Sam Harris (born 1967) is an American author, neuroscientist and CEO of Project Reason.He received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA, and has a B.A. in philosophy from Stanford University. He is a proponent of scientific skepticism and is the author of [amazon_link id=”0393327655″ target=”_blank” ]The End of Faith[/amazon_link] (2004), which won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award, [amazon_link id=”0307278778″ target=”_blank” ]Letter to a Christian Nation[/amazon_link] (2006), a rejoinder to criticism of his first book, and [amazon_link id=”1439171211″ target=”_blank” ]The Moral Landscape[/amazon_link] (2010).
He is a well-known contemporary critic of religion, along with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Daniel Dennett, physicists Lawrence Krauss and Victor Stenger, as well as writer Christopher Hitchens. Being a member of the New Atheism movement, Harris also calls for separation of church and state, civil rights for the non-religious as well as freedom to criticize religion. Being a writer, Harris has also written numerous articles in Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek as well as in scientific journals such as Nature. He has written articles on Islam, Christianity, and religion in general.
In his 2010 book, [amazon_link id=”1439171211″ target=”_blank” ]The Moral Landscape[/amazon_link], he posits that science can shed light on questions regarding moral values and facilitate human well-being. After the release of his books, he continued to give numerous talks at institutions such as University of Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge, California Institute of Technology, UCSD, Stanford University, Tufts University as well as TED, where he proposed an expansion of the scientific method and the possible implications of its contribution to human morality. Harris has also made an appearance in the 2005 film The God Who Wasn’t There, as well as numerous television appearances for Bill Maher and Bill O’Reilly.