I've been reading
The End of Faith, by Sam Harris, and I thought I'd share this educational excerpt:
The fact that people are being prosecuted and imprisoned for using marijuana, while alcohol remains a staple commodity, is surely the reductio ad absurdum of any notion that our drug laws are designed to keep people from harming themselves or others. Alcohol is by any measure the more dangerous substance. It has no approved medical use, and its lethal dose is rather easily achieved. Its role in causing automobile accidents is beyond dispute. The manner in which alcohol relieves people of their inhibitions contributes to human violence, personal injury, unplanned pregnancy, and the spread of sexual disease. Alcohol is also well known to be addictive. When consumed in large quantities over many years, it can lead to devastating neurological impairments, to cirrhosis of the liver, and to death. In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people annually die from its use. It is also more toxic to developing fetus than any other drug of abuse. (Indeed, “crack babies” appear to have been really suffering from fetal-alcohol syndrome.) None of these charges can be leveled at marijuana. As a drug, marijuana is nearly unique in having several medical applications and no known lethal dosage. While adverse reactions to drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen account for an estimated 7,600 deaths (and 76,000 hospitalizations) each year in the United States alone, marijuana kills no one. Its role as a “gateway drug” now seems less plausible than ever (and it was never plausible). In fact, nearly everything human beings do – driving cars, flying planes, hitting golf balls – is more dangerous than smoking marijuana in the privacy of one’s own home. Anyone who would seriously attempt to argue that marijuana is worthy of prohibition because of the risk it poses to human beings will find that the powers of the human brain are simply insufficient for the job.
He goes on to explain how religion is responsible for this atrocious miscarriage of justice (and logic). Just another thing we can blame religion for.
I've been reading The End of Faith, by Sam Harris, and I thought I'd share this educational excerpt:
I guess from a atheistic point of view, if it rains, it's religion's fault. Nice to have a scapegoat.
ReplyDeleteIf you want a good argument why this is indeed religion's fault, read the rest of the chapter in Harris.
ReplyDeleteha-ikkar chaser (from your blog, but lav davka) min hasefer
ReplyDeleteThe ikkar is that weed shoud be legal. That religion is largely responsible for the prohibition is secondary, and obvious.
ReplyDeleteis it obvious? It's not obvious to me.
ReplyDeleteIt's obvious if you are even remotely familiar with the history of prohibition in America.
ReplyDeleteWell Harris is a liar. In the very first few pages of his book "A Letter to a Christian Nation" I saw quite a few bad apples.
ReplyDeleteYou as a religion hating atheist may not care about this at all, but I found it interesting that he begins the first few pages of his book by telling Christians off on how Muslims believe they are going to Hell for not having the same faith as them. Ah!! If the guy had done his homework he would have known that Islam doesn't say that at all.
If the man has such pitiful knowledge, and spread misinformation about the religions he is criticizing then its really hard to take him seriously. There are similarly quite a few lies I see propagated by him, Hitchens, Dawkins and the rest.
If you have honesty on your side then you shouldn't have to lie.
Shalmo,
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about Islam, but I wouldn't be so quick to label Harris a liar. It is usually complicated to assess what a certain religion as a whole believes, since different people of the same faith often have wildly differing beliefs about the same thing.
Anyway, whether Sam Harris is a liar or not has no bearing on the argument I quoted. I think the ideas speak for themselves. I would advise you to try to evaluate ideas without reference to who is presenting them.
Also, I'm curious to hear why you think Dawkins is a liar. He comes across as someone firmly committed to the truth.
The history of marijuana regulation in the United States is complicated. While religion certainly had an element to it (as religion was also to a large extent responsible for Prohibition as well), the restriction of marijuana was also to a large extent about racism. The drug was seen as a drug used by the blacks and that made them violent and likely to harm white people (there was also an element of the entire black-men-are-going-to-take-the-white-women thing also).
ReplyDeleteOh, and just a pointer, a good short history of this can be found at http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html
ReplyDeleteJoshua,
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right that the prohibition of marijuana was motivated in large part by racism (including against the Mexican growers). But Harris argues that the prohibition would not have occurred without religion's tendency to try to forbid other people's pleasureful activities. Also, much racism itself was promoted by religion.