Why do the prominent people I like keep munching on their feet? I’d only just finished dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s ignorant condescension toward philosophers, (basically philosophers are bad scientists because Neil doesn’t understand philosophy) and now I discover that Sam Harris is proposing that muslims are profiled at airport security screenings.
We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I wouldn’t put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull’s-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.
PZ Myers was, as is his habit, a little too fast on the draw and immediately jumped to the conclusion that (more…)