Ars on your lunch break: Let’s talk about religion, politics, guns, and privacy
This is the third installment of my conversation with the outspoken author, podcaster, philosopher, and recovering neuroscientist Sam Harris. Please check out part one and part two if you missed them. Otherwise, you can press play on the embedded audio player or pull up the transcript-both of which are below.
Today, we start off discussing Harris' first bestselling book, The End of Faith, inspired by September 11th attacks. Having recently spent ten years on his own self-styled spiritual journey, "I immediately recognized the spiritual intensity of that enterprise," he recalls. Of Osama Bin Laden, Harris says, "He was not faking his belief. He believed what he said he believed, and it was only rational to take his stated beliefs at face value."
Click here for a transcript and click here for an MP3 direct download.
Harris denounces his critics for viewing the religious justifications of terrorists as "just propaganda, and propaganda that nobody believes" and for thinking that more standard geopolitical or sociological motivations must surely be at work instead. "Many academics," he says, "virtually every anthropologist I've ever had to talk to about this stuff, many journalists, many so-called scholars of religion just don't know what it's like to believe in God. And then doubt that anyone really does."
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