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Sam Harris discusses his latest book, The Moral Landscape, on The Daily Show

Here’s a great Sam Harris video I just stumbled across.

“This all-too-human process of cobbling together the supposed authoritative word of God is a very precarious basis to assert the claims of Christianity.  But the truth is, even if we had multiple contemporaneous claims of the miracles of Jesus, this would not be good enough…”

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(via josephine)

(this post was reblogged from josephine)
Sam Harris will be releasing his new book, The Moral Landscape, on October 5th.  The official cover for this book has just been revealed on his website. I can’t wait for this book to come out.  Harris has a great ability to make clear, compelling arguments, and I’m excited that he’s chosen this topic for his next book.  Non-believers really ought to challenge the fact that mainstream American culture defers to religious institutions and religious leaders for moral guidance.  Doing this has many, many harmful consequences for our nation and for individual citizens. I agree that people ought to base their understanding of moral topics on objective information, including scientific findings.  But my views on the topic are complex and not completely set in stone.  I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve read the book, but I think there could be some harmful, unintended consequences of Harris’ suggestions.  Not the least of which is the realistic possibility that they could cause a backlash against science, which could have a real impact on public funding for the sciences.  Since I’ll be starting grad school in the fall to become a bona fide scientist, this could have a direct impact on my career and my life. But like I said, I’m not totally clear on what exactly Harris is advocating, so I’ll wait until I’ve read the book to pass judgment.  Despite my reservations, I think it’s an important debate to be having.  I hope this book will stimulate more public discussions about morality, and open people’s eyes to the possibility that everyone stands to benefit from reducing the influence of religion in moral debates. (via)

Sam Harris will be releasing his new book, The Moral Landscape, on October 5th.  The official cover for this book has just been revealed on his website.

I can’t wait for this book to come out.  Harris has a great ability to make clear, compelling arguments, and I’m excited that he’s chosen this topic for his next book.  Non-believers really ought to challenge the fact that mainstream American culture defers to religious institutions and religious leaders for moral guidance.  Doing this has many, many harmful consequences for our nation and for individual citizens.

I agree that people ought to base their understanding of moral topics on objective information, including scientific findings.  But my views on the topic are complex and not completely set in stone.  I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve read the book, but I think there could be some harmful, unintended consequences of Harris’ suggestions.  Not the least of which is the realistic possibility that they could cause a backlash against science, which could have a real impact on public funding for the sciences.  Since I’ll be starting grad school in the fall to become a bona fide scientist, this could have a direct impact on my career and my life.

But like I said, I’m not totally clear on what exactly Harris is advocating, so I’ll wait until I’ve read the book to pass judgment.  Despite my reservations, I think it’s an important debate to be having.  I hope this book will stimulate more public discussions about morality, and open people’s eyes to the possibility that everyone stands to benefit from reducing the influence of religion in moral debates.

(via)

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The God that our neighbours believe in is essentially an invisible person. He’s a creator deity, who created the universe to have a relationship with one species of primates—lucky us. He’s got galaxy upon galaxy to attend to, but he’s especially concerned with what we do, and he’s especially concerned with what we do while naked. He almost certainly disapproves of homosexuality. And he’s created this cosmos as a vast laboratory in which to test our powers of credulity, and the test is this: can you believe in this god on bad evidence, which is to say, on faith?

Sam Harris, on a televised debate on the topic “Does God Have a Future?” on ABC Nightline, with Harris and Michael Shermer against quantum woo-guru Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston.

The point here is, for all the grand things that he/she/it has supposedly created, this God is a very petty, petty being. Should someone who’s supposedly so immaculate and omnipotent as the holy God really get offended at frivolous things like sex outside of marriage, or for eating meat, or for eating food on fasting days, or for not dressing up like the religious doctrine says in a book? (Would God tell a woman how to or how not to dress herself up? That’s so crazily trifling!) Because such pettiness is most certainly a human flaw, and ideally, that is not a divine quality which could be attributed to an eternal and wise holy being. It shouldn’t be happening with an almighty heavenly God who has infinite mercy. Think about it—the traditional God of religion contradicts himself.

But these are beside the point of this awesome debate. Watch the entire debate on YouTube. It’s highly interesting and deeply engrossing for those who like stuff like this. You gotta watch Chopra getting his ass cooked and handed to him on a platter by Shermer and especially Harris.

(via sreeyesh)

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(this post was reblogged from friendlyatheist)

CNN article with Sam Harris: Why we should ditch religion

Sam Harris on moral issues affecting the world today.  ”Religion causes people to fixate on issues of less moral importance, … Religion has convinced us that there’s something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There’s concerns about what God wants, there’s concerns about what’s going to happen in the afterlife,”

-Isaac

Here’s an excellent TED video that was just posted a couple of days ago.  In it, Sam Harris makes the argument that matters of morality can be (and ought to be) addressed by science.

-Shane

Shermer & Harris vs. Chopra & some LSD lady

The debate titled “Does God Have a Future?” — featuring Michael Shermer and Sam Harris squaring off against Deepak Chopra — is up on ABC’s Nightline website.  If you missed tonight’s Nightline, don’t worry, you just missed a quick recap of a much longer debate.

For the full debate, go here.  It’s broken into multiple clips, so scroll down to the bottom of the page for all of the videos.

What struck me was just how confident (and even downright rude at times) Deepak was.  He displayed the Dunning-Kruger effect in full force:  it was obvious that he’s got no idea what he’s talking about, but apparently his lack of understanding only empowers him.  Frustrating stuff, indeed.  Hopefully few people, if any at all, were persuaded by him.  Especially with those bedazzled glasses.

I’ll give Deepak this much:  his confidence makes him much more TV-friendly than Michael Shermer.  Sam Harris, however, is flippin’ awesome.  So is the audience member who just happened to be a theoretical physicist, and was willing to point out Deepak’s irresponsible hijacking of the language of physics during the Q&A session (starting just after 2:30 in this clip).

-Shane

Does God Have a Future?

“Does God Have a Future?” is the title of a recent debate featuring Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, and Deepak Chopra that recently took place at Caltech.  Part of it will air on ABC’s Nightline on Tuesday, March 23 at 11:35pm.  The full debate will be available on ABC’s website, according to Sam Harris on Twitter.  I, for one, can’t wait to watch the full thing — it should be entertaining.  S.H. tweeted that he “pushed the edge of civility with Chopra.”

-Shane

“
atheism” is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a “non-astrologer” or a “non-alchemist.” We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.
Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation