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Thursday, January 22, 2015

Michael Shermer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer wiki portrait4.jpg
Shermer on the Skeptics Society Geology Tour on June 8, 2007.
Born Michael Brant Shermer
September 8, 1954 (age 60)
Residence Altadena, California, USA
Alma mater Pepperdine University (B.A., 1976)
California State University (M.A., 1978)
Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D., 1991)
Occupation Academic historian of science and editor
Title Editor-in-Chief of Skeptic, Senior Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University and Adjunct Professor at Chapman University
Website
www.michaelshermer.com

Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic,[1] which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members.[2] Shermer also engages in debates on topics pertaining to pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism.

Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television series Exploring the Unknown. Since April 2001, he has been a monthly columnist for Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column. He is also a scientific advisor to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).[3]

Shermer states he was once a fundamentalist Christian, but ceased to believe in the existence of God during his graduate studies. He accepts the labels agnostic,[4] nontheist,[5][6] atheist and others.[7][8] He also describes himself as an advocate for humanist philosophy[9] as well as the science of morality.[10] He has expressed reservations about such labels for his lack of belief in a God, however, as he sees them being used in the service of "pigeonholing", and prefers to simply be called a skeptic.[7]

Early life

Shermer grew up in Southern California.[11][12] His parents divorced when he was four[11] and later remarried, his mother to a man with three children, who became Shermer's stepsiblings, and his father to a woman with whom he had two daughters, Shermer's half-sisters. His father would later die of a heart attack in 1986, and his mother of brain cancer in 2000.[13]

Although Shermer went to Sunday school, he says that neither his biological nor stepparents or siblings were religious nor non-religious, as they did not hold much discussion on the topic, and did not attend church nor pray together. In 1971, at the beginning of his senior year in high school, Shermer announced he was a born again Christian, which came about through the influence of his best friend, George. For the next seven years he would evangelize door-to-door as part of his profoundly held beliefs.[13]

Shermer was raised with guns. His stepfather was a hunter who took Shermer and their black Labrador hunting dogs with him on hunting excursions half a dozen times a year, shooting game such as dove, duck and quail with a 20-gauge and 12-gauge shotguns. They ate everything they killed, for which Shermer's stepfather also displayed culinary skills. Growing up Shermer owned a BB gun, then a pellet gun, then a 20-gauge shotgun, and then a 12-gauge shotgun.[14]

Shermer graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in 1972. He began his undergraduate studies at Pepperdine University, initially majoring in Christian theology, later switching to psychology.[12][15] He completed his bachelor's degree in psychology/biology at Pepperdine in 1976.[16]

Competitive bicycling

Shermer is a cycling enthusiast and has been involved in the development of cycling gear.

Shermer began competitive bicycling in 1979, and spent a decade as a professional rider. Shermer's best known bicycling is in the very long distance ultramarathon road racing discipline.[17]

During the course of his cycling career, Shermer worked with cycling technologists in developing better products for the sport. During his association with Bell Helmets, a bicycle-race sponsor, Shermer advised them on design issues regarding their development of expanded-polystyrene for use in cycling helmets, which would absorb impact far better than the old leather "hairnet" helmets used by bicyclists for decades. Shermer advised them that if their helmets looked too much like motorcycle helmets, in which polystyrene was already being used, and not like the old hairnet helmets, no serious cyclists or amateur would use them. This suggestion led to their first model, the V1 Pro, which looked like a black leather hairnet, but functioned on the inside like a motorcycle helmet. In 1982, Shermer worked with Wayman Spence, whose small supply company, Spenco Medical, adapted the gel technology Spence developed for bedridden patients with pressure sores into cycling gloves and saddles to alleviate the carpal tunnel syndrome and saddle sores suffered by cyclists.[18]

During the decade in which he raced long distances, he helped to found the 3,000-mile nonstop transcontinental bicycle Race Across America (known as "RAAM", along with Lon Haldeman and John Marino), in which he competed five times (1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1989), was assistant race director for six years, and executive race director for seven years.[19] An acute medical condition is named for him: "Shermer Neck" is pain in and extreme weakness of the neck muscles found among long-distance bicyclists. Shermer suffered the condition during the 1983 Race Across America.[20] Shermer's embrace of scientific skepticism crystallized during his time as a cyclist, explaining, "I became a skeptic on Saturday, August 6, 1983, on the long climbing road to Loveland Pass, Colorado"[21] after months of training under the guidance of a "nutritionist" with an unaccredited Ph.D. After years of practicing acupuncture, chiropractic, massage therapy, negative ions, rolfing, pyramid power, fundamentalist Christianity, and "a host of weird things" (with the exception of drugs) to improve his life and training, Shermer stopped rationalizing the failure of these practices.[22] Shermer would later produce several documentaries on cycling.[19]

Shermer still cycles actively (as of 2012) and participated in the Furnace Creek 508 in October 2011, a qualifying race for RAAM, finishing second in the four man team category.[15][23]

Shermer has written on the subject of pervasive doping in competitive cycling and a game theoretic view of the dynamics driving the problem in several sports. He wrote specifically about r-EPO doping, which he saw as both widespread and well known within the sport, which was later shown to be instrumental in the notorious doping scandal surrounding Lance Armstrong.[24][25][26]

Graduate studies and teaching

Shermer's graduate studies in experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton, led to many after-class discussions with professors Bayard Brattstrom and Meg White. These,[27] along with his studies in ethology and cultural anthropology, led him to question his religious beliefs, and by mid-way through his graduate training, he removed the Christian ichthys that he had been wearing around his neck.[13][27] Shermer completed his master's degree from California State University in experimental psychology in 1978.[16]

Shermer earned his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University in history of science in 1991 (with his dissertation titled "Heretic-Scientist: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Evolution of Man: A Study on the Nature of Historical Change").[16] Shermer later based a full-length, 2002 book on his dissertation: In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History.[28]

Before starting the Skeptics Society, Shermer was an adjunct professor of the history of science at Occidental College, California. Since 2007, Shermer has been a senior research fellow at Claremont Graduate University. Since 2011, Shermer has been also an adjunct professor at Chapman University.[29]

Scientific skepticsm

In 1992 Shermer founded the Skeptics Society, which produces Skeptic magazine and organizes the Caltech Lecture Series. It currently has over 55,000 members.[2][30]

Shermer is also a scientific advisor to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).[31]

Published works

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Michael Shermer
Shermer in 2008.

Shermer is the author of books which attempt to explain the ubiquity of irrational or poorly substantiated beliefs, including UFOs, Bigfoot, and paranormal claims. In 1997 he wrote Why People Believe Weird Things, which explores a variety of "weird" ideas and groups (including cults), in the tradition of the skeptical writings of Martin Gardner. A revised and expanded edition was published in 2002. From the Introduction:
So we are left with the legacy of two types of thinking errors: Type 1 Error: believing a falsehood and Type 2 Error: rejecting a truth. ... Believers in UFOs, alien abductions, ESP, and psychic phenomena have committed a Type 1 Error in thinking: they are believing a falsehood. ... It's not that these folks are ignorant or uninformed; they are intelligent but misinformed. Their thinking has gone wrong.
— Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, 1997, 2002, Introduction
In How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, Shermer explored the psychology behind the belief in God. In its introduction Shermer wrote "Never in history have so many, and such a high percentage of the population, believed in God. Not only is God not dead as Nietzsche proclaimed, but he has never been more alive."

Since April 2001, he has written the monthly Skeptic column for Scientific American. He has also contributed to Time magazine.[32]

In February 2002, he characterized the position that "God had no part in the process [of the evolution of mankind]" as the "standard scientific theory".[33] this was criticized by fellow scientist Eugenie Scott in January 2006, who commented that science makes no claim about God one way or the other.[34]

In May 2002, Shermer and Alex Grobman published their book Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? which examined and refuted the Holocaust denial movement. This book recounts meeting various denialists and concludes that free speech is the best way to deal with pseudohistory.

Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown was released in 2005. Then his 2006 book Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design, marshals point-by-point arguments supporting evolution, sharply criticizing Intelligent Design. This book also argues that science cannot invalidate religion, and that Christians and conservatives can and should accept evolution.

In June 2006, Shermer, who formerly expressed skepticism regarding the mainstream scientific view on global warming, wrote that, in view of the accumulation of evidence, the position of denying global warming is no longer tenable.[35]

The Mind of The Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics was released in 2007. In it Shermer reports on the findings of multiple behavioral and biochemical studies that address evolutionary explanations for modern behavior.

In February 2009, Shermer published The History of Science: A Sweeping Visage of Science and its History, a 25-hour audio lecture.

In May 2011, Shermer published The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies – How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths.

Prior to work on science and skepticism, Shermer published books on cycling and others on child education in the math and science disciplines. These include collaborations with Arthur Benjamin.[15]

Media appearances and lectures

Shermer appeared as a guest on Donahue in 1994 to respond to Bradley Smith's and David Cole's Holocaust denial claims, and in 1995 on The Oprah Winfrey Show to challenge Rosemary Altea's psychic claims. Shermer made a guest appearance in a 2004 episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, in which he argued that events in the Bible constitute "mythic storytelling," rather than events described literally. His stance was supported by the show's hosts, who have expressed their own atheism. The episode in question, The Bible: Fact or Fiction?, sought to debunk the notion that the Bible is an empirically reliable historical record. Opposing Shermer was Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University.[36]

Shermer made several appearances on NBC's daytime paranormal-themed show The Other Side in 1994 and 1995. After getting to know that show's producers, he made a formal pitch to their production company for his own skepticism-oriented reality show whose aim would be to present points of view of both believers and skeptics. His proposals were not fruitful, but several years later, one of the executives of that company went to work for the then-newly formed Fox Family Channel, and impressed with Shermer's show treatment, requested he pitch it to the network. The network picked up the series, Exploring the Unknown, of which Shermer became a producer and cohost. The series, which was budgeted at approximately $200,000USD per episode, was viewed by Shermer as a direct extension of the work done at the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, and would enable Shermer to reach more people. The equivocal title was chosen so as to not tip off guests or viewers as to the skeptical nature of the show.[37] Various segments from Exploring the Unknown can be found on Shermer's YouTube channel.[38]

In 1999 Shermer produced and was the co-host for the Fox Family TV series, Exploring the Unknown.

Shermer has been a speaker at all three Beyond Belief events from 2006 to 2008. He also spoke at the 2006 TED Conference on "Why people believe strange things."[39]

Shermer is an occasional guest on Skepticality, the official podcast of Skeptic.[24]

Shermer has debated Deepak Chopra on multiple occasions,[40][41] including during their March 2010 appearance on the ABC News program Nightline.[42] He has named Chopra as his personal favourite debating partner.[15]

On August 21, 2010, Shermer was honored with an award recognizing his contributions in the skeptical field, from The Independent Investigations Group during its 10th Anniversary Gala.[43]

Personal life

Shermer lives in Altadena, California, on the edge of a cliff in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains atop which Mount Wilson stands.[44]

Politically, Shermer has described himself as a lifelong libertarian. The first President he voted for was Richard Nixon in 1972, which in light of the Watergate scandal, he calls his "most embarrassing vote". In 2000 he voted for Harry Browne in order to "vote his conscience", on the assumption that the winner of the Al Gore-George W. Bush contest would be irrelevant. He later regretted this assumption, believing that Bush's foreign policy made the world more dangerous, and voted for John Kerry in 2004. Shermer names Thomas Jefferson as his favorite President, for his championing of liberty and his application of scientific thinking to the political, economic, and social spheres.
Shermer says of Jefferson, "When he dined alone at the White House there was more intelligence in that room than when John F. Kennedy hosted a dinner there for a roomful of Nobel laureates."[45]

In an early 2013 issue of Skeptic Shermer stated that he opposes gun control measures, primarily because of his beliefs in the principle of increasing individual freedom and decreased government intervention, and also because he has owned guns for most of his life. As an adult, he owned a Ruger .357 Magnum pistol with hollow-tip bullets for a quarter century in order to protect his family, though he eventually took it out of the house when his marriage began to experience problems, and later got rid of it entirely. Though he no longer owns guns, he continues to support the right to own guns to protect one's family.[14] However, in a column he wrote later that October, he indicated that the data on gun homicides, suicides and accidental shootings may make some gun control measures necessary.[46]

He married Jennifer Graf on June 25, 2014.[47]

Bibliography

Books

Articles

Media work

Television

Exploring the Unknown
Other television and film appearances

Radio and Web appearances

at

Sam Harris

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Sam Harris
Sam Harris 01.jpg
Harris, pictured c. 2007
Born Samuel B. Harris[1]
April 9, 1967 (age 47)
United States
Occupation Author, philosopher, neuroscientist, non-profit executive
Nationality United States
Alma mater Stanford University (B.A. 2000)
UCLA (Ph.D. 2009)
Genre Non-fiction
Subject Religion, philosophy, neuroscience
Notable works
Notable awards PEN/Martha Albrand Award
Spouse Annaka Harris (m. 2004)
Signature
Website
www.samharris.org

Samuel B. "Sam" Harris (born April 9, 1967)[2] is an American author, philosopher, and neuroscientist. He is the co-founder and chief executive of Project Reason.[3] He is the author of The End of Faith, which was published in 2004 and appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks. The book also won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction in 2005.[4] In 2006, Harris published the book Letter to a Christian Nation as a response to criticism of The End of Faith. This work was followed by The Moral Landscape, published in 2010, his long-form essay Lying in 2011, the short book Free Will in 2012, and Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion in 2014.

Harris is a contemporary critic of religion and proponent of scientific skepticism and the "New Atheism".[5] He is also an advocate for the separation of church and state, freedom of religion, and the liberty to criticize religion.[6] Harris has written numerous articles for The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, and the journal Nature. His articles touch upon a diversity of topics including religion, morality, neuroscience, free will, terrorism, and self-defense.[7]

In his 2010 book The Moral Landscape, Harris argues that science can help answer moral problems and can aid the facilitation of human well-being.[6] He regularly gives talks around the United States and Great Britain, which include speeches at the University of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford University, and Tufts University. He also gave a shortened speech at TED, where he outlined the arguments made in his book The Moral Landscape.[8] Harris has also made numerous television appearances, including interviews for Nightline, Real Time with Bill Maher, The O'Reilly Factor, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Last Word, among others. He has also appeared in the documentary films The God Who Wasn't There (2005) and The Unbelievers (2013).

Early life and education

Harris grew up in a secular home in Los Angeles, son of actor Berkeley Harris[9] and The Golden Girls creator and TV producer Susan Harris.[10] His father came from a Quaker background and his mother is Jewish.[11] His parents rarely discussed religion, though it was always a subject which interested him.[12][13] Harris has been reluctant to discuss personal details such as where he now lives, where he grew up, or what his parents did, citing security reasons.[14] In 1986, as a young student at Stanford University, Harris experimented with the drug ecstasy, and has since written and spoken about the powerful insights he felt psychologically under the drug's influence.[15][16] Harris was a serious student of the martial arts and taught ninjutsu in college. After more than twenty years, he began practicing two martial arts again,[17] including Brazilian jiu-jitsu.[18]
Harris became interested in spiritual and philosophical questions when he studied at Stanford University. He was fascinated by the idea that he might be able to achieve spiritual insights without the use of drugs.[19] Leaving Stanford in his second year, he went to India, where he studied meditation with Hindu and Buddhist religious teachers,[19][20] including Dilgo Khyentse.[21] Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford, completing a B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000.[13][22] Harris began writing his first book, The End of Faith, immediately after the September 11 attacks.[13]
He received a Ph.D. degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 at the University of California, Los Angeles,[13][23][24] using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty.[13][24] His thesis was titled "The moral landscape: How science could determine human values", and his advisor was Mark S. Cohen.[25]
Harris married in 2004. He and his wife Annaka are the parents of two daughters.[26] Annaka Harris is a co-founder of Project Reason and an editor of nonfiction and scientific books.

Views

Harris's basic message is that the time has come to freely question the idea of religious faith.[27]p. 13–15 Harris criticizes Islam, Christianity, and Judaism which he says tend to be monolithic and ready to harm others only for their religion. He feels that the survival of civilization is in danger because of a taboo against questioning religious beliefs, and that this taboo impedes progress toward more enlightened approaches to spirituality and ethics.

Although an atheist, Harris avoids using the term, arguing that the label is both unnecessary and a liability.[28] His position is that "atheism" is not in itself a worldview or a philosophy. He believes atheists "should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, honest people, who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them".[28]

Harris argues that religion is especially rife with bad ideas, calling it "one of the most perverse misuses of intelligence we have ever devised."[29] He compares modern religious beliefs to the myths of the Ancient Greeks, which were once accepted as fact but which are obsolete today. In a January 2007 interview with PBS, Harris said, "We don't have a word for not believing in Zeus, which is to say we are all atheists in respect to Zeus. And we don't have a word for not being an astrologer". He goes on to say that the term will be retired only when "we all just achieve a level of intellectual honesty where we are no longer going to pretend to be certain about things we are not certain about".[30]

He also rejects the claim that the Bible was inspired by an omniscient god. He insists that if that were the case, the book could "make specific, falsifiable predictions about human events". Instead, he notes, the Bible "does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century".[31]

In The End of Faith, Harris suggests that religious dogma is flawed in that such beliefs are based on faith rather than on evidence and experience. He maintains that religion allows views that would otherwise be a sign of "madness" to become accepted or, in some cases, revered as "holy", citing as an example the doctrine of transubstantiation. Harris contends that if a lone individual developed this belief, he or she would be considered "mad", and that it is "merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window".[27]p. 72.

Harris states that he advocates a benign, noncoercive, corrective form of intolerance, distinguishing it from historic religious persecution. He promotes a conversational intolerance, in which personal convictions are scaled against evidence, and where intellectual honesty is demanded equally in religious views and non-religious views.[32] He also believes there is a need to counter inhibitions that prevent the open critique of religious ideas, beliefs, and practices under the auspices of "tolerance".[33]

Judaism

Harris was raised by a secular Jewish mother and a Quaker father, but has publicly stated that his upbringing was entirely secular. Fellow religion critic Christopher Hitchens once referred to Harris as a "Jewish warrior against theocracy and bigotry of all stripes".[34]

In The End of Faith, Harris is critical of the Jewish faith and its followers:

Science of morality

Sam Harris speaking in 2010 at TED

In his third book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Harris argues that "Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors—ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics." He contends that humanity has reached a point in time when, thanks to scientific flourishing and inquiry, many sciences can "have an impact on the well-being of others".[35] Harris argues that it is time to promote a scientific approach to normative morality, rejecting the idea that religion determines what is good.[36] He believes that once scientists begin proposing moral norms in papers, supernatural moral systems will join "astrology, witchcraft and Greek mythology on the scrapheap".[36]

Harris's arguments in The Moral Landscape were widely criticized by reviewers.[37][38][39][40][41][42] Soon after the book's release, Harris responded to some of the criticisms in an article for The Huffington Post.[43]

In August 2013, three years after the book's original publication, Harris announced "The Moral Landscape Challenge'". On his blog, he invited readers to submit essays arguing against the positions he had put forth in The Moral Landscape, offering a $2,000 prize to the author of the (independently judged) best entry. He also stipulated that, if the winning essay ultimately persuaded him that the arguments he'd put forth in The Moral Landscape were, in fact, wrong, he would award an extra $20,000 of prize money. Explaining his rationale for the contest, he expressed his frustration with the criticism the book had received up until that point, saying: "I haven’t encountered a single significant criticism of The Moral Landscape that has made any sense to me. ... And yet I’m continually confronted by people who believe that there is a knock down argument against my thesis that is well known to everyone. This has been frustrating, to say the least. ... My goal with this contest is to elicit the hardest challenge I can find and to deal with it, or fail to, once and for all.".[44] In May 2014 it was announced that the $2,000 prize had been won by Ryan Born, a philosophy teacher at Georgia State University.[45]

Spirituality

Despite his anti-religious sentiments, Sam Harris also claims that there is "nothing irrational about seeking the states of mind that lie at the core of many religions. Compassion, awe, devotion and feelings of oneness are surely among the most valuable experiences a person can have."[19]

Organizational affiliations

In 2007 Sam and Annaka Harris founded Project Reason, a charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society.[46] He is also a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America,[47] a national lobbying organization representing the interests of nontheistic Americans.

Neuroscience

Building on his interests in belief and religion, Harris completed a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at UCLA.[20][24] He used fMRI to explore whether the brain responses differ between sentences that subjects judged as true, false, or undecidable, across a wide range of categories including autobiographical, mathematical, geographical, religious, ethical, semantic, and factual statements.[48]

In another study, Harris and colleagues examined the neural basis of religious and non-religious belief using fMRI.[49] Fifteen committed Christians and fifteen nonbelievers were scanned as they evaluated the truth and falsity of religious and nonreligious propositions. For both groups, statements of belief (sentences judged as either true or false) were associated with increased activation of ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in emotional judgment, processing uncertainty, assessing rewards and thinking about oneself.[24] A "comparison of all religious trials to all nonreligious trials produced a wide range of signal differences throughout the brain," and the processing of religious belief and empirical belief differed in significant ways.[49] The regions associated with increased activation in response to religious stimuli included the anterior insula, the ventral striatum, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the posterior medial cortex.

Writings and media appearances

Harris's writing focuses on neuroscience and criticism of religion, for which he is best known. He blogs for the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and formerly for Truthdig, and his articles have appeared in such publications as Newsweek, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the British national newspaper The Times.[50]

Harris has made numerous TV and radio appearances, including on The O'Reilly Factor, ABC News, Tucker, Book TV, NPR, Real Time, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show. In 2005, Harris appeared in the documentary film The God Who Wasn't There. Harris was a featured speaker at the 2006 conference Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival. He made two presentations and participated in the ensuing panel discussions. Harris has also appeared a number of times on the Point of Inquiry radio podcast. In April 2011, he debated William Lane Craig on the nature of morality.[51][52]

In September 2011 Harris's essay Lying was published as a Kindle single.[53]

Harris has appeared as a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast three times, most recently in September 2014. The conversations have each lasted around three hours and have covered a variety of topics related to Harris's research, books, and interests.

On September 28, 2012, Harris spoke at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, Australia.[54] His speech was on the delusion of Free Will,[54] which is also the topic of his book of 2012.[55]

On April 7, 2013, Harris revealed on his blog his forthcoming book, Waking Up: Science, Skepticism, Spirituality, which describes his views on mystical experience.[56]

Criticism

Harris has been criticized by some of his fellow contributors at The Huffington Post. In particular, R. J. Eskow has accused him of fostering an intolerance towards Islam, potentially as damaging as the religious fanaticism that he opposes.[57][58] Margaret Wertheim, herself an atheist, contends that liberals should view Harris's account of religious faith "with considerable skepticism".[59] On the other hand, Harris has received support from Nina Burleigh[60] and Richard Dawkins.[61]

Anthropologist Scott Atran has criticized Harris for unscientifically highlighting the role of belief in the psychology of suicide bombers. In the 2006 conference Beyond Belief, Atran confronted Harris for portraying a "caricature of Islam". Atran later followed up his comments in an online discussion for Edge.org, in which he criticized Harris and others for combating religious dogmatism and faith in a way that Atran believes is "scientifically baseless, psychologically uninformed, politically naïve, and counterproductive for goals we share".[62] In The National Interest, Atran argued against Harris's thesis in The Moral Landscape that science can determine moral values. Atran adds that abolishing religion will do nothing to rid mankind of its ills.[63]

In January 2007, Harris received criticism from John Gorenfeld, writing for AlterNet.[64] Gorenfeld took Harris to task for defending some of the findings of paranormal investigations into areas such as reincarnation and xenoglossy. He also strongly criticized Harris for his defense of judicial torture.
(Harris has stated that he believes torture should be illegal, but that it in certain extreme circumstances it may be ethical to break the law.).[65] Gorenfeld's critique was subsequently reflected by Robert Todd Carroll, writing in the Skeptic's Dictionary.[66] On his website Harris disputed that he had defended these views to the extent that Gorenfeld suggested.[67] Shortly afterward, Harris engaged in a lengthy debate with Andrew Sullivan on the internet forum Beliefnet.[68] In April 2007, Harris debated with the evangelical pastor Rick Warren for Newsweek magazine.[69]

Madeleine Bunting quotes Harris in saying "some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them", and states this "sounds like exactly the kind of argument put forward by those who ran the Inquisition".[70] Quoting the same passage, theologian Catherine Keller asks, "[c]ould there be a more dangerous proposition than that?" and argues that the "anti-tolerance" it represents would "dismantle" the Jeffersonian wall between church and state.[71] Writer Theodore Dalrymple described the passage as "quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist".[72] Harris repudiated his critics' characterization, stating that this sentence has been taken wildly out of its original context. "Some critics have interpreted (this sentence) to mean that I advocate simply killing religious people for their beliefs," he writes, "but such a reading remains a frank distortion of my views.".[73] In a later article, he described the same quote as "the most easily misunderstood sentence in The End of Faith", pointing out that it takes place within the "absolutely essential" larger context of "a philosophical and psychological analysis of belief as an engine of behavior", and that "nowhere in my work do I suggest that we kill harmless people for thought crimes."[74]

After two columns, one in Al Jazeera and one in Salon, accused the New Atheists of expressing irrational anti-Muslim animus under the guise of rational atheism, Glenn Greenwald wrote a column saying he agreed: "The key point is that Harris does far, far more than voice criticisms of Islam as part of a general critique of religion. He has repeatedly made clear that he thinks Islam is uniquely threatening ... Yes, he criticizes Christianity, but he reserves the most intense attacks and superlative condemnations for Islam, as well as unique policy proscriptions of aggression, violence and rights abridgments aimed only at Muslims."[75]

Harris wrote a response to this controversy, which also aired on a debate hosted by The Huffington Post on whether critics of Islam are unfairly labeled as bigots.[76] Harris and Greenwald have clashed on numerous other occasions - Harris writes that Greenwald has "worked very hard to make himself my enemy."[77]

Harris rejects the term "Islamophobia", which he is frequently accused of. He emphasizes that his criticism of Islam is aimed not at Muslims as people, but at the doctrine of Islam as an ideology - admitting that not all Muslims subscribe to the ideas he is criticizing. "My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences," he wrote following a controversial clash with Ben Affleck in October 2014 on the show Real Time with Bill Maher, "but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people."[78]

Commenting on Harris's book Free Will, Daniel Dennett disagrees with Harris' position on compatibilism, saying that Harris directs his arguments against an unreasonably absolute or "perfect freedom" version of compatibilism, which Dennett describes as an incoherent, straw man version.[79]

In response to some of the most frequent criticisms of his work—many of which he claims are unfair and which misunderstand or distort his true positions—Harris maintains a long and frequently updated post on his personal website where he addresses and rebuts each claim.[73]

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