1. Samuel Benjamin Harris was born on April 9,1967 and is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host.
67 Facts About Sam Harris
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Sam Harris has since written six additional books: Letter to a Christian Nation in 2006, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values in 2010, the long-form essay Lying in 2011, the short book Free Will in 2012, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion in 2014, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue in 2015.
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Sam Harris and his supporters reject this characterization, saying that such a labeling is an attempt to silence criticism.
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Sam Harris has debated with many prominent figures on the topics of God or religion, including William Lane Craig, Jordan Peterson, Rick Warren, Robert Wright, Andrew Sullivan, Cenk Uygur, Reza Aslan, David Wolpe, Deepak Chopra, Ben Shapiro, and Peter Singer.
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Since September 2013, Sam Harris has hosted the Making Sense podcast, which has a large listenership.
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Around 2018, he was described as one of the marginalized "renegade" intellectuals, though Sam Harris disagreed with that characterization.
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Sam Harris is considered a prominent figure in the Mindfulness movement, promoting meditation practices without the need for any religious beliefs.
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Samuel Benjamin Harris was born in Los Angeles, California, on April 9,1967.
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Sam Harris is the son of the late actor Berkeley Harris, who appeared mainly in Western films, and television writer and producer Susan Harris, who created Soap and The Golden Girls, among other series.
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Sam Harris's father, born in North Carolina, came from a Quaker background, and his mother is Jewish but not religious.
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Sam Harris was raised by his mother following his parents' divorce when he was age two.
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Sam Harris has stated that his upbringing was entirely secular and that his parents rarely discussed religion, though he stated that he was not raised as an atheist.
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Sam Harris's thesis was titled The Moral Landscape: How Science Could Determine Human Values.
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Sam Harris came to prominence for his criticism of religion and he is described as one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.
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Sam Harris has written for publications such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times, The Boston Globe, and The Atlantic.
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Five of Sam Harris's books have been New York Times bestsellers, and his writing has been translated into over 20 languages.
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In September 2013, Sam Harris began releasing the Waking Up podcast.
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Sam Harris has interviewed a wide range of guests, including scientists, philosophers, spiritual teachers, and authors.
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Sam Harris is generally a critic of religion, and is considered a leading figure in the New Atheist movement.
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In September 2006 Sam Harris debated Robert Wright on the rationality of religious belief.
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In 2010, Sam Harris joined Michael Shermer to debate with Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston on the future of God in a debate hosted by ABC News Nightline.
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Sam Harris debated with Christian philosopher William Lane Craig in April 2011 on whether there can be an objective morality without God.
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Sam Harris has been described in 2020 by Jonathan Matusitz, Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, as "a champion of the counter-jihad left".
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Sam Harris is critical of the Christian right in politics in the United States, blaming them for the political focus on "pseudo-problems like gay marriage".
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Sam Harris has often noted some positive aspects of Buddhist thought, especially in relation to meditation, such as Buddhism's emphasis that one's behavior and intentions impact the mind, and in order to achieve happiness, one needs to strive towards "overcoming fear and hatred" while "maximizing love and compassion".
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In 2019, while discussing his book Waking Up: Searching for Spirituality Without Religion, Sam Harris noted that the West could learn a lot from the East about the traditions of meditation found in Hinduism and Buddhism, though he considers that meditation can be practiced without any traditional religious beliefs.
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Sam Harris rejects the dichotomy between spirituality and rationality, favoring a middle path that preserves spirituality and science but does not involve religion.
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Sam Harris writes that spirituality should be understood in light of scientific disciplines like neuroscience and psychology.
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In Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, Sam Harris describes his experience with Dzogchen, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice, and recommends it to his readers.
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Sam Harris writes that the purpose of spirituality is to become aware that our sense of self is illusory, and says this realization brings both happiness and insight into the nature of consciousness, mirroring core Buddhist beliefs.
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Sam Harris considers that the well-being of conscious creatures forms the basis of morality.
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Sam Harris criticizes cultural and moral relativism, arguing that it prevents people from making objective moral judgments about practices that clearly harm human well-being, such as female genital mutilation.
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Sam Harris contends that we can make scientifically based claims about the negative impacts of such practices on human welfare, and that withholding judgment in these cases is tantamount to claiming complete ignorance about what contributes to human well-being.
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Sam Harris says that the idea of free will "cannot be mapped on to any conceivable reality" and is incoherent.
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Sam Harris writes in Free Will that neuroscience "reveals you to be a biochemical puppet".
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Sam Harris is particularly concerned with existential risks from artificial general intelligence, a topic he has discussed in depth in several episodes of his podcast.
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Sam Harris said that artificial superintelligence will inevitably be developed if three assumptions hold true: intelligence is a product of information processing in physical systems, humans will continue to improve intelligent machines, and human intelligence is far from the peak of possible intelligence.
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Sam Harris described making artificial superintelligence safe as "one of the greatest challenges our species will ever face", indicating that it would warrant immediate consideration.
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Sam Harris describes himself as a liberal, even though he criticizes some aspects of both right and left.
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Sam Harris is a registered Democrat and has never voted Republican in presidential elections.
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Sam Harris said that liberalism has grown "dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world" regarding threats posed by Islamic fundamentalism.
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Sam Harris criticized the Bush administration for its use of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, but argued that there can be a rational case for torture in rare circumstances.
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Sam Harris opposes religious claims to Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
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Nonetheless, Sam Harris has said that due to the hostility towards Jews, if there is one religious group which needs protections in the form of a state, it is Jews and the state of Israel.
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Sam Harris said in 2014 that he believes Israel genuinely wants peace and that its neighbors are more devoted to the destruction of Israel.
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Sam Harris has said that Hamas is more guilty than the IDF with regard to war crimes citing Hamas' use of human shields and genocidal rhetoric towards the Jews.
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Sam Harris condemned the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which led to the war.
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Sam Harris has criticized Trump for lying, stating in 2018 that Trump "has assaulted truth more than anyone in human history".
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Sam Harris supports raising taxes on the wealthy and reducing government spending, and has criticized billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett for paying relatively little in tax.
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Sam Harris has accused conservatives of perceiving raising taxes as a form of theft or punishment, and of believing that by being rich they create value for others.
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Sam Harris owns guns and wrote in 2015 that he understood people's hostility towards gun culture in the United States and the political influence of the National Rifle Association of America.
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Sam Harris has stated that he disagrees with proposals by liberals and gun control advocates for restricting guns, such as the assault weapons ban, since more gun crimes are committed with handguns than the semi-automatic weapons which the ban would target.
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Sam Harris has said that the left-wing media gets many things wrong about guns.
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Sam Harris has offered support for certain regulations on gun ownership, such as mandatory training, licensure, and background checks before a gun can be legally purchased.
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Sam Harris accused these commentators of believing that COVID-19 policies were a way of implementing social control and to crackdown on people's freedom politically.
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Sam Harris has feuded with Bret Weinstein over his views on COVID-19.
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Sam Harris has been described, alongside others such as Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein, and Jordan Peterson, as a member of the intellectual dark web, a group that opposes political correctness and identity politics.
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In November 2020, Sam Harris stated that he does not identify as a part of that group.
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In 2021 Sam Harris stated that he had "turn[ed] in [his] imaginary membership card to this imaginary organization".
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Sam Harris stated the invitation was out of indignation at a violent protest against Murray at Middlebury College the month before and not out of particular interest in the material at hand.
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Sam Harris has been accused of Islamophobia by linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky.
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Hedges and Nathan J Robinson have criticized Harris for discussing in an excerpt from The End of Faith the possibility of a nuclear first strike against an Islamist regime that acquired long-range nuclear weapons and that would be undeterred by the threat of mutual destruction due to beliefs in jihad and martyrdom.
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Sam Harris has countered that his views on this and other topics are frequently misrepresented by "unethical critics" who "deliberately" take his words out of context.
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Sam Harris has criticized the validity of the term "Islamophobia".
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Wright wrote that Sam Harris, despite claiming to be a champion of rationality, ignored his own cognitive biases and engaged in faulty and inconsistent arguments in his book The End of Faith.
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Sam Harris was included on a list of the "100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People 2019" in the Watkins Review, a publication of Watkins Books, a London esoterica bookshop.
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In 2004, Sam Harris married Annaka Sam Harris, an author and editor of nonfiction and scientific books, after engaging in a common interest about the nature of consciousness.