Ask Me Anything #1

How does the struggle of atheists for acceptance compare with that of women, blacks, gays, etc? How long until true equality arrives?What is your view on laws that prevent people from not hiring on the basis of religion?Can you say something about artificial intelligence and your concerns about it?What do you think of Cenk Uygur's attack on you recently?How did you become such a good public speaker?Why do we have to meditate sitting up?Does your view that there's no free will give you sympathy for your enemies?Can the form of human consciousness be distinguished from its contents or are the two identical?What's your opinion of the rise of the new nationalist right in Europe and the issue of Islam there?What charity organization do you think is doing the best work?How you with complete certainty know there is no God. What proof do you have?Some of your critics like the paint you as a philosophically-illiterate scientist. Please speak about your relationship to philosophy.If you were going to criticize Sam Harris, what do you think the most valid intellectual criticism is?I'm often attacked for taking quotes out of scripture out of context and therefore misconstruing them or misrepresenting them and yet I complain incessantly about the people who do this to me. How is that fair?I'm worried you're spending too much time on defense. Have you ever considered completely ignoring misrepresentations?Who argues against your position on religion honestly?How often should we be aware of the illusion of free will? Should it serve a more reflective function rather than happen in real time?Sam addresses letter from listener about how reading Free Will helped him cope with his mother's suicide.

Om Podcasten

Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the human mind, society, and current events. Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live. Harris's work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere. Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.