r/neoliberal • u/ghhewh Anne Applebaum • Aug 11 '24

Richard Dawkins lied about the Algerian boxer, then lied about Facebook censoring him Opinion article (non-US)

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/richard-dawkins-lied-about-the-algerian

636 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

u/pfSonata throwaway bunchofnumbers Aug 11 '24

Sam Harris did not pivot to anti-trans grifting.

-5

u/therealwavingsnail Aug 11 '24

I gave up on him some years ago so I don't know how he is about trans issues, but at some point he too boarded the right wing grift train.

32

u/pfSonata throwaway bunchofnumbers Aug 12 '24

A "right wing grifter" who is an outspoken atheist, hates Trump with a passion, is pro-vaccine and spends most of his time discussing meditation?

That's a pretty weird flavor of right wing grifter.

9

u/Ablazoned Aug 12 '24

Harris has stuck his head into some topics out of his main lane that have generated some controversy among those left of center. His strong line against Islam in general terms upsets a lot of progressives, as has his past conversations with Charles Murray and subsequent hubbub with Ezra Klein over it. He also was associated in a few interviews with the now-cringe "intellectual dark web" group, mainly finding common cause with them over incidents of cancel culture but not over substantive policy beyond it.

More directly in his lane, it seems like both moral realists and moral non-cognitivists generally take issue with his thesis in The Moral Landscape. Still, I haven't really heard a single argument against his gateway zinger, namely, "if there's anything we should avoid, isn't it the maximal suffering of all conscience creatures for maximal duration?"

9

u/SullaFelix78 Milton Friedman Aug 12 '24

His strong line against Islam in general terms upsets a lot of progressives

I don’t follow Sam Harris closely, but he doesn’t strike me as a far-right grifter. As an Ex-Muslim, I can’t help but notice how many of the prominent voices criticizing Islam tend to shill for the far right. There’s a significant pipeline from Ex-Muslim communities to far-right ideologies, largely because some influential Ex-Muslims with large enough audiences in online spaces end up aligning with the far right in their crusade against the religion. So I think it’s important to have some reasonable voices out there—people who can criticize Islam, and cater to an exMuslim audience, without steering them towards extremist views.

2

u/Ablazoned Aug 12 '24 edited Aug 12 '24

I agree, generally. It's pretty in vogue right now as far as I can tell among atheist circles to poopoo on new atheism generally and the proverbial Four Horsemen specifically. I gotta say I'm still a big fan of the conversations they started and a lot of the specific points they made, as well as their rhetorical strategies. Sure, there's a lot to pick on e.g. Dawkin's philosophical rigor, or Hitch's tendency to overstate the strength of his positions, or Harris's occasional flirting with non-theistic woo (contrasted to his hard skepticism of theistic woo), etc. But they're important if imperfect members of the modern atheist community.

Sam has taken an unpopular but important position re: islam. I think it's obvious to me that many muslim communities in muslim-majority countries support extremely more illiberal policies than christian communities in christian-majority countries. Even maga doesn't actually compare to wahhabi islam, for example, as much as some lefties in america would claim. US christian nationalistm is extremely right wing compared to the general US population, but frankly mild compared to gulf state authoritarians.

I'm not nearly enough of an expert on islam to say whether these right-wing policies re: women and government are inherent to islam any more than they are inherent to christianity. As a former christian nationalist (though I wouldn't have called myself one at the time), I can say that there's a lot in the bible that supports extremely regressive policies re: women, but also some places where that can be disputed. It's not a clear and coherent text in that regard, because of course it's not, having been written by so many people over such a large span of time for a multitude of reasons. And none of those reasons were to guide the establishment and governance of a post-industrial society, duh.