by Sam Harris
First published 2010
Harris tackles the widespread assumption that science has no role in determining human values or moral questions. His previous work The End of Faith sparked global discussions about religion's validity, revealing a curious consensus among believers and atheists alike: that scientific inquiry stops where moral questions begin. This agreement has become religion's strongest defense and forces secular thinkers to defer to religious claims about right and wrong. Harris dismantles this division between scientific facts and human values. He proposes viewing morality through the lens of conscious creature wellbeing, mapping experiences as peaks and valleys across a moral landscape. Since objective facts exist about our position on this landscape, science can move beyond describing moral behavior to prescribing optimal choices for human flourishing. Harris combines his background in philosophy and neuroscience with frontline experience in cultural debates to argue that moral relativism fails and that religious intrusion into ethics can be rejected just as we reject religious mathematics or physics.
Genres: science, philosophy, atheism, non-fiction, academic
Vibes: thought-provoking
Tropes: academic
291 pages · Hardcover · Free Press