Sam Harris

May 25th, 2006

The End of FaithThis week’s dialogue on Integral Naked was totally rad (that expression’s back right?). Stuart Davis interviewed Sam Harris, who wrote The End of Faith. This interview alone is well worth jumping through hoops for the free trial subscription. From what I’ve heard and read so far, this guy is dead-on in his analysis. He’s not some political hack either. He’s a Stanford educated philosophy grad who’s working on his doctorate in neuroscience.

From Sam Harris’s web site:

The End of Faith provides a harrowing glimpse of mankind’s willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when these beliefs inspire the worst of human atrocities.

Clipped from an Amazon.com interview:

Amazon.com: What’s the single most practical thing that people who agree with your conclusions could do starting now to change the overall consensus about religious faith?

Harris: Once again, it comes down to new rules of conversation–not new laws or demonstrations in the street. Just imagine how different it would be if every time a person in a position of power used the word “God,” the press responded as though he had just used a word like “Poseidon.” Our conversation with ourselves would change very quickly and very dramatically. Imagine someone opposing stem-cell research on the floor of the Senate with a statement like, “life is a gift from Zeus himself. No man should meddle with it.”

Of course, criticism and the demand for intellectual honesty are not enough. On the positive side, we need to find creative approaches to ethics, spiritual experience, and the building of strong communities. The scientific study of positive human experience–joy, love, compassion, meditative states, etc.–will undoubtedly play a role here. But this will take time. It need take no time at all, however, for us to realize that the people who invoke God in public discourse are either speaking in empty platitudes or making some very suspect claims about the nature of the world, or about the character of their own experience. We should demand that they start making sense, and if they fail to make sense, we should stop listening to them.

This is definitely my next book to buy, read part of, and then set aside for another important book. Seriously, check him out.

[Edit 8:45 8/26] Not even twelve hours after I posted this, Scott Adams posted this on the Dilbert Blog - Could Science Eliminate Religion? Coincidence? Synchronicity? Or maybe Scott Adams is a regular reader. Better yet, he subscribes to Integral Naked.

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7 Responses to “Sam Harris”

  1. Eric Says:
    May 25th, 2006 at 9:38 pm

    “This is definitely my next book to buy, read part of, and then set aside for another important book. ”

    Dude - I laughed my ass off when I read this. So true…

  2. ~C4Chaos Says:
    May 26th, 2006 at 9:26 am

    thanks bro. will check out the interview!

  3. ~C4Chaos Says:
    May 26th, 2006 at 9:27 am

    LOL. i think Scott is a regular reader ;)

  4. Graham English Says:
    May 26th, 2006 at 9:57 am

    LMAO :) Thanks for the book tip.

  5. ~C4Chaos Says:
    May 26th, 2006 at 10:30 am

    ~The Dilbert Blog Troll: Could Science Eliminate Religion…

    Serendipity is flowing the deep surface …

  6. William Harryman Says:
    May 27th, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    I enjoyed this book when I first read it last year. But then he started posting things like a “Defense of Torture” and an “Atheist Manifesto.” It became unfortunately clear that he is mostly a flatlander.

    However, I was THRILLED when I got my update that he was on Integral Naked. I haven’t listened to it, yet, but hopefully tomorrow. But I am hopeful that being exposed to an integral worldview, combined with his meditation practice, will generate some transformation in his thinking. He certainly is bright enough to get the integral viewpoint.

    The timing of the Scott Adams post was interesting. :)

    Peace,
    Bill

  7. Sean Says:
    May 28th, 2006 at 10:34 am

    Thanks for the comments, guys.

    Bill - I would never have guessed, from his interview, that Harris would write something called “Defense of Torture.” With a title like that, I don’t even want to check it out.

    Here’s another clip from the Amazon interview that made me feel that, at least intellectually, he is not rooted in flatland-

    Amazon.com: In other words, you are careful to distinguish between what you term “faith” and “spirituality.” In a nutshell, what is this distinction?

    Harris: “Faith” is false conviction in unjustified propositions (a certain book was written by God; we will be reunited with our loved ones after death; the Creator of the universe can hear our thoughts, etc.). “Spirituality” or “mysticism” (both words are pretty terrible, but there are no good alternatives in English) refers to any process of introspection by which a person can come to realize that the feeling he calls “I” is a cognitive illusion. The core truth of mysticism is this: It is possible to experience the world without feeling like a separate “self” in the usual sense. Such a change in the character of one’s experience need not become the basis for making unsupportable claims about the nature of the universe, however.

    I’ll “pray” for more transformation along these lines. :)