There’s a form of very bad thinking that I see a lot in some very smart, thoughtful people.

The thinking goes like this:

“Great thinkers throughout history have had unpopular ideas that everyone disagreed with.

“I have an unpopular idea that everyone disagrees with.

“Therefore, I must be a great thinker.”

I do understand the impulse. If you’re a non-conformist and an independent thinker, you’ve probably gotten used to pushing against the current — to the point that doing so feels more comfortable and natural than going along with it. If you’ve spent your life resisting popular but stupid ideas, resisting popular ideas can become a reflex. And it can be very easy to start thinking of yourself as a smart person simply because you resist popular ideas.

The problem, of course, is this: It’s certainly the case that being popular, widely accepted, believed by the scientific/ academic/ medical/ etc. establishment… none of that makes an idea true.

But none of it makes an idea false, either.

You know what makes an idea false? Being false. You know what makes an idea true? Being true.

And it’s not like Galileo Fallacists are out there doing the research themselves…Galileo Fallacists are mostly just laypeople like the rest of us, and they’re relying on authority just as much as anybody else.

They’re simply relying on different authority — authority that supports their “you can’t trust the Man” view of the world. They’re rejecting The Man, only to accept the word of a different Man.

It is also similar to what she calls the Gadfly Corollary.

The Galileo Fallacy is often accompanied by the Gadfly Corollary. It goes something like this

“Great thinkers throughout history have make people upset, angry, irritated, or insulted.

“I make people upset, angry, irritated, or insulted.

“Therefore, I must be a great thinker.”

The fact that you’ve made people mad at you doesn’t automatically make you a misunderstood genius. Sometimes it just makes you an asshole.

Go read the whole thing. If Greta Christina has many more posts like this, I might’ve found a new blog to follow.

It’s good to be hated by the right people.”

I’m not quite sure what to make of the following quote, though if it turns out to be some sort of parody, I’ll be pleasantly surprised (though I’m not holding my breath).

This film – it is going to surprise you, one and all. It’s not what you think it is. No one has seen it yet.

His next quote from Marcus Aurelius makes me think that there is really going to be no substance to this movie at all.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Since people who believe in the special creation of humans less than 10,000 years ago are the majority in the country, you might be able to take that statement as an indictment of Intelligent Design. However, from the look of the trailer and the rest of the site, it appears more likely that the entire basis for the movie will be that evolution is the majority viewpoint (at least among scientists), there are people with a minority viewpoint who don’t have the respect of the majority, therefore the majority is wrong because they’re picking on the minority. If this is the case, don’t expect too much of an examination of the actual scientific evidence for Intelligent Design (because there isn’t any). It’ll just be whining about how science is being oppressive or ‘discriminating’ against good God-fearing Christians.

However, I was pleasantly surprised reading this post by the quality of the comments below. Not a single one is respecting the Intelligent Design position, and all are critical of Ben Stein (they all also happen to be fairly well written). Some examples:

Hmmm, er, um well… that’s not much of a response. Anyone can claim to be a rebel, to be oppressed by tyranny. Playing the victim is nothing new, even with a slick paint of coat on it.
No, we haven’t seen the film. But we can most certainly judge the rhetoric and claims already being made, and those of us quite familiar with this debate and the particular buzzwords you’ve chosen have a pretty good idea of what your portrayal will involve (and what it will conspicuously leave out).
Ben’s also words seem pretty clear: you guys want to portray methodological concerns about supernatural explanations as if they were actual bans on free inquiry, rather than boundaries of disciplines with limited scopes. You want to present this as an issue of free speech, but to do so, you are simply going to ignore and misrepresent cases like Sternberg’s, in which a lot more was going on than simply his ability to speak his mind.

Framing this as a “freedom” issue is clever, but false. No one is being oppressed or prevented from thinking anything, as Mr. Stein claims. As noted above, claiming victimhood for oneself is a standard move by these people, not to mention a time-honored Republican tradition. But when scientists criticize Intelligent Design as non-scientific, that isn’t oppression or censorship; it’s the scientific method in action. But I won’t hold my breath waiting for Mr. Stein to address the scientific facts. He’ll wrap himself in the flag and cry about being oppressed and some small subset of the public will believe him.

Watch, I know a quote, too:
“Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be
persecuted by an unkind establishment; you must also be right.”
-Robert Park

According to this post, the majority is usually wrong. The more your ideas are ridiculed, the better they must be. Everyone should try to be hated by everyone else.
Remember, it’s good to keep an open mind; but it shouldn’t be so open that your brain falls out.
There are systems in place to keep science on the right track. All untrue claims are eventually filtered out. Science has self-correction built in. Science is not closed-minded to new ideas. Intelligent design is a very very old idea that has not withstood the demands of evidence, so it has been thrown out. Yes, creationists are sometimes ridiculed, but only because science has dealt with it long ago and bringing it up again and again is like someone today trying to prove geocentrism. It should be either ignored or laughed at.
There is no such thing as “Big Science” controlling what is being studied. If a new idea works, it will pursued. It’s just that simple. If there is any merit whatsoever to a theory, it will not be simply thrown out.
At some point, the general public has to trust that science in general works, and is moving in the right direction. Suggesting that an idea is correct simply because it is criticized is absolutely ridiculous.

Check ‘em out for yourself.

It also appears that noted Science Blogger PZ Myers will also be featured in the movie. He was interviewed for a movie about the intersection of science and religion awhile back called Crossroads, however he wasn’t informed of it’s creationist point-of-view. The deception of creationists knows no ends. It’s also interesting how it appears that all of the creationists interviewed for the film were met with personally by Ben Stein, but PZ wasn’t. Hmm…

Update:
The original post has been removed, so I’ll post the entirety of it below:

Before I thank all of you movie-going readers and posters: the thoughtful, the mortal, the Supreme Beings With Bees-in-Their-Mouths apparently among us, those with intelligence as well as those with designs… it is only fitting that we invite the late, great Johnny Cash to weigh in on the merits of free speech, science and the genius that is freedom of inquiry, in the face of tyranny.

“It’s good to be hated by the right people.”
— Attributed to Johnny Cash

Indeed. We could, I’ll wager – agree that that is perhaps the only statement that all who have visited these pages today might collectively agree upon. But please – let’s have no hatreds here. Life is too long.

Thank-you all, for sharing with us. We are overwhelmed. We had no idea…

This film – it is going to surprise you, one and all. It’s not what you think it is. No one has seen it yet.
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

– Marcus Aurelius

And if we re-read Ben Stein’s words here again and again (as I have)…we may still not quite comprehend the full implications of his thoughts. But keep trying, if you misunderstood them…it’s worth it.

I do not know Mr. Stein…but I can tell you this: the man is comitted to freedom.

I’m glad you found this site, because I want to share with you my thoughts from time to time here about a subject that is very near and dear to me: freedom. EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is a controversial, soon-to-be-released documentary that chronicles my confrontation with the widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, and that is doing irreparable harm to some of the world’s top scientists, educators, and thinkers.
America is not America without freedom. In every turning point in our history, freedom has been the key goal we are seeking: the Mayflower coming here, the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, the Cold War. Tens of millions came here from foreign oppression and made a life here. Why? For freedom. Human beings are supposed to live in a state of freedom. Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given. A huge part of this freedom is freedom of inquiry.

Freedom of inquiry is indeed important. It’s a virtue that I cherish above most others. However, freedom of inquiry has nothing to do with teaching Intelligent Design in classrooms. The point is to teach children the most accurate, supported hypothesis and theories we have so that they have the best understanding possible of the natural world. Intelligent Design is a hypothesis which is untestable and has no good evidence in its favor. Freedom of inquiry has to do with figuring out which theory is best and that’s already been done. Yelling about discrimination isn’t going to change the fact that Intelligent Design doesn’t actually do any science.

Freedom of inquiry is basic to human advancement. There would be no modern medicine, no antibiotics, no brain surgery, no Internet, no air conditioning, no modern travel, no highways, no knowledge of the human body without freedom of inquiry.
This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates. This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS.

No real argument there, but you wouldn’t have modern medicine if you would do what Intelligent Design proponents do when they talk about biology. They assert that it’s too complex to figure out, and therefore God did it. What happens when that’s the driving philosophy behind knowledge? The Middle Ages. In a world driven by the idea that what happens to you is part of a divine plan or divine retribution, sickness was seen as God’s punishment. Why bother trying to treat something that God ordained? The advancements that have been made in modern science and medicine have been made in spite of belief in God, not because of it.

Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator.
Operating under that hypothesis, they discovered the most important laws of motion, gravity, thermodynamics, relativity, and even economics.

Bringing up Einstein is a dishonest tactic. Einstein was essentially an atheist. His view of what God was had nothing to do with Christianity or traditional religion. He viewed the laws of the universe as God, which has produced no end of confusion since. Let’s hear what Einstein himself had to say on the subject.

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Moving on…

Now, I am sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed.
Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator. Do you realize that some of the leading lights of “anti-intelligent design” would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him… EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe? EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS… HE WOULD BE BANNED.

Bullshit. A majority of the America’s scientists believe in a God of some sort. If Stein had actually talked to any he would know that. One of the most ardent defenders of science against Intelligent Design is Kenneth Miller, a practicing Roman Catholic. And, even though I think he’s a kook, what about Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project? He’s written a book about his religious beliefs. This is a blatant lie, and one that attempts to equate belief in God with belief in Intelligent Design creationism. Two very different things.

In today’s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.
They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being. They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off. This can happen. It has happened.

The best example I can think of regarding this line of reasoning is Michael Behe. Intelligent Design’s top scientist and author of such books as Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution. Behe is still a tenured professor at Lehigh University, despite advocating Intelligent Design for years.

Of course, this isn’t to say that they couldn’t or shouldn’t. If someone was going up for tenure and the majority of their research was faulty, or inaccurate, or didn’t exist (as with Intelligent Design), who thinks that they should be granted tenure?

This movie looks like it wants to equate belief in God with belief in Intelligent Design creationism. Intelligent Design make the specific claim that the diversity of life on this planet cannot be explained through natural processes and that a supernatural power (God) is needed to create it. Not only is this bad science (an argument from ignorance), it is also bad theology. What kind of God are we talking about who is incapable of creating natural laws to guide his creation and instead needs to intervene all the time to make things turn out right? Just like most fundamentalism, their God is a small god. Most importantly, they don’t really give a damn about freedom of inquiry, they care about getting their religion taught in classrooms and want to remove the entire basis of scientific knowledge (methodological materialism) from public life.

Of course, this movie will probably do quite well in Christian circles. It will probably have special screenings in churches just like the Passion of the Christ did. Of course, the irony will be lost of everyone attending. Most of all its going to provide a huge headache for scientists trying to get good science taught. I can only hope it won’t be as big as I fear it will be

“Are you kidding me?” Watching white, middle-class, mostly ex-Protestant males (the dominant new atheist demographic) compare themselves to feminists, labor movements, gay and civil rights activists, or the members of any other persecuted group fighting for their social, political, and economic lives is just plain surreal. Or worse, as Trinifar notes, it’s just plain manipulative. It does, however, reinforce my armchair psychoanalysis of the new atheists: members of a privileged class who decided to create an identity simply to justify their own persecution complexes.

I’m sorry Chris, but there is real persecution of atheists in this country, though it doesn’t get talked about much.

an atheist girl’s lack of belief was exposed when she refused to join in reciting the Lord’s Prayer. This resulted in lies being promulgated about her in an attempt to get her removed from the basketball team. When her father, Chuck Smalkowski, learned about this, he went to the principle’s house to discuss the matter where the principle then punched him.

These people were harassed relentlessly (by the police, no less!), the daughter was kicked off the basketball team.
Some kid was attacked for putting up posters for Victor Stenger’s lecture at a school.

I remember watching Paula Zahn’s atrocious special about atheism in America and the stories they told. Atheists can get evicted from their apartments, or lose their jobs because of their lack of faith. An ‘out-of-the-closet’ can’t get elected to a high office (perhaps that’ll change now that Pete Stark has come out as an atheist), and atheists are thought of as the least trusted group in the country.

I’ve heard of plenty of persecution, violence and vandelism against atheists. In my opinion, it seems to me that the only reason this doesn’t happen more often is that atheists know how to keep quiet, and keep their lack of belief to themselves, and I think it’s because they are scared. If most kids have this reaction from their parents about being honest about who they are, I can’t blame them.

So, you can rag on the ‘New Atheists’ all you want, but in my opinion, there’s sufficient reason to classify the desire of atheists to be accepted in society as a social cause. And reason enough to fight back against those forces of intolerance that want to keep us in the position of second-class citizens.

People do not have a right not to be offended. One of the negative aspects of progressive society is the lengths it will go to to prevent anyone from getting offended by anything. It’s largely a reactionary measure. In the past as well as currently, the freedom of speech has been used to to promote ideas distasteful to many. People have been criticized about their religion, their race, their sex and their sexuality. In a modern, progressive, pluralistic society, we want everyone to feel welcome. We want minorities to feel that society as a whole will not persecute you based on who you are. It’s a noble idea and one I support. However, this respect for individuals can be extended too far to respect for irrational beliefs. Fear of offending anyone, especially those who have been or are being persecuted, can create an unhealthy society, where deference to people’s sensibilities takes precedence over truth.

In the United Kingdom, some schools have ceased teaching about the Holocaust in order to prevent offending Muslims.

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades – where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem – because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

Not only are these schools doing their students a disservice, by not teaching their students about an important event in history, they’re doing the opposite of educating. The sole reason that our modern societies are able to be so tolerant of other cultures, peoples and beliefs is because of education. Education allows us to learn about different times, different places, and different people. Through education we get to experience, by proxy, the experiences of others. This allows us to understand situations and places outside of our own narrow, limited point-of-view.

Beyond that, if knowledge were only pursued when it offended no one, we would never get very far at all. Learning about astronomy would offend those who believed the Earth was at the center of the universe, teaching about medicine would offend Christian Scientists. Teaching psychology would offend Scientologists, and of course, teaching about geography and biology offends Creationists.

“… the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques.”

A third school found itself ’strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination’.

The report concluded: “In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship.”

Deferring to the sensibilities of a minority, prevents the rest of the students (not to mention the minority themselves) of getting a good education. Criticizing the beliefs of Christians or Muslims, or at least arguing against positions that have no basis in reality, is not intolerance, it’s promoting education and critical thinking. If we just back down, and avoid teaching certain areas of study altogether, then they’ve won. Not only have their religious beliefs encroached on the rights of others, they’ve lessened the power of what knowledge can do in regards to minimizing superstition, and bigotry, and in promoting tolerance. The very things progressive societies stand for.

Chris McGovern, history education adviser to the former Tory government, said: “History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable.”

Education should be in the business of removing irrational and superstitious beliefs from societies. How can we expect to end Holocaust denial, if we’re tacitly endorsing it by not teaching the truth? Where are we as a society when we’re more concerned with political correctness than educating our children? Education is our first line of defense against intolerance, superstition and hatred. By not standing up to those promoting these ideas, we’re letting them grow. And if we keep letting it grow, it will eat away the foundations of society.

(via Pharyngula)

Mike’s Weekly Skeptic Rant has a more colorful response.

For instance, this passage from the introductory essay:

Ah, say the atheists, see, we told you exclusivist faiths like Christianity are forces for evil. So let’s get rid of faith, replace it with rationality and science, and all shall be well, or at least vastly better. But the atheist solution has its own problems. In “Letter to a Christian Nation,” Harris likens himself to an abolitionist and religion to slavery, but who is to say that a wholly scientific world would not itself soon produce dogma and strife over the findings, interpretations and applications of experiments and research? It is possible, even probable, that science would become a kind of religion, with creeds and convictions and arguments over the nature of reality. Labs would replace cathedrals, brain scans holy books. It would be different, but would it necessarily be better?

Arguments like this one seem to characterize atheism or, more specifically, science, as just one religion among many. It fails to take into account that science, for all intents and purposes, is the opposite of religion, at least as far as acquiring knowledge is concerned.

Now, I can see how people could end up creating something resembling a religion out of almost anything, including celebrities, and football teams, but the methods of science itself would make it difficult for any religion-izing of it to take place. Any dogmas and creeds that a scientific world would generate, would themselves be inherently unscientific. Science searches for knowledge that can be discovered only through reason, observation and experience, regardless of the preconceptions of the observer. No dogma is necessary for science to work, indeed dogma stands explicitly in the way of the process of science.

Regardless, the potential consequence of one view over the other has no bearing on its veracity, which is what we are discussing here.

I also have problems with this particular passage:

Theocracies—that is, governments organized around religious dogma—are not conducive to the cultivation of the kinds of societies many Americans value. But history teaches us that religion need not be entirely barred (as if it could) from public life in order to build a culture of liberty and freedom of inquiry and conscience. The key is how a culture manages the different factions contending for influence in a given time and place. The brilliance of the American experiment lies in its creation of a republican arena in which all manner of forces—religious, economic, geographic, what have you—can take their stand within the confines of a system in which checks and balances limit the possibilities of radicalism of any kind. Our government is slow, cumbersome and resistant to reform—by design.

Liberty and republican values are the guardrails against extremism, either religious or secular. Religion should not dictate education or science policy, for example, but there is nothing wrong—and there is much right—with its being one voice among many in the shaping of our public lives. One cannot be for one group’s right to speak out and exert influence and be against another group’s right to do so. The battles must be fought on the merits, and religion should be one force on the field, not the only one.

This moderate solution pleases neither the atheists nor the fervent believers, which may recommend it even more. The more conservative faithful think centrists are squishy, and some atheists argue, as Harris puts it, that “religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others … all we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of Scripture imposes on us.”

This passage appears to equate atheism with extremist theocrats, as two extreme options where the centrist position is preferable. As such, it implies that there is an equally extremist atheist position who also wish to use the power of the government to promote their own particular philosophy. I personally do not know any individual atheist, nor any atheistic organization that wishes to use the power of the government to eradicate religion from public life. My own position is that the government needs to remain entirely secular, as put forth in the Constitution, in line with the views of the Founding Fathers. Neither promoting nor restricting private religious views, nor promoting or restricting any atheistic philosophy.

Regardless, the introduction ends, the debate begins. I noticed throughout that Warren does these little dances around certain topics in order to, prevent alienating many evangelical christians, as well as to make sure he doesn’t sound like a total loon. Take, for instance, this passage:

Is the Bible inerrant?
WARREN: I believe it’s inerrant in what it claims to be. The Bible does not claim to be a scientific book in many areas.

I’m really not sure what this mean. Does the Bible claim to be inerrant in some passages and errant in others? Are there some areas where the Bible does claim to be a scientific text?

He sidesteps the next question as well:

Do you believe Creation happened in the way Genesis describes it?
WARREN: If you’re asking me do I believe in evolution, the answer is no, I don’t. I believe that God, at a moment, created man. I do believe Genesis is literal, but I do also know metaphorical terms are used. Did God come down and blow in man’s nose? If you believe in God, you don’t have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it’s fine with me.

Who brought up evolution? If Genesis is literal and uses metaphor, doesn’t that ultimately make it metaphorical? Where does the metaphor end and the literalness begin? How do you decide which is which? Again, by avoiding any specifics, he avoids offending those who might have a more literalist/young-earth-creationist point-of-view, without having to openly agree or disagree with them.

Unfortunately, with the next exchange, he walks right into a common conundrum for those promoting the idea of an interventionist God:

WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He’s an intern at this church, and so I said, “God, I need you to help me with this,” as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, “I’m an immigration attorney; I’d be happy to take this case.” Now, if that happened once in my life I’d say, “That is a coincidence.” If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

There must have been times in your ministry when you’ve prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.
WARREN: Oh, absolutely.

So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.
WARREN: Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I’ve had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I’ve never met an atheist who wasn’t angry.

On the one hand, Warren attempts to provide evidence for his God by telling a story about a woman getting an immigration attorney (a wholly improbable event, I’m sure), but then is stumped by God allowing an innocent girl to die. One of God’s actions (the one with a happy ending) is proof positive that God exists, and instead of the opposite occurrence (the one with a tragic ending) being proof against God’s existence, instead it only implies that we have no idea what God is really up to. It’s an inconsistent reasoning, one that’s not disprovable. In reality, the best explanation is simply that good things and bad things happen in this world, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Pretending good things are evidence of God’s existence only works if you concede that bad things are evidence of his non-existance.

So, his last thought about atheists hiding behind rationalism is actually very telling about his own position. Rather than atheists hiding behind their rationalism, it appears that Warren is hiding behind his faith, unable to truly follow where his rational thoughts might take him. He then has the gall to accuse atheists of being angry. It’s a complete non sequitur, and ad hominem argument that comes out of nowhere.

Fortunately, Harris takes it all in stride, and doesn’t reciprocate. Warren says Harris’s books are angry, Harris responds simply, and then tries to get back on topic:

HARRIS: I would put it at impatient rather than angry. Let me respond to this notion of answered prayer, because this is a classic sampling error, to use a statistical phrase. We know that human beings have a terrible sense of probability. There are many things we believe that confirm our prejudices about the world, and we believe this only by noticing the confirmations, and not keeping track of the disconfirmations. You could prove to the satisfaction of every scientist that intercessory prayer works if you set up a simple experiment. Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. [Warren is laughing.] I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting.

Harris comes back to the topics Warren was hoping to avoid, and makes well-reasoned arguments against both the power of prayer, and the unremarkable nature of so-called ‘miracles’.

Here’s another example of Warren attempting to really side-step the subject at hand:

Rick, if you had been born in India or in Iran, would you have different religious beliefs?
WARREN: There’s no doubt where you’re born influences your initial beliefs. Regardless of where you were born, there are some things you can know about God, even without the Bible. For instance, I look at the world and I say, “God likes variety.” I say, “God likes beauty.” I say, “God likes order,” and the more we understand ecology, the more we understand how sensitive that order is.

HARRIS: Then God also likes smallpox and tuberculosis.

WARREN: I would attribute a lot of the sins in the world to myself.

HARRIS: Are you responsible for smallpox?

WARREN: I am responsible to do something about it. No doubt about it. I am responsible to do something about the 500 million who get malaria every year and the 40 million who have AIDS, because I will be held accountable for my life. And when I say, “God, why don’t you do something about this?” God says, “Well, why don’t you? You were the answer to your own prayer.”

He totally bypasses the question proposed by the moderator, and goes off into his own tangent. Then also side-steps the responses to his own tangent.

I could go on and on with examples from the interview, but that would make this post longer than it already is.

I’ll mention briefly examples of standard theological arguments that Warren raises. He brings up this tired argument that atheism is responsible for more crimes/deaths than religion, something Harris is always good at refuting. He then brings up the standard canard that atheists cannot have morality. Fortunately, the moderator (or perhaps the editor of the article) keeps things concise, not allowing the conversation to be bogged down too much with arguments that could fill volumes by themselves.

It would have been nice if the same old stereotypical arguments against atheists wouldn’t have been brought up time and time again, but I think Harris does an excellent job of getting his own points across succinctly and honestly. An example, when answering a question about the majority of the world who believe in a god, and how that is evidence in and of itself for some kind of god to exist:

HARRIS: It is quite possible for most people to be wrong—as are most Americans who think that evolution didn’t occur.

WARREN: That’s an arrogant statement.

HARRIS: It’s an honest statement.

One more good one from Sam:

HARRIS: How is it fair for God to have designed a world which gives such ambiguous testimony to his existence? How is it fair to have created a system where belief is the crucial piece, rather than being a good person? How is it fair to have created a world in which by mere accident of birth, someone who grew up Muslim can be confounded by the wrong religion? I don’t see how the future of humanity is in good care with those competing orthodoxies.

Warren was given the last word, and I can’t imagine many theists were pleased with his conclusion.

WARREN:…We’re both betting. He’s betting his life that he’s right. I’m betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. When we die, if he’s right, I’ve lost nothing. If I’m right, he’s lost everything. I’m not willing to make that gamble.

It’s a simple application of Pascal’s Wager. An bad argument for the existence of god, which, if Sam was given a response, I’m he could have easily addressed.

Overall, it’s an entertaining read, and, though I feel that Sam came out on top, it’s usually a matter of opinion in debates like this.