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Notes -
Not posting in the Gaza/Israel thread since this is more generic, IMO.
In the most recent Sam Harris podcast, he elevates the problem with Hamas to the more general problem of jihadi terrorism. The episode is here and there's also a transcript here.
In this, he paints a picture of Hamas being a jihadi terrorist organization that's beyond reasoning with in terms of any reasoning we'd consider compatible with liberal western civilized order. He reads this quote from a member of a different jihadi group that had just finished slaughtering young children:
He makes the point that atheists have a lot of trouble understanding how utterly fanatical and unreasonable jihadis can be. People of Christian or Jewish faith know, because they know how powerful their own faith is in their lives. But atheists are eager to attribute this kind of proclivity towards sadism and murder as a reflection of terrible conditions that they must be living under. That people living in a utopia would never succumb to such depravity. Sam argues that Muslims of faith are just as destructive outside of Israel and disputed Israeli territories.
For more concrete stats, I found this from Google generative results
The culmination of this episode is Sam practically condemning belief in Islam entirely. Almost bordering on saying that every Palestinian is a mope in the Muslim Matrix who could become inhabited by a jihadi Agent Smith at any time. He argues that unlike Jesus, or Buddha, the central most beloved figure in Islam is Muhammed, and he was not anything like a saint:
What I hear from this is that there are no "good" Muslims, or if they are good it's an aberration, or that they're Muslim in name only.
How does one operationalize such a belief? Is Sam arguing that accepting Muslim refugees is a mistake, full stop, and that the only way to deal with jihadis is the grant them their wish: death, because there's nothing else in the world we could offer them? Is that even enough to cure the problem?
There are two billion Muslims in the world. If bringing them capitalism and the pleasures of modernity (everyone gets Starlink, Steam deck, dirt cheap halal KFC and Chil Fil-A, etc as a poster recently suggested for pacifying the Palestinians) does not innoculate against jihadi mind viruses, what would?
It took Europe about 1000 years for their culture to develop antibodies to dogmatic below-the-sanity-waterline Christian crusader ideology, and Christianity's deck was not nearly as stacked against it (its central figure was still practically a hippie). Will we have to wait this long for Islam to do the same? Sam sounds like he's advocating a form of genocide by another name.
As an atheist myself, I certainly don't succumb to this failing. If one sincerely believes in that their holy book is the Word of God and doesn't contort themselves into knots when the literal interpretation is inconvenient, then yes, performing jihad or other activities offensive to modern western sensibilities is the right thing to do.
I agree with Yudkowsky that the men who flew the planes into the WTC were many things, but not cowards.
Since I aim to be sincere in my beliefs with minimal delusions of convenience, I respect such adherents more than insincere mealy-mouthed Cultural Catholics or the "moderate" Muslims who eat pork, smoke and drink while nominally calling themselves Muslim. Do I get along better with such people than a Hamas operative? Of course, doesn't mean I don't respect them less.
As has been discussed before, religion both shapes and is shaped by the human carriers of its memeplex. Beliefs and traditions that are grossly bad for flourishing (in the sense that the humans who believe them tend to die early without reproducing), tend to be marginalized or explained away. Despite believing that Life is Dukkha, the average Buddhist doesn't have the stomach to starve themselves to death. Things like excessive fasting, self-flagellation and the like usually die out, but as always, there's plenty of ruin in a civilization, and plenty of bad things persist or arise de novo.
Think of it as exactly analogous to the competing drives of a virus seeking to infect humans. On one hand, they want to maximize the number of copies of themselves, on the other hand, they wish to persist (in a metaphorical sense, virii don't actually want anything at all).
If a virus disregards the health of the host and maximizes reproduction, then it usually causes debilitating illness or even death, and in most cases, prevents further spread of the virus.
Hence, in combination with host-immunity, viruses tend towards becoming as benign as possible. This is not out of any charitable inclination, since they're strictly agnostic to the host's wellbeing, it just happens to be robust way of ensuring its own goals are met.
The typical mainstream religion today is cowpox to the smallpox of a brand new cult, it has adapted to not get too much in the way of human desires and affairs, or provoke frenzied behavior that leads to itself dying out or being stamped out.
On the other hand, for a new virus/cult, it might make sense to maximize infectiousness or zeal in the early stages when it has to overcome other competitors, and then let itself mellow out when it's dominant.
I personally know plenty of moderate Muslims, both at home and abroad, and they don't strike me as particularly evil people, the majority have, with various degrees of self-doubt and internal conflict, adopted the tenets of their religion that aren't too much of a hindrance for normal life while avoiding the drive to murder and kill in the name of the Prophet. They might be more zealous than average, or at least the average Muslim is compared to the average Hindu/Jew/Christian/Buddhist, but Islam is a religion that was designed to minimize value drift, as the Prophet declared all prophets after him as false, and their culture strongly endorses a literal interpretation of the Koran and Hadith, not that that removes all room for sectarian splits. There's also the strong stigma against apostasy, making the average lukewarm Muslim keep the branding from convenience if nothing else.
Even then, that can't last forever under the cold imperatives of incentive, and I don't think Islam is worth losing too much sleep over, certainly not to the extent the majority of its adherents deserve to die, even though I don't disagree that they're not the most desirable immigrants to the West, not if you want to keep liberal culture intact.
This only makes sense if you are assigning respect entirely based on honesty/loyalty/commitment, and not at all on things like caring about the welfare of other people. That is, the amount of respect I lose for a hypocrite is less than the amount of respect I lose for a murderer. Even if an honest and committed terrorist Muslim is more respectable for their commitment than a terrorist atheist who just kills for fun, it's less respectable than a Muslim who realizes that murder is wrong and chooses not to do it, even if they reduce themselves to hypocrisy in the process.
I disagree with this framework, or at least find it overly broad. I weight sincerity in ideals strongly, not exclusively when it comes to assigning respect.
Consider it akin to the perspective of the relationship between Patton and Rommel. From what I've heard, both respected each other a great deal, perhaps more than they did the average general on their side. This respect did not stop them from ordering their forces to shoot at each other in the field, or make them betray their own side.
While I'm lucky enough not to find myself holding a gun and facing off against a Jihadist, I would have no qualms in killing them if it came to that, whereas I have little desire to enter a war with the average Muslim unless they raise arms against me and my ideals by force.
You can respect an ideological opponent and still hate their guts till death resolves the issue once and for all.
I think there's a difference between being enemies as a result of material circumstance, which can allow for mutual respect, versus fundamental ideological differences, which I don't think do, or at least severely cap the amount.
Like, if I found myself in a family/tribe/guild/nation, and someone else is in another, and we both want the same land/resource, or are fighting for sovereignty or global hegemony, then we could have approximately the same values but still be at odds against one another, because we each want what's best for our own group to the exclusion of what's best for the other group. Similarly, I can respect an opponent who has different factual beliefs (provided they're not absurd and obviously false such that no respectable person would be wrong in the way they are). Maybe we both want what's best for everyone, but disagree on what course of action is best to do that. Or even with slight ideological differences there can be mutual respect. Like, if there's an opportunity to tradeoff freedom points versus security points at a 1:1 ratio, and I value freedom at 6 utils each and security at 4 utils each, while person B values freedom at 4 utils each and security at 6 utils each, then we're going to end up on opposite sides of the issue of the tradeoff despite both valuing freedom and security. Ideally, neither of the latter two scenarios would lead to war, but maybe they would.
But if the other person's ideology is just straight up evil then no, I can't respect that. Or rather, the sum of my respect would be all of the other traits about them that might be respectable, minus the massive loss from them being an evil person. I don't think it's respectable to be evil, even if you're loyal and devoted to your evil ideals. To the extent that Rommel wanted what's best for the German people and genuinely thought that he was helping them, I can respect that. To the extent that Rommel turned a blind eye to genocide in as a sacrifice towards that end, I lose a decent amount of respect. To the extent that Rommel might have genuinely believed in genocide as a means itself, if any (it's not entirely clear) I would lose a ton of respect for him. I would have much much more respect for a counterfactual Rommel who had pulled a coup on Hitler, stopped the genocide, and then tried to conquer the world, because it would have shown more moral fortitude than someone who's blindly loyal.
In the end this is again a semantic discussion. Respect comes form the latin respectere/respicere, which is generally taken to mean "looking back;regard;consider". I'd interpret this - and to some degree the modern usage - that to respect someone means that you always keep them in consideration. This can apply to an enemy, which is so dangerous that you simply can't ignore them. We see this in the fact that talking about threats also has historically included respect as a term - "keeping my respectful distance" for example. In this usage, respect is a positive term, but it's strictly about "greatness" in a sense, not goodness. So even the most despicable mortal ideological enemy can be respectable, as long as he is sufficiently great.
Of course, most positive terms go through an evolution where other generically good things get attached to them, and respect is no exception (similar to how many negative terms end up as generic insults). This is reflected in the wikipedia entry of the term, which takes it to mean, among other things: "a sense of admiration for good or valuable qualities". To be honest, while ultimately words always change meaning and people can use words in the way they choose, I greatly prefer the old meaning. We already have plenty of good generic words for liking people and appreciating their positive qualities. But in the old meaning, respecting a true enemy is a fairly unique concept, and word. It's a pity to let go of that.
I think this still demands a distinction in different contexts, especially between respect in ones physical capabilities, and one in their mental capabilities. I respect a lion as a powerful beast and I would avoid trying to fight one in unarmed physical combat. I do not respect a lion's intellectual abilities, and would happily trounce one in a game of chess if I could play in safety from its aforementioned physical prowess. Further, I do not respect the physical abilities of lions as a whole in comparison to humans as a whole, because we have guns and missiles and they do not. They simply do not pose an existential threat to humans as a species, while we do pose such a threat if we cared to wipe them out (and maybe even if we half-heartedly try not to).
Bringing this back then, I respect the physical threat of a jihadi in a similar way to a lion, they're extremely lethal if you face one underprepared, and I would personally try to avoid them, but I do not respect them as an existential threat to my people, we have nukes and they do not. But this is a separate consideration from the original issue of respecting their conviction. On the moral front, I do respect the specific integrity of standing up for one's beliefs, but overall do not respect their general moral character, because their beliefs are evil and selfish. Even from a classical sense, they don't exhibit honorable behaviors worth respecting. If they stood and fought against overwhelming odds and died for their beliefs, I could respect that more. But guerilla warfare, hiding behind civilians, and terrorism are incredibly dishonorable and unrespectable. If their beliefs tell them to do that, then they're just standing up for dishonorable beliefs. If you're going to respect that you might as well treat the hypocritical Christian as someone who believes in being a hypocrite and respect them for being so good at it.
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