AS224: Tommentary

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 224, and I am your host, Thomas Smith. It's a pleasure to have you with me today. I've had, recently, a very good interview with Ishmael from Angry Black Rant. I've got another fantastic one coming up I'm excited to tell you about. I'll tell you it at the end of the show. But I figure now is a good time to do some, uh, opinionating. So, uh... Lacking a better name for it, let's do some tomentarying.

0:01:07 Thomas: Lots of people have been requesting topics lately, and I really appreciate that, so feel free to get in contact with me if there's a topic you'd really like me to cover, uh, that being said, of course, there's no guarantee I actually will, who knows if it's gonna be interesting, or, or if, indeed, I'll have something good to say on it, but a lot of people asked me whether or not I was going to do commentary on Sam Harris's podcast with Omar Aziz. Now, I'm not going to do a full breakdown of a three and a half to four hour podcast and everything with it. And I just did the one with Maryam Namazie. But I did want to at least address it because it was a big deal. And I've been thinking about it. And I keep thinking, I try to monitor the topics I'm doing. I don't want to dwell on any one thing too much.

0:01:54 Thomas: And Sam Harris does keep coming up. And then I realized, well, he's the one. He's really an atheist leader who's at least trying to have different conversations, and I think there's a reason he's in the spotlight, and I think it's deserved to a large extent, even if I don't always agree with him. I at least think he's trying to do interesting work. He's not an echo chamber. I don't feel as though I'm constantly going to be reporting on the same thing. So there's the reason he's getting a lot of coverage, at least on my podcast, because there's interesting ideas and there's interesting things to talk about surrounding him. And I honestly can't say the same for, I mean, Richard Dawkins is pretty quiet these days.

0:02:41 Thomas: If I think of the other horse people, you know, Dennett is pretty quiet these days, they're getting older, and Sam Harris is still pretty young. So that could have a lot to do with it. But I don't know. I was just thinking about that. And I do, whatever you think about Sam Harris, I, I wonder if you'd agree that he's at least doing a good job of warranting keeping himself in the atheism spotlight because he's got all kinds of different guests on talking about different stuff, and I like it. So with that said, let's talk about this Omar Aziz stuff a little bit. I'll give a little bit of background for anyone who is not familiar with the situation. Sam Harris has a podcast, as you probably know, and he has been trying to have conversations with people with whom he disagrees. We saw the Maryam Namazie conversation, we saw he tried to have an email exchange with Noam Chomsky that I can't remember if I talked about or not, but that was fascinating.

0:03:35 Thomas: He wanted to set up a longer conversation, but it didn't work, so, and then he just recently, not talking about Omer, he recently had a conversation with someone who he's had disagreements with, and it actually turned out to be really interesting, quite fruitful, so I encourage you to check that one out.

That was Jonathan Haidt, but, we did hear, in, in a lot of these, I don't know, the last, like, four podcasts, Sam Harris was saying, hey, I, first, he said, I'm try, I am going to record a talk with Omar Aziz, someone who wrote a really, really, damning, or, I guess, just, critical review of his book, with Majid Nawaz, and Sam wanted to have him on to, you know, try to bridge the gap there, and so, of course, we first heard, oh, I'm going to do it, and then, then, just kind of silence, and, then Sam announced he wouldn't be releasing it, and this came, it was interesting timing because he actually didn't want to release the Maryam Namazie podcast either, but since he didn't wanna not release two in a row, so it's interesting that that's kind of one of the reasons he did end up releasing that one.

Personally, this podcast with Omar Aziz that he did ended up releasing because of pressure by Omar Aziz and his listeners, because Omar made a big fuss about this, that he was being you censored and he accused Sam Harris of having said a bunch of things in the recording that were, you know, bordered on bloodlust and all this stuff. He made a bunch of claims about the recording to the extent where Sam had to just release it.

0:05:09 Thomas: He said, fine, I, it's, you know, he didn't release it because it was boring, he said. And then he said, well, since there's been so much talk about it and Omer has made such a fuss about it, it is now no longer boring, so I'll release it, and he did. And actually, in some ways, it was a better discussion than the one with Maryam Namazie. I saw the one mit Miriam as not even coming close to ever doing anything like having a discussion, whereas this one, there was eventually some back and forth. It just didn't really go how Sam wanted it to go. And it didn't, really, Omer never conceded points that Sam thought he should. So I could see why he was frustrated. But I actually found it kind of interesting to listen to, more so than Maryam Namazie.

0:05:55 Thomas: So, there's been a bit of a back-and-forth, so, they had the podcast, Sam Harris said he wasn't gonna air it, and then, Omer wrote a, another salon piece, so he's, he's up to, like, three or four salon pieces about Sam Harris and this whole thing, as of now, but anyway, his second one was, my secret debate with Sam Harris, reviewing four-hour dialogue on Islam, racism, and free speech, hypocrisy, and accuses him of all kinds of stuff. One thing that's worth noticing is, or noting rather, is Sam wanted Omer to read his actual review, line for line, and that would be the basis for the podcast, and Sam would respond. Now, it is kind of a weird suggestion, and Omer wrote incredibly disparagingly about this suggestion, saying there was some some creepy, like, you know, way of putting him, like an inquisition or something and all that.

0:06:49 Thomas: But Sam said, no, this is what I want to do because you wrote all kinds of stuff that you shouldn't be held accountable for. And there's some room there either way. I can kind of see how it's a weird approach to a podcast, but I can also see Sam's point there because when you read the original review that Omer wrote, one thing that's so frustrating about it and so frustrating about Salon, is that it's so, so hyperbolic in how critical of Sam it is.

Now, you can disagree with Sam on whatever you want, I'm not like a, you know, fervent defender of everything he says, but the language it uses, the language that Omar used to describe Sam and his views and his disagreements, is stuff that I don't, I wouldn't even use for Omar, I mean, I don't even use for anybody really that I disagree with, and that's just I'm just talking about myself, talking on my podcast, never mind being on a website like Salon that has a pretty good leadership and is trying to be somewhat journalistic. The bar is incredibly low for Salon, and I could see that as a reason why Sam would want to have Omer actually read what he wrote, because it's, it's incredibly insulting, um, constantly.

But I should also note that Sam said, look, you can say, in addition, whatever you want, but I just want to make sure you also say your entire piece. So, he wasn't trying to censor him, you know, this is Sam's claim that he wasn't trying to censor him, he would let him elaborate or make whatever points he want, wanted, they would just start on this basis.

0:08:27 Thomas: As it turned out, they didn't get through much of it, and maybe that was why this was a bad idea, on Sam's part, to even do that, maybe Sam should have just pulled quotes that he wanted to talk about, because it didn't really make sense, I mean, they got through so little of it, some part of that could be on Omer, Omer had a habit of wanting to change the subject at every chance he got, and move on to other issues, but it's really gonna be impossible to do any sort of summary of a three-and-a-half to four-hour podcast, I'm not going to try to do that. I will say for anyone who listened to it, I think one thing that is interesting is that Omer must have written his critique of the recording thinking Sam was never going to release it, because he said stuff that I just, boy, I really have a different version in my mind.

0:09:15 Thomas: Now, people, let me know who listened to the podcast. Check out this little paragraph. "For at least 30 minutes, Harris went on and on about the moral and intellectual failings of individuals and organizations he considered to be left-wing accomplices to jihadists, digressing boringly into petty feuds with people who were apparently so dumb they could not understand the threat posed by Islamist terrorism and so smart they could permanently get under his skin."

0:09:53 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know what he's even talking about there. It's very hard to, I'm racking my mind. I mean, I just, that seems like such an inaccurate description of what happened.

So, here's the thing, I find this Omar Aziz to be incredibly unpleasant to read, because I, I think he, I, I think he takes every opportunity to take cheap little shots at Sam and others and, and give the impression that, that he knows everything and that Sam knows nothing and all that, and there's, there's a big arrogance there, an arrogance that I don't think, uh, I, I don't think I like in anyone, I mean, the only person maybe who I could think of who is that arrogant about it who I liked was Christopher Hitchens, uh but he had a number of other ways that, uh that he, And I think that's really compensated for that arrogance, and, and there were times when I thought he was too arrogant, and I, I didn't, really like, the tone he took, but this guy, is, all the arrogance with not the same experience, not the, same intellectual capabilities, and it comes across, this is, this, is my opinion, he, he's, he is very frustrating for that reason, now, he may have some interesting points, and they're, they're some stuff that I would have liked, to hear debated, but, it, I really think ego got in the way of this one. I would put that about 70-30 on the part of Omer because Omer was the one who launched the first attack with this.

Sure, you could also make the argument that Sam, you know, his ego was preventing him from engaging to a certain extent. But Omer, if you look at the review, I encourage you, well, I mean, I kind of encourage you to read Omer's original review of Sam's book. He really, really launched personal attacks and arrogance and all this stuff that I don't really see as being warranted.

0:11:44 Thomas: Sure, go ahead and disagree with Sam all you want. But the way in which he did it is a really doomed conversation from the get-go. Now, of course, I suppose Omer never dreamed that he would actually talk to Sam, but I don't know, maybe we should encourage writing critiques as though you might actually, you know, as though the person might actually read it. I think that Omer writes, from what I've read of these three or four writings that Ome has done for Salon about this whole business, he really writes it as though no one is ever going to hold him accountable for anything he says. I mean, I tend to speak on my show anticipating criticism I might get. Some people think I do that too much. I'll leave that to you. But I think it's at least smart to do it a certain amount.

0:12:31 Thomas: Because if I wanted to, I could cherry pick, I could unload on people. And it's pretty easy because I'm controlling the medium. You know, I can just ignore the negative comments I get, and then anyone who doesn't really do a lot of research or just kind of looks into these issues just on a surface level is going to have a hard time disagreeing with me if I present it with a certain amount of arrogance and passion and make it nice and flowery, and maybe I'm not even capable of doing this, I don't know. It's certainly Omer's technique. He is really, he writes as though Sam would never respond to him. And you can kind of tell that that shines through a little bit, I think. Here's what I'd say is the biggest takeaway for me, Sam got very hung up on Omer's criticizing of Sam and Majid's motives, and I think this was Sam's logic on this.

0:13:29 Thomas: Omer accused Sam and Majid of writing this book and being Islamophobic as like a get-rich-quick scheme. In Omer's mind, this is a surefire way to make money. This is how he starts his whole criticism. It's incredibly dismissive of the entire project that Sam and Majid undertook. And it says it's all due to just, you know, step one, write a reform, quote unquote, Islamic reform book and cash in on, you you know, just all this stuff like that. And Sam really keyed in on this, even though the rest of the essay, most of it is about other stuff. Now, I could imagine if someone impugned my motives in that way, I would want to get that out of the way.

0:14:16 Thomas: But there was a lot of stuff later on in the review that might have been worth talking about. And if Omer had just skipped the part where you you talk about the, you know, how they're Islamophobic and they're just motivated by all the millions they can make from conservative think tanks and all this stuff, that stuff I just think is ridiculous because honestly, like, let's just take a look at it.

How, how big of a book do Do you think this was Sam has plenty of other projects he could be doing, I want him to be doing other stuff, I'm kind of tired of this topic, personally, and he is related, but lots of his fans feel that way, and the idea that there's no opportunity cost to writing this book, not to mention all the accusations and bigotry and racism that he's gotten, I wouldn't envy anyone that, I would not want that at all, I mean, when a giant actor in Ben Affleck calls you out, you know, like that, and it kind of goes viral, that's not good for you, you know, that's a lot of people, if you convincingly call someone a bigot, it sticks, you know, with people who don't really know anything about the situation, you know, regardless of whether or not it's true, and that's huge cost to Sam and his reputation, uh, Sam talked about how, you know, his kids, now when they get old enough, they're going to see all these accusations of racism, racism, love it at Sam on the internet and all this stuff, and it's a very real cost, almost completely dismissive of all that, he thinks it's nothing but profit, which I think is ridiculous, I mean, there's just no way that that's Sam's main motivation,

0:15:52 Thomas: In my opinion, that's laughable to me, because he could be doing any other project, people buy his books, I'll buy his book on free will or online, those books, you know, I'd buy them if he writes one on Christianity. Could you imagine? No one has written a book on that in Ohio, none of the horsemen. They kind of moved past that. But if Sam Harris wrote an updated letter to a Christian nation and maybe a longer project on that, I would read it. It's not as though this is the only way that he's going to make money. I think he genuinely has these opinions. And to say nothing about their truth or falsity, I think he genuinely holds his opinions. And it's hard to imagine where you would get any other reading from him on this.

0:16:41 Thomas: But here's the reason why Sam stuck on this for so long. In his words, it was because this was a disagreement between him and Omer, where Sam had all the facts and Ome had none. So, Sam's logic was, if I can't get Omer to admit that he doesn't know anything about my motives, he doesn't know anything about the money I got for this book, not to mention the fact that Sam wrote it with Majid. I mean, if Sam wanted to make money, he'd write a book himself and not have to split the money. You know, that's, roughly speaking, you know, halves the amount of money you could make on something like that. That's not a very good business model, for sure. I mean, Sam could write his own book easily and make much more on that. So this was something where Sam had all the info, he had all the facts, Omer had none.

0:17:27 Thomas: And so Sam's reasoning is, if I can't get Omer to concede this point, then how else, how are we going to debate about stuff like, you know, Middle East policy and history and all that? That? How are we going to get any ground on that? So that was why Sam spent so much time on this. I see the reasoning there. I actually, I mean, I think that's pretty good logic if you can't get him to budge on something where you literally have all the facts then. But it wasn't unfortunate for the listener because there was a lot, like I said, there was lot in Omer's essay that are worthwhile. I mean without making a judgment call one way or the other because there's so much there and it's really dense. I don't want to go in. I don't wanna spend much more time on this. But there's at least interesting questions that I would like to hear Sam address.

0:18:14 Thomas: You know, I would like to have an answer on them then for me to be able to judge myself. But we didn't get to any of that because it stalled so long in the beginning. Toward the end of the podcast, they did start talking about differences, but I think a lot of what Omer relies on is historical, and Sam didn't want to get into different readings of history. He pretty much said, look, we have different ideas of Middle Eastern history, and Omer has a very rosy picture of Muslims living in peace and harmony with everybody else, and, you know, the 20th century kind of launching jihad and launching extremism and all that. Sam has a different picture. Now, that's an interesting debate. That's something I, I mean, I don't think Sam is any sort of expert on Middle Eastern history, so he could be, he could fully be wrong on that.

0:19:03 Thomas: Omer could be right. It'd be something I'd love to hear them discuss. They didn't get to it. And I think a lot of it had so much to do with the fact that Omer questioned their motive so much. Now, if Omer had skipped that part, then who knows, you know, if he had skipped that, if you had toned it down a bit and been more factual in his disagreement. And again, read, I'll link the article. Check it out for yourself. I mean, insult after insult, just even the title. I should read you guys the title. I should also note before I read it that Salon writes the titles, but that's part of the issue, because one thing I find so hypocritical, I'll read you the title in a second. One thing I found find so hypocritical about Omer is I'm pretty sure he probably received money for this article, and Salon is nothing but opportunistic when it comes to new atheists.

0:19:52 Thomas: They do nothing but write these viral articles, these clickbait headlines of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins do that? They had an article, I think I've mentioned it before, that had Richard Dawkins picture and didn't even talk about him in the body of the article. They're just so obviously using his fame as clickbait to get readership. And that is far more evident in Salon than it could possibly be in Sam and Majid's tiny little book that I don't think sold all that well. It wasn't a bestseller. So here's how Salon saw fit to title Omer's original review of Sam's book, Sam Harris's Detestable Crusade, How How His Latest Anti-Islam Tract Reveals the Bankruptcy of His Ideas, and these subtitles are killing me too, because that's already one subtitle after a colon, and then we get more subtitles.

0:20:49 Thomas: Harris's haughty ignorance and chauvinism are on full display in his new book, A Dialogue with a Former Radical, so there we go, tell us how you really feel, as they say. The idea that this is anything like neutrality, I mean, it's not even trying to be that, but that it's some objective look at Sam Harris and it's more fact-based and less opportunistic than the book itself is laughable. Alright, well, that's enough on that. I think if you're really interested, you'll have to listen for yourself and see what you think. I just definitely, I had a lot of people ask me about it, so I wanted to address it, but there's no way I'm going to condense four hours into anything, you know. I'd have to do podcast after podcast on it, and that's just not going to be interesting, I don't think. So, let's move on to another topic.

0:21:42 Thomas: Well, this one isn't entirely unrelated, I will admit, but upon doing my research on Aziz and reading those articles and stuff, I came across something that I thought would be worth bringing up. Now, it's been over a year, about a year and a little over a month, since the Chapel Hill shooting, and that was, of course, Craig Stephen Hicks killed three Muslims over an alleged parking dispute.

Now, I wanted to talk a bit about this because this In the course of Omar Aziz's criticism of Sam Harris, he talked about how Sam is supposedly completely numb to any anti-Islamic violence, to anti- Islam hate crimes and all that, he talks about Sam's response being that there's far more hate crimes against Jews, and then Omar also references the inquisition and murder of three model citizens in North Carolina, and he's referring to the Chapel Hill shooting, and And he's referring to it as though it's just obvious that this was an anti-Muslim crime, like an anti Muslim hate crime. And I think that's worth revisiting, at least for a minute or two here. First off, I researched the claim about anti-Jewish hate crime, and Sam is actually correct. It's far higher than anti-Muslim hate crimes. Now, anti-Muslim hate crime did increase a ton after 9-11, and that's a very bad thing.

I mean, there's no reason anyone should be taking out violence on an entire group like that. Of course, no one in their right mind would condone such a thing, but if we're looking at, relatively speaking, what is more of an issue, anti-Jewish hate crime has been the far and away the most of any religion in America for a very long time.

0:23:30 Thomas: And it's not even proportional to the population. So I looked it up and there are about twice as many Jews as Muslims in this country. I was surprised. I thought it would actually be more, but no, it's only twice as much. And there's far more than twice as many hate crimes on Jews as Muslims. So it doesn't even pan out proportionally. So, I mean, of course you'd want to say, and I'm sure Sam would say if we could ask him, he'd say, yeah, obviously any anti-religious hate crime is bad. I mean no one in their right mind would condone that, but it is true that they're far more prevalent against Jews, and that's an observation to be made, I suppose. I don't know what, it doesn't prove anything really, but it is interesting to think about. And it's kind of surprising. I actually do find it surprising at a time when we've got Trump, you know, being very overtly anti-Muslim.

0:24:22 Thomas: We've got a lot of the right wing being that way. And terrorism is still a problem. ISIS is a huge problem. And still, anti-Jewish hate crimes are far higher than anti-Moslem ones. It's kind of interesting. Anyway, now I want to turn back to the Chapel Hill shooting. I think I talked about this at the time. I don't fully recall. I could go back, but there's no point. I can just talk about it again briefly. It won't take too much time. I would think everyone's familiar, but just in case, like I said, Craig Stephen Hicks, who seems to be someone who was very... pretty unstable. I dunno that he was mentally ill, per se, but he definitely had a documented anger problem and was incredibly angry over parking spots. And was a gun enthusiast.

0:25:09 Thomas: Now, here's the thing. This is referenced as just a de facto automatic anti-Muslim hate crime. And And I'm not so sure. Now, there's no way, because we're dealing with mind reading, there is no way I'm, I'm going to tell you this was 100% not a hate crime, I am not going to say that, it could have been motivated by some sort of bias or, or anti, or just like in-group bias, you know, could have, who knows, it's impossible to tell, like, if these were three white students living, doing the exact same things that the Muslim students were doing, would he have resorted to this, to murder? I, I don't know, impossible to say. It could go either way. We don't really have evidence. What it would take, I think we could rule it a hate crime if we had obvious accounts of Hicks using anti-Muslim slurs, talking about the fact that they were Muslims a lot, posting on Facebook about it.

0:26:05 Thomas: But when really, what's so disturbing about this guy to me is how plainly normal atheists his posts were. I mean, we've had time, we have a year now for people to scour through all his posts. No one has found anything like death to all Muslims or get them out of this country or anything like that. No one Has found any evidence of that in all this time. And it's pretty crazy, actually, that his posts, and I'll read some of them, his anti-religious his posts are pretty plain. They're pretty tame. Honestly, there's stuff that I could see a lot of you guys posting. I could say a lot just ordinary everyday atheists posting this kind of stuff, which is why it's so shocking that he murdered three people.

0:26:50 Thomas: Here's straight from the wikipedia page some of his evidence of his social media stuff and all that. Hicks post on Facebook, comments and images that condemned all religions, religious belief, and religious violence. And his profile read, Atheists for Equality. He was critical of Christian opponents of the Park 51 project, saying, saying, seems an overwhelming majority of Christians in this country feel that Muslims are using the ground zero mosque plans to mark their conquest. Bunch of hypocrites. Everywhere I've been in the country, there are churches marking the Christian conquest of this country away from the Native Americans. And I'll keep going. Hicks had set a banner image on his page to one stating, I don't deny you the right to believe whatever you like, but I have the right to point out it's ignorant and dangerous for as long as your baseless superstitions keep killing people.

0:27:40 Thomas: In another Facebook post, Hicks stated, I give your religion as much respect as your religion gives me. There's nothing complicated about it and I have every right to insult a religion that goes out of its way to insult, to judge, and to condemn me as an inadequate human being, which your religion does with self-righteous gusto. Hicks is a gun rights advocate with concealed weapons permit and who had 13 firearms in his house. Like I said, I mean, I don't have access to his page now, it's obviously gone and there's no way to read it now, but I have to believe in the investigation, a year later now, had there been anything more substantially anti-Muslim, it sure do have come out, and I have no resistance, personally, I'm just talking about my personal, you know, biases here, I have absolutely no resistance to calling out actual hate crimes.

0:28:31 Thomas: I mean, if someone, if a neo-Nazi, if anybody, if white supremacist shoots Muslims and has some record of stating that they're less than human or they're, you know, anything like that, I'm not resistant to calling that out. Sure, there's hate crimes all the time. Now, I should note, anti-Muslim hate crimes, the number is like 100 to 150 a year. And the Jewish ones was something like 600, I think it was. So the numbers are really not that high. Overall hate crimes have gone down. I'll just say again, just in case, every single hate crime is horrible, obviously. I'm not condoning any of it. But they have been down in recent years, so that's good. So sometimes people try to inflate it as a gigantic problem in this country, but it's been going down and that's great.

0:29:19 Thomas: And we need to do everything we can to keep that going. But I have absolutely no resistance to calling out a real hate crime. It does happen. People hate Muslims, people hate Jews, people hates Christians. It happens. There's no reason that I would care one way or the other about what this guy's motive was, except I just don't want to see it called out constantly and referred to as something that there's no proof that it was. Was because if you listen to those quotes that I read, I mean, man, it was surprisingly tame and he even supported the movement to build a mosque around Ground Zero, that Park 51 thing. He even supported that and thought Christians were hypocrites for opposing it. I mean that's, if he was an anti-Muslim bigot, it would be incredibly surprising to see him supporting a mosque near Ground Zero.

0:30:10 Thomas: I mean, even Sam Harris said he didn't support that. So, I mean make of that what you will. Now, this is where it branched off to another topic that I actually wanted to talk about. So, it's a perfect transition here. It's sort of related. Here's a quote from a family member, I believe, of the victims. Had roles been reversed and the man was a Muslim of Arab descent, of South Asian descent, this would have immediately been labeled an act of terror. I haven't heard anyone use the term terrorist here. Why the double standard? He has terrorized our families, he has terrorize our lives, he has terrorised our community locally, nationally, and internationally, and it's time that people call it what it is. So someone actually emailed me on this using the label of terrorism, and I wanted to talk about it.

0:30:58 Thomas: I think I've talked about it before, but that's okay. This was something I want to talk about again because it's really relevant here. I see this a lot, people saying, why are you always calling this terrorism and not this, et cetera, and we usually don't call white people shooting people terrorism, but people will bring up examples of stuff that's just not terrorism. I mean, had the roles been reversed, if there wasn't a single incident, incidents of the, let's say the roles were reversed and the shooter, Hicks, was a Muslim, if he had not one single record awkward of saying Allahu Akbar and stating his religious motives for it or pledging allegiance to ISIS, anything like that, if he had none of that and was just a Muslim who happened to commit a crime, would we be calling it terrorism?

0:31:47 Thomas: This is always offered as though it's just obviously true. Well, if it'd been a Muslim, anytime a Muslim holds up a liquor store, we call it terrorism. Really? I don't find that to be the case. Now, maybe Fox News is doing it. Maybe you You can find bad examples in the media, certainly, but I don't find this to be the case. I mean, there's plenty of crime that happens. There's plenty OF Muslims who commit everyday crime, and I would never label that as terrorism. The definition of terrorism, if it is to exist, if It is to be meaningful, it should be something other than crime, obviously. I mean if it's just murder, this is just a triple murder. If terrorism is anything, and if you look at the FBI definition, if you you look at definitions that make sense. It's trying to intimidate a group of people, intimidate the government, intimidation, intimidating people like that into going for your political aims.

0:32:39 Thomas: I just don't see that anywhere here. I mean, I don't know how this could be called terrorism. All his stated aims. It's not normal for terrorists to To hide their motivations. The reason it's so easy to label Islamic terrorism as terrorism is because it always comes with a declaration of, you know, we support ISIS, we did this in the name of Allah, we whatever. People say it, it's very easy. Terrorism doesn't make much sense if you have the perpetrator themselves saying, I did this because of a parking dispute, you now, which is obviously a horrible reason. It's not like it makes sense. There's no reason to kill three people that you can give that makes sense. But still, it's not, oh, I wanted to end Muslims. I wantedto get Muslims out of America.

0:33:25 Thomas: I wanted to intimidate Muslims. It's usually the person has to have a motive that's trying to bring about political causes. When Timothy McVeigh was caught, he didn't pretend it was some other dispute, you know, he stated that he had political causes he was trying to bring about. That's terrorism. And I'm totally sympathetic to the idea that the media gives white people a pass to a certain extent with terrorism. Now, if someone goes and shoots up an abortion clinic, that's terrorism. That's a political aim. They're trying to end abortion, they're trying to punish abortion, whatever it is. That's the political aim, that an organized thing. That's terrorism, we need to call that terrorism. I think we do, to my mind. Maybe Fox, again, maybe Fox News doesn't.

0:34:10 Thomas: But I'm sympathetic to the claim, but then people say things like, well, when a white shooter shoots up a movie theater, we don't call it terrorism. I've seen that very exact quote several times. What are you talking about? This is funny, I just found this, actually, because I wanted to read more about his motive. He literally wrote, terrorism isn't the message, he wrote, the message is there is no message. This guy, James Holmes, who shot up the Aurora Theater, was nuts, is nuts. He wrote about wanting to kill people long before this. He had obsession with killing. The guy is disturbed. There's a difference between being disturbed, if someone is mentally disturbed, That's not, I don't, that's not terrorism.

0:34:59 Thomas: Now, we could find out, there could be some interesting overlap. It could be that maybe there is someone with a political goal who's also mentally disturbed that throws them over the top. There's some interesting overlapping there. I would say as long as there's a political motive and you're trying to achieve some aim, then that could be called terrorism regardless of mental health. But if it's someone who, like James Holmes, I see this constantly. I'm sure you've seen it too. Too. When a white person shoots up a theater, we don't call it terrorism. Yeah, because it's not terrorism. It doesn't make any sense to call it terrorism. There's no aim. There is no ideology, really, that you can identify. It's a useless term. I mean, if you want to call mass murder terrorism in order to make other people feel better or something, you could, you could, but then it becomes kind of a meaningless word.

0:35:46 Thomas: I mean, words have meaning and I think it's important to use them in ways that make sense to the best that we can. Well, this episode is getting a little long in the tooth, so I think I want to go to listener comments. There's one comment, someone named Maggie on the site posted a very respectful comment, and I want to read some of it. It's very long, so, I can't read all of it, but I want to read some. Thomas, I'm glad you raised the question of anti-science bias in at least some progressive thinking, as this is something I've caught elsewhere in the skeptic communities and have wanted to respond to. I feel comfortable posting a comment here because of the openness you tend to demonstrate. That's very flattering, and not just flattering, but also rewarding, because if my openness, this is me speaking, if my attitude of openness has encouraged someone to comment where they might not otherwise, I'm very happy to hear that, because it's always great to get comments, and there's interaction on the website too, atheisticallyspeaking.com.

0:36:44 Thomas: Check it out, check out where the episodes are, and comment. But anyway, back to Maggie's comment here. A desire to spark conversation rather than boost a prevailing correctness. I embrace much that contemporary science promotes and confirms, but not all. I'm decidedly not fully on board with dominant it's all good conclusions regarding GMOs and nuclear power. To me, GMO and nuclear promoters seem limited in wisdom. They seem to ignore evidence that strongly supports the the precautionary principle. Promoters also seem blind, seldom if ever mentioned or examined, to politics of funding as a very real player in our profit-driven economic models. Reprogressive anti-science bent, here goes. Now, I can't read all this, but I'll read some of it.

0:37:31 Thomas: I'd like to comment on the general skeptic community's tendency to accept scientific truths often without pausing even briefly to consider a need to question further or to pursue wider and deeper understanding of impact of some of these truths. The point of contention I see is what research turns to applied technology, so my thoughts are restricted to applied sciences. As a member of the older generation, born mid-1940s, I've witnessed a few science-based truths applied as technological marvels that in time turned out to introduce serious negative knock-on consequences. So she goes on to note negative frontal lobotomies, electroshock treatments, x-ray technologies, DDT, process-enriched grains, as stuff that science has given us that's been bad. So that, I mean, sorry, I can't get through the rest of it, but that's the main contention here, that we can't just blindly trust science because, you know, science has giving us some bad things. But I just want to point out that that goes both ways, Maggie.

0:38:31 Thomas: I mean, you could use your exact argument that you just laid out to say science could be wrong about climate change, and they could be limiting and changing all our behavior in a false way because they're actually wrong about climate change. And I will say, people pin, for some reason, they pin the nuclear bomb on science. And I don't really know why that, it's not, it's false to say that that's some error of science. It's actually a great triumph of science to be able to invent a weapon that unbelievably horrifying. I mean, it is a a technological and scientific triumph and mastery over our environment and over physics. Of course, the utilization of it is horrible, and that's entirely a non-scientific question.

0:39:19 Thomas: You can't scientifically ask, should we bomb the Japanese? That's not a science question, sorry. The question of how do we make an incredible bomb, that's a science question. Science can tell you this bomb will cause all kinds of horrifying effects, so science was right about that. But the idea that you can pin that on scientists and not, you know, politicians and world leaders and war and, and let me remind you, the Japanese and the Germans who are trying to conquer the entire world, the ideathat you can't pin some of that on them and that you you can pin all of it on science, I think is a little bit false. But things like electroshock and the other things, frontal lobotomies, I mean, yeah, that's kind of compelling. I can see that as a better argument.

0:40:05 Thomas: Scientists thought that was the best way to deal with stuff and, you know, that we've outgrown that, so that's good. But the idea that you can... I think maybe the problem, Maggie, I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, and certainly I don't think anyone would say we shouldn't be cautious, cautious, but just, we have to note that you are going against scientific consensus on GMO and, uh, and nuclear energy. I mean, you are Going against the prevailing scientific wisdom and you just need to acknowledge that that that's all the point of that segment was. It was that you can't say Republicans are anti-science and I'm not because I recognize climate change, change unless you're willing to be consistent and go with the scientific consensus on GMOs and nuclear energy and that.

0:40:53 Thomas: So that's all that was about. I mean, you're free to have that opinion that these things are dangerous, but it is technically anti-science because it's going against the scientific census. But I will say this, I really want to have a, I've gotten a number of people actually commenting on the GMO stuff, I think there's a fair number of people who are anti-GMO within the atheism community, and that's something that I find very interesting, because, like I said, I mean, I read the quotes, the scientific consensus is overwhelming, but it's something is so contentious that I would love to have debate. I think maybe I have someone on the anti-gmo side, but I'm not sure. If you're anti-GMO and would be open to coming on the show, it doesn't have to be like a formal debate, nothing like that.

0:41:39 Thomas: But coming on The Show, having a discussion, I'll find someone on the other side, someone who's pro-GMO. I think there's no shortage of those people. So I'll find them and then we can have a discussion and give people, you know, give people the ability to choose and to pick which side their arguments they like better.

One thing, oh, I should say, one thing another commenter pointed out was the difference between climate change and GMOs is you can just about perfectly predict, almost 100%, that if someone is anti-climate change, they are pretty much conservative or Republican. But if someone is anti-GMO, you can't really predict what the rest of their views are, and that's something to to consider. So anti-GMO is something that's kind of evenly, somewhat evenly spread across the political spectrum, whereas being anti-climate change or rather climate change denier, that's something that is very, very easily pinned down to a far right-wing kind of narrative that's been fueled by oil companies and by all that kind of thing. So that's a lot more political. That was a point someone made that I think is a good point, so I want to bring that up. So that about does it. Just a couple things to tidy up here at the end. First off, my iTunes review count, 234. Keep up the good work.

It's slowed down a little bit, but please go and review the show. Very helpful. Trying to get to 500. That's the goal. Looks like it'll be a long-term goal, but I'm going to keep track of it, because, hey, I've gone up over 100, so I've got 113 since I started, you Trying to get you guys to write those and I take that as great progress and I thank you very, very kindly for writing those reviews.

0:43:23 Thomas: Thing is Monday's Episode, great interview with a legal expert about Justice Scalia and the fact that he was kind of full of shit and it was really, really, really amazing to finally learn from a legal expert why he was so full of shit. I really enjoyed this recording. It was one of those things where I pretty much agreed with everything the guy said. So it wasn't, there wasn't a lot of disagreement, but because it was a very considered legal opinion and I finally got to learn why I just, it made me so mad. I can't wait for you guys to hear it. If you weren't mad enough at Scalia already, I think you will be even more angry on Monday when you hear the episode. I'll I'll try to release that one early if you are a patron over at patreon.com/atheist.

0:44:15 Thomas: Pledge as little as a dollar an episode and you get early access oftentimes. And occasionally there's bonus stuff too. So please do that. And I want to thank all my patrons. Got some new ones, Al, Layman, and Steve. Thank you so much for pledging. Very much appreciated. Welcome to Patreon. I hope you enjoy the early content. Gotta thank my all-time greats, Kyle Reiser, Zimu Zinu Jr., Adrian Borschoff, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs Naughty Bits, thank you guys so much. Christian J, Peter Skelton, Brian Gareford, Dale, Matt Garrett, and Lizzie and Samantha. Thank you guys from the bottom of my heart for pledging patreon.com/atheist. Enjoy that early content. With that said, can't wait to hate Scalia with you on Monday. See you then.