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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, neurotheology, and religion. His book The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction,PEN American Center, 2005. "The PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction." and his essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, Free Inquiry magazine, and Playboy. He also appeared in the 2005 documentary film, The God Who Wasn't There.

A philosophy graduate from Stanford University, Harris has made a long study of both Eastern and Western religious traditions. He lives in New York City, and is currently pursuing research into the neural basis of religious belief. He is a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post and Truthdig.

A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person's life.Sam Harris, 2004. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. W.W. Norton & Company.

World view

Harris's basic theme is that he considers the time has come to speak openly and unambiguously about 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 more enlightened approaches towards spirituality and ethics.

Conversational intolerance

Harris freely admits that he is advocating a form of intolerance, but not, as he says, the kind of intolerance that gave us the Gulag. Rather he is arguing for a conversational intolerance, one in which we simply require in our everyday discourse that people's convictions really scale with the available evidence. He feels that we ought to be able to demand intellectual honesty right across the board, and ignore the prevailing taboos and political correctness which seem to prevent us from openly criticising religion.

Harris observes, moreover, that these are the rules which apply to every other field of discourse. We are never 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 views, is quickly marginalized from the conversation on those topics. Conversely, even a religious fundamentalist acts like a rational scientist when it comes to everyday decision making.

So Harris feels that a partition has been erected, both in the mind of the believer and in society at large, with respect to the treatment of religion as against other domains—a partition which, following the events of September 11, he believes we can no longer afford to maintain.

Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.

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 some 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.Sam Harris, 2005. "The Politics of Ignorance." The Huffington Post.

These beliefs cannot exist in isolation; rather, he feels, they should terrify us all, as they are entirely maladaptive to planning for a sustainable future for the planet. For 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, is that these are the same people who both elect and are elected as presidents and congressmen. Religion 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.

Whatever their imagined source, the doctrines of modern religions are no more tenable than those which, for lack of adherents, were cast upon the scrap heap of mythology millennia ago.

Islam

All of which lunacy, he argues, is obscuring 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 in fact at war with Islam, which far from being a religion of peace, preaches a doctrine of religious and political subjugation. The Koran and the hadith, he notes, are packed full with unambiguous incitements to kill infidels, which noble acts are then duly rewarded by an eternity of celestial delights.

It is specifically the metaphysics of martyrdom, or jihad, which Harris sees as the source of greatest peril, for the simple reason that it takes the sting out of death. In geopolitical terms, we want the sting very much in death, he says, as a genuine disinclination to die provides the only reasonable hope of keeping the missiles safely in their silos.

That such notions might be merely the product of a more extreme form of Islam, is a delusion Harris feels 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.

Unless the world's Muslims can find some way of expunging the metaphysics that is fast turning their religion into a cult of death, we will ultimately face the same perversely destructive behavior throughout much of the world.Sam Harris, 2006. "Sam Harris on the Reality of Islam." Truthdig.

Moderation

That the world would be an altogether happier place if religious extremism were replaced by religious moderation, is plainly acknowledged by Harris. He then proceeds, counter intuitively, 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, as Harris observes, it is absurd to imagine that we can continue to respect everyone's drastically conflicting religious beliefs equally. He points out that 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 possibly 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. Beliefs have consequences, potentially catastrophic ones.

And thirdly, moderation is simply bad theology because the extremists are in fact right: God really does want to put homosexuals to death or destroy infidels, if one reads the texts honestly. Harris further notes that religious moderates (and indeed some secularists) appear to be blinded to the fact that the fundamentalists literally 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.

To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world—to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish—is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it.

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 rightly belonged. He believes that the supposed link between faith and morality is a complete 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 in fact 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 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.

Anyone who feels that the interests of a three-day-old blastocyst just might trump those of a child with full-body burns has had his ethical intuitions blinded by religious metaphysics.Sam Harris, 2005. "Selling Out Science." Free Inquiry, volume 26 number 1.

Spirituality

Finally, Harris also wishes to recapture spirituality for the domain of human reason and creativity. He draws his inspiration from the practices (but not the beliefs) of Eastern religion, in particular that of meditation. By paying very close attention to one's moment-to-moment conscious experience, Harris assures us that it is quite 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.

He has received considerable criticism from atheists for this assertion. For example he has stated, to the bewilderment of some, 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.Sam Harris, 2005. "Rational Mysticism." Free Inquiry, volume 25 number 6. But Harris is unapologetic, claiming 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.

Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith.

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. However, Harris does not feel we need wait for the outcome of his research in order to start making progress:

I'm seeking to understand belief itself at the level of the brain, but clearly the way in here is conversation and challenging ideas—challenging ascendant ignorance, and we're not even doing that.Brian Flemming & Sam Harris, 2005. The God Who Wasn't There, extended interviews. Beyond Belief Media.

Criticism

Please see The End of Faith article for further criticism.

Critical responses to Harris and his arguments are common, especially from those with a stake in religious faith. For example, Harris is sometimes accused of painting Islam, Judaism, and Christianity with a brush so broad that he acknowledges only their negative qualities, and fails to appreciate any potential benefit these faiths have delivered to society. But equally, Harris has not been without his atheist critics, especially for his views on spirituality. 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.Meera Nanda, 2006. "Spirited away." New Humanist, volume 121 number 3.

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.RJ Eskow, 2005. "Blind Faith: Sam Harris Attacks Islam." The Huffington Post.RJ Eskow, 2006. "Reject Arguments For Intolerance—Even From Atheists." The Huffington Post. Margaret Wertheim also weighed in with a deeply personal account.Margaret Wertheim, 2006. "The End of Faith?." The Huffington Post. On the other hand, Harris has received backing from Nina Burleigh,Nina Burleigh, 2005. "Forget About Christ, Get God out of Christmas First." The Huffington Post. and Richard Dawkins.Richard Dawkins, 2005. "Coming Out Against Religious Mania." The Huffington Post.

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:

Upcoming projects

Harris has announced that he intends to start a foundation to promote secular projects worldwide, and that he has a new book coming out in September 2006 entitled Letter to a Christian Nation, a criticism of Christian fundamentalism in modern-day America.Blair Golson & Sam Harris, 2006. "Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview." Truthdig.

Books

See also

External links

References

American non-fiction writers | American atheists | Atheist thinkers and activists | Stanford University alumni | 1967 births | Living people

 

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