Sam Harris is a challenging figure for me - his perspectives do not feel consistent or, rather, I struggle with my sense of moral inconsistency in his writings. It's hard for me to reconcile the man who believes in torture and racial profiling with the man who has had a long-term meditation practice and whose next book seeks to revive the word spiritual in a non-New Age context.
I guess these are simply my issues - he is what he is.
Sam Harris - Death and the Present Moment
A Celebration of Reason - 2012 Global Atheist Convention
13-15th April - Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre
Presented by the Atheist Foundation of Australia
Sam Harris is a Co-Founder and CEO of Project Reason, a non-profit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.
"I struggle with my sense of moral inconsistency in his writings. It's hard for me to reconcile the man who believes in torture and racial profiling"
ReplyDeleteSam Harris holds, as an empirical fact, that religious profiling at airports - not en masse - will likely improve our well-being.
As for torture, he holds that there it MAY be justified in some instances.
HARRIS: "readers mistakenly conclude that I take a cavalier attitude toward the practice of torture. I do not. Nevertheless, I believe that there are extreme situations in which practices like “water-boarding” may not only be ethically justifiable, but ethically necessary"
He is referring to LIMIT cases. It would be like saying I "believe in lying" because I think it is justified to lie to the nazi about hiding a jew... (I'm sorry for the awful, overused analogy, I'm in a hurry <3 )