Like many of my secular YouTube colleagues
I had me a good ole “New Atheist” phase.
Not long after I independently began to separate
myself from my own Christian upbringing, I
became aware of a growing movement of vocal
atheism that was unabashedly antagonistic
towards religious faith and dogma.
The defacto leaders of this campaign were
four old white dudes, on whom were bestowed
the cringeworthy moniker of “The Four Horsemen
of New Atheism.”
This isn’t like a fan or media invented
nickname by the way.
They made a DVD and intentionally called it
that.
The Four Horseman are Richard Dawkins, whom
google describes as an ethologist, when I
thought this whole time that he made his living
as a professional curmudgeon;
the late Christopher Hitchens, who was similarly
impudent but nevertheless probably the only
Horseman that I’d actually have a beer with;
Daniel Dennet, the secular Santa himself,
and as of now the only one of the four who’s
managed to make himself more known for his
actual academic work than defending against
accusations of bigotry;
and finally Sam Harris, who, at least these
days, is arguably the most visible and relevant
of the group, due to his popular podcast and
very active online media presence.
Now I could make a video about each oneof
these guys, but my personal relationship with
the work of Sam Harris is the most tumultuous.
So Sam gets the video!
Hi, I’m T1J.
[weird voice] Follow me!
So before I get started, I wanna say that
this video is not intended to be some massive
takedown of Sam Harris.
But my feelings about Sam Harris have definitely
evolved over the years, and I thought I’d
talk about it.
I became fascinated with Sam Harris after
watching several videos of him debating people
on the subject of religion.
All of the other Horsemen participated in
such debates, but my boy Sammy had a unique
wit about him.
He was smooth and eloquent and funny.
SAM: First of all, things have to be situationally
appropriate.
I'm not constantly looking at my daughter
thinking about--she's just a part of the physical
universe, and 'wow, neurotransmitters giving
rise to all this cuteness.
[audience laughter]
That's not the mode I'm in.
So as you might imagine, consuming Sam Harris’s
videos and writings became a critical part
of my identity as not only an atheist, but
an anti-theist, which is a label I still more
or less identify with.
Now these days, Sam Harris is arguably most
well-known for his strident opposition to
Islam, and he has received no shortage of
criticism for his remarks on the subject.
In fact, reading criticism of Sam Harris is
how I became most acquainted with the term
“Islamophobia,” which I’ve argued many
times on this channel is a bad term that lends
itself to misuse.
To this day I agree with many things Sam Harris
has said about Islam, the most obvious of
which is the general notion that Islam, like
most religions, is pretty garbage and bad
for the world.
Beyond that I’ve also observed, as Harris
has, that the left is often hesitant, if not
completely unwilling, to criticize or lampoon
Islam to the same extent as other ideologies,
and routinely conflates objection to Islam
as a set of ideas with bigotry against Muslims
as people.
In fact the timid acceptance of the obviously
backwards aspects of the scripture and traditions
of Islam is the origin of the now infamous
term “the regressive left.”
Unfortunately that term has been driven deep,
deep into the ground by opportunistic cretins.
And I’ve defended Sam Harris on many occasions,
because it often seems that his detractors
aren’t that educated on his work or worldview.
People call Sam Harris right wing, anti-social
justice, white supremacist.
One guy on Twitter told me that Sam Harris
is “essentially no different from Donald
Trump.”
And these are all things that you would know
are obviously not true, if you’ve listed
to Sam Harris even a little bit over the years.
Sam Harris is obviously left leaning socially
and economically, vocally anti-Trump, and
unlike many of his friends he frequently acknowledges
injustices faced by marginalized groups.
So it’s easy to dismiss criticisms of him
when they’re coming from people who don’t
even have a basic foundation of knowledge
about who he is and what he believes.
And while I do think Harris vastly exaggerates
the extent to which his critics deliberately
and maliciously misrepresent him, I do often
see clearly dishonest takes on his statements.
For example, this article from the Southern
Poverty Law Center website which says:
“Under the guise of scientific objectivity,
Harris has presented deeply flawed data to
perpetuate fear of Muslims and to argue that
black people are genetically inferior to whites.”
You’d have to research his statements for
yourself, but I think this is a pretty misleading
characterization anything Sam has said.
Ironically my fandom of Sam Harris first began
to crack because of his behavior and not necessarily
his beliefs.
Around this time I began a period of deep
self-reflection.
And I started to value compassion and tolerance
a lot more than confrontation and cynicism.
Not to get too into this, but I was kind of
an arrogant, self-absorbed little shit when
I was younger and it resulted in me alienating
a lot people who were close to me.
And so I had basically an epiphany that I
needed to do better.
As I went through this change, I noticed that
a lot of things that I really liked before
no longer appealed to me.
You know, like some of characters I used to
really identify with like Daria, or Tyler
Durden now just seemed pretentious and douchey.
So I began to have a lot of questions for
Mr. Harris.
Like why do you throw a public tantrum every
time someone criticizes you?
Why are you so quick to call every one of
your detractors dishonest and malicious?
Like why can’t you address these things
without being a dick about it?
You’re a grown man.
And as a result it became less and less important
to me to defend Sam Harris, because I began
imagining him less as an intellectual hero,
and more as a stubborn pedant that I just
happened to agree with sometimes.
To be fair, Sam Harris has talked about how
social media often brings out the worst in
him, and I can identify with that very strongly.
I’m sure that I’ve lost followers after
going top HAM on Twitter.
Either way seeing these things happen so often
made me more open-minded about criticisms
of Sam Harris,
but again, it’s often hard to find intelligent,
fair criticisms from people who actually seem
to be familiar with Sam’s actual views.
But I realize that this may be by design.
There’s an argumentative strategy known
as the Gish Gallop, in which a person overwhelms
you with a lot of information and arguments
all at once.
This kind of thing is really hard to respond
to adequately because you have to break down
every claim and every statement and provide
an intelligent answer to each one.
Which requires a lot of preparation and effort,
much more effort than the Galloper himself
has expended, to be sure.
Because of this, users of the Gish Gallop
often get away with weak arguments, because
their opponents are simply unable or unwilling
to put forth the massive amount of energy
it takes to debunk the onslaught of bullshit
they’ve just been presented with.
Sam Harris does this all the time.
A close examination of much of Harris’s
writing, reveals the fact that he makes a
lot of vague, underdeveloped, or ambiguously
worded claims, without ever really elaborating
on them, before moving on to the next talking
point.
And when inevitably called out on these things,
he becomes defensive, claiming that he’s
being misrepresented.
And as I mentioned he also usually accuses
his opponents of deliberately strawmanning
him because of some apparent conspiracy to
ruin his reputation.
But the problem is he fills these essays and
articles with claims and arguments, that I
find it hard to believe he doesn’t understand
are provocative and controversial.
Yet he responds with incredulous astonishment
whenever people have a negative reaction.
[mocking] “I can’t believe you read my
article entitled ‘In defense of profiling’
and are now accusing me of defending profiling!
You must be intentionally trying to ruin my
reputation!"
The aforementioned essay “In Defense of
Profiling” contains the sentence,
“We should profile Muslims, or anyone who
looks like he or she could conceivably be
Muslim, and we should be honest about it.”
After noticing that people were understandably
pissed off by this, he included an addendum,
where he wrote:
“I am not narrowly focused on people with
dark skin.
In fact, I included myself in the description
of the type of person I think should be profiled
(twice).
To say that ethnicity, gender, age, nationality,
dress, traveling companions, behavior in the
terminal, and other outward appearances offer
no indication of a person’s beliefs or terrorist
potential is either quite crazy or totally
dishonest.”
The two times Harris includes himself as a
potential candidate for profiling at the airport
are here when he writes,
“Although I don’t think I look like a
jihadi, or like a man pretending not to be
one, I do not mean to suggest that a person
like me should be exempt from scrutiny.”
And later when he writes,
“And, again, I wouldn’t put someone who
looks like me entirely outside the bull’s-eye…But
there are people who do not stand a chance
of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can
know this at a glance.”
Notice how each of those statement comes with
sly disclaimers, “I don’t THINK I look
like a Jihadi!”
I’m not ‘ENTIRELY’ outside the bullseye.”
Even from before he says, “I’m not ‘NARROWLY’
focused on people with dark skin.”
He’s just broadly focused on them I guess.
It seems very clear to me that he’s not
really talking about people who look like
him.
But my point is not to respond to this specific
article but to demonstrate the argumentative
tactics Sam Harris likes to use.
His claims are so vague and quick that he
still has access to deniability.
He can accuse you of misrepresenting him because
he hasn’t really represented anything of
substance to begin with.
He doesn’t really define what he thinks
a Muslim looks like, because that’s impossible
to do.
There are billions of Muslims in the world.
So he can safely deny any characterization
you ascribe to him.
All we can go off of is what it sounds like
he’s implying, and since the vast majority
of Muslims are brown, in this case it really
sounds like he’s implying that its okay
if brown people are subjected to more scrutiny
in airports, because in his, estimation, Muslims
are more likely to be terrorists.
And that’s a racially oppressive system,
which will almost certainly have more drawbacks
than benefits.
I’ve heard similar arguments with regard
to black Americans.
People say it’s okay to profile black people
because black people commit more crime.
Notwithstanding the fact that the level of
racial bias is actually disproportionate to
the amount of crime, this is still ridiculous.
If you have a room with 100 people in it,
and 1 person does something bad, in my opinion
you are not now justified in profiling everyone
in the room.
And I honestly don’t think Sam Harris is
racist.
But even if he is, I don’t really care.
You know, if it’s another old white dude
that’s racist, cool, add it to the tally.
But it does seem that he is much more concerned
with self-absorbed indignation than he is
with being thoughtful about how his ideas
affect others and contribute to the spread
of harmful oppression.
In that same SPLC article I criticized earlier,
they mentioned how actual white supremacists
have literally cited Sam Harris as one of
their stepping stones into the alt-right.
And that’s one of the things that I changed
about myself over the years.
I used to have this tireless insistence upon
sticking to my principles and changing for
no one.
“If you don’t like me, fuck you, I know
who I am and I know what I mean!
And I’m not responsible for other people’s
interpretations!
And if you can’t see my point of view, you’re
just too dumb or too sensitive to understand
it!”
But the world doesn’t work that way.
Your words and actions have real effects on
the people around you.
Especially if you have a large public platform.
And you should give a shit about the impact
of your words, and how you make other people
feel, even if you don’t agree with their
reasoning.
Sam Harris would call this “political correctness.”
I call it, “not being an asshole.”
Now as I mentioned, I share Sam’s antagonism
towards Islam and most applications of theism.
But a major criticism that he’s received
is that he is disproportionately hostile to
Islam, which many people have suggested is
evidence of a bigotry against Muslims.
This is kind of funny because Sam’s major
criticism of the left is that they don’t
confront Islam enough, meanwhile people are
criticizing him for doing it too much.
I’m pretty sure Sam would deny that he thinks
Islam is worse than other religions on paper.
But it’s very clear that he believes Islam
is more effective than any other religion
when it comes to producing violent extremists.
[HARRIS:] It's a trope of politically correct
liberal apology around criticism of Islam.
This notion of Islamophobia.
The idea that to single out Islam for any
special attention as a set of doctrines or
as a political reality in today's world, is
tantamount to, synonymous with, or covertly
motivated by racist bigotry toward Arabs or
brown-skinned people.
I kind of agree with Sam here, just because
you think something is worthy of special attention
doesn’t necessarily mean you have a bias
against it.
But if the attention you’re giving that
thing is misinformed or unfair, that’s a
whole ‘nother story.
Now while I’ve spent a lot of time looking
into this, I am no Islam expert, and I have
no doubt that Sam Harris has researched this
topic much more than I have.
But when you begin to read and listen to informed
analyses of the Muslim world by experienced
journalists and scholars, Sam’s assessments
seem very simplistic and lacking of nuance
by comparison.
The most obvious example is his insistence
that the doctrine and traditions of Islam
are the only or primary factors in radicalizing
Muslims into violent extremists.
I feel like even if you have a grade school
understanding of world history and sociopolitical
events, you can figure out that this sounds
ridiculous.
It’s like saying crime in black neighborhoods
is caused primarily by rap music.
You can make an argument that it is a contributor,
but it’s obviously more complicated than
that.
But Harris is relentless in his refusal to
acknowledge geopolitical factors that lead
to radicalization of Muslims.
And he only feels this way specifically about
Islam, and not extremists of other ideologies.
In those cases, he’s willing to acknowledge
the nuance of complex political situations.
But in general with Islam, he argues that
the religious doctrine is the primary or sometimes
sole factor.
[HARRIS]: The Quran is a much shorter, much
more streamlined book, and it has a central
message which is very much in harmony with
the example of Muhammad.
The central message of the Quran, arguably,
certainly A central message, is 'you should
spread this one true faith to the ends of
the Earth, and you spread this by conquest,
not conversation.
it is convert or die, or if you happen a person
of the book, you can live as a Dhimmi.
So Sam believes that the doctrines of Islam,
including the Quran, the Hadith, and the historical
example of Muhammad are more likely than that
of other religions to produce extremists because
they’re more clear and straightforward in
their message of conquest and holy war.
Now this is an assertion that’s hard to
prove or disprove, it’s just sort of a thing
that sounds right in Sam’s head.
This is essentially the thesis of most of
Sam’s arguments about Islam.
And since it’s practically unfalsifiable,
apart from someone creating another widespread
religion similar to Islam and then us observing
over the course of many decades whether or
not it leads to widespread terrorism, it’s
very easy for Sam to dismiss any counter arguments.
Such is the case with unfalsifiable claims.
Fun fact, Beyonce and Jay-Z are actually sitting
in my room, right off camera.
You can’t prove it’s not true, which obviously
is evidence that it is true.
So we’re basically left to agree to disagree.
Like I said, I don’t think Sam Harris is
racist, or even anti-Muslim.
If you take the time to really listen to the
explanations of his arguments, it’s difficult
to honestly come to that conclusion, in my
opinion.
Unless you just don’t believe him.
He does seem to be very insensitive to how
his ideas actually affect Muslims, but if
he’s so convinced that eliminating the unique
evil of Islam is the only hope for the future
of humanity, it’s not hard to understand
why.
And he definitely seems to be convinced of
that, so much so that he’s willing to consider
whether hypothetically or not, normally unthinkable
measures that would affect Muslims, such as
racial profiling, torture, and nuclear first
strikes.
In my estimation though, the reasoning through
which he came to these conclusions almost
completely ignores historical and political
precedent.
And seems to be based chiefly on his own subjective
convictions.
Which I guess is fine, but it makes it hard
to take very seriously.
More recently Sam Harris has been associated
with a movement called the Intellectual Dark
Web, which is a name that is only slightly
less masturbatory than the “Four Horseman.”
This is a loosely-associated group of writers
and academics who made quite a wave on the
internet, as opposed to more traditional methods
of spreading ideas.
The group consists of people with different
backgrounds and different political orientations
– the thing that they all have in common
is something in between concern and outrage
over political correctness and what they perceive
as overreaches of the left.
You know, the whole thing where folks on the
left get mad when people say racist and transphobic
shit.
Huge problem facing society, apparently.
Essentially this is the exact same thing as
the YouTube anti-SJW movement, except with
more professional and academic credentials.
As such, I have pretty much the same issues
with it that I’ve had with anti-SJWs.
Namely, a disproportionate cherry picking
of the worst examples of the left, and almost
complete tolerance and acceptance of the right,
which I would argue is obviously a bigger
problem.
More focus on agenda and propaganda than actually
getting facts straight.
And cozying up to the most unscrupulous and
dishonest figures, simply because it benefits
their narrative.
To Sam Harris’s credit, he is somewhat less
guilty of these things than many of the others.
He has admonished segments of the Intellectual
Dark Web for being uncritical of Trump, for
example.
But its clear to me that he’s bought into
this exaggerated hysteria regarding modern
progressives.
He lambasted Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks
for allowing people like Reza Aslan to come
on his show and make false and inflammatory
statements unchallenged.
But I don’t think he’s ever extended this
criticism toward his friend Dave Rubin, another
person who has been associated with the Intellectual
Dark Web, and that’s like all Dave Rubin’s
show is.
My suspicion is that since Dave Rubin has
been an important contributor to this anti-left
narrative, Sam Harris gives him a pass.
He was willing to invite Charles Murray, a
scientist who was violently protested at Middlebury
College last year, on his podcast to discuss
whether black people are genetically predisposed
to having lower IQ than white people, which
is at the very least controversial among psychological
researchers.
But one could argue that this idea was implicitly
endorsed during their discussion.
I’m convinced that conversation was mainly
had to bolster Harris’s anti-left agenda.
That is, to create a narrative where Charles
Murray is some kind of victim of censorship
by big bad politically correct progressives,
even though all he’s doing is a little science.
But in typical Sam Harris fashion, that’s
an obvious oversimplification.
Sure some people have a kneejerk reaction
to any discussion of race and intelligence,
even if they’re completely ignorant of the
relevant data.
But just as many people are concerned with
presentation of debatable ideas as if they’re
settled science.
Especially ideas that can be easily latched
onto and utilized by racists and those who
wish for the downfall of already disadvantaged
groups.
So yeah.
A lot of progressives have a very negative
view of Sam Harris, I think this is in large
part due to his unwillingness or inability
to express himself in a concise way.
Making it very easy for people to interpret
his ideas as bigoted or maniacal.
I think that when you take the time to carefully
process the things he has said over the years,
it becomes obvious that he’s not some crazy
racist.
But you shouldn’t have to analyze multiple
podcasts and dozens of hours of videos in
order to decide whether or not someone is
a bigot.
Maybe it’s you, Sam.
But even if he isn’t a racist, the vague
and loose way he considers things like Islam
and race science do more harm than good to
the discourse surrounding them by providing
pseudo-intellectual ammo to the weapons of
actual racists.
So I don’t have the same amount of disdain
for Sam Harris as many other progressive do.
He still often has interesting things to say
about politics and philosophy, and his podcast
is usually very good.
But even so, the image that I once had of
Sam Harris as this super enlightened genius
who was saying the things no one else wanted
to say has been completely tempered.
He’s a guy who seems to be driven entirely
by his own principles and his own perspective,
and seems to be unconcerned with how his ideas
might affect others.
He’s a person that’s been right so often
that I think somewhere down the line he lost
the capacity to conceive of the possibility
of him being wrong.
DAS JUS ME DOE.
What do you think?
Thank you for watching my video.
I look forward to all of the Sam Harris fans
telling me how I have totally misrepresented
him.
If you’d like to support these videos, consider
becoming a Patron on Patreon.
That would be awesome.
See ya later bye!
