I never thought I would agree with Ben affleck but here we are
Every time I finish an episode of Last Week Tonight, my TV jump scares me with a picture of John fucking Fettermam while it autoloads Maher’s show.
Nothing brings me more immediate panic than trying to get to the remote in time to stop it.
I’ve been through this exact scenario and For real Maher is trash
While this feels current and is a good thing to hear, it’s a number of years old at this point … I’d love to hear what these dudes think now.
Except Bill Maher, fuck that spineless boomer asshole
I think I saw something recently saying Sam Harris is still a tool… However, I may literally just be remembering a YouTube thumbnail that I saw lol. It may have been Majority Report though, so probably reputable.
These days he’s worried about Christo-fascists more than anyone else.
Important to note that Sam Harris argued against Islam as the worst of all evils in the West. He’s no fan of Christians but, at the time, believed he’d rather have Christians running the West than Muslims. At the time, American Christianity was still GWB and Obama’s Christianity, in which case I agreed with Sam. But today? Fuck all of them. Christians, Muslims, Jews. Take your religion and shove it up your asses.
How can anyone parse anything in this video? It’s 5 dudes yelling over each other the entire time.
That’s pretty much mainstream news now. 5 people at a table talking over eachother
I don’t know how anyone watches this and thinks Ben Affleck makes a good argument.
If you think he does, watch the whole video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vln9D81eO60
Also, why is Zoolander debating him?
A more cohesive and nuanced point he could’ve made is that Sam Harris paints Muslims as a monolith of Islamic fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is problematic but you can’t generalize an entire religion in that way if you want to have any sort of meaningful discourse.
There are definitely progressive Muslims who, like progressive Christians and Jews, take the parts of their religion they like/value and leave behind the dated/misogynistic parts. There are plenty of Christian fundamentalists who believe all sorts of wacko shit and engage in bad actions motivated by their beliefs, same with wahhabism or Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Sam Harris paints Muslims as a monolith of Islamic fundamentalism
Did you watch the full clip? Sam himself admits that the overwhelming majority (~80%) of Muslims are not a problem.
There are definitely progressive Muslims who, like progressive Christians and Jews, take the parts of their religion they like/value and leave behind the dated/misogynistic parts
Sam is on the record saying that people pushing for these changes need to be recognised as modern day heroes. They need support to change the religion from within.
The point is this: Sam is actually making a great point but Ben is too stupid / emotional to understand they’re already on the same page.
Sam Harris also believes heavily in IQ and race science, so everything he says should be taken with a shot of penicillin
No he doesn’t. He has had Charles Murray on his podcast twice, I’ve listened to both episodes.
Both of them accepted there are more differences within racial groups than between them. Furthermore, both accepted that environmental factors and systemic racism are contributing factors to mental growth.
Sam actually pushed back on Murray and pressed him on the point of “why care about this at all?” To which Murray floundered and made himself out to be the racist dickhead he is.
Sam was right to challenge him on this point as I’m sure you’ll agree.
For what it’s worth, I’m not riding Sam’s dick. I disagree with him on many things, but I really see this specific issue as really dumb and misunderstood because everyone froths at the mouth the second someone says “race” and “IQ” in the same sentence.
Side note: Murray had such an easy out. He simply could’ve said “to distinguish between the heritability of IQ and environmental factors for the sake of equitable outcomes.”
Instead, he pointed to affirmative action being embarrassing for black students when they can’t keep up with their peers at prestigious universities…
Fuck yeah Ben affleck calls them out on their own show. Bill Maher is the most disgusting neoliberal rat on this planet and he has been pushing his smug homophobia for almost 4 fucking decades now. Maher is as bad as Trump.
Was Maher in the Epstein files too?
nope, just a regular asshole
That’s an insult to rats. Rats are cool.
Bill Maher is a libertarian.
That’s just a cowardly Republican.
He’s a capitalist.
“I’ve lost the argument let’s move on.” classic Maher.
“I’ve tried all my best tactics… ridicule, jabbering nonsensically, talking over the guest… It’s time to move on.”
it would have been actually nice if he conceeded the point, he was just trying to weasel out of it
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Jean-Paul Sartre
well, I respect Affleck more today… who would have thought?
I remember a time when people used to listen to each other speak instead of talk over each other to poison the sound bite. I miss that. Two opposing parties having an actual conversation.
Based Ben, hell yea
Used to find Sam Harris interesting years ago. Now he is a menace.
What’s going on with Harris nowadays? His letter to a Christian nation was great, I loved the talks he had years ago with Rogan about AI (he was no fan of G-AI or whatever it’s called now (AGI?)). I haven’t kept up with him in years. I always knew he was a bit over the top with his views on Islam back then, I’m curious where he stands now on stuff
Hardcore zionist. He has radicalized some of my family into the worst, genocidal people
Hot take:
Maher is a smarmy asshole, and Harris sniffs his own farts but they’re not completely wrong here; being against Islamists isn’t necessarily racist, just like being against Zionists/Isreal isn’t antisemitic.
They’re agreeing with each other that Islam is “full of bad ideas”. It’s true that being against radicals doesn’t make you against the whole religion, but they are clearly saying that they are against the whole religion, even if they try to walk it back
Both Maher and (more recently) Harris have been failing to sufficiently admit the horrors being committed by the West, trying to defend it and other vile things; but they weren’t wrong in what they said in the video: they both think religions are very bad ideas - that religions are fairytales based on lies and the rejection of reality. Pointing out that compared to other popular religions, the percentage of believers in Islam-majority countries who agree with e.g. the death-cult behavior of killing of apostates is vastly higher than in other countries/religions.
Got any sources for other religions? That link isn’t comparative so we can’t draw conclusions “compared to other popular religions” from it
Not that I know of.
It doesn’t seem like a sensible question to ask Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Shintoists, or Taoists.
For Christians, hundreds of years ago: yes.
Oh, it doesn’t seem sensible? Let’s not muddle up the statistics with data or anything.
Can you think of a non-Muslim country where 99% of the people want to have the country’s laws be religious instead of secular, and 79% of those want the death penalty for anyone not wanting to be a member of that religion anymore?
Even 50%?
I could then look up if anyone have thought of even asking that question in such countries.
You know what is about to go down when somebody pulls out the statistics.
A discussion based on facts, if the statistics come from honest sources?
Yes just like when people pull our black crime statistics in a discussion about the police problem. A very “factual” discussion.
Is Pew, and https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/ specifically, dishonest?
It is specifically completely irrelevant to the discussion. Are you going to start posting Talmud links next?
I agree, which is why it’s a hot take. They kind of have a point, but they fumble it.
Sam Harris isn’t just against “Islamists” if I recall correctly.
Ok, in a vacuum that is a salient point.
In the reality that is those two, they’re often Zionist/apologists and similarly anti-Islam
They are not talking about “Islamists”. They are talking about all Muslims.
