Sam Harris (author)

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For other people named Sam Harris, see Sam Harris (disambiguation)

Sam Harris (born 1967) is an American author with an interest in neuroscience and religion. His first book The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award,^[1] and his essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, Free Inquiry magazine, and Playboy. He appeared in the 2005 documentary film, The God Who Wasn't There, and he is a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post and Truthdig.

A philosophy graduate from Stanford University, Harris has studied both Eastern and Western religious traditions. He lives in New York City, and is currently pursuing research into the neural basis of religious belief. His second book, Letter to a Christian Nation, was published in September 2006, and he has announced that he intends to start a foundation to promote secular projects worldwide.^[2]

Contents 1 World view 1.1 Conversational intolerance 1.2 Religious America 1.3 Islam 1.4 Moderation 1.5 Morality and ethics 1.6 Spirituality 2 Current research 3 Criticism 4 Media appearances 5 Books 6 See also 7 External links 8 References

[edit] World view

Harris's basic theme is that he considers the time has come to speak openly and unambiguously about what he sees as the dangers posed to society by religious belief. While highlighting what he regards as a particular problem being posed by Islam at this moment in respect of international terrorism, Harris has made an outspoken attack on religion of all styles and persuasions. He is especially critical of the stance of religious moderation, which he sees as essentially providing cover to religious extremism, while at the same time acting as an obstacle to progress in terms of pursuing what he considers to be more enlightened approaches towards spirituality and ethics.

[edit] Conversational intolerance

Harris freely admits that he is advocating a form of intolerance, but not, as he puts it, the kind of intolerance that led to the Gulag. Rather he is arguing for a conversational intolerance, one in which we require in our everyday discourse that people's convictions really scale with the available evidence. He feels that the time has come to demand intellectual honesty right across the board, and ignore the prevailing taboos and political correctness which, in his view, appear to prevent us from openly criticising religion.

Harris observes that these are the rules which seem to apply to every other field of knowledge. He notes that we are rarely admonished simply to respect someone's views on, say, physics or history; instead, we both demand reasons and expect evidence. Anyone who so fails to substantiate their viewpoint, he suggests, is quickly marginalized from the conversation on those topics. So Harris believes that the tolerance afforded to the spectrum of competing religious ideologies comprises a double standard which, following the events of September 11, he feels we can no longer afford to maintain.

[edit] Religious America

The current state of affairs in contemporary religious America is something which Harris feels should be a matter for profound national embarrassment. He notes that 44 percent of Americans, according to polls, believe that Jesus will probably return within the next fifty years. This is roughly the same number who think that creationism should be taught in schools, to the complete exclusion of Darwinian evolution; or that God has literally promised the land of Israel to the modern-day Jews.^[3]

These beliefs cannot exist in isolation; rather, he feels, they should be deeply troubling as they are, in his view, entirely maladaptive to planning a sustainable future for the planet. He points out that, by the light of biblical prophecy, general Armageddon is regarded as a necessary precursor to the Second Coming, or the Rapture as some call it. Harris considers it no exaggeration to say that a significant proportion of the American population would see a nuclear conflagration in the Middle East, say, as a happy portent of the imminent arrival of Jesus.

What troubles Harris the most, is that these are the same people who both elect and are elected as presidents and congressmen. Religion, he observes, permeates American politics to such an extent that it would be futile to consider running for office without professing some sort of faith. When George W. Bush invokes God in his conversation (as he frequently does with respect to both domestic and foreign affairs), Harris asks us to consider how we might feel if the President were to invoke Zeus or Apollo in the same manner.

[edit] Islam

All of which, he argues, is obscuring what he sees as the greatest present threat to civilisation, namely that from the Muslim world. The general response in the West to terrorist atrocities such as 9/11, has been to pronounce Islam a "religion of peace," while simultaneously declaring a "war on terror." Harris sees the first sentiment as completely false, and the second as quite meaningless.

Instead, he says, we should plainly acknowledge that Western civilisation is at war with Islam which, he maintains, preaches a doctrine of religious and political subjugation, not a message of peace. The Koran and the hadith, he notes, are packed full with unambiguous incitements to kill infidels – which acts, according to the texts, are duly rewarded with an eternity of celestial delights. It is specifically this metaphysics of martyrdom, or jihad, which, in taking the sting out of death, Harris sees as the source of greatest peril.

That such notions might be merely the product of a more extreme form of Islam, is an argument Harris considers to be especially untenable in the light of the worldwide violence which erupted in 2006, as a consequence of the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

[edit] Moderation

That the world would be a happier place if religious extremism were replaced by religious moderation, is plainly suggested by Harris. He then proceeds to turn some of his strongest fire upon religious moderates themselves.

The first problem, as he sees it, is that religious moderation gives cover to religious fundamentalism. Under the banner of moderation, respect and tolerance are sacred, from which stance it becomes impossible to mount a credible assault upon extremism. Moderate religion therefore provides the context in which religious fundamentalism of any stripe can never be adequately opposed.

Secondly, Harris argues it is absurd to imagine that we can continue to respect everyone's drastically conflicting religious beliefs equally. The claim to know the absolute truth is inherent in almost every belief system. Moreover, any religion that claims that all other belief systems are false and heretical, cannot foster genuine acceptance or tolerance of religious diversity. Instead, Harris asserts that the very notion that we should be free to believe whatever we please, has to be jettisoned the moment we comprehend that beliefs are simply actions waiting to happen.

And thirdly, moderation is simply bad theology because the extremists are, in a sense, right: God really does want to put homosexuals to death or destroy infidels, if one reads the texts literally. Harris further notes that religious moderates (and indeed some secularists) appear to be blinded to the fact that fundamentalists really believe in all this stuff. Instead, a moderate tends to think that a suicide attack can more readily be attributed to a range of social and economic factors.

[edit] Morality and ethics

Harris considers that the time is long overdue to reclaim morality and ethics for rational secular humanism, where he feels they have always properly belonged. He believes that the supposed link between faith and morality is a myth, not borne out by current statistical evidence. He notes, for instance, that the highly secular Scandinavian countries are among the most generous in terms of helping the developing world, as well as enjoying higher standards of living themselves by almost any index.

But Harris goes further and posits that, far from being the source of our moral intuition, religion is a travesty of good ethical behaviour, something he attributes to the tendency of religion to decouple the concept of morality from issues of human suffering. He cites as two examples: the alleged impact upon the global AIDS epidemic due to the Catholic prohibition against condom use, and the attempts made by the religious lobby in America to impede funding for embryonic stem-cell research.

[edit] Spirituality

Finally, Harris also wishes to recapture spirituality for the domain of human reason. He draws his inspiration from the practices (but not the beliefs) of Eastern religion, in particular that of meditation. By paying close attention to one's moment-to-moment conscious experience, Harris suggests that it is possible to make our sense of "self" vanish, while retaining a vivid awareness of the continuum of experience, and thereby reach a hitherto unknown state of personal well-being.

For example he has stated that he considers it likely that the happiest man on the planet might well have spent the last twenty years living alone in a cave.^[4] Harris claims a necessary connection between personal spiritual development and ethics, while insisting that at no stage is it necessary to incorporate myth and superstition into the process. Such things, he feels, can only hinder us.

[edit] Current research

Currently, Harris is completing a doctorate in neuroscience. His aim is to understand the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty, using the technique of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI. What is the difference, for instance, between believing that Australia is an island, and believing that Australia is a planet? And where on such a scale, would a belief in, say, the Virgin Birth fit in? These ideas connect with Harris's philosophy of belief, in which he asserts that in order to be useful, beliefs must genuinely represent states of the real world.

[edit] Criticism

Please see The End of Faith article for further criticism.

In May 2006, he came under sustained attack in a featured article by Meera Nanda for New Humanist, in which she claimed that his analysis of religious extremism was flawed, and that his spirituality was a recipe for authoritarianism.^[5]

Harris has also been criticised by some of his fellow contributors at The Huffington Post. In particular, RJ Eskow has accused him of fostering an intolerance towards faith, potentially as damaging as the religious fanaticism which he opposes.^[6][7] Margaret Wertheim also weighed in.^[8] On the other hand, Harris has received backing from Nina Burleigh,^[9] and Richard Dawkins.^[10]

[edit] Media appearances

Harris appears in the 2005 documentary film The God Who Wasn't There, directed by Brian Flemming. He speaks at various points in the movie, and then in a separate thirteen minute interview with the director.

Other TV appearances were:

• The Today Show (NBC), November 14, 2006
• CNN International (CNN), October 1, 2006
• Fox News (Fox News Network), September 23, 2006
• The O'Reilly Factor (Fox News Network), September 20, 2006
• Tucker (MSNBC), September 19, 2006
• The Colbert Report (Comedy Central), April 25, 2006
• Book TV (C-SPAN2), January 7, 2006
• Tucker (MSNBC), December 27, 2005
• Book TV (C-SPAN2), December 18, 2005
• The O'Reilly Factor (Fox News Network), March 31, 2005
• Book TV (C-SPAN2), February 6, 2005
• Scarborough Country (MSNBC), October 28, 2004
• The O'Reilly Factor (Fox News Network), October 4, 2004
• Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered (PBS), August 27, 2004
• Faith Under Fire (PAX), October 2, 2004

[edit] Books

• The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004, 2005) ISBN 0-393-03515-8
• Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) ISBN 0-307-26577-3

[edit] See also

Anthropology of religion Criticism of religion Philosophy of religion

Psychology of religion Sociology of religion Metaphysical naturalism

Mysticism Neurotheology Philosophical realism

[edit] External links

• Official website
• The God Who Wasn't There
• Huffington Post articles
• Truthdig articles and interview
• Point of Inquiry audio interviews
• Free Inquiry articles [1] [2] [3] [4]

[edit] References