---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jedi_spock@...> wrote : Nice to meet you Krysto.
Islam sanctions institutionalised slavery. A muslim man can keep any number of non-muslim women as slaves. He can also keep any number of concubines, apart from his 4 wives. Jihadi supremacists are serious about this stupid, unscientific, barbaric religious ideology. These "revelations" are the delusions of a lunatic, and anybody who believes them, are just like the people who believed Hitler or Stalin. C: Hey Jedi! To add to your point, Sam's complaint about Islam is that it has not gone through a reformation period in modern times like other popular religions. This leads to a mismatch with modern views on all sorts of policy decisions like the role of women in society, or even as whole persons with the same rights as men. (We only let them vote in the 1920's for God's sake! My dad was born that year) Sam's views on Islam represent his view that we have given a society wide pass on evaluating religious ideas in a way not conferred to any other ideas in society. It seems outrageous to rank religions according to a scale of human rights abuse support found in the religions themselves or their scriptural support for waging actual war on infidels. But there is a specific reason that we don't have a problem with all the Buddhist terrorists in the world. Their belief system does not support this behavior, so if a Buddhist goes postal, it is all on the individual, not the religious support. Sam believes that it is the moderate religious people in all religions who protect the radicals by not allowing the fundamentals of their religion to be questioned without crying, "bigotry." He is against the ecumenical assumption that all beliefs in religion should be treated with equal respect. He is not an epistemological or cultural relativist. (It is Ok to mutilate woman in their culture, we have no right to say it is brutal and sick. That is just their belief after all so who are we to judge?) --- <krysto@...> wrote : Talk of Sam Harris brings me out of the FFL shadows. Harris is, in my view, one of the clearest and boldest thinkers in the world today. One may disagree with any number of his positions (that radical Islam presents a dire threat to the world, that free will is an illusion, that science can guide our moral decisions) but the intelligence and power with which he expresses himself is stunning. The surprising twist that this committed atheist and materialist is fascinated by the value that meditation can provide makes him all the more interesting. Go for it, Rick!
