On Jihad and AbortionHaving written on Prof. Richard Dawkins’ untenable correlation between Islamic terrorists and “Christian” abortion “doctor” murderers I was particularly interested in the following statement by Sam Harris:
“It seems to me we fail to enlist the friends we have on this subject, when we balance this. I mean, it’s a tactic, it’s a media tactic, and in some sense it’s almost an ontological commitment of atheism to say that all faith claims are in some sense equivalent. You know, the media says that Muslims have their extremists and we have our extremists. We have jihadists in the Middle-East and we have_”
Prof. Richard Dawkins interrupts for a moment to state, “There’s an imbalance there, yeah.”
Sam Harris continues:
“people who kill abortion doctors, and it’s just not a real equation. I mean, with the mayhem that’s going on under the aegis of Islam, it just cannot be compared to the fact that we have, you know people who, a decade, kill abortionists. And so I think my commitment _ I mean, this is one of the problems I have with the concept of atheism is that I just think it hobbles us in this discourse where we have to seem to kind of spread the light of criticism equally in all directions at all moment. And I think we could, on any specific question, have a majority of religious people agree with us_it seems to me once we focus on particulars, we have a real strength of numbers, and yet when we stand back from the ramparts of atheism and say it’s all bogus, we lose 90 percent of our neighbors.”
This is where the scribe of the transcript of the discussion had a difficult time hearing the word “abortion.” It was transcribed as “kill (inaudible) doctors” but was clearly “kill abortion doctors.” Moreover, there is not a “(?missing word),” Sam Harris paused between “people who” and “a decade.”
I know exactly what he is referring to because I have done the research. In my essay On Abortion, Tadpoles, Rape, Cows, Murder and Sheep (I also posted a succinct version entitled The Dawkins Correlation) I provided some statistics with regards to Prof. Richard Dawkins’ correlation, his was a mere assertion since he did not provide any statistics.I wonder what Prof. Richard Dawkins was thinking as he heard Sam Harris made the point that it is “not a real equation.” For that matter, I wonder if Sam Harris is, or at that point was, aware that Prof. Richard Dawkins had made that into an equation. The reason that it is wholly fallacious, and perhaps the reason for the pause mentioned above, is that “Christians” (if they may be referred to as such) have murdered 7 abortion “doctors” in three decades in both the USA and Canada combined.
atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris
Considering the point made above about the fallacy of saying “that all faith claims are in some sense equivalent” it is no less than fascinating that Christopher Hitchens states,
“they’re all equally rotten, false, dishonest, corrupt, humourless and dangerous.”
At least he does not discriminate.
atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris
In the end, the four rode into the sunset to get some shuteye and live to fight another day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.
Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.