If Books Could Kill - Sam Harris's "The End of Faith"

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Peter and Michael discuss the book that launched the phenomenon of New Atheism and asked the question: What if we hated Muslims, but in a secular way?Where to find us: Peter's other podcast, 5-4Mike's other podcast, Maintenance PhaseSources:Views of ViolenceCarnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening SystemThe same motive for anti-US 'terrorism' is cited over and overDoes intuitive mindset influence belief in God? Terrorism science: 5 insights into jihad in EuropeAnalytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal beliefWhat Is "Islamophobia"?Essays In Defense of ProfilingTo Profile or Not to ProfileChapter 2 The Making of Jihadist Social Actors in Europe inWho are the new jihadis?Disbelief - Prometheus Books God and the Ivory TowerReligion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communionThe Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition GenerateTalking to the Enemy Thanks to Mindseye for our theme song!

I have no zings except for joking about how Sam Harris is racist. That'll be the focus of the episode So it's not the worst Spoil the episode the thing I really want to give him shit for is If you listen to his podcast, he never says um or uh or any other filler words He just pauses for like minutes. I mean, they're so fucking boring. Anyway, I can excuse racism but long pauses They're either about how Muslims aren't people or meditation. He's like clear your mind. All right we we are back the filthy mongrels of Palestine are attacking Israel. Free your mind of all

thoughts other than ranking of the races. Empty your mind of all your biases. Create a castle at the top. White people. Oh I all your biases. Create a castle. At the top, white people. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I have one, I have one, I have one, okay. All right, Michael. Peter. What do you know about The End of Faith? All I know is that this book was was the first thing he ever did.

Okay, that's true. Well, whatever. Don't fact check the zinger. Boom. Keeping Michael Hobbs honest on the If Books Could Kill podcast. Fuck. We're also continuing our tradition of the zinger being the least funny thing about the opening to the show. At no point has the zinger ever been funny. We've maybe done one zinger that was actually

funny. That was good. The theory behind the zinger that you once told me explicitly, if you play the music right after the zinger, it presents as if it were a joke and people will enjoy it the same. Yeah, people will think that it is funny if the music tells them that it's funny because the first couple episodes remember we only came up with the idea of that like five episodes in so a bunch of our early episodes you just like said something normal you're like I haven't heard of this book and it's like blah blah blah blah people think it's like a joke. We're using tricks of, I haven't heard of this book. And it's like, blah, blah, blah, blah. People think it's like a joke.

We're using tricks of psychology to get you to enjoy this podcast. We've actually never said anything funny on the show. There's a magic of editing. There's a magic of editing. So yeah, the book is The End of Faith by Sam Harris came out in 2004 when he was just a guy with a degree in philosophy.

He was a student pursuing his PhD in cognitive neuroscience. He's sort of a nepo baby. His mom is Susan Harris, who's a renowned writer and producer, most famous for Golden Girls. Okay. Are you pausing to let me say something gay? Yeah. About how I watch Golden Girls?

I almost didn't want to mention it on the episode in case someone enjoyed Golden Girls and then I was going to ruin it a little. He's such a mod. He's such a, what are the names of the characters on that show? Yeah, and who's the most racist? That's him. So this book really launched the phenomenon of new atheism, a very popular political and

cultural movement that openly challenged theism and religion. I had a tough time figuring out what this episode would be about because New Atheism, it's like this big sprawling movement with tons of different characters. Sam Harris himself is extremely prolific. He's a huge podcaster. He appears on TV all the time. He has some liberal bona fides, but Extensive ties with a bunch of right-wing creeps. He's like a consistent peddler of race and IQ science he's a big anti woke guy and

This book in many ways It's just very boring and all of these new atheism books are sort of very boring in a way That is not conducive to our podcast Yeah, like remember you like you once tried to do a little behind-the-scenes Action here for our listeners you once tried to do the Christopher Hitchens atheism Yeah, I couldn't it was so boring that you just had to stop. Yeah, you were just texting me one day being like I can't do it I'm gonna do the anxious generation. There was a time in my life where I thought it was an interesting intellectual exercise

to try to talk people out of their most deeply cherished beliefs, right? Or like debate, like, oh, is God real? And then I turned like 13 and I just wasn't interested in doing that anymore. I don't really disagree with any of the arguments in these whatever atheism books, like I guess I'm an atheist or agnostic or whatever. But it's also just really boring to be like, this thing that gives your life a lot of meaning, it's fucking fake, four Pinocchios.

Yeah, you know, I think that's a good jumping off point for talking about like the cultural context in which this book existed because the context has changed to the point where now this all seems kind of silly right yeah but if you look at the early aughts in retrospect it was very obviously primed for an anti-religious political movement yeah right like you have 9-eleven where we're all exposed to the dangers of fundamentalist religion and which Harris says is a catalyst for writing this book.

He's like, 9-11 happened and I started writing, whatever. And then at the same time, domestically in the United States, you had the Bush administration, which was really governing from an explicitly evangelical posture. And there were a lot of really salient public policy disputes that were sort of undergirded by a religious dispute, right? You had stem cell research, right? This really dynamic research into embryonic stem cells that Bush denied federal funding to. Because they're little tiny babies. Because they're actually little tiny babies. You had early debates about gay marriage, right?

Which were sort of just starting to pick up steam. You had debates about teaching evolution in the classroom. You had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan being touted by a bunch of politicians as expressly religious. And then maybe most importantly for the career of Sam Harris and his cohort, you have the rise of social media at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was mostly a blog phenomenon.

I feel like there were a lot of blog debates. I think if you back up a little bit, in the 90s, you had message boards that were only accessible to nerds. And there, there was a prominent community of atheists, right? And message boards get a little bit more mainstream. The blogosphere is picking this up. Facebook and YouTube and Twitter launch in pretty quick succession.

With that comes the sort of like online debate culture. I think people underestimate how formative the atheist clique was in that respect. Like modern, like cringe compilations, like feminists embarrasses herself, those sorts of things. Those started with atheists making fun of creationists and other religious people, right? Remember how Richard Dawkins tried to rebrand atheists

as brights? He was like, the bright community, which is basically just reproducing all the most obnoxious aspects of organized religion. I'm going to send you a clip. This is Christopher Hitchens talking to Anderson Cooper after the death of Jerry Falwell. Jerry Falwell, of course, the famous piece of shit reverend, just a far-right lunatic

scumbag. Speaking of far-right lunatic scumbags, let's watch Christopher Hitchens. Christopher, I'm not sure if you believe in heaven, but if you do, do you think Jerry Falwell is in it? No, and I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to. What is it about him that brings up such vitriol? The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you'll just

get yourself called reverent. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and with God's punishment, if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification, people like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. Right. The thing is, I think that he's wrong here, because he says the only way that, like, a little toad can get on CNN as a credible commentator is if they have reverend in front of their name. I think the other way they do that is if they have a British accent

Christopher it's so funny how insufferable he is even when he's fundamentally correct Yeah, I know it felt good to hear him say it but also shut the fuck up That is like a huge part of what made this whole movement popular Yeah, the ability to sort of throw down the gauntlet and be like, these guys are scumbags. There's also public polling, I think, about sort of who would you not vote for for president. And like, atheists is one of the highest ones.

Like, people would vote for many, like, members of minority groups before they would vote for an atheist. So the fact that there was finally somebody standing up and being like, no, it's actually fine to be an atheist, really did feel good. We are better than minorities of other types. We are brights. So the fact that there was finally somebody standing up and being like, no, it's actually fine to be an atheist, really did feel good. We are better than minorities of other types. We are brights.

But then what was your journey with this, Peter? Because you were also kind of Dawkins and Harris-pilled at a time, right? You have the beard and the bearing of a debate, bro. It is embarrassing. Deep inside every middle-class white boy born in the 1980s is the desire to win a debate on the internet. Yeah, I know. And you have to choose your path, right?

Will you be a libertarian or an atheist? It's different now. Now every middle-class white boy born in the 2000s has the desire to do a gay little dance on TikTok. Or they're an incel. Those are the two paths available. You're either a straight guy with painted fingernails, or you're a school shooter I know I definitely was like way too into this for way too long

And I like I didn't have I didn't have like a cool reason like some people are like I was raised Religious and then I broke out of it Yeah, I definitely was just like wow like this is an annoying thing to be but then what I think is always interesting about the The new is this sort of rise and fall of new atheism is how people got out of it. Honestly, I think I just got a job and then I had to stop watching YouTube videos. You literally just got off the internet. I'm like not, I'm not kidding. I don't have, there was like no moment. I just got less interested in it and I think more interested in politics. The one thing that might have like saved me is that I got out of this well before it became

Really popular like oh really okay the peak of new atheism Was probably like the early reddit era of like 2010 to 12 And I had been not interested in it for a couple years by then you were an atheist from new atheism This is something we'll talk about in a future episode, but that's when you start to see the split where the reactionaries sort of break off and become a force on the American right. This was actually very important in my sort of philosophical coming of age in that I do think there's like a little reply guy in me that just wants to be right about everything.

Like that's what drove my libertarian phase. But I also try to be nice, and, like, my politics are also very informed by, like, trying not to ruin people's day or just be shitty to people. And so much of the stuff that was coming out of new atheism was just mean. Like, obviously, organized religion, these are institutions that have done major harm, but, like like on an individual

level, a lot of people just believe things that aren't true but aren't really trying to force it on anybody and it's a driver of meaning in their life. It's like, why is it so fucking important to you to take that away from people? I think that's a good framing for some of what I want to accomplish in this episode, the atheist community ended up being a community of just the blandest losers on earth, but they had this one claim to superiority. They were like, we are the more rational ones. People who believe in religion are dumb. And Sam Harris is sort of the final boss of these guys. Like, he's very smart.

He's very good at debating. Like, really, really talented at it. He also believes in his own intelligence so much that he considers it to be a substitute for actual expertise. Yeah, it's incredible. And I find that very fascinating in and of itself, but also as a sort of, like, microcosm

of the broader movement. And this is where we segue into the portion where I explain that Jesus is God. How funny would it be if we just did a fucking, like an insane clown posse reveal where we're just like, we're Christians. What we were actually zinging in the opening was Jesus Christ into your hearts.

You know who else had a podcast? What do you think about it? Let's talk about the book here. One thing to mention before we really get going here is that Sam Harris frequently responds to his critics. The only time he doesn't is when he believes that they are arguing in bad faith. And what he defines as bad faith is basically if they are mean to Sam Harris. If they're like, Sam Harris is an asshole and here's what he said, then Sam's like, no, I will not be responding to this indignity. And so to avoid a response, just going to say, Sam Harris, you are a weird racist bitch in my view. I love the idea of including a trigger warning in all of our episodes

specifically for the authors we're talking about. David Brooks tune out. One of Harris's opening chapters is called the nature of belief and the premise is basically that society privileges religious belief by making it uncouth to criticize but we should be free to criticize religious belief the way we would any other belief. So I'm gonna send you a little bit. Is this gonna be one of those episodes where we're just like he's right but he's an asshole? No this will be this moment right now will be the last time we have that thought.

He says, Yet it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. Oh, this is the Hitchens thing where it's just like too many words to say something basic and it's also just kind of mean-spirited. Classic New Atheism, right? Faith is a cop-out, and we should evaluate religious claims on their own merits, and when we do, we realize that they are stupid.

Yeah. But there's actually an interesting academic debate underlying this. One of Harris's biggest critics on these points is Scott Atran, an anthropologist. He is an expert. He's had a couple of debates with Sam Harris, both written and in person. So Harris is saying that religious belief is an attempt to describe the world, and therefore we can essentially confront religion in the marketplace of ideas, like we would any other belief, right? Right.

Atran doesn't totally disagree that religious beliefs serve to make sense of things that we don't understand, but he also argues that religious belief is functionally an evolutionary byproduct that strengthens social cohesion. People participate in religious acts and rituals together, which develops trust and community and establishes social bonds. The outlandishness of much of the religious doctrines and rituals actually serves to accentuate those bonds. So what Atran and other anthropologists are pointing at

is that the reason that religious belief isn't as susceptible to rational analysis as scientific beliefs is that they aren't really serving the same purpose. And part of why this is important is that it's necessary to understanding when and why religion produces violence, which is a huge focus for Harris. Harris claims that it's the doctrines themselves, right?

The holy books are violent, they endorse violence, and therefore people read them and commit violence. But Atran says not really. What's happening is that violence and the willingness to do violence serves as a source of community and interpersonal bonding that feeds into itself and develops into extremism. I wanted to bring this up because this is emblematic of a big picture critique of Harris's work. There's this vast literature about the function of religion, psychologically, sociologically, and he just does not engage with it at all. There's a really interesting conversation to be had here about why religion develops, how it builds community, how it can create conflict. But Harris is not interested in it because it would undermine his thesis.

Maybe if he started to engage with it, he would realize that he's out of his depth and can't actually talk about these things with any authority. I will say another thing that has become a huge red flag for me, and I think the new atheism thing was the first time I noticed it, was people like Sam Harris, who think that they can sort of rational mind or like IQ their way into correct beliefs without engaging with the actual evidence. If you're good enough at logic, you don't need to know things, you can just figure it out. Exactly. That is the core principle by which Sam Harris lives, even if he doesn't recognize it.

It's also the core principle by which the Slate Star Codex guy lives. I've always said that one of my major assets is that I'm not that smart and I'm not that good at debating, but I'm willing to read stuff. And most of the opinions that I come to are like, well, I read up on this and one person is lying about this debate and one person isn't. But it doesn't take a lot of like quote-unquote intelligence to do that. That's interesting. I always thought you could benefit from being more smart. Thank you. You have said that to me in private numerous times. Got em folks, got em.

I am going to send you the opening paragraph of this book edited for brevity by me. It says, the young man boards the bus as it leaves the terminal. He wears an overcoat. Beneath his overcoat, he is wearing a bomb. The bus is crowded and headed for the heart of the city. The young man smiles. With the press of a button, he destroys himself,

the couple at his side, and 20 others on the bus. The young man's parents soon learn of his fate. Although saddened to have lost a son, they feel tremendous pride at his accomplishment. They know that he has gone to heaven and prepared the way for them to follow. He has also sent his victims to hell for eternity. It is a double victory. The neighbors find the event a great cause for celebration and honor the young man's parents by giving them gifts of food and money. This is all we know for certain about the young man.

Why is it so easy then, so trivially easy, you could almost bet your life on it easy, to guess the young man's religion? Hmm. This man is a Scientologist. He took a stress test before boarding the bus. Interesting how I described in detail a scenario specifically designed to evoke a certain image,

and then that image was evoked. You ever think about that? Wow. Islam crushed with logic. A young man boards the mentions of a tweet by a female journalist. He corrects her on a trivial factual point orthogonal to her argument. Do I even need to tell you that that man is a Sam Harris podcast listener? There's something very funny about just being like, as a justification for racism, being

like, a man commits a crime. He has a tattoo with Spanish words. He says, essay, out loud. Interesting how I know his race immediately. Wow. A man hosts a podcast and is obsessed with Eric Adams. That's right. He's a heterosexual in New Jersey. his race immediately. A man hosts a podcast and is obsessed with Eric Adams. That's right, he's a heterosexual in New Jersey.

So he is using this to highlight two persistent themes of the book. One, religious dogma is uniquely capable of driving people to commit heinous acts. And two, Islam is a uniquely violent religion that we should be focused on. First, let's talk about what Harris presents as the dangers of religious dogma.

The argument is that the biggest danger posed by religious belief is that it can create people with unshakable certainty in their beliefs who cannot be reasoned with because their beliefs weren't built on a foundation of reason to begin with. At one point he says, before you can get to the end of this paragraph, another person will probably die

because of what someone else believes about God. This is, I think, how Harris is addressing what you said, which is basically why be mean about this? Why bother people who aren't harming other people? What he's saying is that downstream of any religious belief is extremism. As soon as you accept that you can put rationality to the side, suddenly you are on a slippery slope to extremism. Yeah, this is kind of one of the main problems with Sam Harris, is that he thinks that religious belief is totally distinct from other things that people believe with no evidence.

Like millions of people read their horoscope every week. People don't do that because they've read a Cochrane review that says that this framework aligns with the evidence. They do it because it feels true, and that's a belief that has essentially never resulted in any extremism. And then on the other side of the equation, the most important driver of terrorism in the United States right now is misogyny and racism, right? We have all these racially motivated mass shootings, but Sam Harris does not consider those to be an important threat because he's like, oh, well, they're not religious.

The rise of secular violence in this country is something that the new atheists could have never predicted, right? Because they don't have a framework for describing how violent movements originate, spread, and manifest in actual violence. All they have is a theory about religion and doctrines and how people can be impacted by doctrines. So let's let's talk a little bit about how shallow this is. I'm gonna send you another little bit here. He says, by unjustified belief. This is nearly a truism. Genocidal projects tend not to reflect the rationality of their perpetrators simply because there are no good

reasons to kill peaceful people indiscriminately. Even where such crimes have been secular, they have required the egregious credulity of entire societies to be brought off. Consider the millions of people who were killed by Stalin and Mao. Although these tyrants paid lip service to rationality, communism was little more than a political religion." Oh, so now he's doing the thing

where it's all religious even when it's not religious. Yeah, very obvious bait and switch, right? He wants to say that religion is responsible for the most monstrous crimes against humanity, but that's obviously not true. The great crimes of the 20th century were committed by secular states. So instead he's like, they were inspired by unjustified belief. And then he says that communism was sort of like religion. But then it's like, what you're actually saying now, I guess, is that believing strongly in things is bad? Well yeah, then write your book about unjustified beliefs then. It always feels like Harris and the other new atheists are spending a lot of time dancing around

this pretty obvious question of how many wars are actually caused by religion. This is part of an ongoing segment we have on If Books Could Kill called We Don't Have to Have Abstract Arguments About This Because There's Actual Data. There's a volume called The Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alexander Axelrod. They attempt to survey the major conflicts from about 8,000 BC through the time of publication, which was the time of the first edition was 2004, which is when the end of faith came out. They catalog about 1800 wars and they characterize about 7% as religious.

Now obviously, you can probably pick around the edges of their characterizations. Yeah, we don't want to do a pinker here and be like, the exact body count of religion is this, and the exact body count of communism is this. Like, we've talked off the show about it, like, this is just a fucking bizarre project. But also, like, yeah, if you're gonna say that religion is the source of most killing in war, then like yeah, we're gonna check that. Yeah, when you're dealing with a number like 7%, like fine, double it. It's still a small percentage. And then you have the fact that even religious wars could arguably be reframed as non-religious, right? But I think bottom line,

historically, we're talking about pretty low numbers for expressly religious wars. I also feel like if you're looking at conflicts taking place up to 10,000 years ago, it's also tricky to classify those as distinctly religious or distinctly non-religious, just because state institutions were so different throughout most of human history. Religious institutions were extremely different throughout human history, you can look at almost any conflict and say that it's religious or say that it's not religious. The murkiness of all of these concepts kind of reveals how silly his entire project is.

I think so too. Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, again, these guys present themselves as like beacons of rationality. Right, right. These guys present themselves as like beacons of rationality. So now let's talk about what Harris characterizes as the unique danger of Islam. This is where we're going to focus a lot of the episode because A, it's a huge and common critique of his book and B, being Islamophobic in public is the bulk of Sam Harris's career. Yeah, at this point. And anti-woke, if you listen to his podcast, he brings everything back to like, well, why

won't the college students let you say it? I tried to listen to a couple episodes just doing my diligence here and my god. Dude, I know. I know that he's a very popular podcaster. He's probably more popular than us, so maybe I shouldn't talk shit. That's a reason to talk shit, Peter. We're punching up. That's true.

Punching upwards. Yeah, I do want to say this. He sucks podcasting dude. It's so fun. Oh my god I know the only I think I was just telling you about this, but I heard him Laugh on that podcast once and it was when his guest was going on a wildly transphobic rant Yeah, yeah, a man who never laughs and then right this guy was just like trans women aren't real and Sam Harris is like oh Oh, you are killing me. You have three cheese puns per episode and then you'll be a real podcaster get on get on our fucking level So let's get into the racism the Islamophobia. I want to avoid a defamation lawsuit So I can't say that he's objectively racist

So what I will say is that if there is an omnipotent God, he believes that Sam Harris is racist. Is it? Endorsing violence towards Muslim people is probably Harris's most consistent output over the span of his career. And seeing as we are currently mid-genocide, a genocide that Sam Harris supports possibly more than anyone I've listened to. Maybe a good time to visit some of the most common arguments about Islamic violence.

So are we just skipping all the stuff where he's like Christianity is not real? Because it just bores us both. There's actually not that much of it in the book. Wait, really? Christianity is like a side discussion in the end of faith. Not true of the other new atheists. They focus on Christianity a little bit more. But Harris uses Christianity almost as like a jumping off point for talking about Islam. He's much more interested in talking shit about Muslims than anything else. So it's not like he was hiding his Islamophobia under these arguments about like the George W. Bush administration evangelicals.

It's like it was always there like right up front. There are almost expressed defenses of George Bush himself as a person in this book. And we're gonna talk about them. Okay, so Paris is arguing that Islam is a unique danger in this world because Islamic doctrine is uniquely violent and the fact that we see terrorism disproportionately coming from Muslim groups now proves that. I will say I am not going to get into like, here's what Islamic doctrine actually says. I don't think that there are like correct

or incorrect interpretations of religious doctrine exactly. I think that it's very obvious that people interpret doctrines in different ways and that trying to prove that there's a correct one to prove that all religious people either do or should view it like, yes, view it a certain way is just a fundamental mistake. If there's one thing we know on this show, it's that everyone hates reading.

And so any holy book of any religion, most of the adherents of the religion have not read it. So it's kind of pointless to do like chapter and verse. Okay, but let's steel man, let's steel man his argument a little bit before we get into this. I think what he is going to, what he would respond, that might be true, that basically no one reads these books, that everything's up to interpretation, but the fact that the doctrine is violent in reality

allows for people who do read the book to interpret it correctly as such. And so in a sense, even if most Muslims don't end up going down this path, the doctrine is facilitating some people to do it, right? I think that's what he would say. That's true of every religion, that like if you look at the text, a lot of it was written at a time when like retributive justice was the norm. And so this eye for an eye stuff is everywhere in organized religion. Okay, well, I'm gonna send you another bit.

Are we debating right now, Peter? Is it happening? No, I'm putting a stop to this right now. Uh... I'm gonna send you another bit. It's in two parts. Okay, he says, to exasperate many readers since it ignores most of what commentators on the Middle East have said about the roots of Muslim violence. It ignores the painful history of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in Gaza. It ignores the collusion of Western powers with corrupt dictatorships.

It ignores the endemic poverty and lack of economic opportunity that now plague the Arab world. But I will argue that we can ignore all of those things or treat them only to place them safely on the shelf because the world is filled with poor Uneducated and exploited peoples who do not commit acts of terrorism and the Muslim world has no shortage of educated and prosperous men and women Suffering little more than their infatuation with Quranic eschatology who are eager to murder infidels for God's sake We are at war with Islam. Okay, so he's like ignore all of the context it turns out right that Muslims are just more violent than every other religion and if you follow this logic

He's saying that there are poor uneducated and exploited people who do not commit terrorist acts and that that Proves that terrorist acts aren't caused by those things, right? This is my favorite type of logical error The error is so bad that the reasoning can be completely flipped. There are Muslims who do not commit terrorism. Therefore Islam cannot be the cause of terrorism. Same logic. Right, exactly.

And also, it's also, I mean, I know this is unfair to criticize the book for what he does now, but his whole thing with Trump-driven violence is like, well, what about the lack of economic opportunities? The men who are frustrated at all the feminists telling them that they can't be what they want to be anymore, and that's why they're committing violence. He's making excuses for this kind of thing in other contexts. The end of good faith. Got him.

Got him good. The Mike and Peter story. Tara says, to attribute territorial and nationalistic motives to Osama bin Laden seems almost willfully obscuratist, since Osama's only apparent concerns are the spread of Islam and the sanctity of Muslim holy sites. Now first this is dumb because Harris is implying that we can fully understand what drives someone to do something based on what they say their motives are, which we can't reliably do. But also, Osama bin Laden wrote a whole letter about his reasons for attacking the United States,

and the very first reason is, quote, because you attacked us and continue to attack us. Again, you're seeing Harris just sort of wade into an extremely complex topic, stroll right past everyone with actual expertise, and just announce that he has figured this all out using logic. He's basically just like, look at the guy! He's a Muslim! Right.

Like... So first, he's just wrong. As soon as he makes a verifiable claim, right, here are Osama bin Laden's stated motives. He's wrong about it. And second, there are researchers who study this shit, right? There are researchers who actually sit down and talk to jihadi terrorists

and ask them about their motivations. Scott Atran wrote a whole book on this called Talking to the Enemy, where he chronicles his interviews with accused terrorists. He spoke with detainees who had joined al-Qaeda to fight in Iraq. Almost all of them were motivated by their desire to avenge crimes against Muslims. Every single person he spoke to cited Abu Ghraib as one of their motivating factors. Atran and other researchers have found that disproportionate numbers of violent jihadis

are recent converts who actually have fairly minimal knowledge of Islamic doctrine to the point where some researchers found that many jihadis they spoke to didn't know the basics of daily prayer. Oh, that's what you're saying. These are not devout Muslims who are convinced by doctrine to become violent. It's the other way around. They are motivated by the prospect of violence and they are sort of operating through the vessel of Islam.

Right. And also, of course, we shouldn't take at face value what these people say their motivation is either. No. Everyone's motivation for doing basically anything is complicated. And so you can't just say, oh, it's the religion that is bad. I am going to introduce you to a rhetorical tactic that Sam Harris loves. I am calling it the Cowards Hypothetical. Ooh. I thought it was going to be paused for three minutes before speaking, so that I've forgotten what you're actually responding to by the coward's hypothetical. Ooh. I thought it was gonna be pause for three minutes before speaking so that I've forgotten

what you're actually responding to by the time you talk. This is a classic Harris move. He is confronted with a really complex question that he is absolutely not capable of answering. And then he deflects by immediately redirecting the conversation to a hypothetical thought experiment. I'm gonna send you his argument. This is him addressing the issue of collateral damage by the American military.

He says, What we euphemistically describe as collateral damage in times of war is the direct result of limitations in the power and precision of our technology. To see that this is so, we need only imagine how any of our recent conflicts would have looked if we had possessed perfect weapons, weapons that allowed us to either temporarily impair or kill a particular person or group at any distance without harming others or their property. What would we do with such technology? Consider the all-too-facile comparisons that have recently been made between George Bush and Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden or

Hitler, etc. How would George Bush and Saddam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden or Hitler, etc. How would George Bush have prosecuted the recent war in Iraq with perfect weapons? Would he have targeted the thousands of Iraqi civilians who were maimed or killed by our bombs? Would he have put out the eyes of little girls or torn the arms from their mothers? Whether or not you admire the man's politics or the man, there is no reason to think that he would have sanctioned the injury or death of even a single innocent person. What would Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden do with perfect weapons? What would Hitler have done? They would have used them rather differently.

You might think that we've committed horrible deeds, but imagine a world where magic exists. Not so horrible now, are we? This is again his weird rationality thing. He's like created this scenario, but like this is not smart. This is not smart This is not like a real argument. I mean, it's it's a bizarre Hypothetical if I was straight Peter, do you know what a good boyfriend? I would be do you know how nice to women? I would be I would not be an incel if I was straight and if you were gay Peter You'd be a real dick about it. What that is true though. That does feel true I do actually feel that very strongly the issue here here is that just for example, the United States government has thousands of

times over pulled the trigger on bombs knowing that civilians would die. That is a moral choice. You can defend that moral choice or you can just pivot to a hypothetical situation that dodges the issue, right? The coward's hypothetical. I believe that this will catch on. It's also, it's like you're looking at two scenarios in which the leaders of countries have killed people and you're like, well, one of them doesn't count because he would

behave differently in a different world and one of them is like even worse because he'd behave even worse in a different world. We'll circle back to this in a second. I just wanted to give another example of him doing this to prove that this is not the only time. This is from his debate with Scott Atran where Atran had pointed to some data and information showing why he doesn't think that Islamic doctrine is driving terrorism. So for example, he talks about how the history of suicide bombing is largely secular and how secular and Christian groups in Palestine have also engaged in terrorism, for example.

Here is Sam responding to that. Are we gonna watch a clip? We're watching a clip. ["The Last Supper"] That troubles me because this is what I think. If the Quran was exactly the way it is, but it contained a single extra line, and that line read,

if you see a red-haired woman on your doorstep at sunset, cut her head off. I can tell you what kind of world we would live in. We would live in a world where red-haired women would be found murdered in the Muslim world. Boom. And we would also live in a world in which apologists for Islam would say, would look at that behavior and say that has nothing to do with Islam. There was a new story yesterday about a Mormon man who killed his wife and she had red hair. Many of those women who were found, whose heads were found in the bag in Baghdad were

not actually red heads but some were strawberry blonde. We would hear about women who were shot and not decapitated, and decapitation is the only thing that is sanctioned in the Quran. I mean, this is the kind of gymnastics we would be faced with. Oh boy. You can tell on Scott's face that he's just like,

can you believe this shit? It literally is not an argument. Scott Attrane is, you can't, of course you can't hear it, but he is just like tapping his fingers in like a really annoyed way. Like get me the fuck out of here. But this is also like, I think Sam Harris thinks this is like a good argument.

I think he thinks he's like facts and logic-ing. Here's the thing about Sam Harris. If he were to read a book telling him to go skeet shooting with puppies, I can tell you what kind of world we would live in. We would live in a world where Sam Harris skeet-shooted puppies all day long. And the apologists for Sam Harris, the Sam Harris subreddit would love it. I want to circle back to his whole perfect weapon thing. What would we do with the perfect weapon? What would what would Osama bin Laden do? One issue with that is that

collateral damage isn't the only type of War crime that Western militaries have committed. Yeah There are also situations where Western militaries just engage in murder an obvious famous example The Mille Massacre, where American troops in Vietnam tortured and murdered about 500 villagers. Sam Harris is smart enough to recognize that this is bad for his argument,

and so he tries to respond to that counterargument. I want to hear how it doesn't count. I want to hear how it doesn't count. I'm sending it to you. He says, This is about as bad as human beings are capable of behaving. But what distinguishes us from many of our enemies is that this indiscriminate violence appalls us.

The massacre at My Lai is remembered as a signature moment of shame for the American military. Even at the time, US soldiers were dumbstruck with horror by the behavior of their comrades. One helicopter pilot who arrived on the scene ordered his subordinates to use their machine guns against their own troops if they would not stop killing villagers. As a culture, we have clearly outgrown our tolerance for the deliberate torture and murder of innocents. We would do well to realize that much of the world has not.

You might argue that I am also a murderer, but I want to be clear that the fact that I am a murderer makes me very sad. And that's the difference between me and you, buddy. The thing is, I do actually think that on some level this probably does make a difference, right? There's institutional safeguards against this kind of thing. But he's also not doing the empirics to say, well, this is actually what happened there,

that the My Lai Massacre was such an outlier and the people who did it were so thoroughly condemned and punished that we really can sort of write it off as a fluke event. This is just one example of Harris not knowing shit about history. Current Affairs wrote about this passage. First of all, the military tried to keep all of this quiet.

Okay. But once the story broke, the helicopter pilot who Sam references, who tried to restrain the other soldiers during the Mylie massacre, was ostracized. He received death threats from all over the country. When the story became public, the perpetrators on the other hand received outpourings of support. There were marches in support of Lieutenant William

Calley who ordered the massacre. Politicians across the country spoke out in support of him, not just right-wingers. Jimmy Carter created a state holiday in Georgia to celebrate him. Oh my god! The entire ordeal resulted in one conviction of Callie himself. None of his subordinates who followed his orders were convicted. The public outcry in support of Callie was so significant that Nixon had him removed from prison and put under house arrest. He served a few years primarily under house arrest and then was paroled.

Wait, wait, can I do, can I channel Sam Harris here? Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, long pause, long can I channel Sam Harris here? Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, long pause, long pause. But still. But still. America, but still. Look, I mean, this is just, say what you want about it.

This is not the output of a society that strongly condemns such actions, right? Meanwhile, there's also numerous examples in America of Muslim communities actually reporting people who are radicalizing to the authorities. Right. On the other side of the equation, he's like, well, Muslims don't care about terrorism, and that's also not fucking true. Right, and that, by the way, is a claim that he expressly makes, where he's like, Muslims don't speak out about this. And it's just like, what are you talking about? And then if you're like, well, what about this Muslim that spoke out? He's like, ah, but still.

Like, it's not a serious argument. His arguments about the dangers of Islam are mostly just hypotheticals and anecdotes. He does occasionally cite some polling. He discusses the Pew, What the World Thinks in 2002 poll, which surveyed over 38,000 people. There was one question that they asked only of Muslims. Quote, some people think that suicide bombing

and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam? Sometimes justified, rarely justified, never justified. So that is the question asked by Pew.

And I'm going to send you a chart of the country-by-country results. Okay. So Lebanon, 73% yes. Ivory Coast, 56% yes. Nigeria, 47% yes. Jordan, 43% yes. And Uzbekistan is the lowest. Isn't this actually evidence of how diverse the Muslim world is?

That you get this vast range of answers? Harris says these are hideous numbers. And I think that he's right in the general sense that these results are disconcerting. But what he's trying to show is that Islam is driving terrorism and sympathy for terrorism. And what you clocked immediately is that there's a massive gap between Different Muslim countries here who's beka Stan is at the bottom of this chart with only 7% of people saying That suicide bombing in defense of Islam is justifiable right compare that with Lebanon above 70% saying It's just justifiable right you're talking about a massive gap Which seems to suggest that this is driven by geopolitics, right?

The highest support for suicide attacks is Lebanon What's happening in that region in 2002 is the second in defata right where there are suicide attacks being used against Israel? Lebanon's biggest geopolitical enemy also the next two highest countries are Ivory Coast and Nigeria. So it's just kind of an interesting mix. When Sam Harris replicates this chart in his book, he leaves out Uzbekistan. I don't really know why. Whites. Whites. Whites.

It's baffling. Again, we're taking the long way to the conclusion that a religion of 1.3 billion people is pretty diverse. It's like, okay, breaking news. So that question was only asked of Muslims, of course. In 2011, Gallup did a global survey titled, The Views on Violence, where they asked people their thoughts about violence targeting civilians,

either where it's the military doing the targeting or individuals. And what they found was that acceptance for targeting civilians was not linked to religion, not linked to religiousness. People who said that religion is an important part of their daily lives are on average about as likely to support attacks on civilians as those who don't, which doesn't speak to the motivations of terrorists directly, but it is evidence that general religiosity is not correlated with support for extremist violence.

On top of that, people in Muslim countries were less likely to think that attacks on civilians were justifiable. And what's more, the people who are most likely to believe that the military targeting and killing civilians is justifiable are, drum roll please, Americans. Right. 49% of Americans think that the military intentionally killing civilians is at least sometimes justified.

I also want to point out Americans in the survey more likely than people in Muslim countries to say that civilian attacks on other civilians can be justified. So even when we're talking about individual attacks, things that look more like terrorism, Americans more supportive than people in Muslim countries. That is actually fucked up.

I think one interpretation of this is just that American morality is fucked and it's worse than other countries. Another way to look at it is that Americans see this stuff and they, for geopolitical reasons, are not picturing themselves being attacked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas people in other countries are more likely to be like, oh, that's about me.

That's about my family getting attacked. Right. We're thinking like Pakistani drone strike type stuff. Right. That's what Americans would have been thinking. I'm not trying to be like, aha, Americans. We are the actual worst ones. Right?

Yeah, exactly. I think that this is the output of circumstance in either case. And the bottom line to me is that when you try to use actual data to analyze Harris's thesis here that Islam is more inherently dangerous, not so strong. Not so good. I think what it points to is how facile his argument is, right? Because you could write a whole book about how Americans are uniquely violent and like Americans shouldn't get visas to visit other countries because like look how

much gun violence they have and look how much they support terrorism, etc. Those things are a product of like various cultural and political historical factors. It would be really silly to say that like Americans are just inherently more violent than other groups because yeah, I think this whole thing of like saying this group sucks because of this poll that we took like public polling is notoriously very bad and What people report their beliefs are very different than what they are in reality So kind of all of this stuff is pretty facile But because Sam Harris is using it as evidence you can marshal the same kind of evidence

To smear almost any group by just like cherry picking out statistics and public polls. I want to do a case study Let's talk about airport security, Michael. After the book was published, Harris became an advocate for what was basically just like neoconservative foreign policy. He wrote a lengthy defense of the use of torture and interrogations that stirred up a ton of controversy. A few years later, he wrote a similar post titled, In Defense of Profiling, where he makes the argument that airport security,

in particular, should engage in profiling. He says, quote, we should profile Muslims or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. He or she could conceivably be Muslim, I love that. The basic argument he makes is the same as every conservative after 9-11, right?

We know that people most likely to be terrorists are Muslim. Makes sense to just target Muslims for additional security screening rather than waste time screening every elderly woman who we think is, who we know is extremely unlikely to commit terrorism. And what is to blame for the lack of profiling in our current system? He says this. I worry that political correctness can open up another pathway through security allowing terrorists to hide in plain sight.

If it ever became clear that we had a policy of not profiling designed to assure everyone that we were non-racist and culturally sensitive. Terrorists could safely assume that the TSA wouldn't oblige a Muslim woman to lift her veil if she didn't want to." He ends up getting a response from Bruce Schneier, a security expert who has written about profiling. And then the two have a lengthy email exchange, which they publish. I love that every single one of these is like, he says some shit and then someone who actually knows about the topic Like weighs in and then a quote-unquote debate ensues between someone who knows things and someone who doesn't know things This is also a great

Example and I think the most egregious example of something that has happened multiple times Which is Sam Harris having an email debate with someone getting his shit kicked in yeah, but not realizing it and publishing it I debate with someone getting his shit kicked in, but not realizing it and publishing it. I think that a lot of people who oppose profiling at the airport, for example, basically argue that profiling discriminates against Muslims and therefore it erodes social trust, it is unfair to innocent Muslims, etc. What Schneier says is you can put that aside and profiling is still not effective. The way he describes it is that all security decisions are a cost-benefit decision.

If you use profiling, in some ways you make the system more efficient, but you actually create other costs that end up outweighing the benefit. I'm gonna send you a little bit. To implement this system, you're going to have to make this profile explicit. You're going to need a precise definition for Muslim, and it needs to be a definition that can be taught to the TSA screeners written down in the standard operating procedures manual found at every TSA checkpoint. I believe that once you start trying to specify your profile exactly, it will either encompass so many people as to be useless or leave out so many people as to be dangerous. That is, I can't figure out how to get your error rate down.

So basically, I have thought about this for more than 90 seconds, and here's what I actually think. Yeah, so in lay terms, what this means is that it's easy to say that we should screen Muslims more, but you can't literally do that. You don't know who is actually a Muslim. All you can do is screen for people who look Muslim to you, which mostly just ends up meaning people who are either dressed in Muslim garb or just look Arab.

Right. Which, one, does not include all Muslims, and two, can be easily gamed by terrorists. Right. It's very well known that terrorist organizations adjust to profiles. So Schneier pointed out that, for example, in 2004 Chechen rebels conducted suicide bombings of two Russian airliners and the bombers were women. Why were they women? Because they realized that men were getting more aggressive screening.

Right. Schneier's broad argument is that even though it can feel counterintuitive, simple randomized security screenings are actually more efficient and therefore better at catching terrorists because they are easily implemented and they cannot be gamed. He gives a really interesting example of how counterintuitive security measures can be. It's a frequent complaint from pilots that they have to go through security screening. That's because it's sort of absurd, right?

It doesn't matter whether a pilot has a bomb, he can literally crash the plane when he wants to. So it's inefficient to screen pilots, right? That is sort of a fact in a vacuum. So let's say you decide not to. How do you do that? You can't screen for wearing a pilot's uniform because anyone can buy one of those.

You'd have to give pilots a special ID, which then you have to manufacture. And once you do, now you have to worry about them being forged or stolen. You have to develop procedures that account for that. And then you have to worry about someone slipping a bomb onto a pilot's person, for example. By the time you're done implementing this idea

and handling all these variables, it would have just been more efficient to screen pilots like they're anyone else, right? I actually learned something in this episode, Peter. I can't believe it. The Sam Harris episode. There's also an interesting case that Schneier references. In the late 90s, the FAA, the Aviation Administration, implemented a system called CAPS, computer assisted passenger screening. Basically, it analyzed passenger data, it created a risk profile, and that helped determine whether additional screening would be effective. In 2002, some programmers put together an algorithm that showed how the system could be easily gamed by terrorists. Essentially, terrorists could probe

the system by sending operatives on test flights. You see who gets flagged, and then you wait to find people who are not flagged. And once you've identified those people, you use them as your operatives, because people who are not flagged by the system are unlikely to be flagged in the future. The algorithm they made basically showed

that this very simple exploit made the system less effective than random screenings. This is Sam Harris having like Elon Musk disease. He's like, there's this thing that kind of seems unintuitive or illogical to me and like, I can fix it with 10 seconds of my brain. And then people who actually know why the system was designed that way, like slowly explained to him why it may look strange, but it's actually relatively sophisticated and it's being done for a reason, and then

he just rejects it like a transplant. Right. Because like how does Sam Harris respond to this? Well, he doesn't because over the course of this debate, Sam never actually absorbs this point and he has not absorbed it to this day. He has never absorbed the point that the reason you use a randomized system isn't because everyone is equally likely to commit an act of terrorism. It's because systems that profile create new vulnerabilities that aren't worth the trade-off.

He wrote a follow-up to this debate where he said, "...my position on profiling is very simple. We should admit that we know what we are looking for, suicidal terrorists, and that certain people obviously require less scrutiny than others. We should scan everyone's luggage, of course, because bombs can be placed there without a person's knowledge, but given scarce resources, we can't afford to waste our time and attention pretending to think that every traveler is equally likely to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. Right, so but still, we need to look at the Muslims. He's like, this is why it won't work, but we need to look at the Muslims.

That's what's so baffling is that's not the assumption that Schneier is making. He's not saying that everyone is equally likely to be a terrorist. He's saying that if you try to profile, it is inefficient. That's what he's saying. Also, like, not to get too much on my Michael shit, but it's wild to me how these guys seem to conceive of intelligence exclusively as your own ability to express yourself in a way that sounds smart and never in your ability to listen. I will say this. I believe that Sam Harris has been less susceptible to audience capture than some of his intellectual

dark web peers because of his disdain for the thoughts of other people. It's genuinely incredible how little Harris seems to process the argument that his opponent is making here because he is obsessed with the idea that his opponents are all just too PC. Bruce Schneier is expressly being like, I don't care about political correctness. That's not what my argument is based off of. But Sam Harris is like, you liberal pussy.

You must admit that Muslims are bad. That's what he really wants, right? He wants everyone to just be like, all right, Muslims are bad, Sam. It's also, I mean, this is such a fucking obvious point to make, but it's like nowadays, white supremacy is the most common ideology behind acts of terrorism. Don't you say it. Don't you say it. It's like, it's so fucking obvious to point this kind of stuff out, white supremacy is the most common ideology behind acts of terrorism.

Don't you say it. Don't you say it. It's like, it's so fucking obvious to point this kind of stuff out, but it's like, Sam Harris fits the fucking profile, and yet I assume he's not promoting this now. Well, I have another rhetorical trick that Sam loves and that I have named, even though it probably already has a name. You want a legacy of this podcast. You want to like, you want to make Fetch happen in various places. If I give enough things little names names one of them will catch on and they'll be like kill thought of this you get a Wikipedia entry finally one day the president will say my

name where's all I'm ever gonna be remembered for is mispronouncing denouement yeah that's right which by the way I we got a lot of complaints about that people weren't even complaining about you anymore they were just like why. They were just like I love this Like it's my this is my responsibility. You're trying to coin phrases. I'm just trying to make you look bad What people don't know is that every time there's a foreign word. I have to ask you how to pronounce it Like I if I said like they knew more I feel like you'd be like, oh, that's actually the French Canadian way even you just saying it just then gave me hives. Absolutely not. Never on this podcast.

That's interesting because there are many things that I've heard you insist I must say in the original German. Fuck off! Fuck you! Okay, so I am calling this the provocateurs caveat. This is where you say something that is designed to provoke controversy, but you add the thinnest, most obviously bullshit caveat in the world that just allows you to retreat when attacked. But then also you get to counterattack your detractors for being dishonest. Now I'm not saying the thing that I'm obviously saying.

In defense of his in defense of profiling piece, he said, what my critics always neglect to say is that in the article in which that sentence appears, I explicitly include white middle-aged men like me in the profile twice. Now, I'm going to send you the quotes that he's referring to, and you can tell me whether or not it feels like he's actually including himself in the profile. Okay.

Although I don't think I look like a jihadi or like a man pretending not to be one, I do not mean to suggest that a person like me should be exempt from scrutiny. And again, I wouldn't put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bullseye. What does that mean? Exempt from scrutiny. Right, what he said just now was, I explicitly include white middle-aged men like me in the profile twice. And then this is what he's referring to. That's not what he's saying.

And also a system that screened every single middle-aged white man. Non-functional. So what you're suggesting is just screening essentially everybody, and again, creating this huge vulnerability that all you have to do is give your bomb to somebody who's not a middle-aged man. The entire purpose of putting these little things in into this piece is so that when

someone's like, you want to discriminate against Muslims, he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, how dare you, sir. He loves to just put the thinnest little caveat in like an otherwise wildly offensive take and then when he gets criticism, he points to it and he's like you are being dishonest. He can turn the argument around. Probably the most egregious version of this is his passage from the book about Muslims having nuclear weapons. Underneath their overcoats?

Like in True Lies? I'm gonna send this to you. It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a Cold War with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A Cold War requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States

and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own.

Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime, as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day, but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. Oh, this is the, this is the Bili massacre thing again. But it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. Oh, this is the, this is the B-Lie massacre thing again. He's like, look, we did nuke an entire region of the planet, but we felt very bad about it afterwards. We literally are so sad about this. I can't believe how sad about this I am, but we might have to kill 10 million people.

We went to the greeting card store. We bought an I'm Sorry little card, we sent it to the nuclear blast site that we created. So a bunch of people responded to this shocked and outraged. He calls out Chris Hedges who said that Harris was calling for a nuclear first strike and Harris basically says, no, no, no, I wasn't saying we should conduct a nuclear first strike I was saying that hypothetically if this situation arose it would be logical and he accuses his critics of being dishonest on his on this point so he's

sort of correct in that he caught his critics being a little bit sloppy he didn't advocate for a nuclear first strike right now he said we might need to do but we might have to given certain developments in the future. And the fact that these people love death so much that we just have to kill them all because we can't have a conventional like mutually assured destruction because they like dying so much. So it's actually worse, Sam, what you're actually saying is worse. This is what he loves to do.

He puts out an argument with the thinnest little caveat. Someone ignores the caveat because the caveat is sort of not the point. They're sort of mentally skipping over it and being like, you're talking about nuclear first strikes killing tens of millions of people? And then he's like, as you can see, my critics are wildly dishonest.

And it's like, okay, but the fundamental concern about the nuclear first strike is what you should be addressing here. So in his defense of himself, he says, of course, not every Muslim regime would fit this description. And then says he wasn't talking about Pakistan and Iran, he was talking about the Taliban and ISIS, for example.

But that's not what he said in the book. He was referring to all Muslim regimes. It's also a weird distinction because it's like saying, we're not gonna bomb Idaho, we're gonna bomb the KKK, an action that would entail dropping a bunch of bombs on Idaho. Right. Either way, you're dropping bombs

on a bunch of innocent people. This is also a little bit of Coward's hypothetical. He's just like, if they got nukes, they would use them on us immediately because they are not afraid of death and they love murder. It is a little weird to be like, these people are too cavalier about killing, so we have to kill them? If you think what I'm doing is bad, wait until you see the thing that I am pretending they were gonna do.

That's the logic behind like most genocides. Right. Like they want to do it to us So we have to do it to them first his primary contribution to this discourse is The idea that Islamophobia isn't real as a concept. It's just a weapon Yeah used by apologists to deflect criticism of Islam He wrote a piece fairly recently that sort of summarizes feelings on this, titled What is Islamophobia? Where he said this, and I'm condensing a bunch here, but I'll

send it to you. He says, What is Islamophobia? There's no question that the term has been designed to confuse people. Its purpose is to conflate any criticism of Islam, which is a doctrine of religious beliefs, with bigotry against Muslims as people. Its purpose is to conflate any criticism of Islam, which is a doctrine of religious beliefs, with bigotry against Muslims as people. Honestly criticizing the doctrine of Islam does not entail bigotry against Arabs or any other group of people. It is not an expression of hatred to notice that specific Islamic ideas, in particular beliefs about martyrdom and jihad and blasphemy and apostasy, inspire terrible acts of violence. And it's not an expression of phobia, that is, irrational fear, to notice that violent

religious fanatics don't make good neighbors. I mean, fine, sure, man. No, absolutely. You should be able to criticize religious doctrines without being considered a bigot, except as we just discussed, Sam Harris openly advocates for profiling people who quote look Muslim. Yeah Discrimination against Muslims in the strictest most literal sense And he's also just saying that it's like qualitatively just like a worse religion than other world religions Like it's it's uniquely violent and pernicious. That's the thing is how many times, so I think there's two components to this. One, Sam Harris actively lobbies for discrimination

against Muslims, right? So like, if that's not Islamophobia, if that's not bigotry against Muslims, then what could possibly be? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then also, there's a degree to which it's like, okay, you should be allowed to criticize a doctrine, but if you spend 20 years calling that doctrine

psychotic and bloodthirsty, like am I allowed to draw no inference? Is that like, and just to be clear, I have barely grazed upon Sam Harris' Islamophobic statements. In 2006, he said, quote, given current birth rates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25 years. And that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow.

Oh yeah, got it. So just to be clear, it's 2024, and France's Muslim population is like 9% of the country. So, no. When Harris, in 2012, wrote about this, it was very obvious at that point that he was going to be wrong. And all he said was, you know,

I can't find what my source was for that, but obviously that source was incorrect. No acknowledgement of the fact that like, he didn't check the veracity of the source, right? Now, this is the kind of thing that racist pretend is not racist, right? Given, all I'm doing is looking at birth rates, you're doing great replacement theory, right?

You're fostering fear about a certain race becoming a majority, and you're fostering fear about a certain race becoming a majority, and you're doing it using shitty statistics that any undergrad in stats would know was incorrect. And any historian would know has been said about every immigrant group through time, right? It's like, Southern Italians are gonna outbreed white Americans, and it never fucking happens, because as living standards go up, birth rates go down. The only way that that's not Racist is if your definition of racism is that you like have to say out loud these people are

inferior in x y and z ways And that's a little awkward for Sam too because he's also a big promoter of race and IQ shit Yeah, a big fan of Charles Murray, so he does say that some races are inferior to others, you know, on a genetic basis. So that's not racism. This isn't racism. Saying that we should profile Muslims at airports isn't racism. I am genuinely curious about what he thinks racism is exactly. I will say it's a little weird as a defense against a charge of bias to say no no no I'm not islamophobic I simply believe that this religion is bad and I've been saying this for two decades So that I could make the lives of adherence to this religion worse, right? How dare you?

I couldn't even get into his his discussions about Gaza lately But just to give give anyone who's interested a taste, he literally said that Hamas is worse than the Nazis. Oh my God. And again, why did he say that? Because doctrinally, they are worse in his mind. It's never the things you do in the world. Right, right, right.

It's just the things you do in the world. It's just the doctrine. And anytime you step outside of the theoretical world, he looks like a dumb asshole. I love that this is just like the dunk on Sam Harris episode. It's not really about the book. Just like this guy fucking sucks. Here's the thing. Here's the thing about podcasting.

And Sam, listen up. When a book is this boring and abstract and theoretical, you have to step outside the book. Do you have a sense of what was actually driving him? Do you have an origin story of why does he hate Muslims so much? If you watch every episode of Golden Girls. Yeah!