Sam Harris: Can Science Determine Human Values? 1-7

Sam Harris: Can Science Determine Human Values?


Partner: Berkeley Arts and Letters

Location: First Congregational Church of Berkeley (2345 Channing Way at Dana, Berkeley) Berkeley, CA

Event Date: 11.10.10

Speakers: Sam Harris

Summary

In this highly anticipated, explosive new book, the author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation calls for an end to religion's monopoly on morality and human values. In The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Sam Harris tears down the wall between scientific facts and human values to dismantle the most common justification for religious faith -- that a moral system cannot be based on science.

The End of Faith ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In its aftermath, Harris discovered that most people, from secular scientists to religious fundamentalists, agree on one point: Science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Even among religious fundamentalists, the defense one most often hears for belief in God is not that there is compelling evidence that God exists, but that faith in Him provides the only guidance for living a good life. Controversies about human values are controversies about which science has officially had no opinion. Until now.

Morality, Harris argues, is actually an undeveloped branch of neuroscience, and answers to questions of human value can be visualized on a "moral landscape" -- a space of real and potential outcomes whose peaks and valleys correspond to human states of greater or lesser wellbeing. Different ways of thinking and behaving -- different cultural practices, ethical codes, modes of government, etc. -- translate into movements across this landscape. Such changes can be analyzed objectively on many levels, ranging from biochemistry to economics, but they have their crucial realization as experiences in the human brain.

Bringing a fresh, secular perspective to age-old questions of right and wrong, and good and evil, Harris shows that we know enough about the human brain and its relationship to events in the world to say that there are right and wrong answers to the most pressing questions of human life. Because such answers exist, cultural relativism is simply false -- and comes at increasing cost to humanity. And just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality. Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our "culture wars," Sam Harris delivers a game-changing argument about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• moral landscape
• morality
• moral values
• atheism
• religion
• book
• author
• neuroscience
• secular
• humanism
• god
• superstition
• reason
• science
• christianity
• philosophy

[iamthe3rd]

Harris comes on at 3:05

[tigeruby]

Intro was like a leaking bucket... he dropped Dan Dennett (said three horsemen instead of four), pronounced Dawkins as 'Dawson' and said something about Sam Harris having written four books (when it's three) and still goes on to mention the three titles. I mean people screw up sure, but come on, really?

[1tabligh]

@seblasian How can it be supposed that belief in the existence of God is the acceptance of contradiction, whereas belief in the uncaused nature of an effect such as matter is not contradictory?

[seblasian]

@1tabligh Do you think that spamming comment boards is going to convert anyone? Just stop, its pathetic.

[1tabligh]

@seblasian Is it at all feasible to regard all the geometry, functioning and movement of the universe as the outcome of matter in its ignorance?

Dodging ALL the questions and quibbling in vain!

Materialism looks at the world with one eye *closed* and, as a result, is unable to answer numerous questions!

Deluded atheist looks at the world with BOTH eyes *closed* and, as a result, are unable to answer ALL the questions!

[seblasian]

@1tabligh A short copy-paste into a search engine confirmed by suspicion that you are just rattling off someone else's material like a mindless drone. Try thinking for yourself for a change.

[1tabligh]

@seblasian The Development of Beliefs Through the Ages!

------

If "superstitions" and religious myths are to be found among ancient peoples, constantly being infused into new moulds because of deficiency and weakness in thought and restriction in knowledge, this does not mean, then, that religion, with its doctrinal content, is false. Rather, it demonstrates the primacy and autonomy of religious aspiration in the very depths of the human soul and heart.

[seblasian]

@1tabligh I'm not sure whats the point of your comment.. obviously, scientific discoveries DO cause scientists to take on a materialistic worldview. Despite being ambiguous its pretty clear that whatever point you are trying to make, your trying to make it with misrepresentation. Scientists dont regard our current knowledge as total reality, its just that myths and superstition are useless in filling the void wich is why they are rightfully ignored in science.

[1tabligh]

@seblasian Do scientific discoveries and knowledge cause such a scientist to conclude that matter, *unknowing and unperceiving *, is his creator and that of all beings?

No?

Then how can the duped atheists and some of the scientists delude themselve and *believe* that hydrogen and oxygen, electrons and protons, should first produce themselves, then be the source for all other beings, and finally decree the laws that regulate themselves and the rest of the material world?

[seblasian]

@1tabligh The answer is that they don't.. only the religious claim a source of absolute knowledge.

[1tabligh]

@seblasian The atheist Delusion!

How could some of the scientists permit themselves to make a claim that would necessitate knowledge as extensive as the scheme of the universe, when their knowledge of the total scheme of being is *close* to zero, when confronted with a whole mass of unknowns concerning this very earth and tangible, lifeless matter, let alone the whole universe?

[seblasian]

@1tabligh "The result of all human effort and experimentation is a body of knowledge concerning a minute bright dot comparable to the dim light of a candle-surrounded by a dark night enveloping a huge desert of indefinite extent"

Thats very true.. and religion is like a rabid dog urinating onto that candle.