I'm sorry, but if you're going to call all evil ideologies "religion" just to reinforce your argument that religions are evil, you're climbing up some circular logic. You might think you got the high moral ground, but everyone else is looking down on you.

So, with that definition, if a religion is objectively good, and not evil, it can't be called religion.

That was Hitchens playing the postmodernist game of twisting words, to shuffle things around into categories until they fall into the ones that he's attacking, thus "proving" his point.

Was there video, or just audio?

I was referring to the Ben - Harris thing, but discord had cut off the last four or five messages

Might have to check this one out too though

I'll look it up after the Rubin Report is over.

How would you define religion then?

That's a hard question to answer. But it's easy to point out at things that aren't religion.

Here's the latest Ben vs Sam debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTWCl32j8jM

And this is Ben's thoughts about it, if you don't have two fucking hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlUBl64krMo

Audio only, on the first one.

Thumbnail is misleading.

That's the one where the woman asked Sam, "I have a 5 years old son, what do I teach him?" and he said "Lie to him."

I don't remember anything about a woman with a 5 year old son, or her asking about what to teach him. I do remember a woman with an 18 year old son, who asked how she could stop him from doing "stupid things", if he has no free will. I don't think not telling your child that some philospher argues that there is no such thing as free will, is somehow lying to them.

Harris said something about lying at the very end, and it felt more like a joke than anything. The audience laughed at it, and it didn't connect with what he had been explaining earlier, nor the fact that he's written a book about lying, and how there are more often than not unconsidered and unwanted consequences to even the smallest white lies, and that people should make the effort to not tell lies at all.

I was quoting Ben. He might have remembered the age wrong. Doesn't change much though.

If you have to lie to convince your son to be a decent human being, maybe your moral positioning is not sound.

I mean, the question sounded legitimate, why the fuck was Harris being sarcastic on his answer?

Maybe only people with very high IQ can derive morality through secularism? "Sorry, you're a pleb, you're better off lying to your child than try to do what I do."

"i wrote a whole book on it"

the soundest of logical arguments

he wrote a book on the subject of lies and how harmful they are, and you take a joke as him advocating for lying. I suggest you go back and listen to it again, and Ben probably should too if he thinks not telling your child everything is somehow lying to them.

he told ben he wrote a book on the subject instead of making an argument

and ben said i read it

don't remember him saying that in the QA, but if he did, I can understand since it was the last question before they ended the show

it was during the debate

i was just talking about when Ben was trying to get into the details of his ideas

he said I wrote a book on it

in that case, that is not very helpful to a debate

I remember the question.

And I remember he indeed answered it like that, "lie to him". Not the exact words, but pretty much.

What I'm saying is, even if he's just being sarcastic, making a joke, that's inappropriate.

I don't think the woman wanted a sarcastic answer.

no, he argued that she didn't need to tell him about free will in order to make him stop doing stupid things, and then at the end they were joking

But who is to judge on whether his actions and decisions are stupid?

the mother said so

JBP mentioned that on one of his lectures, "it's not clear that taking advantage of people isn't on your best interest. Why shouldn't you take advantage of people whenever you can get away with it?"

so clearly, in her mind, the kid's actions were stupid, she wants to stop him, but she thinks that because he has no free will, he'll be unable to learn how to stop doing these things

what does that have to do with not telling your child that they do not have free will?

She wasn't worried about the child struggling to cope with the non-existence of free will. She wanted to know how to make sure he grows to be a good person.

if I understood her correctly, she wanted him to learn why what he was doing was stupid, but she didn't understand how that would be possible if he had no free will. I feel as if it's more her lack of understanding on the subject of free will, or the lack thereof, that is what Harris was trying to tell her about. But I might be wrong.