I really enjoyed Sam Harris' The End of Faith and am quick to recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the maladaptive nature of religion. But that does not mean I agreed with everything Harris said in the book. As but one example, I found much of his advocacy of Eastern spirituality to be absurd. My great respect for Harris does not prevent me from critically evaluating what he says or even from disagreeing with him on some important issues. You see, I am not blinded by faith; I think for myself and welcome the opportunity to evaluate information critically.Harris has been slammed throughout the atheist blogosphere for comments he made during a recent speech at the Atheist Alliance conference. In the speech, titled "The Problem with Atheism," Harris argued that we are making a mistake to use the word "atheist" and that this mistake has unfortunate consequences.So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not
Sam recently spoke at the Aspen Institute, at their third annual Ideas Festival.
There aren’t any short clips, but you can download the full one hour talk here.
He made many of the same points as in his earlier Idea City presentation, but there are a few nice gems in there.
“They (religions) can’t all be true, given the sheer diversity of the religions on offer, even if we knew that one of them was absolutely true, that this was God’s multiple choice exam: A) Christianity, B) Islam, C) Judaism, every believer should expect to wind up in hell purely as a matter of probability”.
He talks about the criticism of religion, the problems of Islam in the modern world, whether religion can be useful, the consequence of religious beliefs and atheism as a non-belief.
He also covers many of the same issues that we hear in our day to day discussions with theists or apologists, ‘atheism is just another religion’ or ‘atheism is responsible for more e
By Mimi Rothschild
In one corner we have the it-boy of evangelical Christendom, Rick Warren. Pastor of the 25,000-strong Saddleback mega-church, Warren is certainly a force to be reckoned with.
In the other corner, Sam Harris, prominent atheist author and student of neuroscience.
When these two power-players square off, it is bound to be interesting.
I’m disappointed in Warren for invoking so many cliched and emotionally-based arguments. I would have liked to see a more logical approach. Then again, I think Sam Harris did not do nearly as good a job evaluating the historical effects of Christianity vs atheism.
What folks like Harris and fellow author Richard Dawkins must realize is that dogma exists on both sides.
Here are some hilights:
WARREN: You have common grace. Even in people who don’t believe in God, there is a spark God has put in you that says, “There’s got to be more to life than just make money and die.” I think that that spark does not come
I just wanted to share this excellent excerpt from Sam Harris' recent email debate with Andrew Sullivan. In it, he almost exactly sums up my feelings (and much more eloquently than I could manage) on why we should discard our ancient myths and engage in a rational, evidence-driven pursuit of knowledge for the betterment of us all: I'm asking you to imagine a world in which children are taught to investigate reality for themselves, not in conformity to the religious dogmatism of their parents, but by the lights of truly honest, fearless inquiry. Imagine a discourse about ethics and mystical experience that is as contingency-free as the discourse of science already is. Science really does transcend the vagaries of culture: there is no such thing as "Japanese" as opposed to "French" science; we don't speak of "Hindu biology" and "Jewish chemistry" Imagine a world that has transcended its tribalism—racism and nationalism, yes, but religious tribalism especially—i
