
The Atheist Who Strangled Me - tokenadult
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/the-atheist-who-strangled-me/309292/
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jostmey
Sam Harris does not appear to be a rational individual who discovered atheism
through logic and evidence. The man just appears to be bat-sh*t crazy.

The author casually tries to put this man in the same leagues as other atheist
such as Richard Dawkins. But in my view Dawkin's is a sane individual trying
to cope with an insane world. I cannot say the same about Mr. Harris after
reading this article.

~~~
acomar
Can you expand on that? The article is about a man who enjoys meditation and
brazilian ju jitsu. What in this article makes you think he's bat-sh*t? I did
not catch any such vibe.

~~~
jostmey
The man practices chocking other people to the brink of death in some sort of
pseudo-BDSM tournament. What sort of sanity comes from a hallucination induced
by oxygen deprivation?

~~~
philwelch
You immediately associate Brazilian ju-jitsu with BDSM and he's the crazy
one!?

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tokenadult
A follow-up interview by the same author with Sam Harris on the techniques of
unarmed combat against armed attackers:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/what-
mar...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/what-martial-arts-
have-to-do-with-atheism/275273/)

~~~
gojomo
I'm not familiar with the full range of Harris' writings, but I found it
interesting that as an explicit and unapologetic 'atheist', Harris actually
says at one point:

    
    
      ...we don't know what happens after death.
    

It is in the context of discussing death with a child, but still... the
hardcore atheist position would seem to be that we do know what happens:
nothing, the total cessation of experience. To say "we don't know" seems to
allow for some tiny shred of religious mystery, which I didn't expect from
Harris.

~~~
gamegoblin
Your "hardcore" atheism is more correctly known as gnostic atheism. You will
be hard pressed to find philosophically educated gnostic atheists.

~~~
sofal
Using the label "agnostic" as a philosophical weasel word to give a nod to
solipsism every time it is politically convenient is a form of lopsided
pedantry. Unless you think a specific religious god is more likely to be real
than, say, vampires or Harry Potter, the distinction does not actually add any
useful information. People normally just use "agnostic" as a device to try to
frame a debate in a precise way in order to put the burden of proof squarely
on the positive claim.

~~~
gamegoblin
I used the word "gnostic", not "agnostic".

~~~
sofal
I'm not sure you understand what I said. Let me explicitly state what I tried
to imply about your use of the word "gnostic": people who call themselves
gnostic atheists are not generally being philosophically ignorant or
dishonest.

~~~
gamegoblin
I just didn't see how your comment applied. I never said that gnostic atheists
were philosophically ignorant or dishonest. I just said that they would be
harder to find.

~~~
sofal
Okay. I took your statement "You will be hard pressed to find philosophically
educated gnostic atheists" to imply that most people who go by that label are
likely not philosophically educated, presumably because realizing that true
certainty about anything is impossible invalidates the "gnostic" part. If
that's not what you meant, then I apologize. I often see this line of
thinking, so I patterned matched incorrectly.

~~~
gamegoblin
No worries. In my experience, the majority of gnostic atheists are like some
of the kids on /r/atheism. There exist educated gnostic atheists, but in my
experience, they are more rare than educated agnostic atheists.

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illuminate
It's almost as if atheists live life with hobbies and interests like decent,
churchgoing folks. Isn't that a marvelous piece of "human interest".

(Did I miss a story somewhere?)

------
bluedino
_"Most martial artists get illusions in training,” he said. For example, if
you are trained as a boxer, you come to trust that an opponent won’t try to
tackle you to the ground—because that’s not what people do in boxing rings.
Instead they hit each other, with gloves on (another condition that is not
very realistic)._

BJJ also assumes a set of rules, not unlike boxing, wrestling or karate.
You're not allowed to take a bite out of your opponents arm while they are
choking you, or pull their ear off, or stick your thumb in their eye.

BJJ is also often practiced wearing a _gi_ which allows for different
techniques than if your opponent were wearing say, a t-shirt (or no shirt at
all).

~~~
scott_s
This is true, and we often use the phrase "sport jiu-jitsu" to make this
clear. I have trained BJJ for close to 9 years, and I am a purple belt. Most
people who train jiu jitsu also train no-gi, though. Personally, I try to
favor strategy that I think would also work in MMA or even a real fight.

However, what differentiates jiu jitsu, wrestling and boxing from a lot of
"traditional" martial arts is live sparring. I think that people who practice
a martial arts with an emphasis on live sparring will have an enormous
advantage if a real fight because live sparring is a close _simulation_ of the
real thing. Yes, your opponent won't follow the same rules. But, you're only
good at what you train. And in order to train something regularly and not get
constantly injured (or worse), you need to have rules.

Chael Sonnen, an MMA fighter who will fight for the UFC light heavyweight
belt, makes a great observation in this interview. His observation is, in MMA,
figure out what techniques were illegal in your opponents main discipline, and
do those: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33BrIxAu7-M>

(Yes, Sonnen does a lot of trash talking before his fights, and is full of
hyperbole. Don't let that fool you. His analysis of MMA is some of the best
I've heard.)

