Book description
Sam Harris's first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide
debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris
discovered that most people - from religious fundamentalists to
nonbelieving scientists - agree on one point: science has nothing to
say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address
questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the
primary justification for religious faith.
In this highly controversial book, Sam Harris seeks to link morality
to the rest of human knowledge. Defining morality in terms of human
and animal well-being, Harris argues that science can do more than
tell how we are; it can, in principle, tell us how we ought to be. In
his view, moral relativism is simply false - and comes at an
increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the
sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for 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', Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future
of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and the author of the New York
Times bestsellers The End of Faith and Letter to a
Christian Nation. His writing has appeared in Newsweek,
The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Times,
Nature and in many other journals. He holds a degree in
philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph. D. in neuroscience from
UCLA. He is a co-founder of Project Reason.
www. samharris. org
