Sam Harris on killing people for thought crimes

I recently came across an item where the author claimed that Sam Harris had advocated that some beliefs are so pernicious that they merited the person holding them being killed. The critic was using this quote supposedly made by Harris that “Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.” Although Harris has advocated ideas that are terrible (such as bombing campaigns against Islamic countries), racial profiling, and concocting elaborate scenarios to justify the use of torture, I thought that advocating killing people for thought crimes was a bit much and that he must have been taken out of context.
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Heat is bad for the soul

If there is one thing that religions absolutely must believe in, it is the existence of the soul, although not all religions give it the same name. Without the belief that there is some entity that is part of us and yet somehow independent of the body and can interact freely with an external deity, much of religious doctrine becomes even more vacuous than it currently is. [Read more…]

Suicidal mice

Evolution by natural selection says that those characteristics that enable organisms to survive and reproduce more than others will tend to end up dominating the population. In that model, organisms seek to propagate their genes as much as possible. Suicide as a biological instinct is clearly not advantageous and should be selected against and disappear over time. So what are we to make of some mice that seem to commit suicide by actually running towards cats and being killed and eaten by them? [Read more…]

We use almost all our brains

One sometimes hears that humans use only about 10% of our brains. Some have suggested that this means that if only we could learn how to harness our brains fully, we could be geniuses. Others have used it to argue, somewhat desperately, that this limited utilization is the reason for god’s ineffability, because in the unused portions lies the ability to understand how god works and what his plan for us is. [Read more…]

Religious reactions to the shootings

When violence strikes innocent people close to home, you can expect religious leaders to immediately scramble to explain how their god can allow such things to happen. Some, like Bryan Fischer and Mike Huckabee, have suggested that god is punishing people for excluding religion from schools. Others are more aware that such a message it not particularly good public relations for their god and try to square the events with a god who is good and not easily irked into fits of violence. [Read more…]