Why Is Sam Harris So Misunderstood?

Sam Harris and Sam Seder had a bit of a debate on Twitter a few days ago. Here is a snippet of Sam and Michael Brooks' response during the show.

and

[jamaicanification]

Mike Brooks and Sam Seder nail it. For New it comes to reading the Bible or Quran either you take the whole thing literally and straightforwardly or you're just an apologist offering the courtier's reply. But if anyone critiques of the writings of their superstars like Richard Dawkins or Sam just haven't read his books or understood properly what he in other words the courtier's reply.

[RoninDave]

Appreciating Sam Harris is like appreciating modern art. You can have that smug feeling of intellectual superiority of "getting it" while so many don't.

I wonder if Harris fans will become the new libertarian callers, each one calling in to say the last caller wasn't a true "Harrissian" as they offer up a new interpretation with each call.

[nitzky]

I was vaguely aware of this dude for a couple of years, but talking to his fanboys, who can recite chapter and verse from his works and argue for the one correct interpretation, I start to think they quit religion, but they still can't live without a guru.
I didn't like Hitchens, but I could respect him. He had a charisma and intellectual honesty. Hariss is a whiner, who makes grandiose claims about things he doesn't understand and bitches about being "misunderstood", when he gets pushback.

[modelmajorpita]

Because he tries to obfuscate his views by adding in as many qualifiers and hypotheticals as possible, so it's easy for his followers to pretend like he didn't say what he clearly said.

[RetiredInThailand]

Harris claims torture should be illegal, but in extreme cases it is justified.

if you give that one minute of real thought, you have to come to the conclusion that since this was the policy of the USA since at least 1992\3 (torture was officially made illegall as part of the criminal code) and we know that authorities still used torture in situations they claimed were "extreme cases", every single case of which we know was not really an " extreme situation ", resulting in not only the suffering of our enemies for poor reasons, but also the torture and suffering of many innocent people.

so essentially this policy of "call it illegal but do it anyway based on random gut feelings of people who have both the will and power to torture", is nothing more than advocating torture, and not just advocating torture in "extreme situations", because we KNOW that this policy will lead far beyond that simplistic fairytale, to end up resulting in wholesale torture. This is simply a fact of history, it takes no Harris style " thought experiment " to realize this fact.

if Harris is unable to reason to the logical conclusions of his nonsense " throught experiments ", then he had no business calming himself an intellect ... although I suspect his goal is not really to present "reason" so much as it is to present "reasons" to fear and hate, and justifications for what he claims to be out "superiorly evolved culture" to kill and maim "the other".

[eejay]

Sam Harris' views remind me of Dylann roof

[Zatzzo]

"torture may be an ethical necessity"

Wow...
What a smart man. Thank God (not literally) we have him as a moral compass. Sam Harris is a JOKE.

[gabek]

On this particular point Sam Seder is lying. I mean c'mon, when someone talks about torture in a make believe scenario like the show 24 that doesn't exist in real life - and the context of the conversation is clear that it is a hypothetical - it is dishonest to pretend those statements apply to real scenarios.

I don't think Sam Harris is misunderstood. I think people flat out lie about him because they don't like his criticisms of Islam.

[Darcsied]

Muslim Faith vErY gOoD
Christian Faith vErY bAd
That pretty much sums up the Majority Report on this issue

You guys are making your own audience turn on you, lets stop cannibalizing other liberals and focus on important shit

[johnsanders]

This is so easy to understand XD. Just please, listen to his podcast or read his book if you're so confused. He holds the same position on torture that you would find in philosophy courses, and he explains it clearly. You cannot take a single sentence and act as if that's all Sam has said on the issue. He is not in favor of torture being legal (he has explicitly stated that it should be illegal).

[skedaddleMLS]

lol for thousands of years no one had to go to school for 1 day to be religious and understand religion and now people like Brooks and Reza say you have to study it in college in order to truly understand the magic within. Such a lame argument.

[gabeartist]

It's not that Sam is wrong in his priorities for dealing religious extremism, it's just that these are ideas that belong amongst our top ranking military officials. If everyone considers these scenarios the consequence will only be racism and xenophobia. There's no way that everyone can give the nuance to these judgements that he has given.

[BrendanBeckett]

If Sam's writings were ambiguous I wouldn't blame people for misinterpreting. But they aren't. He says things in plain English and still gets misunderstood somehow, because his critics are reading him through a lens of assumptions

[Evirthewarrior]

What the fuck did Michael just say, was there a point to it?

[Xendra]

Are you ever going to fix the left channel only audio? I havent been here in like a year and the issue is still there

[Vid]

Sam (Harris) I loved you so much. Why did he have to be a neocon?

[DarwinOrwell]

Why not just have Sam Harris on the show for debate? (no, twitter "debate" doesn't count)

[RustyShackleford]

So ignore all other "new atheists" and just focus on Harris and pretend they're all the same. Lol

[collinblatchford]

This is so dishonest. Are we pretending there's no context for the torture statement. Obviously there is and if you watched some of his debates you would know this and I'm sure he stated why in the quote you read. If you know someone has information that could save 10 lives would you torture to get it. Sam would say yes. Not too whacky
of a philosophical stance.