I've been meaning to post this video of a talk by Sam Harris for some time; just not sure who to tip the hat to, I think maybe BCF.
It's significant to me in that Harris is not one of your "usual suspects" who criticise Islam; one of those so often dismissed as being "far right". Sam Harris certainly is not that. And there are few enough on the Left who dare criticise Islam, that he's significant. And he does a fine job of slicing into its core problems:
"The Koran is a profoundly mediocre book" (so true), "anyone who says that Islam is a religion of peace is delusional" (ditto); "this book [the Koran] offers precious little rationale for living in a sane and pluralistic global civilisation" (ditto, a fortiori).
[LATER: Woops the link below no longer works (I wonder why??...). Try this one.
There's also a great and longer talk at the TED conference by Harris, a wonderful presentation on the nonsense of moral equivalence: "all religions are the same" and all that guff:
It's significant to me in that Harris is not one of your "usual suspects" who criticise Islam; one of those so often dismissed as being "far right". Sam Harris certainly is not that. And there are few enough on the Left who dare criticise Islam, that he's significant. And he does a fine job of slicing into its core problems:
"The Koran is a profoundly mediocre book" (so true), "anyone who says that Islam is a religion of peace is delusional" (ditto); "this book [the Koran] offers precious little rationale for living in a sane and pluralistic global civilisation" (ditto, a fortiori).
[LATER: Woops the link below no longer works (I wonder why??...). Try this one.
There's also a great and longer talk at the TED conference by Harris, a wonderful presentation on the nonsense of moral equivalence: "all religions are the same" and all that guff:
