This is Sam Harris' talk from the AAI 07 conference in Washington, DC.
My synopsis: Simply use words like "reason" and "evidence". If we talk about being an "atheist", we put ourselves in the position of letting theists set the agenda. We waste a lot of time arguing over and over the same points that theists pose as "proofs"and that will never go away, and that makes us limit our focus on irrationality only as it pertains to religion, rather than all other aspects of politics and society. Our time is better spent making a difference in the world, and pressing for reason and evidence everywhere. And we can best do this, not by accepting a label that confuses people and makes them think of us as a fringe group of cranky people who meet in hotel conference rooms, but by making them deal with us as countless individuals who demand reason and evidence. And we need to be careful not to too easily dismiss the potential benefits of various forms of contemplative (non-supernatural) spirituality. "Atheism" is often thought of as dismissing this out-of-hand.
http://youtu.be/AMa-0Fjn2sU
No comments:
Post a Comment