Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Sam Harris: Is Christian Morality Psychopathic?



This is an excerpt from the Harris vs. Craig we previously posted, but I thought this was a nice, short example of that debate. Sometimes I think people don't want to spend their time watching a two hour debate on religion. You're all awful.

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2 comments:

Steve said...

@ 7:03

"There is no reason to believe we live in a universe ruled by an invisible monster YHWH"

**slow clap**

mens_in_umbra said...

I couldn't help but laugh after hearing the complete strawman Harris pulled out in the debate. Though I understand Dr. Craig's frustration, I wouldn't give Harris the pleasure of frustrating me.
Psychopathy is a SYNDROME, and, as such, it cannot be reduced to one or two "key elements". Dr. Robert Hare points this out in his fantastic book "Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us", which gives a detailed description of the phenomena of psychopathy and it's devastating effects. He also points out that simply because a person has a few personality characteristics that happen to be consistent with the psychopathic personality, DOES NOT constitute the person to be psychopathic. Harris says he is not calling Christians psychopaths, yet he claims they are following a "psychopathic morality". I'd like to know the difference between a psychopath and someone who follows such a "morality" (or perhaps "amorality", to be more accurate). Suffice it to say that Harris is ignorant of the nature of psychopathy and resorted to 3 critical fallacies in making his statement: 1) a hasty generalization, 2) an ad hominem, 3) an argument from ignorance.