Sam Harris podcast, blog, etc.
September 30, 2015 at 2:20 am
(This post was last modified: September 30, 2015 at 2:21 am by Fake Messiah.)
To be honest it seems to me that I can't wrap my mind around Sam Harris. I mean sure I've read some of his books and listened lectures, but when he speaks to other people it kind of rubs me the wrong way.
For instance I was listening to his podcast where he talked to apostate of Westboro Baptist Church and also a granddaughter of it's founder, Megan Phelps-Roper. She starts the talk of what she calls the "true story" that moved her grandfather to organize picketing: she says in 1989 he was taking a bike ride with her brother who was then 4 years old in a park in Topeka, Kansas. The park was, according to her, known as a place where homosexuals had public sex and few of the gays tried to rape her 4 year old brother in that park in broad daylight in the middle of the city. Her grandfather then went to the police and their superiors to tell them to "clean the park" and they all refused because, apparently, gays like Catholic church have free pass on everything including pedophilia. She continues by saying that it was well known gay place because even the cops had anti-gay stings in the park - so then police did try to do something?
And Harris just let it slide not saying anything.
I mean I don't know about gay parks. I think in every town in the world there is a park where there are rumors that gays meet and fuck, but I always thought it was a myth, because why would they fuck in the park and not in a room? Or a like they do in public toilets. And certainly there are heterosexual parks (if you want), I mean I frequently see used condoms on parking lots and once I even saw heterosexual couple fucking in a car on a parking lot, but to claim that gays would fuck anything including 4 year old boys and on top of that be untouchable is just preposterous. Again what are they some multi billion dollar religion called Catholic church to get away with it?
And then there is recently Sam's Q&A with a philosopher Mark Riebling who just published a book about how Pope Pius XII was behind every assassination attempt on Hitler and this is all based on some secret recordings of papal meetings by Jesuits. I mean WTF?! I certainly don't know anything about those recordings but in the interview Riebling claims that British and US diplomats were begging Pius not to denounce the genocide of the Jews which is something completely false, there were delegation from Franklin Delano Roosevelt who dispatched his personal envoy, Myron Taylor, to meet Pius warning that its “policy of silence” likely meant “a renunciation of moral leadership and a consequent atrophy of the influence and authority of the Vatican.
Then they touch on Pius XII silence and Riebling who is apparently atheist tries to rationalize from Pope's viewpoint and says that it was because Pope didn't want to condemn Hitler because he would turn against them, forbid Christians to take sacraments and therefore condemn millions of Catholic souls to damnation! - and yeah millions of Chatolics being responsible for killing of millions of Jews and using them as soaps is less "evil", less of a sin then not getting holy water on their forehead and eating sacred cracker.
I mean am I missing something here? Or Sam Harris is involved deep in some real garbage here.
For instance I was listening to his podcast where he talked to apostate of Westboro Baptist Church and also a granddaughter of it's founder, Megan Phelps-Roper. She starts the talk of what she calls the "true story" that moved her grandfather to organize picketing: she says in 1989 he was taking a bike ride with her brother who was then 4 years old in a park in Topeka, Kansas. The park was, according to her, known as a place where homosexuals had public sex and few of the gays tried to rape her 4 year old brother in that park in broad daylight in the middle of the city. Her grandfather then went to the police and their superiors to tell them to "clean the park" and they all refused because, apparently, gays like Catholic church have free pass on everything including pedophilia. She continues by saying that it was well known gay place because even the cops had anti-gay stings in the park - so then police did try to do something?
And Harris just let it slide not saying anything.
I mean I don't know about gay parks. I think in every town in the world there is a park where there are rumors that gays meet and fuck, but I always thought it was a myth, because why would they fuck in the park and not in a room? Or a like they do in public toilets. And certainly there are heterosexual parks (if you want), I mean I frequently see used condoms on parking lots and once I even saw heterosexual couple fucking in a car on a parking lot, but to claim that gays would fuck anything including 4 year old boys and on top of that be untouchable is just preposterous. Again what are they some multi billion dollar religion called Catholic church to get away with it?
And then there is recently Sam's Q&A with a philosopher Mark Riebling who just published a book about how Pope Pius XII was behind every assassination attempt on Hitler and this is all based on some secret recordings of papal meetings by Jesuits. I mean WTF?! I certainly don't know anything about those recordings but in the interview Riebling claims that British and US diplomats were begging Pius not to denounce the genocide of the Jews which is something completely false, there were delegation from Franklin Delano Roosevelt who dispatched his personal envoy, Myron Taylor, to meet Pius warning that its “policy of silence” likely meant “a renunciation of moral leadership and a consequent atrophy of the influence and authority of the Vatican.
Then they touch on Pius XII silence and Riebling who is apparently atheist tries to rationalize from Pope's viewpoint and says that it was because Pope didn't want to condemn Hitler because he would turn against them, forbid Christians to take sacraments and therefore condemn millions of Catholic souls to damnation! - and yeah millions of Chatolics being responsible for killing of millions of Jews and using them as soaps is less "evil", less of a sin then not getting holy water on their forehead and eating sacred cracker.
I mean am I missing something here? Or Sam Harris is involved deep in some real garbage here.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
