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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I don't listen to Harris' critiques of Islam because his big argument - that Islam is more problematic than Christianity or Judaism - is just weak. It relies on viewing Islam only over the last fifty years, and it focuses on the crazies rather than the moderates. If one takes a longer view and assesses Christianity's crimes, Christianity was a far more pernicious "problem religion" for a longer period of time than any other.
I'm not familiar with Harris' views on Buddhism. I think he's a bit off kilter to be picking fights with a religion as benign as that one. (I actually kind of like Buddhism to the extent it's more a way of thinking than a religion.)
Maher doesn't pretend to be enlightened. Maher is an opinion machine. He's thoughtful, but he's also got a quick trigger finger. He doesn't care to go deep into the weeds. He sells judgment. I like him because, while he is wrong on certain things, he's right far more often, and where he's right, he's ruthless. His disdain for religion generally, his views on climate, his stance on animal rights, and his free speech absolutism make him an essential voice.
Murray wrote one good book about excessive govt regulation and when I heard him talk about how society is bifurcating into "two Americas" (similar to John Edwards' shtick) on Harris' show, I thought he made some good points. But it struck me a bit odd that a guy who wrote on those soft anthropological subjects would also feel comfortable getting into biology. That takes an exceptionally nimble mind. The only person I've seen do that convincingly is Dawkins. And he does it in reverse - starting from the science and expanding into cultural issues. When you start with views derived from anthropology and then seek out the hard science to support them, as did Murray, you're doing it all backwards, and you're going to get flawed results.
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Harris is a fan of Buddhism, but not as a religion. It's kind of a thing. It's really only possible to do with a religion you view in the abstract whose texts are in a language you don't read and whose temples you don't visit and whose practitioners you don't talk with.
My point though was a little more fundamental. Why do people like this, who revel in their factual ignorance and lack of background in the things they discuss, get listened to for "ideas"?
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