Sam Harris on Alexander’s ‘I Visited Heaven’ Claim
Again with the people who have actual expertise weighing in on credulous fairy tales: This must be heaven.
23 Responses to “Sam Harris on Alexander’s ‘I Visited Heaven’ Claim”
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October 22nd, 2012 at 8:28 am
A scientist that believes in atheism doesn’t agree with a scientist that believes in God. Things that make you go hmm.
October 22nd, 2012 at 2:39 pm
Debate night.
Any predictions? My prediction: neither candidate will win, and loser will be Iran.
Finally! Rmoney’s economic plan details! http://www.romneytaxplan.com/
October 22nd, 2012 at 3:23 pm
It depends on if Bob is able to help Obama as much as Candy did. If the debate does revolve around foreign policy Romney should have the edge on substance, but Obama is a smooth talker, he just needs a little help deflecting the tough questions.
October 22nd, 2012 at 5:10 pm
Candy helped Obama? Hardly, from what I could see of the time limits she Romney speak way over the allowed time limits and should have cut him off way sooner. MAybe that was my bias, but it seemed Obama wasn’t over time limits as much and didn’t keep begging for more time when he’d already used it up.
And, she didn’t chastise Romney for repeatedly breaking the rules
http://www.scribd.com/doc/110073567/The-2012-Debates-Memorandum-of-Understanding-Between-the-Obama-and-Romney-Campaigns
Plus, not once did she call Romney an idiot.
October 22nd, 2012 at 6:32 pm
Yeah, your bias is showing, what is your about? I don’t see how it is pertinent
October 23rd, 2012 at 8:18 am
Really? Breaking rules and mistaking (or Lyin’) about facts, Rmoney is an unfit candidate.
October 23rd, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Candy helped Obama? Really? How?
By pointing out a fact rather than letting a lie go like that?
Obama called it a ‘terrorist act’ the next day. That is a fact.
Romney shot his fool mouth off the night before.
I enjoyed watching Obama sweep the floor with that fool last night.
CBS had a snap poll that Obama won 53% to 23%
a 30% win – ouch!
Romney/Ryan = Wrong/Reckless
And the whole ‘he’s gutting our Navy!’ good grief, the lowest number of ships since 1916 came during the Bush misadministration. And one aircraft carrier could easily wipe out our entire fleet from WWI. This aint a game of Battleship.
Silly facts! So lib.
October 24th, 2012 at 9:47 am
Succinct:
Zing.
October 24th, 2012 at 10:11 am
Why is it her job to help Obama? if one candidate says the moon is made of green cheese is it the moderator’s job to correct the candidate? Or is it the job of the other candidate to correct the first?
October 24th, 2012 at 10:18 am
Actually Crowley (like that name, the county in county in Colorado of that name was made famous by by birth there) corrected herself the next day.
Obama used the word terrorism in a broad sense the next day but didn’t attribute this particular attack to Islamic terrorism until much later, the timeline is pretty clear on that account.
Hillary has taken one for the team, Obama and his people screwed up before, during and after this attack, he should man up to that, they have done a pretty darn good job of killing our enemies, one of the few things they have done well, they screwed up, it happens, you can’t always be right.
October 24th, 2012 at 11:29 am
There was no correction.
Crowley simply repeated what she stated during the debate: that Romney was WRONG in claiming Obama did not use those words in his Rose Garden speech but was correct on his other point.
She said the same thing during the debate in order to get Rmoney to stfu so they could continue as he’d been bleating on and on about it already. LOL
October 24th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
This is why ‘debating’ with wwnjs is so frustrating. Facts is facts. There were something like twenty demonstrations all over the middle east protesting that stupid wwnj video.
On the day after the attack Obama said “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for” unless of course you are a fact-free wrong wing nut job
roll the tape
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CItCCjT2dS4
and roll the tape from the rose garden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RDdrpXGrA2M#t=258s
So, in an address that happened less than a day after the attack, when the picture is still murky, the blood still wet, the smoke still rising, the kin still grieving, this address talks about Benghazi over and over, as well as the broader ME turmoil, our President said those exact words. Facts is facts. Just give it up. wwnjs are wrong, what else is new? water is wet, the sky is blue, 2+2=4.
Watch the whole Rose Garden address wwnj, you might learn something about being an American rather than a partisan tool.
October 24th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
Ok, I watched the Rose Garden show again, by the way nifty how you went right to the one word “terror” or “terrorism” skipping the first four and a half minutes of not mentioning any of the Islamic terror groups that carried this out. The point is, the State Department and all the kings men had been going out of their way to say this wasn’t caused by those Islamic groups and this one word in a very nice and perfunctory speech did nothing to change that, then the kings men continued to deny the obvious for weeks. Why? Because they screwed up and people died, it happens, man up to it.
But Knarly, that isn’t her job, she isn’t supposed to side with either man, in this case you could say she sided with both, but in doing so she stopped Romney’s momentum. Did she do it intentionally? Who knows?
Honestly, you two are the only two on the planet that thought Crowley wasn’t in the tank for her guy, even lefty’s thought she was.
October 24th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
lefty / __J__ (isn’t that the internet symbol for ‘asscrack’?) is a hard right wingnut
lefty claims to be a gay black man who lurves him some far right gibberish, same gibberish as mssr. asscrack… hmmmm
You and Rmoney keep saying Obama never said it, so I advanced the YouTube playhead to the exact moment where the phrase is used. Facts is facts. Then I enjoined you to watch the entire thing. Who are you going to believe? Your lyin eyes or some right wing gibberish. I think we know that answer…
“No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for”
Perfunctory? lol
You need to look up the definition of the word “responsibility”
You are just like Rmoney: say anything. No principles, no backbone, a frictionless weathervane of a man who looted companies and sent jobs overseas. Vulture capitalism. Read the Rolling Stone article on Bain. He’ll do the same to the entire country. Going back to the bush policies is insanity (but about 35% of the country [cough, I’m looking at you former states of the Confederacy] is just plain insane)
When Obama lost the first debate, everyone admitted it. When Obama mopped the floor with Rmoney (twice), wwnjs claim their guy won. Because socialism. Oh and Biden’s smile might have been a bit too feral, but he squeegied every window in the debate hall with that lying rag of a human being Paul Ryan.
October 24th, 2012 at 7:30 pm
Stopped Rmoney’s momentum? LOLz, Mittens was making an ass of himself doubling down on his bet that Obama didn’t say ‘act of terror” in his Rose Garden speech. I can’t stop laughing at how stupid you are.
October 24th, 2012 at 8:40 pm
Quite civil of you
October 25th, 2012 at 9:13 am
Quite right, please let me amend that: “how stupid you are behaving.”
October 25th, 2012 at 11:02 am
touché
October 30th, 2012 at 8:18 am
@enkidu, still waiting for your nuanced and well-thought-out-reply to my clear explanation of my actual positions, way back here — http://www.lies.com/wp/2012/10/02/friedersdorf-why-i-wont-vote-for-obama/#comment-340334 Considering your approach to truth in this thread here today, is it fair to assume I’ll never be seeing any such thing?
You quite clearly don’t understand the difference between right and left, plus more crucially, that there are third and fourth possibilities. To you, the world is simple — Obama is a liberal, aka on the left, and Romney is on the right, aka a conservative, but certainly not *hard* right by any means. Anybody who disagrees with Obama simply *must* be on the right, therefore, since there is no other option. Anybody who disagrees with Obama, but also disagrees that Romney is a conservative, obviously must be hard right, which means wing-nut, nutjob, asscrack. You are painting yourself into your own corner of frustration. Pay attention, and learn something new. http://www.nolanchart.com/article7443-what-do-the-nolan-chart-categories-mean.html You claim to be interested in facts, calling them “the liberal way” quite often. Let’s see whether you practice what you preach.
By the way, the assessment of Obama in that article is wrong. Bill Clinton is a centrist-leaning liberal, much like Mitt is a centrist-leaning conservative (with a bit of statist thrown in for spice). Obama is a statist-leaning liberal. I’m against both camps, but I’m not hard-right, which is where somebody that wanted strong social conservatism along with strong fiscal conservatism would live… Pat Buchanan maybe? I’ve not studied him well enough to say. I’m in the Ron Paul and Gary Johnson quadrant, the libertarian-leaning folks. Anti-totalitarianism. Your stance now is not represented on the chart… because you see the world one-dimensionally, team blue versus team red. That’s how the media portrays it to you, so you have a self-reinforcing echo chamber. But this is the internet. Learn.
While we’re on the subject of hypocrisy, most liberals claim to be advocated of tolerance, interested in multi-culturalism… and then drop the ball and hate hate hate those damn white male teabagger mofos! Your bias is showing . . . http://www.theblaze.com/stories/even-jon-stewart-finds-tolerance-at-the-dnc-doesnt-extend-to-conservatives-nazis-and-evil/ Presuming you still think I’m a gay black religious guy, is it fair to say you also think I’m a racist hillbilly simultaneously? If the gay black religious guy “lefty” and the straight white non-religious Gary Johnson are on the same team, which is NOT team red romney, and also NOT team blue obama, then wouldn’t you agree your one-dimensional worldview is wrong?
As for the subject of the article… well, the comments in this thread have been all about the prez debates, and nothing about heavenly visions. So I guess I’ll follow the trend.
As for the subject of most of the comments, absolutely Mitt was wrong when he tried to hammer on whether obama literally said Act Of Terror in his speech. But that don’t make Obama the truth-teller, sorry! All of Obama’s minions, and if memory serves, from time to time Obama himself, were doing their best to portray that naughty youtube video as the sole-n-only cause of violence. Which is to say, a violent mob, angry about some perceived religious insult, went to far, and killed the ambassador. Nobody actually SAID that, it was just very strongly implied, ya see? Let the viewer make up their own mind. The wording in Obama’s speech is masterful — give the impression that it was a not-at-all-related-to-me-killing-Qaddafi violent mob, and that the killing of our ambassador was ditto. Never admit a mistake! Which seems to be your position, as well. Do you, or do you not, admit that the administration-minions did their level best to lay the blame for Benghazi on youtube, rather than on Obama’s militaristic adventure there, overthrowing that darn old colonial dictator?
“Going back to the bush policies is insanity” Well, on that we agree! But you seem to be implying that *Obama* is not also in favor of bailouts (obama voted for the bush bank bailouts when he was senator), the federal dept of education (no child left behind), federally-run healthcare (medicare part dubya), extrajudicial treatment of suspected bad guys (not waterboarding… but he kept gitmo aka indefinite detention of suspected enemy combatants plus added indefinite detention of our own citizens if they are merely allegedly linked to supporting terrorism via some bureaucrat’s assessment & not to mention drone strikes which kill more civilians than bad guys… also sometimes including our own citizens), and pre-emptive overseas military strikes (Libya blowback & Afghanistan surge… cf Iraq blowback & Iraq surge under Bush2nd). Are you trying to say that Romney is just like Bush, and Obama is the opposite? Better read that Nolan chart link through once more….
p.s. From 1872 until about 1972 or so, a century or thereabouts, all the former confederate states would have voted for Obama, since “even a yaller dawg with a D after their name” would be better than the finest candidate imaginable with an R. Once again, your bias is showing… trying to insinuate that repubs cannot stand Obama because he is black. Who cares if he’s green with orange spots? Obama and Romney and Bush2nd all share similar if not identical policies on continuing trillion-dollar deficits, increasingly centralized federal healthcare (aka socialized medicine), and overseas military adventures we cannot afford. That’s why tea party folks cannot stand Obama, and why most cannot stand Mitt either.
October 30th, 2012 at 8:40 am
@knarly … “Mittens was making an ass of himself doubling down on his bet that Obama didn’t say ‘act of terror” in his Rose Garden speech.” Well, sure, but at least Mitt didn’t put ten grand at risk this time around.
(Rick Perry would have won that bet, by my reading of Romney’s book, even though the media claims otherwise. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/11/rick-perry/rick-perry-says-mitt-romneys-book-deleted-line-mas/ “people who previously had no health insurance became insured … everyone is insured … We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country …” In the paperback, that was changed by outright deleting the third portion. Sure sounds like an individual mandate to me, even if instead of a federal individual mandate like obamacare, you tweak it slightly, so that there is a federal mandate that every state must implement a state-level individual mandate. The end result is the same; Romney *did* support an individual mandate, and I would argue, still does — remember when he accidentally let slip that he would retain ‘some parts’ of obamacare, such as forcing insurers to accept people with pre-existing conditions?)
That said, I for one would not bet *any* money that Mitt won’t be able to weasel his way out of *any* statement he’s ever made. Including the statement about act-of-terror, which as shcb is trying to explain, Mitt has weaseled around a bit, pointing out that while Obama said the phrase, it wasn’t clear grammatically exactly what the phrase was referring to, and at the same chronological time period, many Obama minions were *not* saying act of terror, but rather, violent riot caused solely-n-only by naught youtube video. Mitt lies. Obama lies. ___j___ cries. That’s this whole election cycle, in a nutshell.
October 30th, 2012 at 2:42 pm
I don’t recall promising a detailed response to your every point. I recall saying I would like to have a post about transparency and reinvention of government entirely. I keep using the line ‘the internet still hasn’t come to government’ or vice versa or something.
I think the lie is that government is a no good wreck under them evil Demo-rats and we’re going to drown it in a bathtub. Elect me! I’ll destroy the government!
Actually I think government has a legitimate role to play in life in advanced democracies. I encourage you libertarians to emigrate to the government-free paradise that is Somalia. Ya’ll love it there!
We are the guv, if you don’t like it, vote accordingly.
October 31st, 2012 at 2:50 pm
Somalia isn’t libertarian, it’s a cross between despotism and anarchism. Libertarians are not that, as you ought to well know by now from the 340334 thread linked above. We’re in favor of a strong central government that does a very few jobs, very well, and is otherwise chained down. Madison was a libertarian, in this sense of the word — he was against the federal government building *roads* that weren’t absolutely necessary to the USPS… and prolly would have been against building post-roads with taxpayer dollars, come to think of it. That’s libertarianism, in a nutshell — the government is there to preserve and protect negative-natural-individual rights of life/liberty/property against all enemies foreign (armies) and domestic (criminals). That’s all.
As for what we have now, I don’t like it, and I do vote accordingly. The number of libertarian-leaning votes has been doubling every cycle for the past several. If enough people come around to the idea that the feds aren’t meant to be a stern nanny-governess, regulating our every thought (repub) and our every action (dems), we might get back to the Madisonian sort of liberty-n-justice-for-all government that libertarians are seeking.
“I think government has a legitimate role to play in life in advanced democracies.”
Do tell. This is the key question of our time. What do you want — beyond cops, judges, soldiers, spies, and tax-collectors (the libertarian subset). The founders added patent-bureacrats, postal-bureaucrats, and a few others. Socialism would be federally-employed doctors, teachers, and bus-drivers. Communism would be *all* jobs as government-jobs.
October 31st, 2012 at 2:54 pm
“Elect me! I’ll destroy the government!”
Ummmm… citation needed. Obama and Romney are both planning on continuing to run trillion dollar deficits, piling more and more debt on the shoulders of future generations. Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, the libertarian-leaning candidates this year, would cut the federal spending by a trillion dollars or so, within their very first presidential term, cross their hearts and hope to die.
If you call balancing the federal budget “destroying the government” then okay… I guess… but I call what we *are* doing, spending borrowed money that the current kindergartners and their future grandkids will have to pay back, immoral theft of the highest order.