Sam Harris's "The End of Faith"

Summary

Podcast Summary: "If Books Could Kill" – Episode on Sam Harris's "The End of Faith"

Title: If Books Could Kill
Host/Authors: Michael Hobbes & Peter Shamshiri
Episode: Sam Harris's "The End of Faith"
Release Date: November 4, 2024
Description: The airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds

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Introduction

In this episode of If Books Could Kill, hosts Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri delve into Sam Harris's influential book, "The End of Faith." From the outset, the conversation is marked by their irreverent banter and sharp critiques of Harris's perspectives on religion and Islam. The episode aims to dissect the key arguments presented in Harris's work, exploring both its impact on the New Atheism movement and the controversies it has sparked.

Notable Quote:
Michael Hobbes [00:00]: "I have no zings. Except for joking about how Sam Harris is racist."

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Background on Sam Harris and New Atheism

The hosts provide a brief overview of Sam Harris's background, highlighting his philosophical education and familial ties to the entertainment industry. They contextualize "The End of Faith" within the broader New Atheism movement, emphasizing its role in challenging theism and promoting secularism.

Notable Quotes:
Peter Shamshiri [02:13]: "The book is the End of Faith by Sam Harris. Came out in 2004 when he was just a guy with a degree in philosophy."
Michael Hobbes [02:35]: "Are you pausing to let Me say something gay about how I watch Golden Girls."

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Critique of Harris's Arguments on Religion

Hobbes and Shamshiri critique Harris's assertion that religious belief is inherently irrational and dangerous. They argue that Harris oversimplifies complex socio-political issues by attributing much of the world's violence solely to religious doctrines, particularly Islam.

Key Points:

• Racism and Islamophobia: The hosts accuse Harris of promoting Islamophobia, pointing out his consistent portrayal of Islam as uniquely violent.
• Misrepresentation of Religious Violence: They challenge Harris's claim that the majority of wars are religiously motivated, citing the Encyclopedia of Wars which only categorizes about 7% of conflicts as religious.
• Function of Religion: Drawing on anthropologist Scott Atran's work, they argue that Harris ignores the social and evolutionary functions of religion, such as fostering community and social cohesion.

Notable Quotes:
Peter Shamshiri [04:05]: "There was a time in my life where like I thought it was an interesting intellectual exercise to try to talk people out of their like most deeply cherished beliefs."
Michael Hobbes [05:35]: "The rise of secular violence in this country is something that the new atheists could have never predicted."

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Analysis of Harris's Position on Islamic Violence

The episode delves deeper into Harris's specific focus on Islam, scrutinizing his claims about the religion's role in terrorism and extremism. The hosts highlight logical fallacies and the selective use of data in Harris's arguments.

Key Points:

• Selective Statistics: They examine Harris's use of Pew poll data, demonstrating how he selectively presents countries with high support for violence while ignoring the diversity within the Muslim world.
• Misinterpretation of Motivations: The hosts argue that Harris misunderstands the motivations behind terrorism, emphasizing factors like geopolitical tensions and socio-economic conditions rather than purely religious doctrine.
• Counterarguments from Experts: References to Scott Atran's research illustrate that motivations for terrorism are multifaceted and not solely driven by religious beliefs.

Notable Quotes:
Michael Hobbs [28:03]: "So it's not like he was hiding his Islamophobia under these arguments about, like, the George W. Bush administration evangelicals. It's like, it was always there, like, right up front."
Peter Shamshiri [34:04]: "This is a classic Harris move. He is confronted with a really complex question that he is absolutely not capable of answering, and then he deflects by immediately redirecting the conversation to a hypothetical thought experiment."

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Harris's Rhetorical Tactics and Logical Fallacies

Hobbes and Shamshiri identify and name several rhetorical strategies employed by Harris to advance his arguments while deflecting criticism. They argue that these tactics undermine the validity of his claims.

Key Points:

• Coward's Hypothetical: Introducing unrealistic scenarios to dismiss valid critiques, such as imagining "perfect weapons" to justify extreme measures.
• Provocateur's Caveat: Making inflammatory statements with minimal disclaimers to shield against backlash, then accusing critics of dishonesty.
• Selective Inclusion: Harris's claim of including himself in profiling policies is refuted by the hosts, who argue that his criteria are inherently biased and ineffective.

Notable Quotes:
Peter Shamshiri [34:23]: "I am calling it the Cowards hypothetical."
Michael Hobbs [58:43]: "He's also just saying that it's, like, qualitatively, just like a worse religion than other world religions."

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Impact and Legacy of "The End of Faith"

The hosts reflect on the broader implications of Harris's book, discussing its influence on both secular and conservative circles. They argue that while "The End of Faith" played a pivotal role in the rise of New Atheism, it also contributed to heightened Islamophobia and polarization.

Key Points:

• Promotion of Profiling and Discrimination: Harris's advocacy for profiling Muslims at airports is critiqued as discriminatory and ineffective.
• Legacy of Divisiveness: The book's assertion that Islam uniquely fosters violence has fueled societal divisions and justified discriminatory policies.
• Dismissal of Counterarguments: By labeling any criticism as Islamophobic, Harris shuts down constructive debate and dismisses valid concerns about security and extremism.

Notable Quotes:
Peter Shamshiri [51:53]: "He's like, this is why it won't work. But we need to look at the Muslims."
Michael Hobbs [64:07]: "It's like, Sam Harris fits the fucking profile. And yet I assume he's not promoting this."

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Conclusion

Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri conclude by emphasizing the flaws in Sam Harris's arguments, particularly his oversimplification of complex issues and reliance on biased data. They argue that "The End of Faith" not only fails to adequately address the roots of religious violence but also perpetuates harmful stereotypes and discrimination against Muslims.

Notable Quote:
Michael Hobbs [69:04]: "It's just like, this guy fucking sucks."
Peter Shamshiri [69:34]: "If you watch every episode of Golden Girls."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of If Books Could Kill serves as a robust critique of Sam Harris's "The End of Faith," challenging its premises and highlighting its contribution to societal polarization. Through sharp analysis and pointed commentary, Hobbes and Shamshiri encourage listeners to critically evaluate the arguments surrounding religion, secularism, and their intersections with politics and society.

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Note: The transcript contains explicit language and strong opinions, reflecting the hosts' passionate stance on the subject matter.

Transcript

[Michael Hobbs]

I have no zings. Except for joking about how Sam Harris is racist.

[Peter]

That'll be the focus of the episode, so it's not the worst.

[Michael Hobbs]

We don't want to spoil the episode. The thing I really want to give him shit for is if you listen to his podcast, he never says or. Or any other filler words. He just pauses for, like, minutes.

[Peter]

I mean, they're so fucking boring anyway.

[Michael Hobbs]

I can excuse racism, but long pauses.

[Peter]

They're either about how Muslims aren't people or meditation.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

He's like, clear your mind. All right, we are back. The filthy mongrels of Palestine are attacking Israel.

[Michael Hobbs]

Free your mind of all thoughts other than ranking of the races.

[Peter]

Empty your mind of all your biases. Create a castle at the top. White people.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I have one. I have one, I have one.

[Peter]

Okay. All right. Michael, Peter, what do you know about the end of Faith?

[Michael Hobbs]

All I know is that this book was the end of mine in Sam Harris.

[Peter]

I like that zinger because it was the first thing he ever did.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, that's. Well, whatever. Don't fact check the zinger.

[Peter]

Boom. Keeping Michael Hobbs honest on the if Books Could Kill podcast. Fuck.

[Michael Hobbs]

Fuck. We're also continuing our tradition of the zinger being the least funny thing about the opening to the show.

[Peter]

At no point has the zinger ever been. We've maybe done one zinger that was actually funny.

[Michael Hobbs]

It was good.

[Peter]

The theory behind the zinger that you once told me explicitly, if you play the music right after the zinger, it presents as if it were a joke, and people will enjoy it the same.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, people will think that it is funny if the music tells them that it's funny. Because the first couple episodes, remember, we only came up with the idea of that, like, five episodes in. So a bunch of our early episodes, you just, like, said something normal. You're like, I haven't heard of this book. And it's like people think it's like a joke.

[Peter]

We're using tricks of psychology to get you to enjoy this podcast.

[Michael Hobbs]

We've actually never said anything funny on the show. There's the magic of editing. There's the magic of editing.

[Peter]

So, yeah, the book is the End of Faith by Sam Harris. Came out in 2004 when he was just a guy with a degree in philosophy. He was a student pursuing his PhD in cognitive neuroscience. He's sort of a Nepo baby. His mom is Susan Harris, who's a renowned writer and producer, most famous for Golden Girls.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, are you. Are you pausing to let Me say something gay about how I watch Golden Girls.

[Peter]

I almost didn't want to mention it on the episode in case someone enjoyed Golden Girls and then I was going to ruin it a little.

[Michael Hobbs]

He's such a. He's such a model. He's such a. He's such a. What are the names of the characters on that show?

[Peter]

Yeah, and who's the most racist? Because that's. That's him. So this book really launched the phenomenon of new atheism, a very popular political and cultural movement that openly challenged theism and religion. I had a tough time figuring out what this episode would be about because new Atheism, it's like this big sprawling movement with tons of different characters. Sam Harris himself is extremely prolific. Prolific. He's a huge podcaster. He appears on TV all the time. He has some liberal bonafides, but extensive ties with a bunch of right wing creeps. He's like a consistent peddler of race and IQ science. He's a big anti woke guy. And this book in many ways is just very boring. And all of these new Atheism books are sort of very boring in a way that is not conducive to our podcast. You know, like, remember like, you once tried to do little behind the scenes action here for our listeners. You once tried to do the Christopher Hitchens atheism book. Yeah, I couldn't do it. And it was so boring that you just had to stop. You just texted me one day being like, I can't do it. I'm going to do the anxious generation. This is.

[Michael Hobbs]

There was a time in my life where like I thought it was an interesting intellectual exercise to try to talk people out of their like most deeply cherished beliefs. Or like debate like, oh, is God real? And then I turned like 13 and I just like wasn't interested in doing that anymore. I don't really disagree with any of the arguments in these whatever, atheism books. Like I guess I'm an atheist or agnostic or whatever. But it's also just really boring to be like this thing that gives your life a lot of meaning. It's fucking fake. Four Pinocchios.

[Peter]

Yeah. You know, I think that's a good jumping off point for talking about like the cultural context in which this book existed because the context has changed to the point where now this all seems kind of silly, right? Yeah. But if you look at the early aughts in retrospect, it was very obviously primed for an anti religious political movement. Right. Like you have 9, 11, where we're all exposed to the dangers of fundamentalist religion, and. Which Harris says is a catalyst for writing this book. He's like, 9. 11 happened, and I started writing whatever.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, okay.

[Peter]

And then at the same time, domestically in the United States, you had the Bush administration, which was really governing from an explicitly evangelical posture. And there were a lot of really salient public policy disputes that were sort of undergirded by a religious dispute. Right. You had stem cell research. Right. This really dynamic research into embryonic stem cells that Bush denied federal funding to.

[Michael Hobbs]

Because they're little tiny babies. Because they're actually little tiny babies.

[Peter]

You had early debates about gay marriage. Right. Which. Which were sort of just starting to pick up steam. You had debates about teaching evolution in the classroom. You had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan being touted by a bunch of politicians as expressly religious. And then maybe most importantly for the career of Sam Harris and his cohort, you have the rise of social media at the same time.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. It was mostly a blog phenomenon. I feel like there were a lot of, like, blog debates.

[Peter]

I think if you back up a little bit. In the 90s, you had message boards that were only accessible to nerds. And there. There was a prominent community of atheists. Right? And message boards get a little bit more mainstream. The blogosphere is picking this up. Facebook and YouTube and Twitter launch in pretty quick succession. With that comes this sort of, like, online debate culture. How? I think people underestimate how formative the atheist clique was in that respect. Like, modern, like, cringe compilations, like feminist embarrasses herself, those sorts of things. Those started with atheists making fun of creationists and other religious people. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

Remember how Richard Dawkins tried to rebrand atheists as brights? He's like the bright community, which is basically just like, reproducing all the most obnoxious aspects of organized religion.

[Peter]

Gonna send you a clip. This is Christopher Hitchens talking to Anderson Cooper after the death of Jerry Falwell. Jerry Falwell, of course, the famous piece of shit Reverend. Just a far right lunatic scumbag.

[Michael Hobbs]

Speaking of far right lunatic scumbags, let's watch Christopher Hitchens. Christopher, I'm not sure if you believe in heaven, but if you do, do you think Jerry Falwell is in it?

[Peter]

No.

[Christopher Hitchens]

And I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to.

[Michael Hobbs]

Is it about him that brings up such vitriol?

[Christopher Hitchens]

The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country. If you'll just get yourself called Reverend, who would even at your network have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment? If they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification, People like that should be out in the street shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.

[Michael Hobbs]

The thing is, I think that he's wrong here because he says the only way that, like, a little toad can get on CNN as a credible commentator is if they have Reverend in front of their name. I think the other way they do that is if they have a British accent. Christop.

[Peter]

And it's so funny how insufferable he is even when he's fundamentally correct.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, I know. It felt good to hear him say it, but also, shut the fuck up.

[Peter]

That is like a huge part of what made this whole movement popular. The ability to sort of throw down the gauntlet and be like, these guys are scumbags.

[Michael Hobbs]

There's also public polling, I think, about sort of, who would you not vote for for president? And like, atheist is one of the highest ones. Like, people would vote for many, like members of minority groups before they would vote for an atheist.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

So the fact that there was finally somebody standing up and being like, no, it's actually fine to be an athe really did feel good.

[Peter]

We are better than minorities of other types.

[Michael Hobbs]

We are brights. But then what was your journey with this, Peter? Because you were also kind of Dawkins and Harris pilled at a time. Right?

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

You have the beard and the bearing of a debate, bro.

[Peter]

It is embarrassing. Deep inside every middle class white boy born in the 1980s is the desire to win a debate on the Internet.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, I know.

[Peter]

And you have to choose your path. Right. Will you be a libertarian or an atheist? It's different now. Now every middle class white boy born in the 2000s has the desire to do a gay little dance on TikTok.

[Michael Hobbs]

Or they're an incel. Those are the two paths available.

[Peter]

That's right.

[Michael Hobbs]

You're either a straight guy with painted fingernails or you're a school shooter.

[Peter]

No, I definitely was, like, way too into this for way too long. And I didn't have a cool reason. Some people are like, I was raised religious and then I broke out of it. I definitely was just like, wow, this is an annoying thing to be.

[Michael Hobbs]

But then what I think is always Interesting about the sort of rise and fall of New Atheism is how people got out of it.

[Peter]

Honestly, I think I just got a job and then I had to stop watching YouTube videos.

[Michael Hobbs]

You literally just got off the Internet.

[Peter]

I'm like, not. I'm not kidding. I don't have. There was, like, no moment. I just got less interested in it and I think more interested in politics. The one thing that might have, like, saved me is that I got out of this well before it became really popular. Oh, really?

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Peter]

The peak of New Atheism was probably, like, the early Reddit era of, like, 2010-12, and I had been not interested in it for a couple of years.

[Michael Hobbs]

By then, you were an atheist from New Atheism.

[Peter]

This is something we'll talk about in a future episode. But that's when you start to see the split where the reactionaries sort of break off and become a force on the American right.

[Michael Hobbs]

This was actually very important in my sort of philosophical coming of age in that I do think there's, like, a little reply guy in me that just wants to be right about everything. Like, that's what drove my libertarian phase. But I also try to be nice and, like, my politics are also very informed by, like, trying not to ruin people's day or just be shitty to people. And so much of the stuff that was coming out of New Atheism was just mean, right? Like, obviously organized religion, these are institutions that have done major harm. But, like, on an individual level, a lot of people just believe things that aren't true but aren't really trying to force it on anybody. And it's a driver of meaning in their life. And it's like, why is it so fucking important to you to take that away from people?

[Peter]

I think that's a good framing for some of what I want to accomplish in this episode. The atheist community ended up being a community of, like, just the blandest losers on earth. But they had this one. One claim to superiority, right? They were like, we are the more rational ones. People who believe in religion are dumb. And Sam Harris is sort of the final boss of these guys. Like, he's very smart. He's very good at debating, like, really, really talented at it. He also believes in his own intelligence so much that he considers it to be a substitute for actual expertise.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, it's incredible.

[Peter]

And I find that very fascinating in and of itself, but also as a sort of, like, microcosm of the broader movement.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

And this is where we segue into the portion where I explain that Jesus is God. How funny would it be if we. We just did a fucking, like an Insane Clown Posse reveal where we were just like, we're Christians.

[Michael Hobbs]

What we were actually zinging in the opening was Jesus Christ into your hearts.

[Peter]

You know who else had a podcast when you think about it? Let's talk about the book here. One thing to mention before we really get going here is that Sam Harris frequently responds to his critics. The only time he doesn't is when he believes that they are arguing in bad faith. And what he defines as bad faith is basically if they are mean to Sam Harris. If they're like, sam Harris is an asshole, and here's what he said, then Sam's like, no, I will not be responding to this indignity. And so to avoid a response, just gonna say, sam Harris, you are a weird racist bitch, in my view.

[Michael Hobbs]

I love the idea of including a trigger warning in all of our episodes. Specifically for the authors we're talking about David Brooks. Tune out.

[Peter]

One of Harris's opening chapters is called the Nature of Belief. And the premise is basically that society privileges religious belief by making it uncouth to criticize, but we should be free to criticize religious belief the way we would any other belief. Sure. So I'm gonna send you a little bit.

[Michael Hobbs]

Is this gonna be one of those episodes where we're just like, he's right, but he's an asshole?

[Peter]

No, this'll be. This moment, right now will be the last time we.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, good.

[Peter]

Okay, we have that thought.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says, to be ruled by ideas for which you have no evidence and which therefore cannot be justified in conversation with other human beings is generally a sign that something is seriously wrong with your mind. Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yet it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the creator of the universe can hear your thoughts. Well, it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. Oh, this is the Hitchens thing where it's just like too many words to say something basic. And it's also just kind of mean spirited.

[Peter]

Classic new Atheism. Right. Faith is a cop out, and we should evaluate religious claims on their own merits. And when we do, we realize they are stupid. Yeah, but there's actually an interesting academic debate underlying this. One of Harris's biggest critics on these points is Scott Atran, an anthropologist. He is an expert. He's had a couple of debates with Sam Harris, both written and in person. So Harris is saying that religious belief is an attempt to describe the world, and therefore we can essentially confront religion in the marketplace of ideas like we would any other belief. Right, Right. Atrian doesn't totally disagree that religious beliefs serve to make sense of things that we don't understand. But he also argues that religious belief is functionally an evolutionary byproduct that strengthens social cohesion. People participate in religious acts and rituals together, which develops trust and community and establishes social bonds. The outlandishness of much of the religious doctrines and rituals actually serves to accentuate those bonds. So what Atran and other anthropologists are pointing at is that the reason that religious belief isn't as susceptible to rational analysis as scientific beliefs is that they aren't really serving the same purpose.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

And part of why this is important is that it's necessary to understanding when and why religion produces violence, which is a huge focus for Harris. Yeah. Harris claims that it's the doctrines themselves. Right. The holy books are violent, they endorse violence, and therefore people read them and commit violence. But Atran says not really. What's happening is that violence and the willingness to do violence serves as a source of community and interpersonal bonding that feeds into itself and develops into extremism.

[Michael Hobbs]

Sure.

[Peter]

I wanted to bring this up because this is emblematic of a big picture critique of Harris's work. There's this vast literature about the function of religion psychologically, sociologically, and he just does not engage with it at all. Right. Of course, there is a really interesting conversation to be had here about why religion develops, how it builds community, how it can create conflict. But Harris is not interested in it because it would undermine his thesis. Maybe if he started to engage with it, he would realize that he's out of his depth and can't actually talk about these things with any authority.

[Michael Hobbs]

I will say another thing that has become a huge red flag for me. And I think the new atheism thing was the first time I noticed it was people like Sam Harris who think that they can sort of rational mind or like, IQ their way into correct beliefs without engaging with the actual evidence.

[Peter]

If you're good enough at logic, you don't need to know things. You can just figure it out.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly.

[Peter]

That is the core principle by which Sam Harris lives, even if he doesn't recognize it. It's also the core principle by which the Slate Star Codex guy lives.

[Michael Hobbs]

I've always said that one of my major assets is that I'm not that smart and I'm not that good at debating, but I'm willing to read stuff. And most of the opinions that I come to are, well, I read up on this and one person is lying about this debate and one person isn't. But it doesn't take a lot of intelligence to do that.

[Peter]

That's interesting. I always thought you could benefit from being more smart.

[Michael Hobbs]

Thank you. You have said that to me in private numerous times.

[Peter]

Got em, folks. Got em. I am going to send you the opening paragraph of this book, edited for brevity. Okay? By by me.

[Michael Hobbs]

It says, the young man boards the bus as it leaves the terminal. He wears an overcoat. Beneath his overcoat, he is wearing a bomb. The bus is crowded and headed for the heart of the city. The young man smiles. With the press of a button, he destroys himself, the couple at his side, and 20 others on the bus. The young man's parents soon learn of his fate. Although saddened to have lost a son, they feel tremendous pride at his accomplishment. They know that he has gone to heaven and prepared the way for them to follow. He has also sent his victims to hell for eternity. It is a double victory. The neighbors find the event a great cause for celebration and honor the young man's parents by giving them gifts of food and money. This is all we know for certain about the young man. Why is it so easy then? So trivially easy? You could almost bet your life on it. Easy to guess the young man's religion. This man is a Scientologist. He took a stress test before boarding the bus.

[Peter]

Interesting how I described in detail a scenario specifically designed to evoke a certain image, and then that image was evoked. You ever think about that? Wow. Islam crushed with logic.

[Michael Hobbs]

A young man boards the mentions of a tweet by a female journalist. He corrects her on a trivial factual point orthogonal to her argument. Do I even need to tell you that that man is a Sam Harris podcast listener?

[Peter]

There's something very funny about just being like as a justification for racism. Being like. A man commits a crime. He has a tattoo with Spanish words. He says essay out loud. Interesting how I know his race immediately.

[Michael Hobbs]

A man hosts a podcast and is obsessed with Eric Adams. That's right. He's a heterosexual in New Jersey.

[Peter]

So he is using this to highlight two persistent themes of the book. One, religious dogma is uniquely capable of driving people to commit heinous acts. And two, Islam is a uniquely violent religion that we should be focused on.

[Michael Hobbs]

Man.

[Peter]

First, let's Talk about what Harris presents as the dangers of religious dogma. The argument is that the biggest danger posed by religious belief is that it can create people with unshakable certainty in their beliefs who cannot be reasoned with because their beliefs weren't built on a foundation of reason to begin with. At one point, he says, before you can get to the end of this paragraph, another person will probably die because of what someone else believes about God. This is, I think, how Harris is addressing what you said, which is basically, why be mean about this? Why bother people who aren't harming other people? What he's saying is that downstream of any religious belief is extremism. As soon as you accept that you can put rationality to the side, suddenly you are on a slippery slope to extremism.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, this is kind of one of the main problems with Sam Harris is that he thinks that religious belief is totally distinct from other things that people believe with no evidence. Like, millions of people read their horoscope every week. You know, people don't do that because, like, they've read a Cochrane review that says that this framework aligns with the evidence. They do it because it feels true. And that's a belief that has essentially never resulted in any extremism. And then on the other side of the equation, the most important driver of terrorism in the United States right now is misogyny and racism. Right? We have all these racially motivated mass shootings, but Sam Harris does not consider those to be an important threat because he's like, oh, well, they're not religious.

[Peter]

The rise of secular violence in this country is something that the new atheists could have never predicted. Right, because they don't have a framework for describing how violent movements originate, spread, and manifest in actual violence. All they have is a theory about religion and doctrines and how people can be impacted by doctrines. So let's talk a little bit about how shallow this is. I'm gonna send you another little bit here.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says the most monstrous crimes against humanity have invariably been inspired by unjustified belief. This is nearly a truism. Genocidal projects tend not to reflect the rationality of their perpetrators simply because there are no good reasons to kill peaceful people indiscriminately. Even where such crimes have been secular, they have required the egregious credulity of entire societies to be brought off. Consider the millions of people who were killed by Stalin and Mao. Although these tyrants paid lip service to rationality, Communism was little more than a political religion. Oh, so now he's Doing the thing where it's all religious, even when it's not religious.

[Peter]

Yeah. Very obvious bait and switch, right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

He wants to say that religion is responsible for the most monstrous crimes against humanity, but that's obviously not true. The great crimes of the 20th century were committed by secular states. So instead he's like, they were inspired by unjustified belief. And then he says that communism was sort of like religion. But then it's like, what you're actually saying now, I guess, is that, like, believing strongly in things is bad.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. Then write your book about unjustified beliefs.

[Peter]

Then it always feels like Harris and the other new atheists are spending a lot of time dancing around this pretty obvious question of how many wars are actually caused by religion.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

And this is part of an ongoing segment we have on if books could kill called we don't have to have abstract arguments about this because there's actual data. There's a volume called the Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alexander Axelrod, and they attempt to survey the major conflicts from about 8,000 BC through the time of publication, which was the time of the first edition was 2004, which is when the End of Faith came out. They catalog about 1800 wars, and they characterize about 7% as religious.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Peter]

Now obviously, you know, you can probably pick around the edges of their characterizations.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, we don't want to do a pinker here and be like, the exact body count of religion is this right?

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

The exact body count of communism is this. Like, we've talked off the show about how, like, this is just a fucking bizarre project. But also, like, yeah, if you're gonna say that religion is the source of most killing and war, then, like, yeah, we're gonna check that.

[Peter]

Yeah. When you're dealing with a number like 7%, like, fine, double it. It's still a small percentage. And then you have the fact that even religious wars could arguably be reframed as non religious. Right, right. But I think, bottom line, historically we're talking about pretty low numbers for expressly religious wars.

[Michael Hobbs]

I also feel like if you're looking at conflicts taking place up to 10,000 years ago, it's also tricky to classify those as distinctly religious or distinctly non religious just because, you know, state institutions were so different throughout most of human history. Religious institutions were extremely different throughout human history. You can look at almost any conflict and say that it's religious or say that it's not religious. The murkiness of all of these concepts kind of reveals how silly his entire project is.

[Peter]

I think so too. Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, again, the. These guys present themselves as like beacons of rationality.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right, Right.

[Peter]

So now let's talk about what Harris characterizes as the unique danger of Islam. This is where we're gonna focus a lot of the episode because A, it's a huge and common critique of his book, and B, being Islamophobic in public is the bulk of Sam Harris career. Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

At this point, and anti woke. If you listen to his podcast, he brings everything back to like, well, why won't the college students let you say it?

[Peter]

I tried. I tried to listen to a couple episodes. Just doing my diligence here and my God, dude. I know, I know that he's a very popular podcaster. He's probably more popular than us, so maybe I shouldn't talk shit.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's a reason to talk shit. Peter, we're punching up.

[Peter]

That's true.

[Michael Hobbs]

Pushing upwards.

[Peter]

Yeah, I do want to say this. He sucks at podcasting. Dude. It's so fucking dude.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God.

[Peter]

I know the only. I think I was just telling you about this, but I heard him laugh on that podcast once, and it was when his guest was going on a wildly transphobic rant.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

A man who never laughs. And then this guy was just like, trans women aren't real. And Sam Harris is like, oh, oh, you are killing me.

[Michael Hobbs]

You need to have three cheese puns per episode and then you'll be a real podcaster.

[Peter]

Get on our fucking level. So let's get into the racism, the Islamophobia. I want to avoid a defamation lawsuit, so I can't say that he's objectively racist. So what I will say is that if there is an omnipotent God, he believes that Sam Harris is racist. Endorsing violence towards Muslim people is probably Harris's most consistent output over the span of his career. And seeing as we are currently mid genocide, a genocide that Sam Harris supports possibly more than anyone, yeah, that's wise. Maybe a good time to visit some of the most common arguments about Islamic violence.

[Michael Hobbs]

So are we just skipping all the stuff where he's like, christianity is not real? Because it's just like, it bores us both.

[Peter]

There's actually not that much of it in the book.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, really?

[Peter]

Christianity is like a side discussion in the end of faith, huh? Not true of the other new atheists. They focus on Christianity a little bit more. But Harris uses Christianity almost as like a jumping off point for talking about Islam. He's much more interested in talking shit about Muslims than anything else.

[Michael Hobbs]

So it's not like he was hiding his Islamophobia under these arguments about, like, the George W. Bush administration evangelicals. It's like, it was always there, like, right up front.

[Peter]

There are almost express defenses of George Bush himself as a person in this book, and we're gonna talk about them. Okay, so Harris is arguing that Islam is a unique danger in this world because Islamic doctrine is uniquely violent. And the fact that we see terrorism disproportionately coming from Muslim groups now proves that. I will say I am not going to get into, like, here's what Islamic doctrine actually says. I don't think that there are, like, correct or incorrect interpretations of religious doctrine exactly. I think that it's very obvious that people interpret doctrines in different ways and that trying to prove that there is a correct one, to prove that all religious people either do or should view it like a certain way, is just a fundamental mistake.

[Michael Hobbs]

If there's one thing we know on this show, it's that everyone hates reading. And so any holy book of any religion, most of the adherents of the religion have not read it. So it's kind of pointless to do, like, chapter and verse.

[Peter]

Okay, but let's steel, man. Let's steel, man his argument a little bit before we get into this. I think what he is going to. What he would respond that might be true, that basically no one reads these books, that everything's up to interpretation. But the fact that the doctrine is violent in reality allows for people who do read the book to interpret it correctly as such. And so, in a sense, even if most Muslims don't end up going down this path, the doctrine is facilitating some people to do it. Right. I think that's what he would say.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's true of every religion. That, like, if you look at the text, a lot of it was written at a time when, like, retributive justice was the norm. And so this eye for an eye stuff is everywhere in organized religion.

[Peter]

Okay, well, I'm gonna send you another bit.

[Michael Hobbs]

Are we debating right now, Peter? Is it happening?

[Peter]

No, no. I'm putting a stop to this right now. I'm gonna send you another bit. It's in two parts.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay. He says, I suspect that the starting point I have chosen for this book, that of a single suicide bomber following the consequences of his religious beliefs, is bound to exasperate many readers since it ignores most of what commentators on the Middle east have said about the roots of Muslim violence. It ignores the painful history of the Israeli occupation of the west bank in Gaza. It ignores the collusion of Western powers with corrupt dictatorships. It ignores the endemic poverty and lack of economic opportunity that now plague the Arab world. But I will argue that we can ignore all of those things or treat them only to place them safely on the shelf. Because the world is filled with poor, uneducated, and exploited peoples who do not commit acts of terrorism. And the Muslim world has no shortage of educated and prosperous men and women suffering little more than their infatuation with Quranic eschatology who are eager to murder infidels. For God's sake. We are at war with Islam. Okay, so he's like, ignore all of the context. It turns out that Muslims are just more violent than every other religion.

[Peter]

And if you follow this logic, he's saying that there are poor, uneducated and exploited people who do not commit terrorist acts, and that that proves that terrorist acts aren't caused by those things.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right?

[Peter]

This is my favorite type of logical error. The error is so bad that the reasoning can be completely flipped. Like, there are Muslims who do not commit terrorism, therefore Islam cannot be the cause of terrorism. Right, Exactly. Yeah, yeah, same logic.

[Michael Hobbs]

And also, it's also, I mean, I know this is unfair to criticize the book for what he does now, but his whole thing with, like, Trump driven violence is like, well, what about the lack of economic opportunities, the men who are frustrated at all the feminists telling them that they can't be what they want to be anymore and that's why they're committing violence. Like he's making excuses for this kind of thing in other contexts.

[Peter]

The end of good faith got him. Got him good.

[Michael Hobbs]

The Mike and Peter story.

[Peter]

Harris says to attribute territorial and nationalistic motives to Osama bin Laden seems almost willfully obscuritanist, since Osama's only apparent concerns are the spread of Islam and the sanctity of Muslim holy sites. Now, first, this is dumb, because Harris is implying that we can fully understand what drives someone to do something based on what they say their motives are, which we can't reliably do. But also, Osama bin Laden wrote a whole letter about his reasons for attacking the United States. And the very first reason is, quote, because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

Again, you're seeing Harris just sort of wade into an extremely complex topic, stroll right past everyone with actual expertise, and just announce that he has figured this all out using logic.

[Michael Hobbs]

He's basically just like, look at the guy. He's a Muslim.

[Peter]

Right? So first he's Just wrong. As soon as he makes a verifiable claim, right here are Osama bin Laden's stated motives, he's wrong about it. And second, there are researchers who study this shit, right? There are researchers who actually sit down and talk to jihadi terrorists and ask them about their motivations. Scott Atran wrote a whole book on this called Talking to the Enemy, where he chronicles his interviews with accused terrorists. He spoke with detainees who had joined Al Qaeda to fight in Iraq. Almost all of them were motivated by their desire to avenge crimes against Muslims. Every single person he spoke to cited Abu Ghraib as one of their motivating factors. Atran and other researchers have found that disproportionate numbers of violent jihadis are recent converts who actually have fairly minimal knowledge of Islamic doctrine, to the point where some researchers found that many jihadis they spoke to didn't know the basics of daily prayer.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Peter]

These are not devout Muslims who are confused, convinced by doctrine to become violent. It's the other way around. They are motivated by the prospect of violence, and they are sort of operating through the vessel of Islam.

[Michael Hobbs]

And also, of course, we shouldn't take at face value what these people say their motivation is. Either everyone's motivation for doing basically anything is complicated. And so you can't just say, oh, it's the religion that is bad.

[Peter]

I am going to introduce you to a rhetorical tactic that Sam Harris loves. I am calling it the Cowards hypothetical.

[Michael Hobbs]

Ooh, I thought it was gonna be paused for three minutes before speaking, so that I've forgotten what you're actually responding to by the time you talk.

[Peter]

This is a classic Harris move. He is confronted with a really complex question that he is absolutely not capable of answering, and then he deflects by immediately redirecting the conversation to a hypothetical thought experiment. I'm gonna send you his argument. This is him addressing the issue of collateral damage by the American military.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says what we euphemistically describe as collateral damage in times of war is the direct result of limitations in the power and precision of our technology. To see that this is so, we need only imagine how any of our recent conflicts would have looked if we had possessed perfect weapons. Weapons that allowed us to either temporarily impair or kill a particular person or group at any distance without harming others or their property. What would we do with such technology? Consider the all too facile comparisons that have recently been made between George Bush and Saddam Hussein or Osama bin laden or Hitler, etc. How would George Bush have prosecuted the recent war in Iraq with perfect weapons? Would he have targeted the thousands of Iraqi civilians who were maimed or killed by our bombs? Would he have put out the eyes of little girls or torn the arms from their mothers? Whether or not you admire the man's politics or the man, there is no reason to think that he would have sanctioned the injury or death of even a single innocent person. What would Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden do with perfect weapons? What would Hitler have done? They would have used them rather differently.

[Peter]

You might think that we've committed horrible deeds, but imagine a world where magic exists. Not so horrible now, are we?

[Michael Hobbs]

This is again his weird rationality thing. He's like created this scenario, but like, this is not smart. This is not like a real argument.

[Peter]

I mean, it's a bizarre hypothetical.

[Michael Hobbs]

If I was straight, Peter, do you know what a good boyfriend I would be? Do you know how nice to women I would be? I would not be an incel. If I was straight. And if you were gay, Peter, you'd be a real dick about it.

[Peter]

What?

[Michael Hobbs]

That is true though.

[Peter]

That does feel true.

[Michael Hobbs]

I do actually feel that very strongly.

[Peter]

The issue here is that just for example, the United States government has thousands of times over pulled the trigger on bombs knowing that civilians would die. That is a moral choice. You can defend that moral choice or you can just pivot to a hypothetical situation that dodges the issue. Right? The cowards hypothetical. I believe that this will, this will catch on.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also, it's like you're looking at two scenarios in which the leaders of countries have killed people and you're like, well one of them doesn't count because he would behave differently in a different world. And one of them is like even worse cuz he'd behave even worse in a different world.

[Peter]

We'll circle back to this in a second. I just wanted to give another example of him doing this to prove that this is not the only time. This is from his debate with Scott Atran where Attran had pointed to some data and information showing why he doesn't think that Islamic doctrine is driving terrorism. So for example, he talks about how the history of suicide bombing is largely secular and how secular and Christian groups in Palestine have also engaged in terrorism. For example, here is Sam responding to that.

[Michael Hobbs]

Are we gonna watch a clip?

[Peter]

Watching a clip.

[D]

That troubles me because this is what I think. If the Quran was exactly the way it is, but it contained a single extra line and that line read, if you see a red haired woman on Your doorstep at sunset. Cut her head off. I can tell you what kind of world we would live in. We would live in a world where red haired women would be found murdered in the Muslim world.

[Michael Hobbs]

Boom.

[D]

And we would also live in a world in which apologists for Islam would say, would look at that behavior and say, that has nothing to do with Islam. There was a news story yesterday about a Mormon man who killed his wife and she had red hair. Many of those women who were found in the. Whose heads were found in the bag in Baghdad were not actually redheads, but some were strawberry blonde. We would hear about women who were shot and not decapitated. And decapitation is the only thing that a sanctuary mentioned in the Quran. I mean, this is the kind of gymnastics we would be faced with.

[Peter]

Oh, boy.

[Michael Hobbs]

You can tell on Scott's face that he's just like, can you believe this shit? It literally is not an argument.

[Peter]

Scott Atrian is. You can't, of course you can't hear it, but he is just like, tapping his fingers in like a really annoyed way, like, get me the fuck out of here.

[Michael Hobbs]

But this is also like, I think Sam Harris thinks this is like a good argument. I think he absolutely thinks. He's like, facts and logic.

[Peter]

Here's the thing about Sam Harris. If he were to read a book telling him to go skeet shooting with puppies, I can tell you what kind of world we would live in. We would live in a world where Sam Harris skeet shooted puppies all day long.

[Michael Hobbs]

And the apologists for Sam Harris, the Sam Harris subreddit, would love it.

[Peter]

I want to circle back to his whole perfect weapon thing. What would we do with the perfect weapon? What would Osama bin Laden do? One issue with that is that collateral damage isn't the only type of war crime that Western militaries have committed.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

There are also situations where Western militaries just engage in murder. An obvious famous example, the My Lai massacre, where American troops in Vietnam tortured and murdered about 500 villagers. Sam Harris is smart enough to recognize that this is bad for his argument. And so he tries to respond to that counter argument.

[Michael Hobbs]

I want to hear how it doesn't count. I want to hear how it doesn't count.

[Peter]

I'm sending it to you.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says, this is about as bad as human beings are capable of behaving. But what distinguishes us from many of our enemies is that this indiscriminate violence appalls us. The massacre at My Lai is remembered as a signature moment of shame for the American Military. Even at the time, US soldiers were dumbstruck with horror by the behavior of their comrades. One helicopter pilot who arrived on the scene ordered his subordinates to use their machine guns against their own troops if they would not stop killing villagers. As a culture, we have clearly outgrown our tolerance for the deliberate torture and murder of innocents. We would do well to realize that much of the world has not.

[Peter]

You might argue that I am also a murderer, but I want to be clear that the fact that I am a murderer makes me very sad. And that's the difference between me and you, buddy.

[Michael Hobbs]

The thing is, I do actually think that on some level, this probably does make a difference, right? Like, there's institutional safeguards against this kind of thing.

[Peter]

Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

But he's also not doing the empirics to say, well, this is actually what happened there. That, like, the My Lai massacre was such an outlier and the people who did it were so thoroughly condemned and punished that we really can sort of write it off as a fluke event.

[Peter]

This is just. This is one example of Harris not knowing shit about history. Current affairs wrote about this passage. First of all, the military tried to keep all of this quiet, okay? But once the story broke, the helicopter pilot who Sam references, who tried to restrain the other soldiers during the My Lai massacre, was ostracized. He received death threats from all over the country when the story became public. The perpetrators, on the other hand, received outpourings of support. There were marches in support of Lieutenant William Calley, who ordered the massacre. Politicians across the country spoke out in support of him, not just right wingers. Jimmy Carter created a state holiday in Georgia to celebrate him.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God.

[Peter]

The entire ordeal resulted in one conviction of Calley himself. None of his subordinates who followed his orders were convicted. The public outcry in support of Callie was so significant that Nixon had him removed from prison and put under house arrest. He served a few years, primarily under house arrest, and then was paroled.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, wait. Can I do. Can I. Can I channel Sam Harris here?

[Peter]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay. Okay. Long pause, long pause. But still. But still America. But still.

[Peter]

Look, I mean, this is. Just say what you want about it, this is not the output of a society that strongly condemns such actions. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Meanwhile, there's also numerous examples in America of Muslim communities actually reporting people who are radicalizing to the authorities.

[Peter]

Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

On the other side of the equation, he's like, well, Muslims don't care about terrorism, and that's also not fucking true.

[Peter]

Right? And that, by the way, is a Claim that he expressly makes where he's like, muslims, don't speak out about this. And it's just like, what are you talking about?

[Michael Hobbs]

And then if you're like, well, what about this Muslim that spoke out? He's like, ah. But still, like, it's not. It's not a serious argument.

[Peter]

His arguments about the dangers of Islam are mostly just hypotheticals and anecdotes. He does occasionally cite some polling. He discusses the Pew what the World thinks in 2002 poll, which surveyed over 38,000 people. There was one question that they asked only of Muslims, quote, some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam? Sometimes justified, rarely justified, never justified. So that is the question asked by Pew. And I'm going to send you a chart of the country by country results.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, so Lebanon, 73%, yes. Ivory Coast, 56%. Yes. Nigeria, 47%. Yes. Jordan, 43%. Yes. And Uzbekistan as the lowest. Isn't this actually evidence of, like, how diverse the Muslim world is that you get this vast range of answers?

[Peter]

Harris says these are hideous numbers. And I think that he's right in the general sense that these results are disconcerting. But what he's trying to show is that Islam is driving terrorism and sympathy for terrorism. And what you clocked immediately is that there's a massive gap between different Muslim countries here. Uzbekistan is at the bottom of this chart with only 7% of people saying that suicide bombing in defense of Islam is justifiable. You compare that with Lebanon above 70% saying it's just justifiable.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

You're talking about a massive gap which seems to suggest that this is driven by geopolitics. Right. The highest support for suicide attacks is Lebanon. What's happening in that region in 2002 is the second intifada, right. Where there are suicide attacks being used against Israel, Lebanon's biggest geopolitical enemy.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, the next two highest countries are Ivory coast and Nigeria.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

So it's just kind of an interesting mix.

[Peter]

When Sam Harris replicates this chart in his book, he leaves out Uzbekistan. I don't really know why.

[Michael Hobbs]

Whites, whites, whites.

[Peter]

It's baffling.

[Michael Hobbs]

I like, again, we're taking the long way to the conclusion that, like, a religion of 1.3 billion people is, like, pretty diverse. It's like, okay, breaking news.

[Peter]

So that question was only asked of Muslims, of course. In 2011, Gallup did a global survey titled Views on Violence, where they asked people their thoughts about violence targeting civilians, either where it's the military doing the targeting, or individuals. And what they found was that acceptance for targeting civilians was not linked to religion, not linked to religiousness. People who said that religion is an important part of their daily lives are on average, about as likely to support attacks on civilians as those who don't, which doesn't speak to the motivations of terrorists directly. But it is evidence that general religiosity is not correlated with support for extremist violence. On top of that, people in Muslim countries were less likely to think that attacks on civilians were justifiable. What's more, the people who are most likely to believe that the military targeting and killing civilians is justifiable are. Drumroll, please. Americans.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right?

[Peter]

49% of Americans think that the military intentionally killing civilians is at least sometimes justified. I also wanna point out Americans in the survey more likely than people in Muslim countries to say that civilian attacks on other civilians can be justified. So even when we're talking about individual attacks, things that look more like terrorism, Americans more supportive than people in Muslim countries.

[Michael Hobbs]

That is actually fucked up.

[Peter]

I think one interpretation of this is just that, like, American morality is fucked and it's worse than other countries. Another way to look at it is that Americans see this stuff and they, for geopolitical reasons, are not picturing themselves being attacked.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

Whereas people in other countries are more likely to be like, oh, that's about me. That's about my family getting attacked. Right, right.

[Michael Hobbs]

We're thinking, like, Pakistani drone strike type stuff.

[Peter]

Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

That's what Americans would have been thinking.

[Peter]

Like, I'm not gonna. I'm not trying to be like, aha, Americans. We are the actual worst ones. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly.

[Peter]

This is the output of circumstance in either case. And the bottom line to me is that when you try to use actual data to analyze Harris's thesis here that Islam is more inherently dangerous. Not so strong. Yeah, not so good.

[Michael Hobbs]

I think what it points to is how facile his argument is. Right? Because you could write a whole book about how Americans are uniquely violent and Americans shouldn't get vegan visas to visit other countries because, like, look how much gun violence they have and look how much they support terrorism, et cetera. Those things are a product of, like, various cultural and political historical factors. It would be really silly to say that, like, Americans are just inherently more violent than other groups because, yeah, I think this whole thing of, like, saying this group sucks because of this poll that we took, like public polling is notoriously very bad. And what people report, their beliefs are very different than what they are in reality. So kind of all of this stuff is pretty facile. But because Sam Harris is using it as evidence, you can marshal the same kind of evidence to smear almost any group by just like cherry picking out statistics in public polls.

[Peter]

I want to do a case study. Let's talk about airport security. Michael. After the book was published, Harris became an advocate for what was basically just like neoconservative foreign policy.

[Michael Hobbs]

Nice.

[Peter]

He wrote a lengthy defense of the use of torture and interrogations that stirred up a ton of controversy. A few years later, he wrote a similar post titled In Defense of Profiling, where he makes the argument that airport security in particular should engage in profiling. He says, quote, we should profile Muslims or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.

[Michael Hobbs]

He or she could conceivably be Muslim. I love that.

[Peter]

The basic argument he makes is the same as every conservative after 9 11. Right. We know that people most likely to be terrorists are Muslim. Makes sense to just target Muslims for additional security screening rather than waste time screening every elderly woman who we think is. Who we know is extremely unlikely to commit terrorism. And what is to blame for the lack of profiling in our current system? He says this.

[Michael Hobbs]

I worry that political correctness can open up another pathway through security, allowing terrorists to hide in plain sight. If it ever became clear that we had a policy of not profiling designed to assure everyone that we were non racist and culturally sensitive terrorists could safely assume that the TSA wouldn't oblige a Muslim woman to lift her veil if she didn't want to.

[Peter]

He ends up getting a response from Bruce Schneier, a security expert who has written about profiling. And then the two have a lengthy email exchange which they publish.

[Michael Hobbs]

I love that every single one of these is like, he says some shit and then someone who actually knows about the topic, like, weighs in. And then a quote, unquote debate ensues between someone who knows things and someone who doesn't know things.

[Peter]

This is also a great example and I think the most egregious example of something that has happened multiple times, which is Sam Harris having an email debate with someone getting his shit kicked in.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

But not realizing it and publishing it. I think that a lot of people who oppose profiling at the Airport, for example, basically argue that profiling discriminates against Muslims and therefore it erodes social trust, it is unfair to innocent Muslims, et cetera. Right. What Schneier says is you can put that aside and profiling is still not effective. The way he describes it is that all security decisions are a cost benefit decision. If you use profiling, in some ways you make the system more efficient, but you actually create other costs that end up outweighing the benefit. I'm going to send you a little bit.

[Michael Hobbs]

To implement this system, you're going to have to make this profile explicit. You're going to need a precise definition for Muslim, and it needs to be a definition that can be taught to the TSA screeners written down in the Standard Operating Procedures Manual found at every TSA checkpoint. I believe that once you start trying to specify your profile exactly, it will either encompass so many people as to be useless or leave out so many people as to be dangerous. That is, I can't figure out how to get your error rate down. So basically, I have thought about this for more than 90 seconds and here's what I actually think.

[Peter]

Yeah. So in lay terms, what this means is that it's easy to say that we should screen Muslims more, but you can't literally do that. You don't know who is actually a Muslim. All you can do is screen for people who look Muslim to you, which mostly just ends up meaning people who were either dressed in Muslim garb or just look Arab.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

Which 1 does not include all Muslims and 2 can be easily gamed by terrorists. Right. It's very well known that terrorist organizations adjust to profiles. So Schneier pointed out that, for example, in 2004, Chechen rebels conducted suicide bombings of two Russian airliners and the bombers were women. Why were they women? Because they realized that men were getting more aggressive screening.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

Schneier's broad argument is that even though it can feel counterintuitive, simple randomized security screenings are actually more efficient and therefore better at catching terrorists because they are easily implemented and they cannot be gamed. He gives a really interesting example of how counterintuitive security measures can be. It's a frequent complaint from pilots that they have to go through security screening. That's because it's sort of absurd. Right. It doesn't matter whether a pilot has a bomb. He can literally crash the plane when he wants to. So it's inefficient to screen pilots. Right. That is sort of a fact in a vacuum. So let's say you decide not to. How do you do that? You can't screen for wearing a pilot's uniform because anyone can buy one of those. You'd have to give pilots a special id, which then you have to manufacture. And once you do, now you have to worry about them being forged or stolen. You have to develop procedures that account for that. And then you have to worry about someone slipping a bomb onto a pilot's person, for example. By the time you're done implementing this idea and handling all these variables, it would have just been more efficient to screen pilots like they're anyone else. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

I actually learned something in this episode, Peter. I can't believe it. The Sam Harris episode.

[Peter]

There's also an interesting case that Schneier references. In the late 90s, the FAA, the Aviation Administration, implemented a system called CAPS, Computer Assisted Passenger Screening. Basically, it analyzed passenger data, it created a risk profile, and that helped determine whether additional screening would be effective. In 2002, some programmers put together an algorithm that showed how the system could be easily gamed by terrorists. Essentially, terrorists could probe the system by sending operatives on test flights. You see who gets flagged, and then you wait to find people who are not flagged. And once you've identified those people, you use them as your operatives, because people who are not flagged by the system are unlikely to be flagged in the future. The algorithm they made basically showed that this very simple exploit made the system less effective than random screenings.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is Sam Harris having, like, Elon Musk disease. He's like, there's this thing that kind of seems unintuitive or illogical to me. And, like, I can fix it with 10 seconds of my brain. And then people who actually know why the system was designed that way, like, slowly explain to him why it may look strange, but it's actually relatively sophisticated and it's being done for a reason. And then he just rejects it, like a transplant.

[Peter]

Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Because, like, how does Sam Harris respond to this?

[Peter]

Well, he doesn't. Because over the course of this debate, Sam never actually absorbs this point. And he has not absorbed it to this day. He has never absorbed the point that the reason you use a randomized system isn't because everyone is equally likely to commit an act of terrorism. It's because systems that profile create new vulnerabilities that aren't worth the trade off. He wrote a follow up to this debate where he said, my position on profiling is very simple. We should admit that we know what we are looking for, suicidal terrorists. And that certain people Obviously require less scrutiny than others. We should scan everyone's luggage, of course, because bombs can be placed there without a person's knowledge. But given scarce resources, we can't afford to waste our time and attention pretending to think that every traveler is equally likely to be affiliated with Al Qaeda.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right? So. But still. But still, we need to look at the Muslims. He's like, this is why it won't work. But we need to look at the Muslims.

[Peter]

That's what's so baffling, is that's not the assumption that Schneier is making. He's not saying that everyone is equally likely to be a terrorist. He's saying that if you try to profile, it is inefficient. That's what he's saying.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, like, not to get too much on my Michael shit, but it's wild to me how these guys seem to conceive of intelligence exclusively as your own ability to express yourself in a way that sounds smart and never in your ability to listen.

[Peter]

I will say this. I believe that Sam Harris has been less susceptible to audience capture than some of his intellectual dark web peers because of his disdain for the of other people. It's genuinely incredible how little Harris seems to process the argument that his opponent is making here because he is obsessed with the idea that his opponents are all just too PC. Yeah, Bruce Schneier is expressly being like, I don't care about political correctness. That's not what my argument is based off of. But Sam Harris is like, you liberal pussy. You must admit that Muslims are bad. That's what he really. He wants everyone to just be like, all right, Muslims are bad, Sam.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also. I mean, this is such a fucking obvious point to make. But it's like, nowadays, white supremacy is the most common ideology behind acts of terrorism.

[Peter]

Don't you say it. Don't you say it.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's like, it's so fucking obvious to point this kind of stuff out. But it's like, Sam Harris fits the fucking profile. And yet I assume he's not promoting this.

[Peter]

Well, I have another rhetorical trick that Sam loves and that I have named, even though it probably already has a name.

[Michael Hobbs]

You want a legacy of this podcast. You want to like, you want to make fetch happen in various places.

[Peter]

If I give enough things little names, one of them will catch on and they'll be like, Peter from if Books Could Kill.

[Michael Hobbs]

Thought of this, you get a Wikipedia entry.

[Peter]

Finally, one day the president will say.

[Michael Hobbs]

My name, whereas all I'm ever going to be remembered for is mispronouncing denouement.

[Peter]

Yeah, that's right. Which, by the way, we got a lot of complaints about that. People weren't even complaining about you anymore. They were just like, why didn't Peter say anything?

[Michael Hobbs]

I love this.

[Peter]

Like, it's my. This is my responsibility.

[Michael Hobbs]

You're trying to coin phrases. I'm just trying to make you look.

[Peter]

What people don't know is that every time there's a foreign word, I have to ask you how to pronounce it. If I said, like denouement, I feel like you'd be like, that's actually the French Canadian way.

[Michael Hobbs]

Even you just saying it just then gave me hives.

[Peter]

Absolutely not.

[Michael Hobbs]

Never on this podcast.

[Peter]

That's interesting, because there are many things that I've heard you insist I must say in the original German. Fuck off.

[Michael Hobbs]

Fuck you.

[Peter]

Okay, so I am calling this the provocateur's caveat. This is where you say something that is designed to provoke controversy, but you add the thinnest, most obviously bullshit caveat in the world that just allows you to retreat when attacked. But then also you get to counterattack your detractors for being dishonest.

[Michael Hobbs]

Now, I'm not saying the thing that.

[Peter]

I'm obviously saying in defense of his. In defensive profiling piece, he said, what my critics always neglect to say is that in the article in which that sentence appears, I explicitly include white middle aged men like me in the profile twice. Now I'm going to send you the quotes that he's referring to and you can tell me whether or not it feels like he's actually including himself in the profile.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay. Although I don't think I look like a jihadi or like a man pretending not to be one, I do not mean to suggest that a person like me should be exempt from scrutiny. And again, I wouldn't put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bullseye. What does that mean, exempt from scrutiny?

[Peter]

Right. What he said just now was, I explicitly include white middle aged men like me in the profile twice. And then this is what he's referring to. That's not what he's saying.

[Michael Hobbs]

And also a system that screened every single middle aged white man non functional. So what you're suggesting is just screening essentially everybody and again, creating this huge vulnerability that all you have to do is give your bomb to somebody who's not a middle aged man. Man.

[Peter]

The entire purpose of putting these little things into this piece is so that when someone's like, you want to discriminate against Muslims, he's Like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How dare you say that?

[Peter]

He loves to just put the thinnest little caveat in, like an otherwise wildly offensive take. And then when he gets criticism, he points to it and he's like, you are being dishonest. He can turn the argument around. Probably the most egregious version of this is his passage from the book about Muslims having nuclear weapons underneath their overcoats.

[Michael Hobbs]

Like in True Lions.

[Peter]

I'm gonna send this to you.

[Michael Hobbs]

It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There's little possibility of our having a Cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long range nuclear weapons. A Cold War requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century per child on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime which grows dewy eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is. And so we will be unable to rely on targeted conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day. But it may be the only course of action available to us given what Islamists believe. Oh, this is the. This is the My Lai massacre thing again. He's like, look, we did nuke an entire region of the planet, but we felt very bad about it afterwards.

[Peter]

We literally are so sad about this. I can't believe how sad about this I am, but we might have to kill 10 million.

[Michael Hobbs]

We went to the greeting card store, we bought an I'm sorry little card. We sent it to the nuclear blast site that we created.

[Peter]

So a bunch of people responded to this, shocked and outraged. He calls out Chris Hedges, who said that Harris was calling for a nuclear first strike. And Harris basically says, no, no, no, no. I wasn't saying we should conduct a nuclear first strike. I was saying that hypothetically, if this situation arose, it would be logical. And he accuses his crit dishonest on this point. So he's sort of correct in that he caught his critics being a little bit sloppy. He didn't advocate for a nuclear first Strike right now.

[Michael Hobbs]

He said, we might need to do.

[Peter]

But we might have to, given certain developments in the future.

[Michael Hobbs]

And the fact that these people love death so much.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

That we just have to kill them all because we can't have a conventional mutually assured destruction because they like dying so much. So it's actually worse. Sam, what you're actually.

[Peter]

This is what he loves to do. He puts out an argument with the thinnest little caveat. Someone ignores the caveat because the caveat is sort of not the point. They're sort of mentally skipping over it and being like, you're talking about nuclear first strikes killing tens of millions of people. And then he's like, as you can see, my critics are wildly dishonest. And it's like, okay, but the fundamental concern about the nuclear first strike is what you should be addressing here.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

So in his defense of himself, he says, of course, not every Muslim regime would fit this description. And then says, he wasn't talking about, like, Pakistan and Iran. He was talking about the Taliban and isis, for example. But that's not what he said in the book. He was referring to all Muslim regimes.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also a weird distinction because it's like saying, we're not gonna bomb Idaho. We're gonna bomb the kkk. An action that would entail dropping a bunch of bombs on Idaho.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

Either way, you're dropping bombs on a bunch of innocent people.

[Peter]

This is also a little bit of Coward's hypothetical. He's just like, if they got nukes, they would use them on us immediately because they are not afraid of death, and they love murder.

[Michael Hobbs]

It is a little weird to be like, these people are too cavalier about killing, so we have to kill them.

[Peter]

If you think what I'm doing is bad, wait until you see the thing that I am pretending they were gonna do.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's the logic behind most genocides. They want to do it to us, so we have to do it to them first.

[Peter]

His primary contribution to this discourse is the idea that Islamophobia isn't real as a concept. It's just a weapon used by apologists to deflect criticism of Islam. He wrote a piece fairly recently that sort of summarized his feelings on this, titled, what is Islamophobia? Where he said this, and I'm condensing a bunch here, but I'll send it to you.

[Michael Hobbs]

He says, what is Islamophobia? There's no question that the term has been designed to confuse people. Its purpose is to conflate any criticism of Islam, which is a Doctrine of religious beliefs with bigotry against Muslims as people. Honestly criticizing the doctrine of Islam does not entail bigotry against Arabs or any other group of people. It is not an expression of hatred to notice that specific Islamic ideas, in particular beliefs about martyrdom and jihad and blasphem and apostasy inspire terrible acts of violence. And it's not an expression of phobia, I.e. irrational fear, to notice that violent religious fanatics don't make good neighbors. I mean, fine, sure, may.

[Peter]

No, absolutely, you should be able to criticize religious doctrines without being considered a bigot. Except, as we just discussed, Sam Harris openly advocates for profiling people who, quote, look Muslim.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

Which is discrimination against Muslims in the strictest, most literal sense.

[Michael Hobbs]

And he's also just saying that it's, like, qualitatively, just like a worse religion than other world religions. Like, it's uniquely violent and pernicious.

[Peter]

That's the thing is how many times. So I think there's two components to this. One, Sam Harris actively lobbies for discrimination against Muslims. Right? So, like, if that's not Islamophobia, if that's not bigotry against Muslims, then what could possibly be? Yeah, but then also. So there's a degree to which it's like, okay, you should be allowed to criticize a doctrine, but if you spend 20 years calling that doctrine, like, psychotic and bloodthirsty, am I allowed to draw no inference? Is that, like. Right. And just to be clear, I have barely grazed upon Sam Harris's Islamophobic statements in 2006. He said, quote, given current birth rates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25 years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah.

[Peter]

God. So just to be clear, it's 2024, and France's Muslim population is like, 9% of the country. So. No, when Harris in, like, 2012 wrote about this, it was very obvious at that point that he was going to be wrong. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

And all he said was, you know, I can't find what my source was for that. But obviously that source was incorre. No acknowledgement of the fact that he didn't check the veracity of the source. Right. Now, this is the kind of thing that racists pretend is not racist. Right. All I'm doing is looking at birth rates. You're doing great replacement theory. Right. You're fostering fear about a certain race becoming a majority, and you're doing it using shitty statistics that any. Any undergrad in stats would know was incorrect.

[Michael Hobbs]

And any historian would know has been said about every immigrant group through time. It's like, southern Italians are gonna outbreed white Americans, and it never fucking happens, because as living standards go up, birth rates go down.

[Peter]

The only way that that's not racist is if your definition of racism is that you, like, have to say out loud, these people are inferior in X, Y, and Z ways. And that's a little awkward for Sam, too, because he's also a big promoter of race and iq. Shit. Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

A big fan of Charles Murray. So he does say that some races are inferior to others, like, you know, on a genetic basis. So that's not racism. This isn't racism. Saying that we should profile Muslims at airports isn't racism. I am genuinely curious about what he thinks racism is. Exactly.

[Michael Hobbs]

I will say it's a little weird, as a defense against a charge of bias, to say, no, no, no, I'm not Islamophobic. I simply believe that this religion is bad. And I've been saying this for two decades so that I could make the lives of adherents to this religion worse.

[Peter]

Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

How dare you?

[Peter]

I couldn't even get into his discussions about Gaza lately. But just to give anyone who's interested a taste, he literally said that Hamas is worse than the Nazis. And again, why did he say that? Because doctrinally, they are worse. In his mind, it's never the things you do in the world.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right, Right.

[Peter]

It's just the doctrine. And anytime you step outside of the theoretical world, he looks like a dumb asshole.

[Michael Hobbs]

I love that. This is just like the dunk on Sam Harris episode. It's not really about the book. It's just like, this guy fucking sucks.

[Peter]

Here's the thing. Here's the thing about podcasting and Sam, listen up. When a book is this boring and abstract and theoretical, you have to step outside the book.

[Michael Hobbs]

Do you have a sense of, like, what was actually driving him? Like, do you have, like, an origin story of, like, why does he hate Muslims so much?

[Peter]

If you watch every episode of Golden Girls.