Sam Harris

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Sam Harris

Samuel Benjamin "Sam" Harris (born April 9, 1967 in Los Angeles ) is an American philosopher , neuroscientist , writer and popular debate speaker. He is particularly known for his thesis that questions of ethics can and should be investigated using scientific methods. Alongside Richard Dawkins , Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens , who died in 2011 , Harris is one of the best-known representatives of New Atheism .

He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in neuroscience, including studying the neural basis of beliefs using functional magnetic resonance imaging .

In 2004 he wrote the by the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 inspired book The End of Faith (in German The End of Faith ), and thus won the 2005 PEN Award. In 2006 he published Letter to a Christian Nation , with which he countered the critics of his first book. He also writes articles for Newsweek , The Los Angeles Times , The Times in London and The Boston Globe .

He is the son of screenwriter and television producer Susan Harris .

philosophy

Harris sees religions in general and Islam in particular as a great danger for contemporary society and advocates a rational and reasonable approach to ethics and spirituality without denying their necessity. In doing so, he particularly criticizes, based on the famous text Why I am not a Christian by Bertrand Russell , the monotheistic religions and every other form of unfounded, blind faith - which he describes with his book title The End of Faith (in German: Das Ende des Faith ) directly attacks. He argues that political correctness was obsolete in the days of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism and that certain things should be openly discussed:

“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 moderate currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance. "

“To speak simply and honestly about the state of our world - say, for example, that both the Bible and the Koran contain mountains of deadly nonsense - goes against the notion of tolerance currently held by the moderates. But we can no longer allow ourselves the luxury of political correctness. We finally have to recognize the price we pay to maintain the imagery of our ignorance. "

Harris admits that he himself represents a form of intolerance, but he justifies this with the philosophical position that personal beliefs should not be valued more than objective facts and evidence. He demands nothing more from religions than intellectual honesty, which is also demonstrated by the rational way of thinking and science. He argues that it would be nonsensical to demand "respect" from someone for their views on physics or history. Instead, it tests conflicting hypotheses against evidence and facts, and then validates the one that best fits the facts. The same should be done with the “God hypothesis” and should not be measured with other cubits in the area of ​​religion. Harris does not accept the objection that religion and science are two fundamentally different spheres, because religious statements also refer to the physical world and can therefore be scientifically investigated.

Criticism of Christianity and Islam

Harris focuses his criticism, among other things, on the state in the United States , where u. a. the then President George W. Bush suggested that the teaching of intelligent design should be taught in schools in addition to the theory of evolution . He also criticizes that it is precisely these people who are elected to parliament and even to the presidency and who, with their apocalyptic end-time ideas, steer the fate of the country. In order to illustrate and clarify his thesis, he suggests replacing the word “ God ” with “ Zeus ” or “ Apollo ” in a speech by Bush .

Harris sees the taboo on not being allowed to criticize religion as a danger to society. Without admitting that the religions do not spread messages of peace, but messages of hatred and intolerance, every fight against fundamentalist terrorism must fail. That the doctrine of jihad and martyrdom are not simply excesses of extreme Islamism is demonstrated by the controversy surrounding the caricatures that appeared in the Jyllands-Posten in 2006 . Harris calls on Muslims around the world to critically question their beliefs and to identify and fight extremists in their ranks.

Moderate religion

Even if it would be a first positive step to replace religious extremism with a more moderate form of religious practice, Harris does not spare criticism of the moderate believers. By condemning every attack on religion under the banner of respect and tolerance, the moderate faith grants protection and refuge for fundamentalists and prevents an effective criticism of their faith. Thus, moderate belief creates an ideal environment in which religious fundamentalism cannot be criticized.

He also argues that it is absurd to demand "respect" and tolerance for all forms of belief, however ridiculous and untenable; especially in view of the fact that they often make a claim to absoluteness and are always themselves intolerant to a certain degree. In the face of these facts, moderate faith is intellectually shaky. Finally, Harris argues that the fundamentalists and not the moderate theologians are "right" with their interpretation of the respective texts - because these are actually meant literally and it is incoherent to interpret certain passages literally and others in a figurative sense, depending on one's preference. A moderate interpretation of the texts actually represents a falsification of the message, argues Harris on the line of the fundamentalists, but in contrast to them draws the conclusion to reject religion completely.

Morals and ethics

Harris is of the opinion that a rational secular humanism should position itself much more strongly than before on morality and ethics and can contribute much to these issues. He describes the justification of morality through religion as a myth, which is not supported by evidence - the highly secular Scandinavian countries are the most generous in terms of development aid. Harris posits that religious concepts are even morally bad and corrosive in that they unnecessarily increase human suffering, citing as examples the Catholic Church's ban on condoms , which at least in part caused the global AIDS epidemic, and the attempts by American Christians to use the Limit stem cell research and thus prevent the relief of human suffering.

Harris provides a detailed article on the subject of morality in The Moral Landscape . In it he explains in detail that moral behavior can be explained solely by a scientific approach.

In an interview with William MacAskill , Harris spoke favorably of the ideas of the movement of effective altruism and agreed with the arguments of the Australian philosopher Peter Singer that rich people are obliged to contribute to poverty reduction. In response, Harris began donating money to effective, evidence-based organizations for each of his podcasts.

spirituality

Just like morals and ethics, the field of spirituality should no longer be left to religions, but should also be opened up by the human mind. Harris advocates exploring the "practices" (but not the metaphysical belief systems) of the "Eastern religions" and scientifically investigating the phenomena without the supernatural substructure and using them for personal self-realization. As harsh as his criticism of the Abrahamic religions is, he rates Buddhism and its exploration of consciousness in particular . The introspective practices of meditation , according to Harris, do not contradict science; they can even become the subject of rational scientific discourse.

criticism

Basically, Christians and members of other faiths criticize Harris for putting extremists and moderate believers in the same box. Matthew Simpson criticized that Harris could not defend his morals against those of fundamentalists without the basis of a divine origin. In his 2006 book Letter to a Christian Nation , Harris addresses his critics and defends his theses from The End of Faith .

Further criticism came from atheists and humanists themselves, who particularly criticized Harris' views on Eastern spirituality and accused him of being pseudo-scientific in this area and of celebrating his own Hindu-Buddhist experiences. John Gorenfeld also criticized Harris' view of the paranormal (especially his attitude towards reincarnation ) and his attitude towards torture on AlterNet . This criticism was taken up by Robert Todd Carroll in a contribution to the Skeptic's Dictionary . Both related, among other things, to a passage in The End of Faith in which Harris explains:

"If we are willing to drop bombs [...] we should be willing to torture a certain clan of criminal suspects and military prisoners."

"If we are ready to drop bombs [...] we should be ready to torture a certain clan of suspects and military prisoners."

Harris then published a reply on his website in which he stated that his critics had misunderstood basic positions of his thinking or took them out of context.

additional

Sam Harris was interviewed for the documentaries The God Who Wasn't There (2005) and The Unbelievers (2013).

Books

literature

  • Florian Ossadnik: Spinoza and the "scientific atheism" of the 21st century. Ethical and political consequences of early enlightenment and contemporary criticism of religion . In: Studies In European Culture , Volume 8, ed. v. Ludwig Tavernier. Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-89739-705-7 (The volume specifically addresses Sam Harris and his argumentation in The End of Faith .)

Web links

Commons : Sam Harris  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Segal: Atheist Evangelist . In: The Washington Post , October 26, 2006
  2. ↑ Biography of the IMDb about Sam Harris IMDb .
  3. ^ The PEN / Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction . ( Memento of the original from May 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. PEN American Center, 2005. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pen.org
  4. ↑ About Sam Harris . Brief autobiography of the author.
  5. ↑ Blair Golson: Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview ( Memento of the original from August 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Truthdig , April 3, 2006 (English) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.truthdig.com
  6. ^ Brian Flemming & Sam Harris: The God Who Wasn't There , 2005, interviews in English.
  7. ^ A b Sam Harris: The Politics of Ignorance . In: The Huffington Post , 2005.
  8. ↑ Sam Harris: Bombing Our Illusions . In: The Huffington Post , 2005.
  9. ↑ Sam Harris, Being Good and Doing Good . ( samharris.org [accessed May 31, 2017]).
  10. ↑ Sam Harris Believes in God. Newsweek October 18, 2010
  11. ^ Matthew Simpson: Unbelievable: Religion is really, really bad for you . In: Christianity Today , 2005.
  12. ↑ Meera Nanda: Spirited away . In: New Humanist , volume 121, 2006, number 3.
  13. ↑ John Gore field: Sam Harris's Faith in Eastern Spirituality and Muslim Torture . In: AlterNet , 2007.
  14. ↑ Sam Harris: In Defense of Torture . In: The Huffington Post , 2005.
  15. ^ Robert Todd Carroll: Sam Harris: A Man of Faith? In: Skeptic's Dictionary , Newsletter 74, 2007.
  16. ↑ Sam Harris: The End of Faith. Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason . London 2006, p. 197.
  17. ↑ Sam Harris: Sam Harris' Response to Criticism . samharris.org, 2007.
  18. ↑ catalog. Spinoza and the "scientific atheism" of the 21st century. In: VDG Kromsdorf / Weimar online. VDG Weimar, 2011, accessed on April 17, 2011 : “This work undertakes a critical comparison of the early Enlightenment criticism of religion by Baruch de Spinoza (1632-77) with the current“ new atheism ”that was promoted by the so-called“ Brights ”(R. Dawkins et al ) is used against the revealed religions. [...] It can be made clear that Spinoza can be considered a pioneer of Bright's criticism of religion in a comprehensive and in no way distant sense. In addition, the perception arises that the “new atheists” - despite their starting point with current scientific theories - are not actually formulating any new criticism of religion, but only those topoi of the Enlightenment orthodoxy of the 17th and 18th centuries and their ethical ones and political-philosophical implications vary - but without expanding them in terms of content. "
personal data
SURNAME Harris, Sam
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harris, Samuel Benjamin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH los Angeles