Anti-Religion Author Argues Science, Not Faith, Should Determine Morality

'End of Faith' author Sam Harris angers both believers and atheists alike.

ByABC News
December 28, 2010, 2:37 PM

Dec. 29, 2010 — -- He's bashed the Catholic church as "an institution more concerned with preventing contraception than child rape" and compared Islam to a "death cult."

These and other fervent attacks on religion have earned writer and scientist Sam Harris enough acrimony that Harris -- the author of the bestselling "The End of Faith" -- now travels with security guards and keeps his home address under wraps.

But here's the twist: It's not just the faithful who are furious with Harris -- it's also his fellow atheists.

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Harris first raised their ire at an Atheist Alliance International convention in 2007, where he argued that atheists shouldn't actually call themselves atheists. (CLICK HERE to watch an excerpt of the speech.)

"It seems to me that we are consenting to be viewed as a crank sub-culture. We are consenting to viewed as a marginal interest group that meets in hotel ballrooms," he said.

Harris instead emphasized the importance of advocating for "reason and intellectual honesty" and to "destroy bad ideas wherever we find them," later adding "that religion has more than its fair share of bad ideas."

Harris also made a more surprising argument: That, despite his views on religion, he believes it's possible for people to have real and positive "spiritual" experiences.

"If we by definition ignore them because of their entanglement with religion, we appear less wise than even our craziest religious opponents," he said.

Harris, as it turns out, spent his 20s studying meditation and Eastern spirituality in India and Nepal and elsewhere. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he felt compelled to start writing books that rail against religion. But, to this day, he continues his own spiritual practice.

This practice, he said, "gives me better reason to attack religion. Because I know that the religious belief, the dogmatism, the faith, is unnecessary. I know you don't need faith. I know you don't need to pretend things you don't know in order to investigate spiritual experience or to have spiritual experience."

Now Harris is angering fellow atheists once again, this time with a new book called "The Moral Landscape." In the book, Harris, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, launches a full frontal attack on his fellow scientists, faulting them for turning responsibility for the debate over morality to religious people.