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→Killing people for thought crimes and Harris' book The End of Faith: Building a Civilization of Ignorance
What a load of utter codswollop. Sam Harris clearly and openly and unmistakably wrote that it MAY be ethical to kill people for believing dangerous beliefs. Not for doing anything, not for harming anyone, but for simply BELIEVING CERTAIN BELIEFS. His repeated "clarifications" and obfuscations don't change that established fact and he has never recanted his statement. Nor, I note, has he ever come right out and declared specifically WHAT beliefs are so dangerous that it is ethical to kill people for nothing more than holding them.<ref>[http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/10/sam-harris-is-still-genocidal-maniac.html Sam Harris: genocidal maniac or suicidal logician?] by [[Vox Day]], October 13, 2014</ref>}}
What a load of utter codswollop. Sam Harris clearly and openly and unmistakably wrote that it MAY be ethical to kill people for believing dangerous beliefs. Not for doing anything, not for harming anyone, but for simply BELIEVING CERTAIN BELIEFS. His repeated "clarifications" and obfuscations don't change that established fact and he has never recanted his statement. Nor, I note, has he ever come right out and declared specifically WHAT beliefs are so dangerous that it is ethical to kill people for nothing more than holding them.<ref>[http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/10/sam-harris-is-still-genocidal-maniac.html Sam Harris: genocidal maniac or suicidal logician?] by [[Vox Day]], October 13, 2014</ref>}}
== Building a Civilization of Ignorance ==
{| class="infobox bordered" style="font-size:95%; width:25em;"
! style="font-size:120%; background:lightgreen; text-align:center; padding:5px 0;" | The core of science: intellectual honesty
|-
| style="padding:15px;" |''"The core of [[science]] is not controlled [[experiment]] or [[mathematical]] modeling; it is intellectual honesty. It is time we acknowledged a basic feature of human discourse: when considering the [[truth]] of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the [[evidence]] and [[logic]]al arguments, or one isn't."''
<div style="padding-left:40px;">— Sam Harris<ref name="Harris2006"/>
</div>
|}
In his ''Letter to a Christian Nation'', Harris complains about people who ''"can obtain a [[PhD|Ph.D.]] in any branch of science for no other purpose than to make cynical use of scientific language in an effort to rationalize the glaring inadequacies of the [[Bible]]"'' and then he continues: ''"While such people are technically "scientists," they are not behaving like scientists. They simply are not engaged in an honest inquiry into the nature of the universe."''<ref name="Harris2006">{{cite book |title=Letter to a Christian Nation |author=Sam Harris |publisher=http://www.samharris.org
|year=2006 |place=New York |pages=23+ |url=https://luptaanticapitalista.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/sam-harris-letter-to-a-christian-nation.pdf}}</ref> However, while being harshly judgmental of others without care of factual accuracy, he fails to evaluate this criterion of an honest inquiry against his own views. If he would be an ''"intellectually honest person"'' as he requires of others, he would had to admit not only that he does not know ''"why the universe exists,"'' but also that his resistance to patterns of "optimal design" in "the natural world" is, at best, uninformed. Despite his claim: ''"When we look at the natural world, we see extraordinary complexity, but we do not see optimal design,"'' scientific research brings exactly opposite [[Scientific observation|observations]] as has been shown by G. Cullmann and J. M. Laboygues already in 1985: ''"The genetic code is an instantaneous code absolutely optimal"'' (In French: ''"Le code génétique, code instantané absolument optimal"'').<ref name="CULLMANN1985">{{Cite journal
|title = Le code génétique, code instantané absolument optimal
|author = CULLMANN G.; LABOUYGUES J. M.
|journal=Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences. Série 3, Sciences de la vie
|publisher = Elsevier
|place = Paris, FRANCE
|year = 1985
|issue=301
|volume=5
|pages = 157 – 160
|accessdate = 3.5.2013
|issn= 0764-4469
|url= http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=9265098
|quote = The genetic code is an instantaneous code absolutely optimal
|language = French
}}</ref><ref name="DeniableDarwin">{{cite book
|author=David Berlinski
|title=The Deniable Darwin
|publisher=Discovery Institute Press (reprinted from ''Commentary'' February 1998 by permission)
|location=Seattle, USA
|year=2009
|pages=124
|chapter=Denying Darwin: David Berlinski & Critics
|isbn=978-0-9790141-2-3
|url=http://www.davidberlinski.org/deniable-darwin/about.php
|quote=...the genetic code is „optimal“, a fact demonstrated by Cullmann and Labouygues („Le Code genetique, instantane et absolument optimal,“ Compte Rendue 301, 1985).}}</ref>
This is a fact that no longer admits of intelligent dispute. Thus, Harris himself is contributing to the very same thing he is afraid of: ''"These data are unequivocal: we are building a civilization of ignorance,"'' let alone to mention that his [[behavior]] exhibits the traits of [[Psychological_manipulation#Techniques_of_manipulation|Selective Inattention]], typical for [[Disturbed character|character disturbance]] advisably subject of treatment by [[psychologist]]s. If an honest inquiry is the declared thing to be after, then, after finding Harris possibly having attention deficiences, one has to be also inevitably afraid that he may seriously suffer from [[Evolutionary schizophrenia]]. The fact that nearly half of the [[American]] population apparently believes the proposition "we do not see optimal design when we look at the natural world", purely on the basis of pseudo-religious [[Evolution of the gaps|evolutionary dogma]], should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.
== Social science research on Sam Harris and his fellow new atheists ==
== Social science research on Sam Harris and his fellow new atheists ==