Atheism and Ligotti

Quote Originally Posted by teguififthzeal

I'd forgotten that Sam Harris even walked the planet. When was it...2003 that I last heard of him? He's certainly been keeping himself in good currency, it would seem.

Never did care for Harris much, especially his imperialist politics; Hitchens and Dawkins seemed to always be better orators (especially Hitch) and arguers anyways.

[teguififthzeal]

Hitchens was funny...except all that time wasted on Bill Maher's show. Disappointing, the whole Iraq thing. The need for attention can sometimes can completely erode an intellectual's integrity.

Quote Originally Posted by gveranon

Ironically (remember the need for ironic perspective) many religious believers have a more realistic view of human life than messianic secularists do, despite the fact that the former indulge in what I would regard as transcendental fantasies, and often transcendental fantasies of an unsavory character. I'm not much exercised by the question of antinatalism myself, but here is a good post about religion at Say No To Life: Religion, Procreation, and a Divine Hatred of Life.

An interesting blog post, but I have a couple of gripes with it.

One being that the author appears to siv the choice to reproduce down to what an individual's opinion is on the existence of a deity or if they're a materialist. This ignores secular, societal factors thar drive people to have children regardless of their religious preferences, namely family/peer pressure, economic pressure, and state pressure.

Another being that, even though the major religious doctrines tend to harbor a negative view of humanity and may fall more in line with antinatalism philosophically, not so pragmatically. This paper, though a bit old, correlates stronger religiosity in adolescents with less contraception use when they become sexually active compared to those with weaker religiosity.

Adolescent Religiosity and Contraceptive Usage on JSTOR

[bendk]

Quote Originally Posted by teguififthzeal

I'd forgotten that Sam Harris even walked the planet. When was it...2003 that I last heard of him? He's certainly been keeping himself in good currency, it would seem.

He's still around. I don't think he does the lecture tour like he used to. He goes on TV from time to time to denounce radical Islam. He got in a heated argument with Ben Affleck about it. Affleck is always going off on something or other. Harris spends most of his time writing, doing a podcast, and working in neuroscience research. He went to some private AI conference with his friend Elon Musk which sounded intriguing.


He bashed Trump recently and I thought it was funny.

Here it is for anyone interested:

Sam Harris articulates why Donald Trump is a dangerous candidate - YouTube

[teguififthzeal]

Can't say I personally see anything particularly remarkable about him as a thinker, but he is definitely emblazoned in my memory as one of the early millennia's many figureheads.

As for Thomas Ligotti's work, I've always seen more of a metaphysical wound--a yearning for justice--than any kind of positivistic materialist atheism.