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Sam Harris

Co-Founder and CEO, Project Reason

Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction.

Mr. Harris' writing has been published in over ten languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, TIME, The New York Times, Scientific American, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Nature, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.

Mr. Harris is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University and holds a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA, where he studied the neural basis of belief with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). He is also a Co-Founder and CEO of Project Reason.

Why Sam Harris is trying to rehabilitate the word ‘spirituality’

The author and neuroscientist argues that, despite its spooky etymology, there’s no better word than “spirituality” to describe the personal and intimate exploration of human consciousness.

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4 min

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Sam Harris: Can Psychedelics Help You Expand Your Mind?

Sam Harris discusses the virtues of psychedelics such as LSD and MDMA. While he does not condone the use of these drugs without caveat, he does acknowledge their profound consciousness-altering properties.

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9 min

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Sam Harris: Mindfulness is powerful, but keep religion out of it

Sam Harris says that stress-reductive benefits of meditation are rather trivial compared to the insights one can discover about the nature of the self.

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7 min

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Sam Harris on Mindfulness as Secular Meditation

The stress-reductive benefits of meditation are trivial compared to the insights one can discover about the nature of the self.

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7 min

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Sam Harris: The Self is an Illusion

Sam Harris describes the properties of consciousness and how mindfulness practices of all stripes can be used to transcend one’s ego.

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7 min

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Sam Harris on Happiness

Sam Harris on the absence of neuroses.

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2 min

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What is your counsel?

Technology is furthering environmental consciousness

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3 min

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What is your outlook?

Too much attachment to myth worries Sam Harris.

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2 min

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Sam Harris on the Dangers of Religion

Again this year, the New Atheist is giving up God.

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4 min

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Sam Harris Considers a Creator

Sam Harris refutes the notion of an intelligent creator.

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3 min

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Sam Harris On Interpreting Scripture

Maybe God spoke in metaphor.

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7 min

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Sam Harris On Good and Evil

Morality is one of the greatest challenges for modernity.

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5 min

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Sam Harris On Death

Religion does not teach grief, Harris says.

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3 min

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What is secular fundamentalism?

Secular fundamentalism is a play on words.

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5 min

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Religion is like a Placebo

Every benign religion, every religion that’s actually helping somebody sometimes could be functioning like a placebo. It could be totally barren of content and still useful in certain circumstances.

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3 min

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What inspires you?

Fighting ignorance.

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2 min

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Religions Are Failed Sciences

We are misled by the very term “religion,” argues Sam Harris. Religion was simply the discourse humans used when all causes in the universe were opaque.

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5 min

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What Do You Believe?

Converging on a common project in a non-divisive, something religion does infrequently.

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4 min

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Is there certainty in science?

Harris believes that certainty is a false goal.

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2 min

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Harris believes faith is healthy and necessary.

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2 min

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9/11 sparked Harris’s interest in religion, and his journey to atheism.

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4 min

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