Inspired by the bumping of the religion thread, and by reading a bit of Sam Harris' book 'The Moral Landscape' at my parents house over the weekend. Frankly, the thing reads like a sixteen year old who didn't do the reading for his ethics class, and instead of just bullshitting a paper, he bullshitted an entire book. Starts with some really crass, simplistic utilitarian premises, doesn't draw any real conclusion, which I can only assume he was using to set up his usual narrative, involving an opposition between our supposedly wonderful, pluralistic western democracies vs the supposed caveman middle east (conveniently ignoring the very important question of how complicit the west is in creating and exploiting conditions of poverty). Are these public figures (Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins et al), as well as their internet sycophants really so naive as to think that simply attacking religious texts amounts to an insightful and meaningful discussion of how religious belief functions in today's society? Tl; dr, rant over.

FLYING SPAGETY MONSTER LOL