Recently, I posted Sam Harris' speech from the AAI 2007 (Atheist Alliance International). At that conference he said that atheism is essentially a useless term, as well as "brights," "new atheists," secular humanists," or anything else. Needless to say, this was not a popular thing to say at an atheist conference.
In this video from Beyond Belief 2007: Enlightenment 2.0, Harris goes even further and acknowledges the potential benefits of spiritual experience as opposed to religious experience. He also looks at who "owns" morality, and why atheists have abdicated that role to religion.
In the Q&A, Jeff Hawkins makes an important distinction between "religion" and "false beliefs" and asks Harris for his view on that issue. Harris says his real issue is dogma -- a closed systems of belief with built-in virus protection -- and that's where the battle lies. Not all religions are equal are in their dogma, he maintains, but religion has been sheltered from questioning for so long that using the general term is useful in the cultural discussion.
I agree with ~C that Harris is easily the most "integral" of the atheist crowd, although I suspect Dan Dennett also has a few integral bones in his body.
This is a good speech -- Harris begins about 4 minutes in, or so, and goes for about 20 minutes followed by some Q&A. There are other speakers after him.
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I've been thinking about the Sam Harris video on and off today. What struck me, looking back, is that sometimes I was thinking, “Oh, the same old Sam.” And other times, “Wow, his thinking has changed.”
I wonder if maybe he is in the midst of a stage shift? Maybe moving out of the Orange and into the Green. I'm sure his will be no touchy-feelly Green, so it will be interesting to see where he is going.
I do hope that he is moving out of the purely rational ethical stance that allowed him to defend torture as necessary evil.
Any thoughts on this?
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