Ben Affleck vs. Sam Harris & Bill Maher on Islam

Dave!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduMMteTEbc

Some of you may have seen this floating about since yesterday. There has been a pretty strong reaction to this discussion by lots of people online. On Twitter at least it seems to be overwhelmingly in support of Affleck and nods of approval at his calling Harris a racist.

Anyone had any thoughts on it?

I think Affleck let himself down here, because he's a pretty smart and articulate guy, but in this case he mostly just shouted the others down and caricatured Harris' arguments, which are a lot more nuanced than Affleck's glib and lazy racial references suggest.

Mr. Incognito

Two morons with ill informed opinions say moronic ill informed things

/close thread

The One Doctor

Meh. Dumb actors giving dumb opinions. Big deal.

Karl Stein

Harris attributes anti-equality views to Islam. There are a lot of people from his own country who hold similar views about homosexuals, women, elves, minorities etc and I doubt he attributes their views to Christianity.

My name is URL

Karl Stein wrote: »

Harris attributes anti-equality views to Islam. There are a lot of people from his own country who hold similar views about homosexuals, women, elves, minorities etc and I doubt he attributes their views to Christianity.

He probably would to be fair. He'd never attribute anything bad to Judaism or Zionism though. He regularly defends Israel and its actions despite the glaring hypocrisy of it

http://www.donotlink.com/aqdJ

Nodin

Maher seems the best way to compete with right wing commentators is to mirror them. He's badly mistaken. Never had time for Harris and theres nothing here to induce me to change my mind.

bnt

Surprised to see this mentioned here. I occasionally hear it said that "Atheists never criticise Islam": such folks have clearly never heard of Maher or Harris, and as for poor Ben, thinking he was on just to promote his latest movie ... whoops!

Dave!

Karl Stein wrote: »

Harris attributes anti-equality views to Islam. There are a lot of people from his own country who hold similar views about homosexuals, women, elves, minorities etc and I doubt he attributes their views to Christianity.

He does – on homosexuals, women, abortion, stem cells, etc.

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/holy-terror

It appears that President Bush and the Republicans in the Senate have failed (for the moment) to bring the U.S. Constitution into greater conformity with Leviticus and the writings of St. Paul—which are, respectively, the sections of the Old and New Testaments that justify Christian concerns about gay marriage. Reading these documents, one discovers that the Creator of the universe does not approve of homosexuality. In fact, his instructions on the subject go far beyond a mere prohibition of gay marriage. According to God, homosexuals must be put to death. God himself says so in Leviticus (20:13), and St. Paul says it in Romans (1: 24-32). God also instructs us to murder people who work on the Sabbath, along with adulterers and children who curse their parents. Congress might also want to reconsider the 13th Amendment, because the biblical God clearly expects us to keep slaves. He merely admonishes us not to beat them too severely (Exodus 21). God’s wisdom on this subject can be distilled to a single precept: don’t injure their eyes or their teeth, because then you have to set them free.

There is clearly a problem with using scripture to decide social policy in the 21st century. The Bible, it seems certain, was written by men and women who thought the earth was flat and who would have considered a wheelbarrow a breathtaking example of emerging technology. Are its teachings applicable to the challenges we now face as a global civilization? Consider the subject of stem-cell research. Many people of faith believe that three-day-old embryos – which are collections of 150 cells—are fully endowed with human souls and, therefore, must be protected as persons. But if we know anything at all about the neurology of sensory perception, we know that there is no reason to believe that embryos at this stage of development have the capacity to sense pain, to suffer, or to experience the loss of life in any way at all (there are, for comparison’s sake, 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly). These facts notwithstanding, our President and our leaders in Congress have decided to put the rights of undifferentiated cells before those of men and women suffering from spinal cord injuries, full-body burns, diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease.

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/gods-hostages

Some of this sexist evil probably predates religion and can be ascribed to our biology, but there is no question that religion promulgates and renders sacrosanct attitudes toward women that would be unseemly in a brachiating ape.
While man was made in the image of God, the prevailing view under Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is that woman was made in the image of man. Her humanity, therefore, is derivative, contingent, ersatz (Gen: 2-21-22 Koran 4:1; 39.6; 7.189). Of all the animals, woman was the last to be made but the first to sin (Gen 3:12). The Old Testament puts the monetary value of a woman’s life at one-half to two-thirds that of a man’s (Leviticus 27). The Koran elaborates: it requires the testimony of two women to offset that of one man (2:282) and every girl deserves exactly one-half her brother’s share of inheritance (4:11). God suggests in his tenth commandment that the woman next door is your neighbor’s material possession which, along with his house, slaves and oxen, must not be coveted (Exodus 20:17); Deuteronomy 5:21).

The God of Abraham has made it perfectly clear that a woman is expected to live in subjugation to her father until the moment she is pressed into connubial service to her husband. As St. Paul put it: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.” (Ephesians 5:22-24). The Koran delivers the same message, and recommends that disobedient wives be whipped (4:34). The suppression of women under Islam achieved hideous precision through the writings of Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), perhaps the most influential Muslim since Muhammad:

Karl Stein

Dave! wrote: »

He does – on homosexuals, women, abortion, stem cells, etc.

So are we talking about people with 'conservative' views rather than those who subscribe to various religious doctrines?

tastyt

Affleck should stick to being a bad actor. So easy for him in his cocoon of luxury and security to criticise people for saying something wrong is actually wrong. Hippie political views

Dave!

Karl Stein wrote: »

So are we talking about people with 'conservative' views rather than those who subscribe to various religious doctrines?

Not sure I follow you – but I don't think he says that religion is the only reason that people can have ****ty morals.

Awkward Badger

Affleck seems to be too worked up and just "Knows he's right" without making any real coherent argument.

Harris on the other hand makes a good point, although given his previous defence of Israeli killing of innocent Palestinians I'd take whatever he has to say on Islam being bad because they believe death is an appropriate response for whatever its hard to take it seriously.

Dave!

tastyt wrote: »

Affleck should stick to being a bad actor. So easy for him in his cocoon of luxury and security to criticise people for saying something wrong is actually wrong. Hippie political views

I quite like Affleck, but it's funny in this case that he perfectly exemplified the point that Harris was making – that there's a lack of willingness to speak honestly about the doctrine of Islam; that you're immediately called an Islamophobe. Within minutes, Affleck had called Harris a racist and compared it to anti-Semitic and African-American stereotypes.

donvito99

tastyt wrote: »

Affleck should stick to being a bad actor. So easy for him in his cocoon of luxury and security to criticise people for saying something wrong is actually wrong. Hippie political views

He was sitting in the room same as the others. He made his feelings known to their faces. He would have been well aware that he'd receive criticism the reasons you mention from people like yourself.

But he still went and did it, to me it says a lot for him. Fair fúcks to him is what I say.

Nodin

Dave! wrote: »

I quite like Affleck, but it's funny in this case that he perfectly exemplified the point that Harris was making – that there's a lack of willingness to speak honestly about the doctrine of Islam; that you're immediately called an Islamophobe. Within minutes, Affleck had called Harris a racist and compared it to anti-Semitic and African-American stereotypes.

Whatever about he said in that interview, Harris' statements do stereotype the muslim population, particularily in relation to his blind spot.

we'llallhavetea

weh weh weh, these "debates" happen all the time. throw in a famous actor and everyone wants to know about it.

Dave!

Nodin wrote: »

Whatever about he said in that interview, Harris' statements do stereotype the muslim population, particularily in relation to his blind spot.

In what sense does he stereotype? He's pretty specific in his criticisms of extremists, and he supports his contentions about how widespread belief in violent doctrines is; he is also at pains to point out that there are hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims who are appalled by what ISIS is doing, and he says that these are the people who need to be supported and defended and encouraged with their attempts at reform. He has also written passionately before about how it is in fact Muslims themselves—particularly women—who suffer the most at the hands of these tyrants.

CaptainInsano

donvito99 wrote: »

He was sitting in the room same as the others. He made his feelings known to their faces. He would have been well aware that he'd receive criticism the reasons you mention from people like yourself.

But he still went and did it, to me it says a lot for him. Fair fúcks to him is what I say.

Yeah fair play for speaking his mind but judging by that video he didn't even know what his mind was. Half of what was said to him went over his head.
He could probably doing with educating himself more before going and shouting everyone down on TV.

Billy86

Harris' breakdown assessment has some very "strange" parts. Like mentioning how Islamisation want to "work within the system to use democracy against itself" and then going on to say that Conservative Muslims are different because they do not favour radicalism such as ISIS - by extension labelling that second 'circle' as being radicals in fill support of ISIS, also hunting at 78% of British Muslims being of this sort. He then stops there instead of going into any more moderate or liberal branches of Islam, and then interrupts the other guy to say he thinks the fundamentalists are a huge chunk of Islam.

Michael Steele makes a great point about Muslims speaking out about more oppression regimes and such not getting media coverage because of doesn't fit into our stereotypes. Boll Mayer's response? "that's because they are afraid to speak out" - which makes literally no sense when talking about people who ARE speaking out.

Affect had some good points to make but wasn't doing a great job making a lot of them. Bill Mayer's isn't exactly worth listening to when it comes to religion - he is a massive hypocrite and loves to ignore Israel's actions in the region while yapping on about Muslim countries.

Personally I'm not a fan of any organised religious - on a smaller scale it does help a good few people and reform a good few criminals, alcoholics and drug addicts (all religions, that is) but it's just not worth the hassle in the grander scheme of things and can often be used to very negative (and powerful) effect... again all religions. But there is also a LOT of skewed representation in the media.

Diabhal Beag

Whenever a debate video has the word "owned" in it I stay well away.

Its Only Ray Parlour

Affleck looks like he's on coke. He lost the debate when he used the racist word.

Billy86

Diabhal Beag wrote: »

Whenever a debate video has the word "owned" in it I stay well away.

Your loss, Mayer makes a fool of himself. But that's not too rare for him when Israel and Judaism get involved.

jank

Karl Stein wrote: »

Harris attributes anti-equality views to Islam. There are a lot of people from his own country who hold similar views about homosexuals, women, elves, minorities etc and I doubt he attributes their views to Christianity.

You may have a point if Christian laws ran the United States. Islam or Sharia Laws run or at least is recognisable in over 50 countries.

jank

I am getting sick of this trend in the left which reflexively excuses grotesque ideologies simply because they are practiced by non whites or are official opponents of the American government.

porsche959

The One Doctor wrote: »

Meh. Dumb actors giving dumb opinions. Big deal.

I know next to nothing about Ben Affleck but he comes across as statesmanlike here.

All in all an interesting debate

Nodin

Dave! wrote: »

In what sense does he stereotype? He's pretty specific in his criticisms of extremists, and he supports his contentions about how widespread belief in violent doctrines is; he is also at pains to point out that there are hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims who are appalled by what ISIS is doing, and he says that these are the people who need to be supported and defended and encouraged with their attempts at reform. He has also written passionately before about how it is in fact Muslims themselves—particularly women—who suffer the most at the hands of these tyrants.

He does in his hole. Get him to defend Israel and its every miserable cliché and then some.

jank

26 posts in and Israel is mentioned. Well done lads, well done.

Dave!

Nodin wrote: »

He does in his hole. Get him to defend Israel and its every miserable cliché and then some.

Ah. Touché.

Lapin

jank wrote: »

26 posts in and Israel is mentioned. Well done lads, well done.

Interesting how the number 26 preceeds the numbers 5, 19 and 22 in Jank Land.

FlashR2D2

People are interested in what famous people have to say. That's what I got from this.

The_Captain

tastyt wrote: »

Affleck should stick to being a bad actor

The dumbest thing said in a thread full of people saying dumb things