Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts

The Islamic State is a Preview of Apocalyptic Terrorism this Century

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Terrorism is one of the most salient problems facing Western civilization today. And it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere soon. As the director of the FBI James Comey recently stated (echoing claims by terrorism scholars), as the Islamic State’s territory shrinks, we should expect a “terrorist diaspora” into the West. We’ve already seen evidence of the Islamic State shifting its strategy from building a robust caliphate (according to a prophetic hadith) in Iraq and Syria to attacking the West.

Urgent News Flash: Humanity is Worried About the Wrong Risks!

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It's been a while since I last posted on Debunking Christianity, I know! Readers may recall that my central project right now (since my book came out) is trying to initiate a desperately-needed, extremely important conversation between the secular movement and the existential risk community. In sum, the former is far, far more important than it even realizes because of the latter, and the latter is failing in its effort to keep the world safe because it ignores the target of the former (namely religion). In a forthcoming "Technical Report" from my fledgling organization, the X-Risks Institute, I try a new strategy for getting existential riskologists and new atheists to talk about the future of humanity. But readers will have to wait another week for more details!

Introducing the X-Risks Institute (for the Study of Extremism)

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What will the future look like? The further upwards one moves from the basement domain of physics, the harder it often gets to predict long-term trends. Nonetheless, we have some fairly good clues about what to expect moving forward. Moore's law, for example, enables us to anticipate with some degree of accuracy, at least on a timescale of decades, how the development of computer hardware will likely proceed. And many nanotechnology experts concur that it's only a matter of time before personal nanofactories become as common as the personal computer (or even more so, given their potential for self-replication).

But technology isn't being developed in a vacuum. This is a crucial point that constitutes, in my view, a major weakness in a lot of (otherwise good) work being done by secular futurists. To my knowledge, virtually no one is asking questions about the important relationship between advanced technologies and religion, the latter of which is one of the most pervasive and influential cultural phenomena in the world.

Why Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky are Both Right

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Sam Harris recently appeared on Kyle Kulinski’s radio show to discuss his views on “progressivism, torture, religion, and foreign policy.” The impetus behind Harris’ appearance was to defend himself against the accusations of Glenn Greenwald and (the increasingly execrable) CJ Werleman, both of whom had previous public discussions with Kulinski.