[Buddha-l] there he goes again (sam harris)

[Richard Hayes]

On Thursday 26 October 2006 07:50, curt wrote:

> I guess Sam Harris has another book.

Yes, the full-page advertisements in the NY Times have made me eager to read 
it. I loved his first book. Moreover, I've been teaching Hume for the last 
four weeks in Philosophy 101. It's hard to teach anything to a dead 
Scotsman---almost as hard as teaching anything to a live Scotsman---but I 
loved pedagogical challenges. Anyway, my encounters with Hume have whetted my 
appetite for laying waste to religion and ushering in a new age of 
religion-free philosophical and scientific enlightenment. The fact that the 
usually peaceful plaza just outside my office has had gory 30-foot-high 
photographs of aborted feti and Christians with bullhorns screaming all 
manner of slogans for the past three days has nurtured my contempt for raving 
assholes who pass negative judgement on others. It's so un-Buddhist!

Thanks to a recent flight home that was sixteen hours late, I finally finished 
Ian Meecham's "American Gospel," which I loved. It provides quite a balanced 
view of the role of religion in American politics from the time of the 
founding fodders to the era of some bozo named George W. Bush. Towards the 
end of the book Meecham gives folks like Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell a bit 
of a rough ride. Any of you who are avid followers of those fellows might 
find Meecham's book a bit challenging, but then if you can survive a day on 
buddha-l, you're probably up to the task of reading Meecham.

The next book on my nightstand, before I get to Harris, is Noah 
Feldman's "Divided by God." It looks quite promising. God has been busy 
dividing people ever since he sent to Hebrews in to take the Canaanites' land 
away from them. I'm interested in seeing whom He has been dividing recently.

> And I just now noticed that Sam's self-promoting website

Just out of curiosity, how many web sites do you know about that are NOT 
self-promoting? Are there any self-loathing web sites out there? There 
probably are. There seem to be approximately one billion web sites for every 
klesha known to Gautama Buddha. But the prevailing klesha in web development 
seems to be asmitaa. A fairly accurate precis of the content of 95% of the 
websites in the world is "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! 
Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!"

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes <=LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!