[William A. Baurle]

No, no, Jim and Roger.

I am serious. No more apologies. Not in the political threads. It is very true, and many very intelligent people have been pointing it out: You must not apologize to these regressives. They will throw it right back in your face, because that's the way they are. It is quite clear, and getting clearer every day.

I apologized to Aaron Novick in my response to critique for my current poem in Metrical. But that was personal, not political. The LAST thing I want to do is be on the wrong side of someone as young, and so brilliant as Aaron.

As for the rest of you. I do not attack and hurt people. I've been a member here since 2001. Everyone worth knowing about on this website knows that I am gentle and kind, to a fault, and that if and when I go on the defensive, it's because I am not being understood, or what I am writing is being misinterpreted.

If someone tells me, in some sideways fashion, that I'm a racist (God forbid), or a misogynist (God forbid!) — then they are in for a fight, and it's a fight they cannot possibly win. I'm far too strong for that.




Thy Will, not mine, my Lord.

[Emitt Evan Baker]

Originally Posted by William A. Baurle

Thy Will, not mine, my Lord.

"Lord" is a strange euphemism for Horowitz.

[Jim Moonan]

"'Lord' is a strange euphemism for Horowitz."

Emitt, you're goading.


"Hey, I'm one of the nicest, gentlest people here."

Bill, you're beginning to sound as humble as Trump.

[Jim Moonan]

Sam Harris makes good intellectual/philosophic sense to me. He considers himself left of center on most issues but is as disgusted with the alt-left as I am and Bill is and maybe others here.
Here is a recent interview he conducted with David Brooks, NYT columnist. The topic of the interview is crucial to our times. The interview, I think, relates to the original intent of this thread.

[Emitt Evan Baker]

What is it that you like about Harris in particular? I think his work on religion is so one dimensional and without a grasp of human history or ensoulment that I find him a total waste of time. He seems to be just the opposite side of the same coin as the literalist rigid orthodoxies that he opposes. Maybe you can lay out what you find useful. And what exactly is the center's suggestion for mass extinction, crushing economic disparities, and the other threats we face. Let's hear the centers prescriptions and how they differ from a politic of excepting the benefits of exploitation and inequality but pretending to be outside of the engine of the process.

[Mark McDonnell]

Hi Emitt,

I quite like Sam Harris; I've read two of his books (the 'End of Faith' and the one about meditation) and I've heard a few of his interviews. I find him very even. I like his refusal to be drawn into taking an ideological 'left' or 'right' position, but instead taking issues on an individual, thoughtfully scientific/philosophical basis. I like that he urged his listeners to vote for Clinton as by far the lesser of two evils despite his obvious misgivings about her. I think his anti-Trump rants (though rant is a little strong for someone so composed in his speech) are some of the most coruscating I've heard, in the way that they focus on Trump's sheer verbal and intellectual vacuity. I admire his support for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who I remember you mentioning in a thread recently as being 'tainted' or 'compromised' by her association with right-wing thinkers in America. This is a woman who was genitally mutilated as a child, forced into marriage, then somehow escaped to become a politician and public intellectual. She now lives under the shadow of an official death sentence from the religion she left. She's a true feminist hero if ever there was one, but the left won't accept her because her views about Islam are too 'controversial'. Which presumably translates as 'unfashionable'. She's been embraced by people on the right only because the left rejected her as, for whatever reason, they are uncomfortable with wholesale criticism of the particular brand of institutionalised patriarchy, misogyny and homophobia that she criticises. It's entirely the left's fault that she's somehow become associated with 'the right'.

I don't understand what you mean by his 'work' on religion. He's an atheist. His 'work' on religion is done and dusted, presumably, as far as he's concerned, inasmuch as he doesn't believe there are any useful grounds for its continuation, particularly in an organised institutionalised form.

'Without a grasp of human history or ensoulment'. These are two strangely different things to put in the same sentence. With regards to the first, Harris seems to have as good a grasp of the history of religion as any other public intellectual, given that he's primarily a neuro-scientist not a theologian or religious scholar. And as the second is a theological term with no empirical basis, I don't see how his 'grasp' of it can be any more or less legitimate than anybody else's. I'm not saying that theological/philosophical musings about the existence or otherwise of a 'soul' aren't useful or fascinating. Just that its not an area where anyone can claim to be an expert. He certainly seems fairly unusual among the 'new atheists' in his openness to using words like 'spirituality' and his advocacy for mindfulness meditation etc.

'I find him a total waste of time.' Ok.

'He seems to be just the opposite side of the same coin as the literalist rigid orthodoxies that he opposes.' Expand on this please. Because it's an easy accusation to throw around isn't it? What are the 'literalist rigid orthodoxies' he opposes and how is his opposition to them just as bad? I assume you're talking about religion? Islam? Christianity? It's hard to know because you're so vague. The old rejoinder that 'atheism/scientific rationalism is just as bad/fundamentalist as that which it criticises' always reminds me of this cartoon.

https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qim...39a1d06589a8-c

'And what exactly is the center's suggestion for mass extinction, crushing economic disparities, and the other threats we face.' What has this got to do with anything?? Or specifically Sam Harris? I've heard nothing from the 'left' or the 'right' that suggests either are going to wave any magic wands any time soon either.

Peace

Mark

Edit: I just listened to the interview that Jim linked to. I urge you to do the same. I can't see how anyone could object to the existence of a podcast with this sort of intelligent, reasoned, non-partisan, thoughtful exchange of ideas given the shrill hysteria of much of the media, social and otherwise. To turn your question back onto you, what is it you find so objectionable about him that you felt the need to jump on Jim's decision to post the link?

[Emitt Evan Baker]

Happy to have this discussion with you, Mark. I am familiar with Harris and his end religion program of thought. It was in the context of his project that I asked what it was in his thought that Jim was excited about. Will try to respond to you post after work. One suggestion though. Let's just keep the discussion to quotes and ideas on the page. I have to watch the light of the glowing screen so much for school these days that I avoid watching podcasts and videos as much as possible. Overload.

[Jim Moonan]

Emitt, I posted the link because it addresses a topic (On Becoming A Better Person) I think gets very little attention and does it in a rigorous, thoughtful, inclusive way. I was hoping we could steer things back to the original intent of this thread. If you've got Harris pegged as "one-dimensional", a "waste of time" and "without a grasp of human history or ensoulment" (I agree with Mark it is an odd coupling), it tells me much more about you than him.

The political future of western societies (and, on those days when everything seems to meld, perhaps our very existence) might hinge on us evolving from a "left/right" mentality which only leads to pendulum swings and polarization to an independent/individualist mentality that Mark pointed out.

(For the record, I believe it was I who mentioned Ayaan Hirsi Ali as being a leader of modern thinking. I stand by that.) This evolution can only take place through civilized discourse and, of course, the literal dying of an old breed of thought. Youth will win out. Modernity takes precedence.

But back to Harris.
It is Sam Harris (and David Whyte) that paved the way for me to rekindle a dormant self-inquiry about my spirituality which had withered as I matured. He (Harris) nudged me to agnosticism which has opened doors that were too long closed for me. I am comfortable for now. It gives me room to think and breath and let the light in.

Sam Harris has been good for me. The modernity of his thinking in particular attracts me -- and the fact that he tethers logic to his thoroughly thought-out convictions.

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Emitt Evan Baker

"Lord" is a strange euphemism for Horowitz.

Emitt,

Excuse me? What are you on about? Explain. And please, make a decent-sized paragraph?

You prove my point with every post.

God bless you, and Christ keep you.

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Jim Moonan

"'Lord' is a strange euphemism for Horowitz."

Emitt, you're goading.


"Hey, I'm one of the nicest, gentlest people here."

Bill, you're beginning to sound as humble as Trump.

Sure, except in my case, it happens to be true.

God bless you!