Prof. Gary L. Francione's Facebook Comment on New Atheism

[brimstoneSalad]

He also doesn't believe in vaccinations apparently, :
http://speakingofresearch.com/2014/03/1 ... cinations/

I would have been surprised if he did believe in vaccines.

TheVeganAtheist should make a video series on Francione.

[Volenta]

I do not necessarily want to bump this topic, but I wanted to correct some views I expressed I do no longer hold, for those who will read this topic someday.

I guess I was in a kind of rage against Francione, making me a bit less critical to some claims being made. I want to specifically address this part:

Yeah I read it, it's saddening... The more he says about the new atheists, the worse it gets. It seems he things just like that women (Linda) that Sam Harris wants to kill innocent people and things along those lines. Those are really outdated lies spread by people like Chris Hedges, which Linda in fact linked to. Harris has exposed this lies {url=http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/resp ... }here{/url} and has written on other misrepresented issues that Francione raised {url=http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text ... }here{/url}.

I gave Sam Harris way to much credits here, and went along with his rebuttal on Chris Hedges without evaluating his blog post thoroughly. To be honest, I believe Harris making some serious fallacies (cherry picking, ad hominem, ...) in this post which I previously missed. I lost quite some respect for Sam Harris because of this post (surely if you've watched the debate between him and Hedges, in which Harris mostly avoids serious discussion and relies on rhetoric—although it is funny). I'm not going to discuss the specifics of the post here, but I recommend anyone to read it—I'm sure you will see what I'm talking about.

Also, to say that Sam Harris does not want to kill innocent people is to miss the point that he's advocating attacks that do lead to collateral damage. This does not mean he actually "wants to kill innocent people", but there is much more nuance here than I cared to admit. Discussions between people someone like Harris and Chomsky are actually very worthwhile, in contrast to discussions to the Christian fundamentalist (particularly those on the Right) and the like.