Samuel Benjamin Harris was born on April 9,1967 and is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host.
58 Facts About Sam Harris
2.
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 has debated with many prominent figures on the topics of God or religion, including William Lane Craig, Jordan Peterson, Rick Warren, Andrew Sullivan, Reza Aslan, David Wolpe, Deepak Chopra, Ben Shapiro, and Jean Houston.
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Since September 2013, Sam Harris has hosted the Making Sense podcast, which has a large listenership.
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Sam Harris was one of the original core members of the so-called "intellectual dark web", although Harris has stated that he does not identify as a part of that group.
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Sam Harris and his supporters reject this characterization, adding that such a labeling is an attempt to silence criticism.
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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 TV 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's writing focuses on philosophy, neuroscience, and criticism of religion.
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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, Economist, London 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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Sam Harris has a chapter giving advice in Tim Ferriss's 2016 self-help book Tools of Titans.
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In 2007, Sam Harris engaged in a lengthy debate with conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan on the Internet forum Beliefnet.
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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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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 a critic of religion, and is a leading figure in the New Atheist movement.
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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 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 especially recommends the "headless" meditation technique as written about by Douglas Harding.
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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 has discussed existential risk from artificial general intelligence in depth.
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Sam Harris has given a TED talk on the topic, arguing it will be a major threat in the future and criticizing the paucity of human interest on the subject.
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Sam Harris argues the dangers from artificial intelligence follow from three premises: that intelligence is the result of physical information processing, that humans will continue innovation in AI, and that humans are nowhere near the maximum possible extent of intelligence.
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Sam Harris describes himself as a liberal, 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" when it comes to threats allegedly posed by Islamic fundamentalism.
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Sam Harris opposes Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and Jewish claims of ownership made in the Bible.
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Sam Harris has indicated that he believes that Israel genuinely wants peace and that its neighbours are more devoted to the destruction of Israel.
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Sam Harris has said that Palestine is more guilty citing Palestine and Hamas's use of human shields and genocidal rhetoric towards the Jews as reasons Palestine is more morally culpable.
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Sam Harris went on to say that nothing on the laptop would come close to even the "Trump University" scandal.
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Sam Harris said that Twitter censoring the laptop was a "conspiracy" but that it was warranted.
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Sam Harris has walked back his comments about the laptop.
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Sam Harris supports raising taxes on the wealthy, reducing government spending, and has criticized billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett for paying little taxes.
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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.
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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 accused these commentators of believing that COVID policies were a way of implementing social control and to crackdown on people's freedom politically.
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Sam Harris was once a member of the intellectual dark web, a group that opposes political correctness and identity politics.
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In 2021 Sam Harris said on his podcast that he had left the intellectual dark web and "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 journalist Glenn Greenwald and linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky.
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Kyle Schmidlin wrote in Salon that he considered Chomsky the winner of the exchange because Sam Harris's arguments relied excessively on thought experiments with little application to the real world.
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Sam Harris has countered that his views on this and other topics are frequently misrepresented by "unethical critics" who "deliberately" regard his words out of context.
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Hamid Dabashi, a professor at Columbia University accused Sam Harris of being a "new atheist crusader" having never studied Islam thoroughly and having no special insight into any Muslim community on earth.
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Sam Harris further accused Harris of engaging in such language to justify Western imperialism in the Muslim world.
56.
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 Gorton, an author and editor of nonfiction and scientific books after engaging in a common interest about the nature of consciousness.