Tag: Sam Harris

Religious believers may seem to share little with nonbelievers when it comes to thinking and judgment. But a new study by UCLA researchers finds that both Christians and nonbelievers use the same parts of the brain when asked to label articles of religious faith as true or false. A report summarizing the study is published today in PLoS ONE.

This study was funded, in part, by Project Reason.

The ‘war’ between science and religion is stuck in a rut. Can we change the record now, asks Philip Ball?

The atheist community is right to pursue rational, civilised debate, and should be able to do so without being tarred as bigots.

Can the gap between the religious and the non-religious be bridged, when the debate itself is so attention-getting?

Sam Harris’ 2008 article on why the controversy about an anti-Islam film should teach us that we need more criticism of Islam, not less.

The most dangerous failing of secularism (and of moderate religion) is that its adherents cannot seem to grasp that some people really believe martyrdom is a path to Paradise.

Earlier this year, Andrew Zak Williams asked public figures why they believe in God. Now it’s the turn of the atheists – from A C Grayling to P Z Myers – to explain why they don’t.

An interview with Sam Harris about his new book.

Some 370 atheists, humanists and other skeptics packed a ballroom in Los Angeles last weekend to debate the future of their movement.

Sam Harris has launched an appeal to fund a legal bid to have the Pope arrested when he visits Britain.

Just a few years ago, it seemed curious that an omniscient, omnipotent God wouldn’t smite tormentors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. They all published best-selling books excoriating religion and practically inviting lightning bolts.

Karen Armstrong attempts to defend religion against what she considers common critiques.  Instead she ends up making excuses for the problems religion creates while shifting the blame onto “overly aggressive secularization” and “so-called new atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens.”  

A “triumphalistic, self-righteous atheism” inspired by the work of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris is winning a following among American young people, leading to “atheist clubs” in high schools, according to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.

New study of the brain shows that facts and beliefs are processed in exactly the same way.

Sam Harris, Jonas Kaplan, and colleagues publish the first study to compare religious faith to ordinary belief at the level of the brain.

“A band of intellectual brothers is mounting a crusade against belief in God. Are they winning converts, or merely preaching to the choir?”

Wired reporter Gary Wolf describes the New Atheist movement and his own personal move towards atheism… but away from “New Atheism”.

Bill Maher interviews Sam Harris on Real Time

An uninspired re-hashing of NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria), that attempts to use Intelligent Design to prove the existence of God.

My recent op-ed in the New York Times, in which I questioned the appointment of Francis Collins as head of the NIH, inspired a fair amount of discussion in the media and on the Internet. As many of Collins’ defenders do not seem to be fully acquainted with his beliefs, or take it for granted that others won’t be, I have written a longer essay on the subject.

Atheism can express intolerance and hatred quite as well as religion. Sam Harris proves it

Faith, reason, and the NIH nominee.

Harris is right to question the wisdom of Collins leading the NIH. If Collins rejects the possibility of a scientific understanding of human nature he is rejecting the effort of cognitive scientists and other scientists engaged in that very task. Science, and the nation, deserve better.