rationalskepticism.org

quas wrote:

Spinozasgalt wrote:I didn't say it's not applicable to any moderates. This is Harris's thesis after all and thus it's his job to apply it to, or show it's applicable to, particular cases. He's failed to do that in the piece, so his analysis floats free of particular examples.

You want Harris to bring out names like Ken Ham or Ray Comfort, as if there's something unique about their literal scripturalism compared to the millions of creationist fundies out there? In the event that you get over this farcical objection, you will be stuck arguing why the moderate's cherrypicking interpretation can be equally as valid as the fundamentalist's literal scripturalism. I don't want to get into that debate, because even if you win the debate, you wouldn't be able to overcome the underlying problem that religion, at its most basic level, is incompatible with tolerance. Which is why even the moderate Mehdi Hasan still retains his discriminatory attitude towards the kafir.

Well, no, I'd suggest that Harris better his case by using particular moderate religious believers as his examples, because he's writing about them in the piece without including any of them. Of course it would've been a difficult case to make without cherrypicking from the believers that appear to confirm your view and leaving out those who don't, because of the broad variability of beliefs among religious moderates. But I think that's Harris's problem for making such bold and sweeping claims. And no, I don't think such a basic form of skepticism about these claims constitutes a "farcical objection".

Your claims in the linked post about the "underlying problem" of "religion, at its most basic level" are in the same style: you've just stated that it's "religion, at its most basic level" without doing the hard work of showing that that's the case. I don't quite know what argumentative pressure you think that exerts on the skeptic when I've just explained how that whole style just fails to address the skeptic.

And I know next to nothing about Mehdi Hasan, but I searched Twitter and the first post I get from him on the topic of "kafir" is: https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/ ... 0625967104

I don't know what any of this tells us.