I heard about this debate between Bill Maher, Sam Harris and Ben Affleck and thought Id watch it for myself. Let me state where I come from: I have appreciated Bill Mahers work for over 20 years and agree with a lot of what he says. One thing I dont share with him is a belief in atheism and sometimes I find his critique of religion to be shallow, though a part of me does appreciate aspects of it because much of our modern organized religions are doing our culture harm, IMHO. So I went into this hearing about how much of a racist he was toward Islam and assumed I would disagree with him. As for Harris, he is probably my favorite of the so-called New Atheists and I am actually reading his current book right now, which I would recommend. After watching this, I was rather unimpressed by Ben Afflecks listening skills. I respect his passion, but he came across as rude and aggressive and unwilling to hear anything Harris or Maher was saying. It frustrated me because I agreed with some of the points he was making, but the way he made them made it impossible for me to get behind him. In the end, I think both sides in this discussion had good points and the solution, as is often the case, is likely in the middle of what they are saying. We need to stand up for liberal values such as tolerance and freedom of speech and condemn people and institutions that dont do so (Mahers main point). But we also need to be careful not to draw with too broad of a brush stroke and say all Muslims believe such and such, or Islam is a religion of hatred and intolerance (Afflecks point). We often hear about the Muslim world, which in the Western mind is synonymous with the Middle East, but the worlds largest Muslim country is Indonesia (in terms of population). It is a fine balance we must strike here as if we go to far in one direction, we end up turning Muslims into the Other, an enemy that threatens to bring down Western civilization, but if we go too far toward tolerance, we ignore some of the awful things being done in the name of Islam. Personally, I think we ought to condemn the actions of each individual who uses religion for nefarious means and do our best to convince more liberal Muslims to speak out as well. So long as we enter into these sorts of discussions as Affleck did, I dont see us getting anywhere.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:49:27 +0000
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