understood. Which as I noted, it's a paradox with the idea that we are just complex animals
@@mariobaratti2985 Nope. From Darwinism comes the belief No Creator, by extension or reason, No Creator = No God. If Darwinism was true, then Harris would be correct. Our common ancestor, would be that common to all life, and that is bacteria. Why do people believe in Darwin? It is because, when we are Children, it is presented to us as fact. The second law of thermodynamics, Entropy. "The supposed evolutionary process breaks the most universal and best-proved law of physics, the law of increasing entropy, known as the second law of thermodynamics. It applies not only in physical and chemical systems, but also in biological and geological systems, in fact all systems, without exception. The law stipulates that all systems tend to lose order. They go towards disorganisation and loss of complexity. The law of increasing entropy therefore precludes evolution, because all evolutionary systems are expected to increase in order and complexity. Physicists E.H. Lieb and Jacob Yngvason explain: "No exception to the second law of thermodynamics has ever been found, not even a tiny one. Like conservation of energy [the `first law'], the existence of a law so precise and so independent of details of models must have a logical foundation that is independent of the fact that matter is composed of interacting particles"
He is still as formidable as ever. COVID just made people crazy and because Sam didn't go down the crazy COVID conspiracy rabbit holes like others that considered themselves part of the international dork web, people stopped liking him and look for any reason to try bring him down.
@@delailama736 no way man, he admits how incoherent his worldview is at the end of his book Anyone who earnestly ascribes to any kind of hard determinism is a performative contradiction, it’s so delusional it deserves to be called out for the joke that it is.
The lack of self awareness on Sam’s part is truly concerning. He justifies killing of people due to their beliefs being potential causes of violence without realizing that the very thing he just stated is a potential cause of violence. By his own judgment he should off himself.
“By his own judgment he should off himself” Exactly!! He’s the king of circular logic and his hard determinism is a joke. How can you possibly have a “moral landscape” without freewill? That is without conscious agents and moral accountability and control of your actions. He’s a walking contradiction and walking ball of cognitive dissonance. CRINGE ATHEISM in full effect. The fact is that hard determinism should be mocked for the stupidity and conceit for rationality and morality that it is!!
@@harrisonsamson I understand his rationality but the very term "elimination" makes him a cause for violence. Also, "greater good" arguments are always terrible because the term is vague enough to justify anything: "I killed 1 million newborns so the rest of us could eat. It's for the greater good". I ascribe myself to Aquinan moral philosophy: good ends never justify evil means.
Ya I really can't stand Harris. His warmongering, his disdain for religion, and the way that he just acts as if all we need to do is do what he says for progress to happen make me kind of sick. Also Liz Cheney is most definitely left-wing
he's just an army of the Machine. the military industrial complex powers the american economy, so sam is pro war. religion tells us that family and faith are more important than working 70 hours a week, and that nations may come and go, so sam is against religion. this has nothiong to do with morality. this is about gaining power through industrial capital, and sam is entirely sold on that.
I think he lost alot of credibility even within the atheist community when he said keeping Trump from power by essentially any means necessary was good.
@@marvalice3455 vreplace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
@@marvalice3455 agreed only I'd add that the militarism is NOT benefiting the US economy. The amount of scientists that are making bombs instead of the next tech innovation and doctors weaponizing diseases instead of curing them is not helping anyones except a select few
It's interesting that Harris can criticize religion when it allows some evil for the greater good, but believes the framework of his own worldview allows the very same thing.
@@MajorCinnamonBuns “Self defence is evil?” Yes Sam Harris’s form of “SELF DEFENCE” is clearly evil. According to Mr Harris.. “The practice of torture, in certain circumstances, would seem to be not only permissible, but necessary” (Sam Harris). Sam Harris even had the nerve to brag that…. “I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity.” (Sam Harris). Harris actually argues that there are scientific “neurological" grounds for supposing that his moral reasoning is logically correct and that we “ought” to be torturing people for collateral reasons. “Science” says that we “ought” to torture humans right? Where he gets his “ought” from is beyond most people. Are women and children exempt Mr Harris?? What about babies if this achieves the same end and forces parents to give information needed by the state? According to the human rights lawyer Lutz Oette…. “Torture is one of the ultimate abuses of state power, and the use of extreme violence that exploits the powerlessness of individuals subject to state control is anathema to the rule of law. It easily becomes a license to target anyone who is declared to be a threat” (Lutz Oette). It gets worse because according to the high priest of “new atheism” Sam Harris… “The only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own ” (Sam Harris). Furthermore, according to one of the high priests of militant atheism Christopher Hitchens… “The crucial thing is to be willing and able, if not in fact eager, to kill them without pity before they get started.” (Christopher Hitchens). It's Sam Harris’s statement about a nuclear first strike of our own and that last phrase from Hitchens that's particularly chilling. The irony and the absurdity goes right over their atheistic, nihilistic heads!! Reference: ('The Age' 5th September 2002) As I pointed out already that last phrase by Hitchens including Sam Harris’s defence of nuclear first strikes is particularly chilling. It reminds of the final scene in the movie [planet of the apes] when Taylor discovers the statue of “liberty!! Sorry but if you’re going to defend Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens et al as proponents of “liberty”, that is if your going to defend “new atheism” don’t forget to defend blatant liars, torture, “killing without pity before they get started” and preemptive nuclear strikes on men, women and children!! I rest my case!!
I think if we are talking about God it might be that God is all powerful and all but yeah given Harris' and my own beliefs which arent exactly the same but are somewhat similar theres nothing intrinsically wrong about God allowing some suffering if there really is no possible way things can be less horrible than they are, or as leibniz would say if it is the case that we live in the best possible world
I’ve heard of Harris before but never actually his talking points, and I’ve come to two conclusions. 1) He’s one of those people that tries to sound smart but is fairly idiotic when you actually reason out what he says. 2) Pretty much every western government has started following his philosophy in the past 2 decades
I guess Sam owes Thomas Aquinas an apology. I assume he is no longer scandalized by the idea that in some circumstances, the capital punishment of heretics may be justified. Sounds like he is now an advocate of such a policy.
@@joshuavd5194 well the nazis killed millions, pol pot and his guys killed millions, Idi Amin and his soldiers killed millions, Stalin and his guys killed millions. Lets think of all the drug dealers, child sex traffickers, thieves, rapists, murderers, scammers, all the other types of criminals. there certainly are alot of psychopaths. And why are they supposed to have empathy. Very naive view of humankind.
Strange that the evil done unto the world by christianity is beyond counting and stretches back so far then. Not to mentiin the other desert blood god faiths of abraham. Just why is it that countless hundreds of millions have suffered and died thanks to the adherents of the faiths of abraham?
17:52 Did Sam Harris just give an atheist defense for killing heretics? By this rationale, his only objection to killing heretics is ultimately a factual question, whether it was actually "dangerous heresy."
No. And if you listened to Sam you'd know there's no way he would support such a thing and isn't a lunatic. What you'd need is examples of what he had in mind. Sam named two people, one preacher of islammic terrorism that convinced a lot of people to blow things up, and one planner of islammic terrorist attacks - bin laden(who he said it'd have been preferable to capture if it could've been done without additional danger to those capturing him). Sam has explained himself in two articles. "on the mechanics of defamation", and "response to controversy".
No. Not even close, you paranoid fantasist. (that means you live by a fantasy) He suggested that some people may be SOOOO driven to act on violent delusions to fulfill a goal that is disharmonious with life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness that there is nothing that can be said or changed- to correct their delusion. And they are so convicted in this pathology- think Dr Doom, or past Pope's in The Crusades- that the game is what it is. It's an extreme exception and hypothetical, in kind. One we would rather not have to confront. Stop believing in debunkable absolutes, and we won't have to postulate around undeterrable delusions that synergize w patriarchal and homophobic notions. We've seen the fruits y'all's fantasy bear. It's prudent to consider: you can't reason w someone that invents Satan (Hebrew for prosecuting attorney in the hierarchy of Elohim; gods. Yes plural) and devils and garbage like that. Sin & evil are words that excuse people from dealing w the actual cause of disharmony, as they gladly draw sloppy conclusions and make hyperbolized moral claims in the face of having their lies and sicknesses deconstructed. It makes them even crazier. DELUSION is a part of human nature. The Eucharist is flat out made up. Delusions are powerful and so is offense. So powerful that some people gear up, mentally AND physically to anticipate the final days. A battle. A War. and they call it being the Good guys... THAT is the sickness. One we should be prepared to counter- to save the humans who are present in this life. You guys just wanna see what you wanna see. This is a master class in fantasy and confirmation bias, and is a sign of how screwed us humans really are- because of orthoxy that doesn't even bother to negate the forgeries in the NT. They just double and triple down of tradition and worse. Abraham did not exist Moses- same Christ meant to keep it Jewish Messianic talk is corrupt and seeks vengeance, invents sin, evil and worse. Don't mistake your problem for ours and by ours- i just mean thinking caring people- not "atheists". Running by some unifying Ideology is not what reality and reason require. Learn your myths. This one is weak. Not Truth. love, T
Excellent video Trent! I love that you put this up now, since my father (a devout atheist) has recently undusted the "End of Faith" and I am expecting some incoming comments about faith in the near future :)
I'm not Catholic, Christian or even religious. That said I do admire you Christians and appreciate your contributions. The world's a better place with you in it. I have nothing positive to say a Sam or people like him.
Fantastic video. A huge part of the problem is that today we use our brain in a very left-tilted way, as Dr. Iain McGilchrist writes (“The master and his emissary”). All these arguments are brought forward by the “emissary”, which is our left brain, very good at “how” but totally oblivious as to “why”. Religion is the best way to look at reality because it re-balances our brain towards the right brain, which is meant to be the “master” of our life.
Thats a really cool way of looking at narratives, taking concepts and wrapping them into a coherent character and creating a scene which can play out. Ill have to try that in my writing some time.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🎵 Trent introduces Sam Harris's philosophy and the criticism he faces. 01:12 📚 Harris's book "The Moral Landscape" attempts to ground morality in science, but philosophers criticize this approach. 02:05 📜 Harris defines goodness as increasing well-being and uses science to ground objective morality. 04:02 🤔 Harris's analogy of medicine and ethics falls short, as ethics is philosophical, not purely scientific. 07:30 🕊️ Harris argues that if determinism is true, free will is an illusion, leading to a lack of moral responsibility. 09:19 🤝 Harris criticizes compatibilist views of free will as redefining the concept, akin to redefining Atlantis. 11:23 ⚖️ Harris challenges traditional notions of punishment, advocating for consequentialist perspectives. 15:07 ⚖️ Consequentialist defense of punishment leads to absurd conclusions, like punishing innocent people for deterrence. 18:06 🔒 Harris suggests suppressing harmful beliefs and actions for overall well-being, even if it involves censorship. 20:12 🔄 Harris's claim that moral goodness and well-being are identical is undermined by his own admission. 23:25 🕊️ A religious perspective, grounded in God and human value, offers a more coherent basis for morality than Harris's approach.
good point. U could slap Sam Harris and he would get mad every time. the “no free will” argument wouldn’t cut it. everyone on earth acts like free will exists. our whole justice system is based on it. if everyone acts like it’s real, does it even matter if it’s not..?
@@jessfarr5667 I can understand what you are implying by this... Makes sense, kind of like Money... Everyone believes it has value, so it doesn't really matter... But that doesn't mean we won't explore other options that can make things even more convenient for us and enhance our quality of life Same goes for our conception of free will, there is much to benefit from exploring it further so that we can arrive at a conception closer to reality. At one point almost everyone 'believed' slavery was a good thing, so would you have said 'does it really matter to re-evaluate that?'
@@thefundamentallucrative8434 no not at all, because abolition was a moral movement concerning cultural attitudes in society. at one point child sacrifice was an accepted ritual. my point about free will is that, regardless what we believe about determinism, every human acts like free will is real. it’s one of the most basic foundations of human society if not the most fundamental. we all agree that we have choice and therefore are responsible for our actions. all politics, hierarchies and the criminal justice system are based on free will.
In the USSR, once you were arrested, your guilt was assumed. You would be tortured until you confessed to a crime you didn’t commit, then sent to a work camp for up to 25 years until you died of exhaustion or exposure. If the state admitted that you were innocent and that they had made a mistake, it would be bad for the state, and therefore bad for everyone in the country (according to them). So you would be tortured and killed if it was expedient for the state, regardless of whether you had actually done anything wrong.
Harris' worldview denies the inner life that we all lead. The conversations we have with ourselves, the justifications we create in our heads, the mental negotiations we go through etc. Only an Atheist would claim to be 'following the evidence' while similarly ignoring what they experience daily and know to be true. It's classic Orwellian double think.
I believe people aren't actually atheist per se they're more like idol worshippers. They're just unwilling to acknowledge it. Any fair person without belief would be agnostic but to deny God as both a premise or a real entity it requires an alternative perspective that is fundamentally idol worship. Some worship their ego hence the veneer of intellectualism that is detached from personal fallibility is such a draw. They pray at the altar of hedonism so for them pleasurable experiences no matter how hollow or fleeting become self fulfilling. Seeking more pleasure is the only response to the quandary of pleasure not being as fulfilling as expected. Adulating human thought and material achievement isn't wonder of mankind its actually an exercise in self congratulatory self worship. This is why coopting and hiding behind science is so common allows the mask of egocentric view of intellectualism as well as to deign the self as the only true creator.
@@skp8748 “Idol worship” Exactly!! How can anyone possibly not notice that Sam Harris’s HARD DETERMINISM is clearly a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM and a total and utter defeater for strictly reductive materialists, atheists or philosophical naturalists/freewill deniers? The worship of “MATTER”, that is the worship of materialism and philosophical naturalism is the ultimate form of idolatry. Man always wants to worship and point to a DEAD, blind, mindless, ultimately meaningless soulless idol, from a golden calf to the moon, or Hollywood to money, or fame, status, cars and property and finally when the nihilism kicks in he turns to the ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS, HOLLOW AND SOULLESS APE as his final form of idolatry and self worship!!
I have debated some atheists in debate groups on Morality. They often quote Dawkins and Harris to me on how we dont have freewill and morality is subjective. Sadly the arguments always comes to an end when i ask them, on what moral ground do they stand to say that people like Hitler and others are evil or are they trying to justify Hitler for his evil deeds, since morality according to them is Subjective, and Hitler i think will definitely have a good subjective reason for his actions?
I am probably going to get lambasted for being "the Atheist" in this comments section - when clearly I am not the target audience here. But I will say a lot of points are being misconstrued here. Also, while I mostly believe that free will is an illusion, I think that in most cases acting like it is not might be the best course of action (if these comments are indicative of "most people"). Ironically Sam is trying to prove that there are objectively bad actions. So are you mad at him for saying that or that morality is subjective? Can't be both. And if you don't think morality is subjective, ask yourself if something you hold is evil was tomorrow decreed by your God to be moral, would you change your mind?
@@murphygreen8484 I can guarantee you that most response you will get here will not be in away a personal attack on you but response to your argument. If the free will you believed to be an illusion is the freewill explained by Harris and other atheists, then I agree with you. To me and every other christain that understood what freewill really is, will know that it's never an illusion. Harris took a reductive and determistic approach to explain freewill which is understandable considering his world view, and he gave vague instances like choosing tea over coffee, choosing a movie over another. Based on the approach he took to explain it, there is some truth in that, but the problem is, freewill in the real sense is not as simple as that. Let's take for instance, at societal level, every individual is presented with the ability to chose between working hard, be law abiding so as to be useful to himself and the society, or to lazy around pay no attention to the rules and regulation and becomes a nuisance to himself and the society. Choosing the former, will require sacrifices and efforts and by no means a choice made casually, and the end result is a positive outcome as a reward, while the later doesn't require much effort or sacrifices and the result is often catastrophic and regrettable. Well you might say, that the society as a factor presented the two choices and confined the individual to them , to that i will say that you're right, but the importants point here is that the individuals gets to chose, and the choice is not made out of ignorance but of the knowledge of what lies at the end of their choices. He can choose good, which comes with selfless sacrifice or evil which is all about selfishness. External factors can't make this choice for us, and the ability to chose here is what we regard as freewill. Christ before his crucification said, if it was his will, he would have wanted the cup to be taken away from him, but then he knew that his will at that moment is against the will of the God the father and will not be a good thing for his mission on earth, so he ultimately submitted his will to the will of the Father which is to give up his life for our sin. Note he has the choice just like everyone of us to go with our will which is in constant rebellion with the will of God. Haris is of the opinion that morality is subjective not objective that is his main reason of trying to explain away freewill. If there is no freewill, there will be no objective morality. My morality is derived from my religious beliefs, therefore it's objective and from God. God does not change so as His words and rules. People might pervert His words and teachings but the truth will always remain the same. So my answer is, I will not change my mind because God can't change His nature either.
@@murphygreen8484 People are mad at him explicitly for saying both morality is subjective and that there are objectively bad actions. Such a statement would be oxymoronic. The last question can only be posed by an extremely simple view of God as simply, "some random dude."
@@murphygreen8484 “I mostly believe that free will is an illusion, I think that in most cases acting like it is not might be the best course of action” I bet you do!! Are you for real? You’re actually claiming that someone like Hitler’s actions were not evil and depraved because freewill is illusory right? But we should just pretend his actions were evil and depraved and that he was accountable for his actions as this is just the “BEST COURSE OF ACTION” right? Sorry but “BEST” according to who? Or what absolute, universal objective standard of measure exactly? The standard of an overgrown amoeba with illusions of grandeur? Or the standard of an ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS, HOLLOW AND SOULLESS APE who shares half their DNA with bananas??? Your world view, your absurdity, your ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS, HOLLOW AND SOULLESS APE, your existential crisis and your epistemological crisis not the theists!! Sorry but we [ought] to just PRETEND that the Nazi officers who were found guilty of genocide and hung after the Nuremberg trials were guilty? We ought to just “pretend” that they were accountable for their actions because freewill is just illusory, that is moral accountability is allegedly “ILLUSORY”. So pretending is the “BEST COURSE OF ACTION”? And you mock our beliefs!! Was that a “rational” claim or was it just determined? CRINGE ATHEISM in full effect. Sorry but the fact is that a strictly reductive materialism, atheism or philosophical naturalism is a walking ball of self contradiction and cognitive dissonance!! “Hitler and the Nazis couldn’t help themselves when they gassed men, women and children as freewill is illusory” Yeah makes great “sense” and completely “sane”!! Atheists definitely have the “moral” high ground on this one!! Glad we cleared that one up!!
Sam Harris does not do philosophy. He just powers through things; “we just know better”, “we now know”, or he will just outright discount alternate positions or ones that undermine his. He is intellectually devoid but he can use the veil of “science” and nobody will question him.
So if killing people is sometimes morally acceptable to maximize the good of others, especially when they will not recount their dangerous views than why does he have such a problem with the church and state putting to death heretics? They injured public cohesion, caused civil unrest, caused riots that injured and killed people and were unrepentant when approached by the authorities. Under his logic the church and state were not just justified in putting them to death but morally obliged.
that is a great question absolutely but it doesnt undermine the principle that the greater good is what is important its mostly just a question of lack of information then because we dont know what will be best to do in a situation when we dont have enough knowledge
The whole case for any form of utilitarianism falls once one realizes that value (as in the value of ends or means) is subjective and ordinal, thus all aggreagations or interpersonal comparisons of utility are completely unacceptable.
The first example (Harris vs Peter) is such a good topic Mr. Trent Just a month ago my grandmother was diagnosed with stones in the gallbladder, my mother wanted a surgery the quicker the better. My grandma didn't want it, she preffered to search an alternative. This was such a heated topic because my mother wanted to make my grandma to submit to her solution, basically what Harris wanted to threat people like fools if they do not want to submit to "the science". Of course there were "scientific" alternatives for what my grandma had but my mother wanted to bent her will
As Sam Harris is a strict determinist, one could argue that what he has to say on morality is irrelevant. None of us can control our actions according to his view, we're just acted upon by external factors. So why do we need to address morality again?
Yes, this is a fundamental problem with the philosophy. How can anyone be morally good or bad if we have no choice? His idea basically excuses all human atrocities committed because we can’t hold those people accountable. The idea of morality is irrelevant if determinism is true.
I still have fond memories of this docuseries about dinosaurs from Animal Planet back in the early 2000s that was narrated by Ben Stiller haha, I watched those DVDs so many times haha.
@@ponti5882 For me maybe, but I am 27 haha. I don't think that the 2000s were a simple decade for my parents, what with Y2K concerns, 9/11 (we lived 30 minutes outside of Manhattan), the Great Recession, etc. Every generation has their struggles - we certainly have ours, but, by and large, the word is a better place now than it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40, etc.
@@Nontradicath Is it better? We are closer to WW3 and worldwide economic collapse than previous times. Also it seems there is a worldwide network of pedophiles. First abuse of children was only blamed on Catholics but now it's being exposed among Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and the SBC!
“…If it would lead people to act better than they otherwise would.” See, even he doesn’t believe his own nonsense. He thinks building prisons would change behavior, but his whole premise is that people can’t choose their behavior. These inconsistencies are inevitable when one’s position is so obviously at odds with reality.
1 replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
Hes a victim of the typical atheist argument of the enlightened ape. Everyone is restricted by certain rules that they cannot be aware of because their awareness of anything is an illusion, but the enlightened ape has transcended the illusion and sees reality and is both capable of describing the rules while remaining bound by them. Its all one massive contradiction.
Not really. There are many things to criticise about his points but I don't think this is it. It could be said that such punishments would alter the variables of the universe and of a possible perpetrator's mind so that what would happen is now bound not to, without violating his principles. I think the main problems with his philosophy are the ones that Trent mentioned in this video, mainly the utterly immoral things it would be bound to defend
No, his premise is that behavior is exactly determined by circumstances such as whether or not there are prisons. You can't choose not to influenced by your environment, thus one environment leads to one outcome. Your argument here is to argue against the idea that balls roll down hill by saying 'but why then don't they roll down without the hill?'
@@DerPinguimThat may be true, but then the next logical question to be asked is what altered those physical brain parameters to take up a new state? Because the premise is that there is no free will, then what was the driving force for that state change in the mind? Also, I think that if there is no free will anywhere in the universe, then everything is predetermined. There is no change that can happen, because there is no agent to drive that change.
@@CtuNelson “It would have been different” Yes!! Of course it would have been “BETTER “ in the Soviet Union with Harris at the stirring wheel of communism. Of course thousands of orthodox Christians wouldn’t have been misrepresented as dangerous, demonised, terrorised and murdered because Sam Harris always always tells the truth doesn’t he? Especially when describing his political opponents beliefs right? Especially when there’s an “existential threat” to the state lol. This guy can not be trusted to protect democracy, human rights and freedom of speech!! His HARD DETERMINISM, that is his denial of freewill is sophomoric and is a joke and a threat to our justice system that protects families and children.
@@petermeyer6873 You might want to note that no-one had ever suggested that Sam was ever seeking respect, just that he had never earned the respect that he had among the secular community. Earning respect would probably come about from seeking truth, if Sam had ever attempted something to that effect in his life, then maybe he'd earn a degree of respect.
@@louisryan5815 - The verb "earning" implies that one works towards a goal, which may be at least a compensation for the efford spent. Danielwisell's comment implies, that Sam Harris works for him, who is granting that compensation within a contract in the form of "respect". This simply does not apply to Sam Harris' effords, especcially in regards to danielwisel as a self-proclaimed contractor. I bet Sam Harris neither knows Danielwisell nor cares about the respect he is willing to pay him. - Furthermore, "respect" towards a person instead towards an idea or a principle remains a strange concept after all. What exactly is meant? Fame or fear? - There is no such thing as a secular community. Neither is there an atheist community, in case you meant that. The mere thought these existed is ridiculous. The basis of these ideas is simply not wide enough.
Suggestion: Would like a follow up, maybe with you speaking with a historian about how the terrifying aspects of Harris's beliefs have already come to fruition in Marxist and National Socialism both quite atheistic.
C.S.Lewis wrote about the "Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" and its chilling consequences. Harris' ideas are far from new and we should have learned by now.
You realize that the event of the government being overthrown is a product of that nation's citizen's being in such a poor state of poverty that they decide they have nothing more to lose so they might as well burn the country down, right? You realize that America is drifting in this same direction, not because of undefined wokism, but because people can no longer afford to keep their homes and feed their families while their government cuts the taxes of the richest people in the nation by half, right? You do realize that America wad at its economic greatest when the government prevented any single business from owning mioe than 5% of a product's market value because maintaining competition kept prices low, which we would protect the middle from the excessive price gouging they need to deal with that's accounting for 50% of our inflation, right? You see where I'm going with this, right? *If I don't reply or if my comment disappears it means this channel blocked me for having a different opinion.
Actually both of those were highly religious Marxism is heavily Judaic and nazism uses religion and shit all the time Himmler tried to talk to the black sun a friggin elder demon older than your faith
I find it interesting that Harris suggests punishing people "if it led people to behave better than they otherwise would." That thought implies that people do have a choice to make, and that adding a deterrent (potential punishmentt) would encourage people to avoid the offense, all other things equal. You cannot deter someone by threatening them with punishment, unless people actually have a choice whether they can do the thing or not.
That I can freely choose is my most immediate phenomenological observation. It will take far more than the argument from materialism to dissuade me. Couldn't we just as easily conclude that free will, rather than impossible, is in fact evidence that we actually live under a different ontological paradigm?
In general philosophy since the enlightenment hasn’t been about finding and pursuing the good. It’s been about giving permission and glorifying the philosophers vices.
At 11:42 Harris is quoted saying '...a sham form of retribution would still be moral- even necessary if it led people to behave better than they otherwise would". How would the threat of punishment change their behavior if all action is predetermined? How would one even go about making his proposed societal changes lest they were also predetermined to do so?
@@TheCounselofTrent I would like to see a video addressing some of the accusations against Mother Teresa by Christopher Hitchens and others, if possible a debate or dialogue with someone who holds that Mother Teresa is an Evil person.
People as individualistic as atheists should not be making these determinations. Harris also knows about moral foundations theory, other personality metrics, and that people are group-competitive, so his rhetoric is quite odd
I used to read atheist dating books. The main goal is to not love others so you can gain power over them and get their love. You must no love so you can control yourself and thus get the other person to love you. If you don't get power you will be manipulated, crushed, and abused. I used to cry because in such a world why get married to someone you don't love so that they can love you? Either you love and it's not returned, or you are smothered by others in not loving.
Thanks for the discussion. I enjoy listening to the arguments of folks like Harris. My favorite is Hitchens, may he RIP, and I enjoy Alex O'Connor. What I find most interesting about Harris' followers, and there's a lot of them, is that they seem to be more satisfied by what he's attacking (religion) than by the coherence of his argument. It's much like protestants who attack the Catholic Church. Doesn't matter what they say as long as they finish by saying the Catholic Church is wrong. With Harris' followers, Sam could say the sun is lime green as long as he ends by saying god is fiction.
av replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
Your ignorance is confusing Dr.Gavin Ortlund's intelligent criticisms with many of the hyper literalist fundamentalists that don't have good arguments! Thinking Protestants like me don't attack certain Roman Catholic doctrines just for fun as you assumed!
18:24 And this is the exact kind of worldly religious thought that Christ lifts us above, in this case the product of a logical mind unsubmissive to God - the author of good.
13:30. Story of my life. My wife and I live in China and cannot leave because she is travel restricted for her father’s crimes. Retrospectively for a crime committed 20 years ago I might add.
Problem with utilitarianism generally. Both defining the desired goal and being able to accurately foresee it's effective means. Goes hand in hand with statolatry and tyranny.
Think about how much good it would do to force Sam Harris to turn over all his wealth to less fortunate people. After all, he was predetermined to be a neuroscientist and author.
So Harris didn’t choose to believe that free will is an illusion. In fact, he couldn’t have believed anything else based on his own position. Quite a self refuting and contradictory position…!
Exactly!! However, that being said, atheist activist baiting is quite an enjoyable pastime. Winding up the brain-dead and narcissistic is amazingly therapeutic. Winding up triggered strictly reductive materialists, atheists or philosophical naturalists who actually claim that we are all ultimately just the brains user “ILLUSION” of self, that is nothing more substantive than overgrown amoebas with illusions of grandeur is extremely therapeutic. You don’t even have to work that hard to make fun of this strictly reductive, causally closed, atheistic nihilistic fan fiction. You don’t even need to exaggerate that much. This is what makes satire so difficult these days when pointing out these absurdities. Because in satire you’re usually taking logic to an extreme extent to show how ridiculous something is. But in the case of HARD DETERMINISM and scientism and materialism of the gaps fallacies all you’re doing is showing that this is what these activists actually subscribe to in real terms. Mocking the claim made by celebrity pop scientists and celebrity atheists that we are all nothing more substantive than ultimately meaningless chemically determined robots with no freewill and choice, that is nothing more substantive than ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS, HOLLOW AND SOULLESS APES is very therapeutic. Winding up the brain washed and pathologically narcissistic and deluded is unbelievably satisfying. God forgive me!! But the fact is that common sense isn’t a flower that grows in everyone’s garden. You have to wonder what Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, and the “EDGY” new atheist on the scene from Oxford, Cosmic Sceptic think about at night. Because Cosmic Sceptic and Richard Dawkins have both taken their relativism and utilitarianism to its “LOGICAL” conclusion by seriously considering the idea of eating human flesh and Sam Harris has taken his HARD DETERMINISM and UTILITARIANISM to its “logical” conclusion by seriously considering torturing people!!
Sorry but no matter how “BEAUTIFUL” your accent is, there is nothing “BEAUTIFUL” about promoting the idea that it’s ok to kill and eat a human to save your own skin. The fact is that Trent Horn deconstructed Cosmic Sceptics utilitarianism, that is Trent Horn deconstructed this atheistic, nihilistic fan fiction in a debate with Alex O’Connor and actually got Alex to admit that it was Ok TO KILL AND EAT YOUR CABIN BOY if you were starving and lost at sea on a lifeboat. I don’t trust anyone who would consider killing and eating another human being to save their own skin whilst virtue signalling about veganism only to later drop their vegan fan base like a lead balloon. “We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.” (Rabbi Johnathan Sacks: Head of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth). Equally, Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins who apparently also has a “nice” British accent took his atheistic beliefs to their logical conclusion when he ruminated over the idea of eating human flesh. This isn’t the first time Dawkins has entertained the idea of cannibalistic behavior. In 2018, he became woke and asked if it’s time - in this brave new world - to “overcome our taboo against cannibalism.” I’m not even making this stuff up. But hey we’re gonna be ok because at least we’ll be cannibalised by people with “BEAUTIFUL ACCENTS” right? The fact is that “NEW ATHEISM” that is fatalism and epistemological nihilism is exactly like the old atheism if the old atheism was bitten by two infected bats called Darth DAWKINS AND DARTH PROFOUNDLY POINTLESS HARRIS AND GOT A OVER ZEALOUS STRAIN OF RABIES!!
We have all of the examples of atheist morality we need in communist and Nazi crimes against humanity. The basis of his philosophy is no different. Harris’ hatred of religion blinds him to his inconsistent logic and misleads him with the absurd idea that religion is somehow an anomaly responsible for human violence instead of a tool for tempering it.
replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
@@a.39886Except that God and the state are not comparable. One is human and the other is the source of all that is Good, Right, Just, etc. God holds infinitely more authority as the creator of everything, infinitely more justice as the perfect Judge and the ability to infinitely compensate those who are deserving of it.
The Nazis were overwhelmingly Christian (albeit some held to a pseudo pagan aesthetic), ruled over a Christian nation, Germany and much of Europe had a long proud history of killing the Jews for being "Christ killers", and fascism has been described by some political thinkers as imperialism turned inwards (and while Europe didn't invent the concept of imperialism, they were VERY good at doing it). In fact, the people who opposed the Nazis most of all, so much so that they were the first ones sent to the concentration camps, were the socialists.
This, to me, is just one more example of how utterly ignorant the new atheists were of philosophical questions like methodology, epistemology, philosophy of science, and moral philosophy
1replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
It's also a misrepresentation of Harris' ideology. Harris doesn't believe science gives you rights or wrongs, but that betterment of human life is so plainly apparent that science seems more like a natural tool to what we ought to do.
@@Eliza-rg4vw 1. believe science gives you rights or wrongs 2. science seems more like a natural tool to what we _ought_ to do Argue why these two statements are not equivalent.
@@crusaderACR It's to say that, if you have anything you've already decided to do, science is a very effective method at dererming what you ought to do to achieve what you ought to do. If we ought to do XYZ, shouldn't there also be a way we actually physically achieve XYZ? That's where he claims science to be the most effective. Let's say you feel compelled by your moral system to not allow for abortions. What tools are you using to do so? Harris just thinks its so plain (what we ought to do) that science does essentially tell you what to do in some cases (for things that may be amoral like the aerodynamics of a keyboard this doesn't apply).
@@Eliza-rg4vw So you're saying his only argument is that science should be used as a tool to enforce morality? Then it's really not only not about morality itself, it's not controversial at all. Except that's not what I understood from his talks, he really tries to decide what's the correct course of action purely through "logic" by applying "the greater good". The latter of which is crazy subjective but he also seems to deny it is so. Frankly, I feel you were misunderstanding our friendly atheist here.
I really would love for someone to simply ask him “is there any event in human history which has led to human flourishing that wasn’t morally good?” Answering “yes” seems indefensible and answering “no” clearly means flourishing and the good cannot be identical
1 replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
If violence can be done for the greater good, then it is good. Surgeons clearly commit physical violence to remove cancerous tumours. We don't call it violence because the word carries the moral baggage of being evil. But in terms of the physical act, some surgeries are almost indistinguishable from torture. That does not make them evil. People pay lots of money for it because it's for the greater good (of not being killed by cancer, for example). A doctor committing violence for the greater good is a moral act.
There’s no way Sam Harris has gotten to where he is without being propped up in some way or another. He has no original ideas and only offers the most superficial defenses of the status quo. How anyone can be taken by his stuttering normie takes is beyond me.
Yep. Like Dawkins he's another empty jacket pushed forward to act as the promoter of ideas he barely understands. He's a puppet of those much cleverer neo-Marxists in academia who have learned a long time ago that it's best to go unseen.
If there's no free will, then it seems to me that there is no distinction between consensual sex and non-consensual sex. Both cases would reduce to materistic predeterminism. There was nothing anybody could do to prevent it from happening. Sounds like a living hell to me.
Watch Harris' debate with William Lane Craig on morality and you see Craig completely dismantle Harris' view...atheists can't have their cake an eat it too...either the universe has 0 meaning and objective moral values, outside of opinion, or there has to be a transcendent moral law giver. Harris' best attmept was "the flourishing of the human species" as the arbiter of moral truth, which is easily dismantled since that is not an objective good, it's a subjective good.
The fact that anti-natalism is so trendy today and that plenty of people have no interest in continuing civilisation tells you that "the flourishing of the human species" is hardly a universal good that atheists subscribe to.
the difference is that in The Prince what he shows how to maximize the prince well being, while harris advocates to maximize concious creatures well being.
@@beastofthenumber6764 So the goal is different, but the methods used can be the same (fear, control, violence) if necessary? So the biggest difference is Harris has moved beyond Divine Right Theory? That honestly seems like semantics to me. Any clarification to these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your response.
@@rosspunzo1876 since the goal is to maximize well being the method cant be one that diminishes well being too much. Also maquiaveli already moved beyond Divine Right the book "the prince" could perfectly be called "the president" and the content still works.
Another great video Trent. Maybe sometime you can address Harmonic Athiest who seem to address Christianity with the same brush, based on their bad experiences.
In the atheist world view. Why are actions labeled as good or evil well good or evil? Where does the definition of what is good or evil even come from? And where does he get to make the judgement that religion is good or evil. If there is no difference then why even comment on it?
20:50 Sam H.] "In this case, rapists, liars, and thieves would experience the same depth of happiness as the saints..." Where did Sam Harris ever get the idea that the saints were 'happy?' Being happy is not the reward of being good, moral, and saintly the reward is holiness. Being holy is a state of being that transcends both happiness and suffering and elevates you to the same plane of being as God - being completely conformed to God's will - but on Earth.
Yet another case of “I’m smart to do philosophy 101” that Sam exhibits. Then tells everyone else they’re stupid for trying to help him get the basics correct.
So, Sam Harris says that we shouldn't have the current justice system because we're not responsible for what we do since what we do is determined solely by the past. If that is true then we also don't have a choice as to the justice system we use, as it would also be solely determined by the past, not by our free will.😂 So what is he advocating for?
Although I'm an atheist I really hate Harris's argument. I don't even disagree with the premise that we can use reason to construct a better moral philosophy (all morality is man made including religious morality it's just misattributed to a deity) but unfortunately he takes it in the worst possible direction. It is, ironically, not rational. It's motivated reasoning. It's using science as a rubber stamp to legitimise what he wanted to do anyway. You'd think after the 20th century we would have learned our lesson. The choice is not between God and anything goes. I really do think that is a false dichotomy. But Harris has fallen into that trap, only to retroactively wallpaper over it with a veneer of rationality.
So according to Harris, we are determined by past events and there is no sense in talking about choices and moral responsability, therefore we should instead choose to reform the justice system for... oops!
I can never hear the phrase "For the Greater Good" without thinking of Hot Fuzz.
The greater good
The Greater Good
I can never hear the phrase without thinking of child murder and genocide.
And I can't stop thinking of the T'au from Warhammer 40k
Same here. It ranks up there with thinking or saying "don't call me Shirley" when someone begins a sentence with "surely ..". I just can't stop myself.
Sam Harris said it's okay to use illegal methods and terrorism to stop conservatives from holding political power. That's all I needed to know about him.
Source? I just want it for myself. Not necessarily doubting you
I mean, he said it’s ok to murder people who hold opinions he dislikes in this video.
If I had to guess, this means anti-semites and radical Muslims. In other words, people he views as ethnic/racial enemies.
@@deanmccrorie3461I don't have a source, but Auron MacIntyre Uploaded A video in which He talks about When sam harris said " hunter biden would have the bodies of dead children in their basement and i would not have cared".
@deanmccrorie3461 Type 'Sam Harris TDS" into the search bar, and you will find examples.
@@deanmccrorie3461 I've got my issues with Sam myself, but I too await this response.
I don't even understand why Sam Harris is popular considering his recent interviews. He's cringe.
Sam Harris has always been cringe, even back in the 2000s he brought absolutely nothing to the table for his side. People like to ascribe good intentions to that movement in the spirit of charity but someone like Harris has never a day in his life had good intentions, he is just a subversive trying to tear everything down.
@@watariovids1645yeah, I didn't have previous knowledge of him nor have any interest in learning about him. Imo he is a smart guy without wisdom.
because the proud like to have their ears tickled. and there are no "new atheists" that are not absolutely crippled by pride.
His comment about stopping Trump being elected -- and I have no brief for Trump or any politician -- threw him out of the pale of being recognized as a serious thinker. I have free enough will go ignore this overrated public intellectual. I think his sell by date has come.
I think he grew a platform at the inception of RUclips when people Atheist vs Apologetics debate were supracommon.
If we don’t have free will, then why does Harris try to change our minds about our beliefs?
I suppose it's because it's been determined that he would do exactly that. -Kyle
That's exactly what I was wondering while watching the video. What's the point of discussing things, what's the point of coming up with solutions for social issues, if everything is predetermined? Might as well lean back, for this is what's predetermined that you'd do.
he thinks he can be the predetermined factor that alters your behavior.
because of course he believes *he* has free will. nobody really believes *they* don't have free will. it's always other people
@@marvalice3455 That's the obvious explanation that I'm inclined to go with, too, but I'm trying to figure out how it'd work _within_ his belief system, and I'm coming up empty-handed.
@@marystone1526 If you're predetermined to lean back, then you will do so. If you're pre-determined to not lean back, then you won't so.
There is no contradiction under this philosophy when it comes to doing stuff/not doing stuff.
Listening to Harris is what brought me back to church partially.
:-). He is spouting the philosophy of the AntiChrist, and is thus a tool of the AC.
Personal responsibility presupposes that we have a right to the Truth. And yet, not only are we lied to by our Media (for profit) and our Politics ( for power) and our academia ( for position and money), but that there is a purpose to it. Nothing from nothing, and nothing for nothing. A flaw common to all People, is that they align their values according to the values of those in position of highest authority. At one time, not that long ago, highest authority rested with God, and his word, the Ten Commandments, and the aim was reward in the next life. However because of the lie that is Darwinism = No Creator = No God = secularism. Instead of putting God first, we put self interest or money first. If money comes first, the one and only rule is to get paid. Get or take as much as can, for as little work as you can. Which leaves society wide open to special interests. If you look at the outcome, where we are heading, ( Diversity, Equality and Inclusion = open borders = mass Muslim immigration = Sharia Law) you will know the purpose and who is paying for the lies/propaganda that we now told.
Harris certainly has helped buttress my faith in God. The fact that he's held up as one of atheism's superstars and yet his arguments are so inept convinces me the atheist position is not very strong.
I'm hardly familiar with Sam so when I read Harris in your comment, my immediate thought was went to Kamala 😅 It took me a second or two but I could see someone brought back to church after listening to a few clips of her 😂
@@sammygoodnightfaith in things you know are fake lmao
Malcolm Muggeridge recounts a conversation with a Soviet police officer about arresting innocent people. The police officer describes how that is a good thing because the people will worry; if an innocent man can get arrested, anyone can get arrested. It keeps everyone on their best behaviour.
Why? At that point what does good behavior gain anyone?
@@Danaluni59 The Soviets didn't care about the good of the people. They were concerned with the good of the state. Good behavior, as defined by the state, is good for the state.
If good behaviour can get you arrested, why show the best behavior - wouldnt that get you executed?
@@petermeyer6873 Overwhelming force by the state organ. The threat of death, or the threat of destruction of everything you love was the methodology of fear instituted by the Cheka, NKVD, MGB, and to a lesser degree the KGB. In the face of overwhelming force and cruelty almost everyone will give into pressure and acquiesce; they sowed the idea that no one can resist and no one can win. They achieved this especially by teaching soviet citizens to scapegoat each other with the (false) promise of being broken out of that cycle; innocence was secondary, and the Soviets in a sense purged the mind of the people who were left. It was the events and experiences of WW2 that gave the Soviet peoples a bit of a backbone again, and the leadership that had grown up and around the effects of that kind of treatment coming to power in the wake of Stalin and Beria led to the reduced the wantonness of the Soviet government.
Sam Harris is very confused. Sam having a public platform and held up as someone credible for being ethical is beyond the pale. Now if I had Harris’s moral outlook I could lock him up, destroy his career and place him in prison because it would be for the overall well-being of society. It does go both ways
He already destroyed his own career. He essentially has no public platform now. Trump destroyed his brain and he had a public meltdown.
So why aren't we doing it?
@@Hammerhead137 because we don’t share the same moral outlook. Things can change later on though we’re people on the opposite side of Harris decide to use his playbook back against him
@@brianfarley926 Why do we continue to wait until the damage has been done before we do something about it? How is that moral?
Because God wins
His "belief system," if you can even call it that, is circular. His reasoning for why things are morally wrong is literally "humans think thing is bad, therefore thing is bad, except those humans who don't think thing is bad, ignore them." There is no logic to it at all. It's just his personal opinions disguised with word salad and ridiculous metaphors.
Seems true to me
@@gonnacry4513 Yeah I dont see where the flaw is
Yeah, thats a circular argument, but that isn’t Sam Harris’s argument. He really just claims that “wellbeing” or whatever catch-all phrase you want to use, can, in theory, be measured neurologically. While impossible today, that claim seems irrefutable in principle. If that’s true, Sam says, then you can imagine morality as a landscape of wellbeing, with measurable peaks and valleys. In this landscape, you can compare different moralities based on their effects on wellbeing. That isn’t at all circular, but it is not “grounded” per se. It isn’t magical.
The idea is to think about morality in the same way we think about medicine. The purpose of good medicine is to increase health, and the purpose of good morality (Sam would argue) is to increase wellbeing. They can be similar enterprises, if only people could stop demanding their morality be dictated to them by otherworldly beings. Imagine how that would go in medicine.
@@Williamwilliam1531 but in the case of weelbeing, would you be onboard with instituting the matrix, or pods where people are constantly feeling euphoric while an AI handles every real thing ?
@@Kamfrenchie no, because it’s not clear to me that the scenario you offered maximizes wellbeing. It might maximize raw pleasure or something like that, but wellbeing encompasses more than just pleasure and very well might include the virtues of suffering and of adaptation.
I always like to ask atheists that are defending something horrible "are these the superior atheist ethics I hear so much about?"
I like to do that with people who believe that most people are gonna get burned forever
Just to be clear though Sam was indeed a loon with some of these comments no disagreement on that one.
Yeah, but couldn't they reply that the same goes for Christians defending slavery, or the worst parts of the Inquisition, or whatever? I think that what WE have is a superior metaphysics, and the Holy Spirit,not necessarily an unwillingness to support evil things
v replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
@@Greyz174 hell is real, act accordingly. We didn't make hell real, we're telling you to avoid it. That's the most moral thing to do, what atheists do by ignoring the evidence, spreading misinformation and disproven epistemology, is evil, because they are not helping people draw closer to God.
@@a.39886not really. If you are speaking for religion, you are right. Both are a nightmare, but God is not a religious concept but a philosophical one, and essential for realism. For example, natural law and morality are based in natural rights and the onotological value of the human being, not what religion says, but the objective reality and purpose of the human being.
One thing I know for sure: if any country were ever to become full blown socialist and planned society, the last person that should lead that country is Sam Harris or anyone who thinks that free will doesn’t exist and that everyone’s an NPC that only requires the right inputs to get the desired outputs of behavior.
Are you kidding? Sam Harris is exactly the kind of absolutist authoritarian that would lead any Marxist or planned society. Authoritarians, if they gain power by election, do so only when the election is heavily rigged to ensure their favored outcome.
Harris is a Jew. The Zohar teaches that human beings don't have free will, which is probably where the crypto-Jew John Calvin got his doctrine from as well as Muhammad.
he says people can choose their behaviour but people cant choose their desire to choose the behaviour , in other words choice exists but in limited context of your desires , and you cant choose your desires.
@@Anxh007 then how "can" people, or at least see them act against their best interests? He enjoys that juicy meal he just bought from restaurant. He sees a homeless person. Can he control his desire or wanting to have his meal, and turn it off? He despite that overrides that desire and give the homeless the meal. This isn't a science fiction movie where the protagonist jumps off the edge of planet to save his gf. THIS HAPPENS TENS OF TIMES IN REAL LIFE. This happens kver and over and over again. So yes, he can't turn off his will and desire to eat the me, yet he overrides it.
And before you speak of the greater desire he has for humans to survive, people even if they knew this homeless person is going to die anyway, and this meal is nothing as we know he has a disease that would inevitably kill him in 30 minutes. So survivability goes down the drain here. Yet many, many people would override their eating desire and give the homelsss the meal, that they know for sure won't help him anyway survive and propogate his genes.
And before you go the good is evil route, imma tell you beforehand I'm agnostic and have no good reason to believe in god. And I do even then believe morality is subjective. So please spare me the what-about-ism of (why did your god do X to Amalakites or whoever).
Just because you're agnostic or atheist, doesn't give you a free pass to say whatever and be expected to walk over thiests scot free. If you remain silent on the net, no one I believe has the right to interrogate you what you believe. But as soon as you argue for a position or a group, you have to answer according to the topic you bring up or respond to.
As the best advice I can give, it's absolutely fine to say (you know what? I don't know the answer of this question, and I doubt the theist's response. Or I'll think about it.) But please don't give a positive response or a claim (I assert X is the case, or is not the case. Free will doesn't exist).
I personally don't know, but I'll refuse to remain silent when people go repeating some buzz words they didn't think through.
And if you were suspicious I was secretly a religious person, yes god is immoral for punishing Amalakites and he could've destroyed their gods and taught them a lesson about their unjust children sacrifices, without the need to destroy all of them, children included and those who didn't agree with that but couldn't voice their objection. And if you think that was the only way god could resolve the situation, you believe in a god that can't knock off the idols, send rain or something, send an army to destroy the place and destroy the false idols as Christians call them and the temples where the atrocities were taking place. Destroy the tools of sin you could say, without killing any one, or with really minimum damages. That would be a truly merciful, loving god who is for repentance and giving sinners chance after chance after 1000 chances to repent before death. That god who does those actions is hundred times more merciful to destroy the work of evil, yet give the sinners and even children murderers a chance to repent.
So no, the (your god committed atrocities) doesn't work to red her the conversation about how free will works, as I believe in (there could be a more merciful god than that, so by definition he's not the most merciful). I don't believe in that god, but I believe there could be a better god morally than that one, and no, I believe in neither god's existence.
@@reda29100 people can act against one desire because of another desire
pretty simple
you dont decide which desire is more valuable the desire decides its value
Scott Adams has been trying to convince his audience that free will isn't real. Recently he described an analogy where he picks up a wad of napkins and drops them, explaining that the napkins have no choice but to fall, per the laws of physics. I wanted to respond that he had just beautifully demonstrated the capacity for a causal agent (himself) to counteract the effects of physics by preventing the napkins from falling up until the moment he dropped them.
Scott Adams the Dilbert guy?
@@mugsofmirth8101 yes
lol it demonstrated no such thing. Falling up also was not possible. We have textbook case here of your argument being "not even wrong".
It still proved free will to be false
@@konyvnyelv. Allegedly, according to almost every Christian sectarian theology I've heard (maybe there are others), the Storm God of Isreal (YHWH) knoweth all things that will happen in the future, and all choices everyone will make, makes free will impossible since there is already a 'fix' in for every decision you will ever make. They can't have it both ways.
The idea of drawing a conclusion on how we ought to behave based on a deterministic universe is an oxymoron. It makes no sense to say "we shouldn't punish criminals because they had no choice." Why do we suddenly have a choice about how to react to people who didn't have a choice?
Right. More proof that atheism cannot justify any moral reasoning whatsoever.
It makes sense once you grant the initial assumptions. These initial assumptions are also the thing that make it obvious Sam's moral claims are not objective. He is appealing to a human universal (or near universal) on moral intuitions.
he says people can choose their behaviour but people cant choose their desire to choose the behaviour , in other words choice exists but in limited context of your desires , and you cant choose your desires.
tragic misread. Nothing fixed and misunderstood should be used to determine anything. No less assume absolute determinism.
This whole comment section is coping and willful ignorance void of any due diligence.
Trent did a horrible, lazy, misapprehended read on this.
Very very disappointed in allll of you.
Lazy and wrong.
If you want to be right- watch the JBP Harris debates. All 5+ hours; then tell me you have the right to paraphrase and summarize Harris with this drivel.
@theonetruetim The really is nothing quite so juicy and delicious as the irony of someone stomping about telling everyone how stupid they are while obviously not understanding. 🤣🤣
Let's just pray for Harris. I can't respect his horrible positions but I can wish for his conversion...
That would be a true miracle.
I’m not an atheist anymore, but his opinion seems reasonable to me. Harris seems to be someone deeply guided by ethical and moral principles. In this sense, I believe he’s searching for God and is unaware of it. It may very well be true that His Heavenly Father extends mercy and love to Him for seeking truth. Let us pray for Sam’s salvation.
@@Xpistos510 He is not searching for God, he thinks he is God. People should all obey Sam's moral law. He has no foundation in his beliefs about morality, just asserts them.
@@gsp3428for people that think they are God, life has a way of humbling them
A small child will break something just to observe the results.
Therefore we have someone like Sam.
Sam Harris helped me become Catholic, precisely because I couldn’t satisfy my inquiry into the question of The Good with superficial answers like “well-being”. If the highest good is measured by the area under the curve of some formula like the product of happiness times health times quantity-of-people over some interval of time, then the most moral possible societies would look an awful lot like sci-fi dystopias.
Imagine a world where most of the population is grown and lives their whole lives in sterile test tube like environments that prevent any sort of health malfeasance, and the people are inundated with euphoric drug cocktails that maximize “happiness for their entire life”. Humans who reach a certain age where the ROI of “well-being” vs maintenance cost drops below a threshold could be justifiably flushed and decomposed into more organic matter to feed the system, and a new test tube human could then be cloned and grown to maintain the optimal number of living humans. A small percentage of the population might be obligated to run the machines and harvest resources at first, but when it can be completely automated, not a single person would ever need to open their eyes, breathe real air, or interact with another human. Such a world would satisfy Sam’s definition of an optimally moral society, but most people would shudder just to think of it.
The problem with a 'no objective moral standards system' is that I don't think it's ever communicated effectively that it's the best we can do. It's not proposed as an alternative to an Objective moral system, its proposed because that doesn't exist. (At least, they don't believe it exists.)
What does that mean? A lack of an objective moral system should mean one primary thing- it cannot be perfect. This doesn't mean we should automatically ignore any and all flaws, but it does reduce the point of pointing them out too.
That said, my reason for saying this is that if you were to realize the inevitable imperfection of subjective moral systems, one may spend less time criticizing it for not being perfect and instead looking into how to make it better.
Tldr; videos, and comments, like these are not worth much.
Ok so the thing is that this aldous huxley novel youre describing is obviously not going to maximize wellbeing and it's going to be terrible so we're not going to do that. Why would we have to do that if we're just trying to make people be optimally happy? Its not an optimal way to make people happy. No one said that micro managing is necessary for this
@@Greyz174 I don't think you're getting the purpose of the analogy. If you have everyone in test tubes that optimally preserve their health and all are connected to an IV drip that maximizes their happiness for their entire life, then you have an optimal world according to the world view that sees happiness/health/"well-being" as the summum bonum. So to the contrary, if the highest moral good is given by maximizing human "well-being", then the best world is one that maximizes the area under the curve of some formula like the product of happiness times health times quantity-of-people over some interval of time, and a world like the one I described perfectly fits the bill. There would be the highest possible number of the happiest and healthiest possible people at any given moment, yet such a world is obviously a nightmare, even though it satisfies Sam's thesis on what the best possible world would be.
@@kirkjungles4901 the reason that would be a nightmare is because trying it would devolve into a dystopia once practical reality kicks in and we know that by now.
like, there would be a bug in the happiness drip system where 1% of alive people feel like they're getting tortured for their entire conscious experience. or people would do this as a front to shepherd humanity into manageable pods where they can use and/or dispose of us as needed. or we mistakenly are calculating the area under the wrong curve because we missed some detail or other. or whatever other outcomes we have endlessly created at this point in novels and movies about dystopia
why would it be a nightmare if it actually worked?
@@kirkjungles4901 what would be important is for you to give a positive case for why a world that is actually like that would be a nightmare, since it looks like you're just appealing to intuitions. but intuitions are supposed to guide you to an explanation of their source, like what I offered about how this is obviously not going to work and you shouldnt try
what's your explanation for why it would be a nightmare, beyond it just being obvious in your opinion?
Never been impressed with Harris. He's more antitheist than genuinely rational. He's dogmatic of the atheistic variant. He does not even try understand the view opposite him. He just assumes his opponent is just wrong, why? because his opponent disagrees with him. Period.
Well Sam really doesn't know the violent history behind his atheism.
“of more than fifty thousand Orthodox churches on the territory of the RSFSR in 1917, fewer than a thousand were left in 1939.” -Victoria Smolkin, A Sacred Space is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, Princeton, 2018, (p. 49)
There's no book that goes with atheism telling you to kill certain groups of people. There are plenty of those commands in religious texts though.
of course he knows. he doesn't actually care about violence, he cares about power.
you cannot make an omlet without murdering a few ethnicities.
@getrit3007 the crusades too, don't throw stones in glass houses
@@ellyam991 total Islamic history 140million killed: you win !
@@davidjanbaz7728 great, so 2 major religions with the same Abrahamic God having a violent history
If Sam Harris's wife cheats on him with a dude that has a bigger dick than his, he would be understandably angry. But that anger is unreasonable and unjustifiable because now there would be two happier and better fulfilled people in the world, only at the cost of one man's bruised ego. The general "wellness" of the world went up, therefore the wife's actions were morally good. And I understand that his wife could say: "No, I love my husband, I don't want to have sex with a guy who has a bigger dick or who is better in bed, I want his dick and I don't mind being unfulfilled If it makes him happy" but she's not offering an alternate sexual, happiness based, worldview that we have to take seriously, she just doesn't get invited back to the conference about sexuality. ;)
You have style 🎉
That’s a funny way to make an excellent point.
LMAO
hahaha 🤣🤣
😂👏
I appreciate his honesty, most Atheists are unwilling to really lay out the truth that they do not value human life unless it furthers their pursuit of power. As one of the brothers Karamazov says, if there is no God, then we should live exactly opposite Christian values.
As an atheist, WHAT?
@ellyam991 is there objective morality? If so, upon what foundation?
Karamazov was wilding with that one
@@FourKidsNoMoney I don't believe there is
@@stevendouglas3781 that would be a non sequitur. The lack of an objective right and wrong doesn't mean we can't establish one based on things that are benefitial or detrimental to us, the planet and such
The ends justifies the means for Harris, clearly, whatever personal "end" Harris happens to value. What a dystopian world according to Harris!
Not for him, because he gets to decide!
@@TravisHi_YTfor every sam harris there should be a aleksandr kolchak
I like how these people literally believe we are just monkeys with an extra step but expect humans to behave in a perfectly and immaculate rational and flawlessly moral manner
Only an idiot would say that humans are "monkeys with an extra step." That's not what Sam nor the other 3 Atheist Horsemen would say. Be fair.
@@ConcedoNulli no but they think it's possible to free humans from immorality (whatever that means for an atheist) once the rational points are understood. Which as I noted, it's a paradox with the idea that we are just complex animals
@@CartoonSlug aren't we biologically primates? I'm a christian and I think we are monkeys with extra steps
@@mariobaratti2985 Nope. From Darwinism comes the belief No Creator, by extension or reason, No Creator = No God. If Darwinism was true, then Harris would be correct. Our common ancestor, would be that common to all life, and that is bacteria. Why do people believe in Darwin? It is because, when we are Children, it is presented to us as fact. The second law of thermodynamics, Entropy.
"The supposed evolutionary process breaks the most universal and best-proved law of physics, the law of increasing entropy, known as the second law of thermodynamics.
It applies not only in physical and chemical systems, but also in biological and geological systems, in fact all systems, without exception. The law stipulates that all systems tend to lose order. They go towards disorganisation and loss of complexity. The law of increasing entropy therefore precludes evolution, because all evolutionary systems are expected to increase in order and complexity.
Physicists E.H. Lieb and Jacob Yngvason explain: "No exception to the second law of thermodynamics has ever been found, not even a tiny one. Like conservation of energy [the `first law'], the existence of a law so precise and so independent of details of models must have a logical foundation that is independent of the fact that matter is composed of interacting particles"
@@mariobaratti2985 No, we are one of the apes. Monkeys still have tails.
I can’t believe I ever saw this guy as formidable
It took me just 15 min to know what kind of guy he was after knowing him for the first time
PS, i started with this video😂
He is still as formidable as ever. COVID just made people crazy and because Sam didn't go down the crazy COVID conspiracy rabbit holes like others that considered themselves part of the international dork web, people stopped liking him and look for any reason to try bring him down.
@@delailama736 no way man, he admits how incoherent his worldview is at the end of his book
Anyone who earnestly ascribes to any kind of hard determinism is a performative contradiction, it’s so delusional it deserves to be called out for the joke that it is.
The lack of self awareness on Sam’s part is truly concerning. He justifies killing of people due to their beliefs being potential causes of violence without realizing that the very thing he just stated is a potential cause of violence. By his own judgment he should off himself.
“By his own judgment he should off himself”
Exactly!! He’s the king of circular logic and his hard determinism is a joke. How can you possibly have a “moral landscape” without freewill? That is without conscious agents and moral accountability and control of your actions. He’s a walking contradiction and walking ball of cognitive dissonance. CRINGE ATHEISM in full effect. The fact is that hard determinism should be mocked for the stupidity and conceit for rationality and morality that it is!!
I think his reasoning is that by eliminating those he perceives as potential causes of violence, it will be for the greater good.
@@harrisonsamson I understand his rationality but the very term "elimination" makes him a cause for violence. Also, "greater good" arguments are always terrible because the term is vague enough to justify anything: "I killed 1 million newborns so the rest of us could eat. It's for the greater good".
I ascribe myself to Aquinan moral philosophy: good ends never justify evil means.
Ya I really can't stand Harris. His warmongering, his disdain for religion, and the way that he just acts as if all we need to do is do what he says for progress to happen make me kind of sick.
Also Liz Cheney is most definitely left-wing
he's just an army of the Machine.
the military industrial complex powers the american economy, so sam is pro war. religion tells us that family and faith are more important than working 70 hours a week, and that nations may come and go, so sam is against religion.
this has nothiong to do with morality. this is about gaining power through industrial capital, and sam is entirely sold on that.
I think he lost alot of credibility even within the atheist community when he said keeping Trump from power by essentially any means necessary was good.
@@marvalice3455 vreplace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
@@marvalice3455 agreed only I'd add that the militarism is NOT benefiting the US economy. The amount of scientists that are making bombs instead of the next tech innovation and doctors weaponizing diseases instead of curing them is not helping anyones except a select few
@@mattm7798 IDK why anyone took him seriously after WLC demolished him their debate
It's interesting that Harris can criticize religion when it allows some evil for the greater good, but believes the framework of his own worldview allows the very same thing.
Self defense is evil?
@@MajorCinnamonBuns
“Self defence is evil?”
Yes Sam Harris’s form of “SELF DEFENCE” is clearly evil.
According to Mr Harris..
“The practice of torture, in certain circumstances, would seem to be not only permissible, but necessary”
(Sam Harris).
Sam Harris even had the nerve to brag that….
“I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity.”
(Sam Harris).
Harris actually argues that there are scientific “neurological" grounds for supposing that his moral reasoning is logically correct and that we “ought” to be torturing people for collateral reasons. “Science” says that we “ought” to torture humans right? Where he gets his “ought” from is beyond most people. Are women and children exempt Mr Harris?? What about babies if this achieves the same end and forces parents to give information needed by the state?
According to the human rights lawyer Lutz Oette….
“Torture is one of the ultimate abuses of state power, and the use of extreme violence that exploits the powerlessness of individuals subject to state control is anathema to the rule of law. It easily becomes a license to target anyone who is declared to be a threat” (Lutz Oette).
It gets worse because according to the high priest of “new atheism” Sam Harris…
“The only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own ” (Sam Harris).
Furthermore, according to one of the high priests of militant atheism Christopher Hitchens…
“The crucial thing is to be willing and able, if not in fact eager, to kill them without pity before they get started.” (Christopher Hitchens).
It's Sam Harris’s statement about a nuclear first strike of our own and that last phrase from Hitchens that's particularly chilling.
The irony and the absurdity goes right over their atheistic, nihilistic heads!!
Reference: ('The Age' 5th September 2002)
As I pointed out already that last phrase by Hitchens including Sam Harris’s defence of nuclear first strikes is particularly chilling. It reminds of the final scene in the movie [planet of the apes] when Taylor discovers the statue of “liberty!!
Sorry but if you’re going to defend Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens et al as proponents of “liberty”, that is if your going to defend “new atheism” don’t forget to defend blatant liars, torture, “killing without pity before they get started” and preemptive nuclear strikes on men, women and children!!
I rest my case!!
I think if we are talking about God it might be that God is all powerful and all but yeah given Harris' and my own beliefs which arent exactly the same but are somewhat similar theres nothing intrinsically wrong about God allowing some suffering if there really is no possible way things can be less horrible than they are, or as leibniz would say if it is the case that we live in the best possible world
I’ve heard of Harris before but never actually his talking points, and I’ve come to two conclusions.
1) He’s one of those people that tries to sound smart but is fairly idiotic when you actually reason out what he says.
2) Pretty much every western government has started following his philosophy in the past 2 decades
When you "win" a debate with mocking derision that gets the audience to laugh you're not being rational, you're just tickling at a logical conclusion.
While Sam has definitely lost his mind to a viscious case of Trump derangement syndrome, he is very intelligent.
So you are going to use reason with Sam Harris. Please do try😅😅
@@lionzion1879Sam is a fool
@@MarkelMathurin so you say. What makes you less of a fool than he is ?
I'm not catholic(am protestant) but am really enjoying your videos
Yay more cults teaming up
I follow many Protestant influencers, it’s great to be open minded 🙏🏼 God Bless you brother.
I guess Sam owes Thomas Aquinas an apology. I assume he is no longer scandalized by the idea that in some circumstances, the capital punishment of heretics may be justified. Sounds like he is now an advocate of such a policy.
I understand why Sam cares about his own well being, I dont understand why I am supposed to care about Sam's well being.
humans have the capacity for empathy. Only a psychopath doesn't care about other peoples well being.
@@joshuavd5194 well the nazis killed millions, pol pot and his guys killed millions, Idi Amin and his soldiers killed millions, Stalin and his guys killed millions. Lets think of all the drug dealers, child sex traffickers, thieves, rapists, murderers, scammers, all the other types of criminals. there certainly are alot of psychopaths. And why are they supposed to have empathy. Very naive view of humankind.
Then maybe you're the sort of person who needs fairy tells about devils and lakes of fire.
@@RatatRatR No I am the sort of person who believes there is a standard of goodness that supercedes me, and that is grounded in God.
@@gsp3428 Right, we're saying the same thing.
we may never commit evil that good may come of it.
atheists have no such restriction.
So you cannot kill someone to save the world then?
Strange that the evil done unto the world by christianity is beyond counting and stretches back so far then. Not to mentiin the other desert blood god faiths of abraham.
Just why is it that countless hundreds of millions have suffered and died thanks to the adherents of the faiths of abraham?
17:52 Did Sam Harris just give an atheist defense for killing heretics? By this rationale, his only objection to killing heretics is ultimately a factual question, whether it was actually "dangerous heresy."
Yes, wierd to see Aquinas and Sam Harris agree with each other, and fairly embarrasing for us catholics
No. And if you listened to Sam you'd know there's no way he would support such a thing and isn't a lunatic. What you'd need is examples of what he had in mind. Sam named two people, one preacher of islammic terrorism that convinced a lot of people to blow things up, and one planner of islammic terrorist attacks - bin laden(who he said it'd have been preferable to capture if it could've been done without additional danger to those capturing him). Sam has explained himself in two articles. "on the mechanics of defamation", and "response to controversy".
@@boliussa Harris calling Christianity dangerous is just inciting people who would do evil against Christians even if he personally would not !
No. Not even close, you paranoid fantasist. (that means you live by a fantasy) He suggested that some people may be SOOOO driven to act on violent delusions to fulfill a goal that is disharmonious with life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness that there is nothing that can be said or changed- to correct their delusion. And they are so convicted in this pathology- think Dr Doom, or past Pope's in The Crusades- that the game is what it is. It's an extreme exception and hypothetical, in kind.
One we would rather not have to confront.
Stop believing in debunkable absolutes, and we won't have to postulate around undeterrable delusions that synergize w patriarchal and homophobic notions.
We've seen the fruits y'all's fantasy bear.
It's prudent to consider: you can't reason w someone that invents Satan (Hebrew for prosecuting attorney in the hierarchy of Elohim; gods. Yes plural) and devils and garbage like that. Sin & evil are words that excuse people from dealing w the actual cause of disharmony, as they gladly draw sloppy conclusions and make hyperbolized moral claims in the face of having their lies and sicknesses deconstructed. It makes them even crazier.
DELUSION is a part of human nature. The Eucharist is flat out made up. Delusions are powerful and so is offense. So powerful that some people gear up, mentally AND physically to anticipate the final days. A battle. A War.
and they call it being the Good guys...
THAT is the sickness.
One we should be prepared to counter- to save the humans who are present in this life.
You guys just wanna see what you wanna see. This is a master class in fantasy and confirmation bias, and is a sign of how screwed us humans really are- because of orthoxy that doesn't even bother to negate the forgeries in the NT. They just double and triple down of tradition and worse.
Abraham did not exist
Moses- same
Christ meant to keep it Jewish
Messianic talk is corrupt and seeks vengeance, invents sin, evil and worse.
Don't mistake your problem for ours
and by ours- i just mean thinking caring people- not "atheists".
Running by some unifying Ideology is not what reality and reason require.
Learn your myths.
This one is weak.
Not Truth.
love,
T
Christians have been slaughtering heretics for centuries. Has Harris killed a single person? Any comments on that?
Excellent video Trent!
I love that you put this up now, since my father (a devout atheist) has recently undusted the "End of Faith" and I am expecting some incoming comments about faith in the near future :)
I'm not Catholic, Christian or even religious. That said I do admire you Christians and appreciate your contributions. The world's a better place with you in it.
I have nothing positive to say a Sam or people like him.
Fantastic video. A huge part of the problem is that today we use our brain in a very left-tilted way, as Dr. Iain McGilchrist writes (“The master and his emissary”). All these arguments are brought forward by the “emissary”, which is our left brain, very good at “how” but totally oblivious as to “why”. Religion is the best way to look at reality because it re-balances our brain towards the right brain, which is meant to be the “master” of our life.
Thats a really cool way of looking at narratives, taking concepts and wrapping them into a coherent character and creating a scene which can play out. Ill have to try that in my writing some time.
The crowd calling to “free Barrabus” and “crucify him” correspond to Harris’s moral framework
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 🎵 Trent introduces Sam Harris's philosophy and the criticism he faces.
01:12 📚 Harris's book "The Moral Landscape" attempts to ground morality in science, but philosophers criticize this approach.
02:05 📜 Harris defines goodness as increasing well-being and uses science to ground objective morality.
04:02 🤔 Harris's analogy of medicine and ethics falls short, as ethics is philosophical, not purely scientific.
07:30 🕊️ Harris argues that if determinism is true, free will is an illusion, leading to a lack of moral responsibility.
09:19 🤝 Harris criticizes compatibilist views of free will as redefining the concept, akin to redefining Atlantis.
11:23 ⚖️ Harris challenges traditional notions of punishment, advocating for consequentialist perspectives.
15:07 ⚖️ Consequentialist defense of punishment leads to absurd conclusions, like punishing innocent people for deterrence.
18:06 🔒 Harris suggests suppressing harmful beliefs and actions for overall well-being, even if it involves censorship.
20:12 🔄 Harris's claim that moral goodness and well-being are identical is undermined by his own admission.
23:25 🕊️ A religious perspective, grounded in God and human value, offers a more coherent basis for morality than Harris's approach.
If Sam Harris doesn't believe offenders should be punished, we should all just slap him Will Smith style and say "determinism made me do it"
And you would suffer the consequences like jail time etc. This is different to punishment. It is about quarantine and rehablitation.
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself 😌
good point. U could slap Sam Harris and he would get mad every time. the “no free will” argument wouldn’t cut it.
everyone on earth acts like free will exists. our whole justice system is based on it. if everyone acts like it’s real, does it even matter if it’s not..?
@@jessfarr5667 I can understand what you are implying by this... Makes sense, kind of like Money... Everyone believes it has value, so it doesn't really matter... But that doesn't mean we won't explore other options that can make things even more convenient for us and enhance our quality of life
Same goes for our conception of free will, there is much to benefit from exploring it further so that we can arrive at a conception closer to reality.
At one point almost everyone 'believed' slavery was a good thing, so would you have said 'does it really matter to re-evaluate that?'
@@thefundamentallucrative8434 no not at all, because abolition was a moral movement concerning cultural attitudes in society. at one point child sacrifice was an accepted ritual. my point about free will is that, regardless what we believe about determinism, every human acts like free will is real. it’s one of the most basic foundations of human society if not the most fundamental. we all agree that we have choice and therefore are responsible for our actions. all politics, hierarchies and the criminal justice system are based on free will.
In the USSR, once you were arrested, your guilt was assumed. You would be tortured until you confessed to a crime you didn’t commit, then sent to a work camp for up to 25 years until you died of exhaustion or exposure. If the state admitted that you were innocent and that they had made a mistake, it would be bad for the state, and therefore bad for everyone in the country (according to them). So you would be tortured and killed if it was expedient for the state, regardless of whether you had actually done anything wrong.
Harris' worldview denies the inner life that we all lead. The conversations we have with ourselves, the justifications we create in our heads, the mental negotiations we go through etc.
Only an Atheist would claim to be 'following the evidence' while similarly ignoring what they experience daily and know to be true. It's classic Orwellian double think.
I believe people aren't actually atheist per se they're more like idol worshippers. They're just unwilling to acknowledge it. Any fair person without belief would be agnostic but to deny God as both a premise or a real entity it requires an alternative perspective that is fundamentally idol worship.
Some worship their ego hence the veneer of intellectualism that is detached from personal fallibility is such a draw. They pray at the altar of hedonism so for them pleasurable experiences no matter how hollow or fleeting become self fulfilling. Seeking more pleasure is the only response to the quandary of pleasure not being as fulfilling as expected. Adulating human thought and material achievement isn't wonder of mankind its actually an exercise in self congratulatory self worship. This is why coopting and hiding behind science is so common allows the mask of egocentric view of intellectualism as well as to deign the self as the only true creator.
@@skp8748
“Idol worship”
Exactly!! How can anyone possibly not notice that Sam Harris’s HARD DETERMINISM is clearly a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM and a total and utter defeater for strictly reductive materialists, atheists or philosophical naturalists/freewill deniers?
The worship of “MATTER”, that is the worship of materialism and philosophical naturalism is the ultimate form of idolatry. Man always wants to worship and point to a DEAD, blind, mindless, ultimately meaningless soulless idol, from a golden calf to the moon, or Hollywood to money, or fame, status, cars and property and finally when the nihilism kicks in he turns to the ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS, HOLLOW AND SOULLESS APE as his final form of idolatry and self worship!!
I have debated some atheists in debate groups on Morality. They often quote Dawkins and Harris to me on how we dont have freewill and morality is subjective. Sadly the arguments always comes to an end when i ask them, on what moral ground do they stand to say that people like Hitler and others are evil or are they trying to justify Hitler for his evil deeds, since morality according to them is Subjective, and Hitler i think will definitely have a good subjective reason for his actions?
The basis by which Hitler should be condemned is not dogma but actuality.
ez
he hurt people
brought no good
History is complicated
Murder is not.
I am probably going to get lambasted for being "the Atheist" in this comments section - when clearly I am not the target audience here. But I will say a lot of points are being misconstrued here.
Also, while I mostly believe that free will is an illusion, I think that in most cases acting like it is not might be the best course of action (if these comments are indicative of "most people"). Ironically Sam is trying to prove that there are objectively bad actions. So are you mad at him for saying that or that morality is subjective? Can't be both.
And if you don't think morality is subjective, ask yourself if something you hold is evil was tomorrow decreed by your God to be moral, would you change your mind?
@@murphygreen8484 I can guarantee you that most response you will get here will not be in away a personal attack on you but response to your argument.
If the free will you believed to be an illusion is the freewill explained by Harris and other atheists, then I agree with you. To me and every other christain that understood what freewill really is, will know that it's never an illusion. Harris took a reductive and determistic approach to explain freewill which is understandable considering his world view, and he gave vague instances like choosing tea over coffee, choosing a movie over another. Based on the approach he took to explain it, there is some truth in that, but the problem is, freewill in the real sense is not as simple as that. Let's take for instance, at societal level, every individual is presented with the ability to chose between working hard, be law abiding so as to be useful to himself and the society, or to lazy around pay no attention to the rules and regulation and becomes a nuisance to himself and the society. Choosing the former, will require sacrifices and efforts and by no means a choice made casually, and the end result is a positive outcome as a reward, while the later doesn't require much effort or sacrifices and the result is often catastrophic and regrettable. Well you might say, that the society as a factor presented the two choices and confined the individual to them , to that i will say that you're right, but the importants point here is that the individuals gets to chose, and the choice is not made out of ignorance but of the knowledge of what lies at the end of their choices. He can choose good, which comes with selfless sacrifice or evil which is all about selfishness. External factors can't make this choice for us, and the ability to chose here is what we regard as freewill. Christ before his crucification said, if it was his will, he would have wanted the cup to be taken away from him, but then he knew that his will at that moment is against the will of the God the father and will not be a good thing for his mission on earth, so he ultimately submitted his will to the will of the Father which is to give up his life for our sin. Note he has the choice just like everyone of us to go with our will which is in constant rebellion with the will of God.
Haris is of the opinion that morality is subjective not objective that is his main reason of trying to explain away freewill. If there is no freewill, there will be no objective morality.
My morality is derived from my religious beliefs, therefore it's objective and from God. God does not change so as His words and rules. People might pervert His words and teachings but the truth will always remain the same. So my answer is, I will not change my mind because God can't change His nature either.
@@murphygreen8484 People are mad at him explicitly for saying both morality is subjective and that there are objectively bad actions. Such a statement would be oxymoronic. The last question can only be posed by an extremely simple view of God as simply, "some random dude."
@@murphygreen8484
“I mostly believe that free will is an illusion, I think that in most cases acting like it is not might be the best course of action”
I bet you do!! Are you for real? You’re actually claiming that someone like Hitler’s actions were not evil and depraved because freewill is illusory right? But we should just pretend his actions were evil and depraved and that he was accountable for his actions as this is just the “BEST COURSE OF ACTION” right? Sorry but “BEST” according to who? Or what absolute, universal objective standard of measure exactly?
The standard of an overgrown amoeba with illusions of grandeur? Or the standard of an ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS, HOLLOW AND SOULLESS APE who shares half their DNA with bananas???
Your world view, your absurdity, your ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS, HOLLOW AND SOULLESS APE, your existential crisis and your epistemological crisis not the theists!!
Sorry but we [ought] to just PRETEND that the Nazi officers who were found guilty of genocide and hung after the Nuremberg trials were guilty? We ought to just “pretend” that they were accountable for their actions because freewill is just illusory, that is moral accountability is allegedly “ILLUSORY”. So pretending is the “BEST COURSE OF ACTION”?
And you mock our beliefs!!
Was that a “rational” claim or was it just determined?
CRINGE ATHEISM in full effect.
Sorry but the fact is that a strictly reductive materialism, atheism or philosophical naturalism is a walking ball of self contradiction and cognitive dissonance!!
“Hitler and the Nazis couldn’t help themselves when they gassed men, women and children as freewill is illusory”
Yeah makes great “sense” and completely “sane”!!
Atheists definitely have the “moral” high ground on this one!!
Glad we cleared that one up!!
Sam Harris does not do philosophy. He just powers through things; “we just know better”, “we now know”, or he will just outright discount alternate positions or ones that undermine his.
He is intellectually devoid but he can use the veil of “science” and nobody will question him.
So if killing people is sometimes morally acceptable to maximize the good of others, especially when they will not recount their dangerous views than why does he have such a problem with the church and state putting to death heretics? They injured public cohesion, caused civil unrest, caused riots that injured and killed people and were unrepentant when approached by the authorities. Under his logic the church and state were not just justified in putting them to death but morally obliged.
He needs to be asked who gets to decide what the “greater good” is…?
Him and the rest of the jews obviously.
that is a great question absolutely but it doesnt undermine the principle that the greater good is what is important its mostly just a question of lack of information then because we dont know what will be best to do in a situation when we dont have enough knowledge
The whole case for any form of utilitarianism falls once one realizes that value (as in the value of ends or means) is subjective and ordinal, thus all aggreagations or interpersonal comparisons of utility are completely unacceptable.
Many values are subjective, not all. With any objective value, you still destroy morality.
Trent, can you next do a deep dive video on *transhumanism* or *nominalism* ?
The first example (Harris vs Peter) is such a good topic Mr. Trent
Just a month ago my grandmother was diagnosed with stones in the gallbladder, my mother wanted a surgery the quicker the better. My grandma didn't want it, she preffered to search an alternative. This was such a heated topic because my mother wanted to make my grandma to submit to her solution, basically what Harris wanted to threat people like fools if they do not want to submit to "the science". Of course there were "scientific" alternatives for what my grandma had but my mother wanted to bent her will
She could use lazers or sounds to break apart the kidney stones
As Sam Harris is a strict determinist, one could argue that what he has to say on morality is irrelevant. None of us can control our actions according to his view, we're just acted upon by external factors. So why do we need to address morality again?
Yes, this is a fundamental problem with the philosophy. How can anyone be morally good or bad if we have no choice? His idea basically excuses all human atrocities committed because we can’t hold those people accountable. The idea of morality is irrelevant if determinism is true.
Remember when Ben Stiller was funny?
I still have fond memories of this docuseries about dinosaurs from Animal Planet back in the early 2000s that was narrated by Ben Stiller haha, I watched those DVDs so many times haha.
Those were simpler times.
@@ponti5882 For me maybe, but I am 27 haha. I don't think that the 2000s were a simple decade for my parents, what with Y2K concerns, 9/11 (we lived 30 minutes outside of Manhattan), the Great Recession, etc. Every generation has their struggles - we certainly have ours, but, by and large, the word is a better place now than it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40, etc.
His part in Happy Gilmore always cracked me up.
@@Nontradicath
Is it better? We are closer to WW3 and worldwide economic collapse than previous times. Also it seems there is a worldwide network of pedophiles. First abuse of children was only blamed on Catholics but now it's being exposed among Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and the SBC!
Sam Harris and his ideas would have fit in very nicely in 1930s Germany…..
Prayers for Sam Harris' repentance. When I was a lukewarm, I had moments where I thought killing people for the greater good was okay. No, it's not.
“…If it would lead people to act better than they otherwise would.”
See, even he doesn’t believe his own nonsense. He thinks building prisons would change behavior, but his whole premise is that people can’t choose their behavior. These inconsistencies are inevitable when one’s position is so obviously at odds with reality.
1 replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
Hes a victim of the typical atheist argument of the enlightened ape. Everyone is restricted by certain rules that they cannot be aware of because their awareness of anything is an illusion, but the enlightened ape has transcended the illusion and sees reality and is both capable of describing the rules while remaining bound by them. Its all one massive contradiction.
Not really. There are many things to criticise about his points but I don't think this is it. It could be said that such punishments would alter the variables of the universe and of a possible perpetrator's mind so that what would happen is now bound not to, without violating his principles. I think the main problems with his philosophy are the ones that Trent mentioned in this video, mainly the utterly immoral things it would be bound to defend
No, his premise is that behavior is exactly determined by circumstances such as whether or not there are prisons.
You can't choose not to influenced by your environment, thus one environment leads to one outcome.
Your argument here is to argue against the idea that balls roll down hill by saying 'but why then don't they roll down without the hill?'
@@DerPinguimThat may be true, but then the next logical question to be asked is what altered those physical brain parameters to take up a new state? Because the premise is that there is no free will, then what was the driving force for that state change in the mind?
Also, I think that if there is no free will anywhere in the universe, then everything is predetermined. There is no change that can happen, because there is no agent to drive that change.
Soviet Union tried Sam Harris's ideology to the letter
But if Sam Harris lead the Soviet Union, it would have been different.
@@CtuNelson
“It would have been different”
Yes!! Of course it would have been “BETTER “ in the Soviet Union with Harris at the stirring wheel of communism. Of course thousands of orthodox Christians wouldn’t have been misrepresented as dangerous, demonised, terrorised and murdered because Sam Harris always always tells the truth doesn’t he? Especially when describing his political opponents beliefs right?
Especially when there’s an “existential threat” to the state lol. This guy can not be trusted to protect democracy, human rights and freedom of speech!! His HARD DETERMINISM, that is his denial of freewill is sophomoric and is a joke and a threat to our justice system that protects families and children.
I don’t know why people act like Sam harris is an intellectual. He has not earned a shred of respect
Anti-theists like Sam Harris really gives atheists a bad name. That said, intelligence and profoundly dumb takes can be found in every belief system.
He claims he is a neuroscientist yet never did a bachelor’s in it, he paid to do his PHD on it so he can claim he is one.
"He has not earned a shred of respect" Did it ever occur to you, that grown ups dont seek respect but rather truth?
@@petermeyer6873 You might want to note that no-one had ever suggested that Sam was ever seeking respect, just that he had never earned the respect that he had among the secular community. Earning respect would probably come about from seeking truth, if Sam had ever attempted something to that effect in his life, then maybe he'd earn a degree of respect.
@@louisryan5815 - The verb "earning" implies that one works towards a goal, which may be at least a compensation for the efford spent. Danielwisell's comment implies, that Sam Harris works for him, who is granting that compensation within a contract in the form of "respect". This simply does not apply to Sam Harris' effords, especcially in regards to danielwisel as a self-proclaimed contractor. I bet Sam Harris neither knows Danielwisell nor cares about the respect he is willing to pay him.
- Furthermore, "respect" towards a person instead towards an idea or a principle remains a strange concept after all. What exactly is meant? Fame or fear?
- There is no such thing as a secular community. Neither is there an atheist community, in case you meant that. The mere thought these existed is ridiculous. The basis of these ideas is simply not wide enough.
Suggestion: Would like a follow up, maybe with you speaking with a historian about how the terrifying aspects of Harris's beliefs have already come to fruition in Marxist and National Socialism both quite atheistic.
C.S.Lewis wrote about the "Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" and its chilling consequences. Harris' ideas are far from new and we should have learned by now.
Don't forget the French Revolution. Intentionally built on a foundation of lies and calumny.
You realize that the event of the government being overthrown is a product of that nation's citizen's being in such a poor state of poverty that they decide they have nothing more to lose so they might as well burn the country down, right? You realize that America is drifting in this same direction, not because of undefined wokism, but because people can no longer afford to keep their homes and feed their families while their government cuts the taxes of the richest people in the nation by half, right? You do realize that America wad at its economic greatest when the government prevented any single business from owning mioe than 5% of a product's market value because maintaining competition kept prices low, which we would protect the middle from the excessive price gouging they need to deal with that's accounting for 50% of our inflation, right? You see where I'm going with this, right?
*If I don't reply or if my comment disappears it means this channel blocked me for having a different opinion.
Actually both of those were highly religious Marxism is heavily Judaic and nazism uses religion and shit all the time Himmler tried to talk to the black sun a friggin elder demon older than your faith
Marxism was national socialism not so much
I find it interesting that Harris suggests punishing people "if it led people to behave better than they otherwise would." That thought implies that people do have a choice to make, and that adding a deterrent (potential punishmentt) would encourage people to avoid the offense, all other things equal. You cannot deter someone by threatening them with punishment, unless people actually have a choice whether they can do the thing or not.
That I can freely choose is my most immediate phenomenological observation. It will take far more than the argument from materialism to dissuade me.
Couldn't we just as easily conclude that free will, rather than impossible, is in fact evidence that we actually live under a different ontological paradigm?
It's really worrisome how many people eat up Sam Harris's garbage
This is the result of spending 30 years trying to be the 'cool edgy boi' you never could be in high school.
The main defect of consequentialism is its consequences.
In general philosophy since the enlightenment hasn’t been about finding and pursuing the good. It’s been about giving permission and glorifying the philosophers vices.
sure seems that way.
It is incoherent to talk about a lack of free will but also to talk about making choices that maximize human good. Either you can choose or you can't.
At 11:42 Harris is quoted saying '...a sham form of retribution would still be moral- even necessary if it led people to behave better than they otherwise would". How would the threat of punishment change their behavior if all action is predetermined? How would one even go about making his proposed societal changes lest they were also predetermined to do so?
I would love to see an episode addressing all the negative allegations against Pope Pius XII regarding Hitler, and Nazism
No promises on future content, but I'd recommend checking out Bearing False Witness by the late Rodney Stark. -Kyle
@@TheCounselofTrent I would like to see a video addressing some of the accusations against Mother Teresa by Christopher Hitchens and others, if possible a debate or dialogue with someone who holds that Mother Teresa is an Evil person.
@@whitevortex8323
The idiots who malign Mother Teresa are not worth discussing, they’re disgusting.
@@whitevortex8323mother teresa delighted in suffering of poor people
@@georgedoyle2487 I mean I dunno about "delighted" but she did say suffering is a gift from God
People as individualistic as atheists should not be making these determinations. Harris also knows about moral foundations theory, other personality metrics, and that people are group-competitive, so his rhetoric is quite odd
I wonder how much of a role the "new atheists" played in the popularisation of wokeism.
Alot
I used to read atheist dating books. The main goal is to not love others so you can gain power over them and get their love. You must no love so you can control yourself and thus get the other person to love you. If you don't get power you will be manipulated, crushed, and abused. I used to cry because in such a world why get married to someone you don't love so that they can love you? Either you love and it's not returned, or you are smothered by others in not loving.
Thanks for the discussion. I enjoy listening to the arguments of folks like Harris. My favorite is Hitchens, may he RIP, and I enjoy Alex O'Connor.
What I find most interesting about Harris' followers, and there's a lot of them, is that they seem to be more satisfied by what he's attacking (religion) than by the coherence of his argument. It's much like protestants who attack the Catholic Church. Doesn't matter what they say as long as they finish by saying the Catholic Church is wrong. With Harris' followers, Sam could say the sun is lime green as long as he ends by saying god is fiction.
av replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
Your ignorance is confusing Dr.Gavin Ortlund's intelligent criticisms with many of the hyper literalist fundamentalists that don't have good arguments!
Thinking Protestants like me don't attack certain Roman Catholic doctrines just for fun as you assumed!
I think you misunderstand Protestants.
18:24 And this is the exact kind of worldly religious thought that Christ lifts us above, in this case the product of a logical mind unsubmissive to God - the author of good.
A little dated but still glad you’re responding to his cringe book
13:30. Story of my life. My wife and I live in China and cannot leave because she is travel restricted for her father’s crimes. Retrospectively for a crime committed 20 years ago I might add.
Sam Harris ignores the fact that temporary suffering in so many cases increases wellbeing in the long term.
Problem with utilitarianism generally. Both defining the desired goal and being able to accurately foresee it's effective means. Goes hand in hand with statolatry and tyranny.
Utilitarianism is a child's philosophy, only concerned with some vague idea of net happiness. Ridiculous.
@@tonyl3762 Yep. You would basically have to be God to know if something was good or bad in the grand scheme of things. Oh wait...hmm....
Isn't this what this video tries to argue against? That ends can justify the means?
@@x10018roPunishememt isn't evil if it is done by a legitimate authority, for the right reasons and respecting proportionality
Think about how much good it would do to force Sam Harris to turn over all his wealth to less fortunate people. After all, he was predetermined to be a neuroscientist and author.
As much as I get frustrated with God, I could never be an atheist. I need our Lord. He is my rock . Atheism is scary to me
Amazing! Just discovered your channel and very excited to see your existing content 🙂
So Harris didn’t choose to believe that free will is an illusion. In fact, he couldn’t have believed anything else based on his own position.
Quite a self refuting and contradictory position…!
Exactly!!
However, that being said, atheist activist baiting is quite an enjoyable pastime. Winding up the brain-dead and narcissistic is amazingly therapeutic. Winding up triggered strictly reductive materialists, atheists or philosophical naturalists who actually claim that we are all ultimately just the brains user “ILLUSION” of self, that is nothing more substantive than overgrown amoebas with illusions of grandeur is extremely therapeutic.
You don’t even have to work that hard to make fun of this strictly reductive, causally closed, atheistic nihilistic fan fiction. You don’t even need to exaggerate that much. This is what makes satire so difficult these days when pointing out these absurdities.
Because in satire you’re usually taking logic to an extreme extent to show how ridiculous something is. But in the case of HARD DETERMINISM and scientism and materialism of the gaps fallacies all you’re doing is showing that this is what these activists actually subscribe to in real terms.
Mocking the claim made by celebrity pop scientists and celebrity atheists that we are all nothing more substantive than ultimately meaningless chemically determined robots with no freewill and choice, that is nothing more substantive than ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS, HOLLOW AND SOULLESS APES is very therapeutic. Winding up the brain washed and pathologically narcissistic and deluded is unbelievably satisfying. God forgive me!!
But the fact is that common sense isn’t a flower that grows in everyone’s garden.
You have to wonder what Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, and the “EDGY” new atheist on the scene from Oxford, Cosmic Sceptic think about at night.
Because Cosmic Sceptic and Richard Dawkins have both taken their relativism and utilitarianism to its “LOGICAL” conclusion by seriously considering the idea of eating human flesh and Sam Harris has taken his HARD DETERMINISM and UTILITARIANISM to its “logical” conclusion by seriously considering torturing people!!
Sorry but no matter how “BEAUTIFUL” your accent is, there is nothing “BEAUTIFUL” about promoting the idea that it’s ok to kill and eat a human to save your own skin.
The fact is that Trent Horn deconstructed Cosmic Sceptics utilitarianism, that is Trent Horn deconstructed this atheistic, nihilistic fan fiction in a debate with Alex O’Connor and actually got Alex to admit that it was Ok TO KILL AND EAT YOUR CABIN BOY if you were starving and lost at sea on a lifeboat.
I don’t trust anyone who would consider killing and eating another human being to save their own skin whilst virtue signalling about veganism only to later drop their vegan fan base like a lead balloon.
“We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.” (Rabbi Johnathan Sacks: Head of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth).
Equally, Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins who apparently also has a “nice” British accent took his atheistic beliefs to their logical conclusion when he ruminated over the idea of eating human flesh.
This isn’t the first time Dawkins has entertained the idea of cannibalistic behavior. In 2018, he became woke and asked if it’s time - in this brave new world - to “overcome our taboo against cannibalism.”
I’m not even making this stuff up. But hey we’re gonna be ok because at least we’ll be cannibalised by people with “BEAUTIFUL ACCENTS” right?
The fact is that “NEW ATHEISM” that is fatalism and epistemological nihilism is exactly like the old atheism if the old atheism was bitten by two infected bats called Darth DAWKINS AND DARTH PROFOUNDLY POINTLESS HARRIS AND GOT A OVER ZEALOUS STRAIN OF RABIES!!
I've learn to go in the other direction whenever anyone says "for the greater good"
I’m ashamed for being his follower in the past.
It’s alright. We’ve all made mistakes. -Kyle
Anyone else think of Hot Fuzz with the chanting of "The Greater Good" as they rationalize killing petty criminals?
We have all of the examples of atheist morality we need in communist and Nazi crimes against humanity. The basis of his philosophy is no different. Harris’ hatred of religion blinds him to his inconsistent logic and misleads him with the absurd idea that religion is somehow an anomaly responsible for human violence instead of a tool for tempering it.
replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
The nazi's weren't atheist. Hitler was a catholic in his early years.
@@a.39886Except that God and the state are not comparable. One is human and the other is the source of all that is Good, Right, Just, etc. God holds infinitely more authority as the creator of everything, infinitely more justice as the perfect Judge and the ability to infinitely compensate those who are deserving of it.
@@DerPinguim If tomorrow god decided that being left if unjust, immoral, bad, etc would that become unjust immoral bad just because God said so?
The Nazis were overwhelmingly Christian (albeit some held to a pseudo pagan aesthetic), ruled over a Christian nation, Germany and much of Europe had a long proud history of killing the Jews for being "Christ killers", and fascism has been described by some political thinkers as imperialism turned inwards (and while Europe didn't invent the concept of imperialism, they were VERY good at doing it).
In fact, the people who opposed the Nazis most of all, so much so that they were the first ones sent to the concentration camps, were the socialists.
I read Sam Harris’ books…right up to “Moral Landscape”.
That’s where he disqualified himself from being taken seriously
I read some of his books too. They weren’t any better.
Sam Harris Rule: When Failing at Presenting My Case, Asteroid
You never miss the target; thank you, Trent.
This, to me, is just one more example of how utterly ignorant the new atheists were of philosophical questions like methodology, epistemology, philosophy of science, and moral philosophy
1replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
It's also a misrepresentation of Harris' ideology. Harris doesn't believe science gives you rights or wrongs, but that betterment of human life is so plainly apparent that science seems more like a natural tool to what we ought to do.
@@Eliza-rg4vw
1. believe science gives you rights or wrongs
2. science seems more like a natural tool to what we _ought_ to do
Argue why these two statements are not equivalent.
@@crusaderACR It's to say that, if you have anything you've already decided to do, science is a very effective method at dererming what you ought to do to achieve what you ought to do. If we ought to do XYZ, shouldn't there also be a way we actually physically achieve XYZ? That's where he claims science to be the most effective.
Let's say you feel compelled by your moral system to not allow for abortions. What tools are you using to do so?
Harris just thinks its so plain (what we ought to do) that science does essentially tell you what to do in some cases (for things that may be amoral like the aerodynamics of a keyboard this doesn't apply).
@@Eliza-rg4vw So you're saying his only argument is that science should be used as a tool to enforce morality?
Then it's really not only not about morality itself, it's not controversial at all.
Except that's not what I understood from his talks, he really tries to decide what's the correct course of action purely through "logic" by applying "the greater good". The latter of which is crazy subjective but he also seems to deny it is so.
Frankly, I feel you were misunderstanding our friendly atheist here.
I really would love for someone to simply ask him “is there any event in human history which has led to human flourishing that wasn’t morally good?”
Answering “yes” seems indefensible and answering “no” clearly means flourishing and the good cannot be identical
1 replace every example that Horn provides in minute 13:20 and forward with the world "God" where he says "State" and that should clear your mind on that topic for the non believers.
"The Greater Good..."
"STOP SAYING THAT!"
If violence can be done for the greater good, then it is good. Surgeons clearly commit physical violence to remove cancerous tumours. We don't call it violence because the word carries the moral baggage of being evil. But in terms of the physical act, some surgeries are almost indistinguishable from torture. That does not make them evil. People pay lots of money for it because it's for the greater good (of not being killed by cancer, for example). A doctor committing violence for the greater good is a moral act.
There’s no way Sam Harris has gotten to where he is without being propped up in some way or another. He has no original ideas and only offers the most superficial defenses of the status quo. How anyone can be taken by his stuttering normie takes is beyond me.
Yep. Like Dawkins he's another empty jacket pushed forward to act as the promoter of ideas he barely understands.
He's a puppet of those much cleverer neo-Marxists in academia who have learned a long time ago that it's best to go unseen.
His mom made the golden girls tv show. He’s just a dumb rich kid
He’s definitely propped up and so is Richard Dawkins and Cosmic sceptic.
Anyone who sees this, please pray for my fiance who was in a horrible wreck.
Thank you for addressing such a dangerous topic.
If there's no free will, then it seems to me that there is no distinction between consensual sex and non-consensual sex.
Both cases would reduce to materistic predeterminism. There was nothing anybody could do to prevent it from happening.
Sounds like a living hell to me.
Watch Harris' debate with William Lane Craig on morality and you see Craig completely dismantle Harris' view...atheists can't have their cake an eat it too...either the universe has 0 meaning and objective moral values, outside of opinion, or there has to be a transcendent moral law giver. Harris' best attmept was "the flourishing of the human species" as the arbiter of moral truth, which is easily dismantled since that is not an objective good, it's a subjective good.
The fact that anti-natalism is so trendy today and that plenty of people have no interest in continuing civilisation tells you that "the flourishing of the human species" is hardly a universal good that atheists subscribe to.
Maybe I am missing something, but it seems Harris is just repeating the basic premises of Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.
the difference is that in The Prince what he shows how to maximize the prince well being, while harris advocates to maximize concious creatures well being.
@@beastofthenumber6764 So the goal is different, but the methods used can be the same (fear, control, violence) if necessary? So the biggest difference is Harris has moved beyond Divine Right Theory? That honestly seems like semantics to me. Any clarification to these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your response.
@@rosspunzo1876 since the goal is to maximize well being the method cant be one that diminishes well being too much. Also maquiaveli already moved beyond Divine Right the book "the prince" could perfectly be called "the president" and the content still works.
Another great video Trent. Maybe sometime you can address Harmonic Athiest who seem to address Christianity with the same brush, based on their bad experiences.
In the atheist world view. Why are actions labeled as good or evil well good or evil?
Where does the definition of what is good or evil even come from?
And where does he get to make the judgement that religion is good or evil. If there is no difference then why even comment on it?
It’d be fascinating if Trent Horn did a video where he calls in to the Atheist Experience show
20:50 Sam H.] "In this case, rapists, liars, and thieves would experience the same depth of happiness as the saints..." Where did Sam Harris ever get the idea that the saints were 'happy?' Being happy is not the reward of being good, moral, and saintly the reward is holiness. Being holy is a state of being that transcends both happiness and suffering and elevates you to the same plane of being as God - being completely conformed to God's will - but on Earth.
Yet another case of “I’m smart to do philosophy 101” that Sam exhibits. Then tells everyone else they’re stupid for trying to help him get the basics correct.
no. not even the first, yet another.
So, Sam Harris says that we shouldn't have the current justice system because we're not responsible for what we do since what we do is determined solely by the past. If that is true then we also don't have a choice as to the justice system we use, as it would also be solely determined by the past, not by our free will.😂 So what is he advocating for?
Great video Trent!
Although I'm an atheist I really hate Harris's argument. I don't even disagree with the premise that we can use reason to construct a better moral philosophy (all morality is man made including religious morality it's just misattributed to a deity) but unfortunately he takes it in the worst possible direction.
It is, ironically, not rational. It's motivated reasoning. It's using science as a rubber stamp to legitimise what he wanted to do anyway. You'd think after the 20th century we would have learned our lesson.
The choice is not between God and anything goes. I really do think that is a false dichotomy. But Harris has fallen into that trap, only to retroactively wallpaper over it with a veneer of rationality.
So according to Harris, we are determined by past events and there is no sense in talking about choices and moral responsability, therefore we should instead choose to reform the justice system for... oops!
"talking" is also an event that determines what we are.