sam harris on islam - the last word with lawrence o'donnell

sam harris on islam - the last word with lawrence o'donnell

04:03 sam harris: islam is at a very different moment in its history and it's as though we're encountering the christians of the 14th century, armed with 21st century weapons. we have a real problem with islam and it's not an accident that we're not having this conversation about the amish or quakers or jains or even buddhists. ideas have consequences and the idea that you can get to paradise by dying in the defense of the faith, in fact dying in the defense of the faith is the best thing that can possibly happen to you--that is a mainstream notion in islam.

04:37 lawrence o'donnell: is there any lesson in how catholicism worked its way through its homicidal phase of a couple of centuries, for present day islamic extremists?
sam harris: yes, the problem is that we just dont have 500 years to work it out. we were burning heretics alive for 5 centuries in europe and it's understandable, based on a certain reading of the bible. we have incredibly destructive technology spreading all over the world and it's getting increasingly easy for one person to screw up life for millions. and so i think we have some decades at best, to get straight about this and to build a viable, global civilization that is compatible with human well-being and religious demagoguery of any kind is the worse piece of software to have running on your brain when it comes to actually engage that challenge.

"the largest group of suicide terrorists are the Tamil Tigers, a group of atheist Marxists." DEBUNKED

i saw an interesting claim in the comments of bill maher to Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison: The Qur'an Is A 'Hate Filled Holy Book by user ProIndividual

largest group of suicide terrorists..are the Tamil Tigers, a group of atheist Marxists.

according to time magazine "The Tigers ... include 5,000 to 10,000 guerillas".

how many muslims are there? about 1.5 billion. obviously not all of them would carry out a suicide bombing, but you can see the ridiculous difference in numbers. and just look at some of the suicide bombing statistics:

according to the wikipedia article LTTE: "between 1980 and 2000, the LTTE carried out 168 suicide attacks".

and the wikipedia Suicide attack article: "In 2004 in Iraq alone there were 400 suicide attacks".

it's quite common, irresponsible and incorrect to cite atheism as a key source and motivator of violence in non-religious political ideologies.

atheism+'no afterlife' is completely incompatible with suicide.

religion+'salvation/glory/rewards after death' is an important motivator for islamic suicide bombers. non-religious people also carry out suicide bombings, as in the case of the Tamil Tigers, but they are doing it because they are influenced, persuaded and coerced by the political ideology, NOT because of their critical analysis of the existence of god (i.e. atheism).

LTTE is a political ideology.
atheism is the disbelief in deity. period.