http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/t...lace-delusion/

Worth reading the rest of it.

Surprised I couldn't find this discussion on the forum (Unless I search bad).

Cliffs: Fireplaces are bad for you so you shouldn't believe in god.

Daniel Dennett made the same point in Breaking The Spell via a thought experiment where music was scientifically proved to be hazardous to our health. It's a really good topic and deserves more discussion, though your quote and cliffs are beyond terrible imo.

As far as it's an analogy, I don't see that it's so hard to give up using a fireplace. I had the one in my home replaced and am now using the space for an entertainment center. (I can play a video of a burning fireplace on the HD TV).

That was interesting. I still love fires, but it sucks that they suck.

whats the point of this, exactly?

I'm not sure I quite understand the purpose of this analogy. So breathing smoke has been scientifically proven to be bad for you. Has believing in God been similarly proven to be?

just as an aside, who the hell burns wood to keep warm anymore? Modern technology, baby.

This was very bad. It was bad as an analogy for theism. It was bad for the level of understanding it shows for how people make decisions. It was just bad. Bad even for Sam Harris.

Why? I don't think it was meant as an analogy for theism, just to demonstrate to people who don't experience this very often what it is like to have a prized component of identity (fires are nice) and have that destroyed by science.

Dietary health gives us bad news all the time - but do we stop eating bacon?

This looked weird to me, so I looked into it some more:

http://ehs.sph.berkeley.edu/krsmith/...%2005(rev).pdf

It appears that Harris has grossly exaggerated the data. First, the number seems to be way off (I couldn't find the 2000 WHO report*). Second, the jump from "fireplace wood" to "crop resdiues and animal dung" seems relevant to me.

* Even if the 2000 WHO report said this, it's clear that more recent and probably more accurate data is available, and it seems disingenuous to use old data in this way.

Also, http://www.who.int/violence_injury_p...ad_traffic/en/

3500 * 365 = 1,277,500

It's not *that* much more.

Bacon=pork=unclean

To be fair, it wasn't an analogy for theism.

He's attempting to construct an emotional analogue. I don't think it's that good of an analogy for religious people in general, though there are certainly segments of it for whom I think it's somewhat applicable.

It only works if he can demonstrate that the possible existence of god has been destroyed by science.

Your complaint is the 1.3 vs 2 million? The point remains the same for either number, and it is quite possible different reports make different estimates with these things, especially with rounding.

His point was not about finding the most accurate number here and I doubt he is deliberately exaggerating especially because a further exaggeration doesn't help him.

This is not how atheists frame it, but anyways it is assumed on his blog that the atheists who read it take as granted the case for atheism.

I feel kind of silly here, because I've read this a couple times and I'm not sure what you mean. Whats not how athiests frame it? how do they frame it? Are you saying he is pre supposing atheists who read it already agree that science has dis proven god?

My complaint was that his numbers looked weird. Being off by 0.7 million when the value is 1.3 million is a larger than 50% error. And 1.3 million doesn't round to 2 million.

He took the time to look up a 2000 WHO report (which I'm having trouble finding) but I was able to find a scientific paper that says a more recent WHO report takes the alleged 2000 WHO report and cuts it by a third. And that also makes his claim of it being so much worse than auto accidents very questionable.

I agree that exaggeration doesn't help him. But if he's trying to make a point about how important scientific data is, he should at least get it right. Right?

I openly admit that I think Harris tends to overstate his position and misstate other people's positions, and I think as a result I'm fairly critical of the things he says. I think that his fame has turned him into more of a hack than a thinker, but that's just my view of him. (However, there are a LOT of people who think that of the four big name public atheists, he's the weakest.)

I have discovered that when I make this case, even to highly intelligent and health-conscious men and women, a psychological truth quickly becomes as visible as a pair of clenched fists: They do not want to believe any of it

I think Harris is overestimating his audience.

Do you think he did anything other than find some number in a study and right it down (possibly rounding up like a 1.8 million or something)? Or maybe he quoted something else that referenced the study without looking it up directly. These kinds of estimates of deaths due to X are routinely horrible and are massively extrapolated from limited data. It is quite believable to me that two different studies, even by the same organization, would be off by that much. At this point, he really can't be accused of anything.

I don't think that he's saying that people believing in the possible existence of god is dangerous. I think he's saying that people refusing to modify/alter some aspects of their belief systems even after being given scientifically proven information to the contrary is dangerous. If my interpretation is correct, I would personally tend to agree with that, and I strongly believe in the existence of some form of god.

In other words, I think he's basically saying that in order for us to move closer to the truth (about god), we cannot have an attitude of "I have all the answers" (I know that wood burning fires are 100% OK), we need to adapt an attitude of "I have a belief system but am willing to modify/alter it if new information comes into play".

I have no idea what he actually did going into it. When I read his article, I found the numbers to be strangely higher than what I had expected, and then when I did my own research, he seemed to be pretty badly informed on the matter. I spent 5 minutes on it. It wasn't that hard.

I'm willing to believe that he selectively chose the 2000 figure over more recent figures in order to make a rhetorical point. (See how super bad wood smoke is? And yet you still sit there with fists clenched? -- Even though now we're not talking about wood smoke anymore...) As I noted, I don't think particularly highly of him.

Edit: By the way, 1 million people per year is something like 1/10% of the world population? This isn't even that big of a deal even if the science is accurate.

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_stat...ts/fast_facts/

Smoking deaths = 5 million per year. Even if wood smoke is 30 times more dangerous, smoking deaths are 5 times more common. What does this say about the actual harm of current wood-lighting practices?

We're on the same page, but I'm not sure how this squares anything away. Is he saying that theists refuse to modify their positions based on scientific information? What is he basing that on?

How does he know these people aren't willing to adapt their beliefs? He hasn't shown them anything close to the kind of evidence he presents for why burning fires are dangerous.

I'm not sure he's attacking theists as a whole, I think that would be crazy. But certainly there are many folks out there (extremists, devouts, whatever) who refuse to believe anything that is not written word for word in the bible/quran/whatever. A basic example would be anyone who refuses to believe in the possiblity of evolution (We didn't come from no monkey!!!)

I think the blog entry is sort of incomplete because it doesn't really take the next step in making this connection, and maybe I'm extrapolating a bit, but that's what I got out of it.

Possible, but he did say "religious people" and gave no care to clarification.

You certainly don't have any evidence that he did this. It is a possible explanation, of course, (one I doubt actually happened because it doesn't help him), but no reason to actively believe that it is true.

lol at the round down to 1 million from 1.3 million when you are pissed off he said 2 million from some unknown reference. I have no idea why you think the "only 0.1% of world population" is relevant to any point he was making, but it is kinda silly.