What a shame! Sam Harris announces that he will lie to support his political choice.
Its all about the method.
I donât see the connection here. Trump repeats an old cliche about bad publicity being better than none. So? [Everyone should click on that link and read the article. Itâs not long.]
It would have been more to the point to find a quote from Trump where he himself justifies lying, if there is one, or at least pointing out that Trump and the truth donât have a very close relationship with each other. But even then, Sam Harris loses the moral high ground with respect to telling the truth to the American people.
Sam Harris said that the mainstream mediaâs lying about Joe Bidenâs sonâs laptop was justified, in order ot prevent Trumpâs election.
So, from now on, when Sam Harris â whom I admire, although I think what he does is a waste of time, since religion is dying off naturally â says anything, I will have to stop and think: is he lying to me, since he believes it would be justified to do so to convince me to support his political choices.
And his religious opponents are going to use this against him:. Theyâll argue like this: âHe admits he supports lying to achieve important ends, like electing Joe Biden. Well, he considers discrediting Christianity an important end as well. So why should we believe anything he says?â
Theyâll go further. Sam Harris is an important figure among the âNew Atheistsâ. So they will hold him up as an example of how atheists â not having an invisible man in the sky watchng them â openly admit they lie to acheive their ends.
No matter that many religious fanatics lie blatantly ⌠now people will conclude atheists are as bad as their opponents.
A bad move by Sam Harris. I wonder if he thought out what he was saying before saying it?
Sam Harris is a public figure with books and podcast shows, at least in intellectual circles, in my observation. He will be popping up a little more on the publicity attention radar with this âcontroversialâ statement."
I admit that Donald Trump could have been lying in his above quote, though.
And FWIW, I fully acknowledge that controlling the narrative where damaging information is concerned during an election is a thing.
I read that article, and I do agree that Sam Harris is a hypocrite for denouncing lying and then embracing lying. So what, that is all there is to it, Sam Harris isnât completely honest. That does not prove anything else in that article as true.
@Doug1943 I read the entire article. I am a firm believer in free speech and you have every right to post it. But I also have the right to disagree and denounce that article.
A word of caution. You may be homophobic, but if you attack anyone in this forum you will disappear faster than a snowflake in the sun.
Are you aware that Trumpâs mentor and close friend was Ray Cohn, who had boyfriends and died of AIDS-related complications?
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Yea, @Doug1943 the picture of who you are is getting much clearer. Iâm not buying any of the crap your selling here.
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Homophobic? Do you mean âafraid of homosexualsâ, or âdislikes homosexuals because theyâre homosexualâ? Please cite the evidence for this.
One of the many lies people on the Left repeat about Trump is that he is homophobic, also that he is anti-Semitic. Saying nonsense like this is worse than a crime, itâs a blunder. There is enough to criticize about the man without making things up.
I have to laugh when I see snowflakes screaming âhomophobiaâ. I spend a certain amount of time (too much!) on various rightwing forums, and one of the things I do there is to try to knock some sense into certain thick heads: namely, (1) you can have your own personal reactions to someone elseâs sexual preferences, but what they get up to in the privacy of their own homes with consenting adults is none of your business and none of the governmentâs business. Conservatives are supposed to be against the state intervening in our private lives â so live up to it. (2) Above and beyond the âmoralâ issue, there is the practical issue of politics. There are plenty of conservative gay people â anyone on the Right who tries to drive them out of our movement is doing the work of the enemy, possibly consciously.
After those dunderheads in Texas wouldnât let the Log Cabin Republicans attend the Republican Convention, I wrote to the Texas branch of the former and expressed my disgust, as an old, white, conservative Texan. Idiots! [ http://logcabin.org/ ]
Most of the people I argue with about this on the Right, are not readers, but just in case there are some, I recommend the novels of Mary Renault about ancient Greece (The Praisesinger, Last of the Wine, The Mask of Apollo, Fire From Heaven, The Persian Boy): she deals brilliantly with the homoeroticism that was absolutely natural and common among the Greek upper classes, not making a big issue of it, just describing her charactersâ ordinary lives as they were lived then.
And we rightwingers are big on Western civilization, of which ancient Greece is, as the cliche has it, the cradle. Or, as I sometimes put it, âYou wouldnât say that [ie some bigotted slur] to Alexander the Great. At least not twice.â
Now ⌠the real issue is the sexualization of children. And here, I take my stand with these good people:
[ https://www.gaysagainstgroomers.com/ ]
And on the other hand, Iâm probably more âliberalâ than these folks: [ https://www.plagal.org/ ] (Abortion is a complex issue, mainly because there is no sharp dividing line beween an-sperm-embedded-in-an-egg, and a fully-developed baby ready to be born. So where you want to allow it to be killed is arbitrary. But thatâs another issue. (I will say that part of the progress of civilization is moving towards making the killing of other humans a âtabooâ, something we just donât do. Itâs one of the best arguments against capital punishment. Unfortunately, the necessity to wage war puts sharp limits on advancing this taboo.)
I thought the âcivil partnershipâ for all couples, gay and straight, was a good compromise, but thatâs no longer on the agenda.
There are more important issues to fight on. The most important thing is do something about the birth rate among the advanced peoples. (And anyone who thinks that it doesnât make any difference whether the average IQ of our descendants is 80 or 120 is a fool, although in reality, most of these people know perfectly well why itâs important but are too cowardly to say so. Hopefully, genetic engineering will take care of this.)
(I see I said âthe most important thing âŚâ etc. Actually, the most important thing is to prevent WWIII, which is becoming a real possibility. That would result in very rapid de-population, so I guess some people would be happy.)
As for the family, we may be seeing something wonderful: technical progress being able to reverse the destruction of the traditional family, as outlined here:
[ A manâs place is in the home - by John Jalsevac ]
Whoops, one more thing, before I turn in: I donât want to sound TOO moralistic re Sam Harris. I too would lie, cheat, steal, whatever to prevent a genuine Nazi takeover of a country. If I were counting the ballots in Hitlerâs August 1934 referendum, I would miscount them without a second thought. But anyone who conflates Trump and his followers with genuine Nazis is an ignoramus, who has no idea of what genuine fascism is.
Great! Donât read anything I write then! And I suspect that will mean you wonât read anything at all.
Donât worry, I will continue to read your ridiculous narcissistic whining. Keep crying like youâre the misunderstood victim here.
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So what is the difference between you and Harris? He advocates dishonesty when it suits his agenda, and do you.
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Uh, just poked my head in to see whatâs happening here. And for what itâs worth, hereâs my two cents on the matterâŚ
Personally, the ONLY times I think it is okay to lie is:
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When the truth will get me in trouble, andâŚ
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When telling a lie helps me get what I want.
Otherwise, I avoid lying whenever possible, because I believe telling lies is a totally dishonest thing to do.
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lol like how good Doug will make a post and then go back on it and say he never wrote it lol. Heâs like a pothead who gets caught with big bag of weed by a cop but tells the cop âthatâs not my bag of weedâ and denies the evidence of his own actions just like he doesnât want to own his words.
I lie on a regular basis. On the job. In professional practice.
There are absolutely times itâs ok to do so, IMHO.
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âLyingâ is such a harsh term. I prefer to think of it as Tactical Verbal Maneuvering. Although, depending on the scope of the situation, there is also Strategic Verbal Maneuvering.
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Yes. I used to lie to my managers at Wal-Mart over 12 years ago to avoid getting wrote up. It was mostly over dumb shit. I ended up quitting.
Itâs mostly the so called âlie to childrenâ technique elucidated by Cohen and Stewart.
Strategic Verbal Maneuvering occasionally makes an appearance when needed, too.
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Personally; there is only one good time to lie. Whenever you open your mouth. There are of course other times; however, having an open mouth makes it so much easier.
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I also agree. If it serves a higher purpose and one is aware they are doing so.
âManipulation of Facts for Self Preservationâ
For me this is the only circumstance when analysis beforehand or identified justification is superfluous.
I figured out when I was a kid that lying was complicated. Every lie led to a new reality, and frankly, I was having hard enough time trying to deal with the reality everybody else seemed to accept.
Now it is just a part of my normal behavior to lie to the extent that it creates an entirely new alternative universe, of which I am the supreme commanderâŚ
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