The End of Faith

Great video. I'm pretty confident you will not get any responses on the points that Harris makes.

If you haven't read any of his books, you should.

Yep, you'll be preaching to the converted. Like me.

I'm just glad to see Harris is getting heard / read.

Wow! That was really good. I ended up looking at some other videos of his. I like when he talks about intelligent honesty. As he says, it is amazing to me how large masses of people can be persuaded to behave as only idiots would do in isolation. That being said, I would say that (in my own experience) it is amazing what people will do because they want to believe in something so badly and want to belong to something so badly. I was "this close" to being confirmed Catholic this year but I just couldn't do it. Not only because deep down inside I know that I don't believe it but because I had incidences where the Padre and my sponsor violated the church's own principles.

You know, the more I learn the more I believe that the only time I have seen an honest spirituality program - a religion so to speak - is at alcoholics anonymous. They believe in the "individual belief" system that Harris talks about. It is a "God as I understand him" program and I respect the same for my neighbor. Don't need to know "what" it is, just that it's working in a positive way. The other concept is that I have to look at myself and how you respond to the world honestly and make adjustments to be useful to others in the world. So, I think I'm just going to stick with the religion of AA.

I made a mistake on the last sentence. It should say - look at myself and how "I" respond to the world - not "you." Sorry about that.

To see Sam Harris and many more speakers discuss this subject try

Beyond Belief

Welcome to A2K lunaflynn

You may find this interesting:

Alcoholics Anonymous: Of Course It's a Cult!
http://www.positiveatheism.org/rw/ofcourse.htm



mesquite: what great stuff. I'm never gonna get any work done now.

If you want to post some of his individual points, perhaps you will get some responses.

There's not much point in trying to respond to a raft of arguments on video.

Anyone who would take a few and respond would likely (based on my experience) be accused of 'cherry picking' his arguments and 'not responding to the total message' of the video, etc

And who wants to type out a 20 page post in response to an hour long video? No one would read it if you typed it.

Thanks, Eorl. And thanks for the link.

Wow! It seems that what we have when it comes to other peoples' beliefs is a lot of anger that they don't see our point of view. I liked the Sam Harris piece because it fit my anger of the Catholic church and I see that the piece you linked fits some peoples' anger at AA. That being said, I'm not even going to try and say that AA is neither a religious organization or a cult because I believe it is both. But realistically, in my opinion, society in general is basically a cult with little mini cults established by definition. I still believe that Sam Harris is on to something about people just having individual belief systems. I understood him to be saying that anyway. Because it's a no-brainer that religion and programs like AA have something people need and at the same time create a new set of problems. But I have to wonder if the "individual belief" system would create a new problem of isolationism which in turn has it's own set of problems. I think the most significant point that Sam makes is on intellectual honesty and I think that can be extended to spiritual honesty. Being true to yourself is the only real benefit you can make to society. AA has it's problems but, in my opinion, those that begin to make a positive influence on the group as a whole practice this principle. Can that work world wide? Don't know - have never seen it attempted.

I am still not through it all yet myself. I'll pass the credit on to fresco. I first saw the link posted here.

I've been watching that Beyond Belief series over the last 2 weeks, 10 sessions, each between 1 hour 30 minutes - 2 hours long, religious, scientific, humanist & ethical discussions and banter (amongst many others), great stuff! I finished the 10th session just now, Neil deGrasse Tyson's enthusiasm and bubbly character is impossible to resist, inspiring. I highly recommend it too, I've had great fun listening to it all recently. I look forward to Beyond Belief 2, in November I hear.

EDIT:

There was one story that I think will stick with me for a while, it was told by Ann Druyan. It was about her father and grandfather and the relationship they had, her grandfather was a devoutly religious man.

Anyway, her father slowly grew away from his religious upbringings and one day he came home to find his father praying, in a trance like state, it was this day that he had decided to be honest and open with his father about his beliefs or lack there of. His father, awakening from his trance, got up to hug him and Ann's father pushed him away, explaining that he needed to say something first. He then talked about all the things that bothered him, all the things he disagreed with about this belief system to which his father was so much a part of. And I gather from Ann's story, he was quite blunt about it all. The grandfather's simple reply to all this?

"Well the only sin, would be to pretend".

I think this says a lot.