I love watching these older Harris lectures. At the time he had an almost boyish look of innocence and tranquility in his face that contrasted with blunt and arresting delivery of his arguments. He was (and still is) able to sustain his rhetorical punch without lapsing into dramatic displays of emotion or the use of overly subjective arguments, and it gives his speeches an incredibly convincing quality whether or not you fully agree with what he's saying. Gold standard of oratory, in my opinion.

Yes, I absolutely agree with Sam. Let's just talk about reason, clear communication, and the use of evidence to support or deny any proposition.

I use the term 'non-religious' or better yet; "I'm not religious". It is all there is to it. And so, it deflates the bogus arguments against 'atheism'.

Sam is my favorite public person. He is a great role model. Brave and intelligent.

Damnit, wish i found this years ago. Another pearl from Sam.

4:10 for Sam

I refuse to call myself an atheist because the term has becime so polluted. people think being an atheist means that you know there is no god, which is totally untrue. Unfortunately the word has come to mean something it isn't supposed to.

Calm, confident and convincing! A masterly performance Sam.

An amazing understanding of consciousness. Meditating does wonders.

It's been 10 years but this guy doesn't seem to have aged even a little bit

18:55 kind of cool how Sam made a nod to a book he'd come out with several years later...speaking of a "landscape with peaks and valleys."

A bizarre note is that 'anti-astrologer' and 'non-racist' were Sam's examples of terms that indicate how unnecessary the term atheist is yet, in 2022, the term 'anti-racist' has become a things.

The problem with atheism & agnosticism is that atheists & agnostics are smart enough to not buy the made-up religious fairy tales & superstitions, so it's difficult for theologian preachers to profit from them.

As one who's experienced the mystical, absolutely loves what the lowly Nazarene had to teach us, and is finding myself more and more concerned about what religion is doing to this world, I'm finding myself incredibly grateful for Sam Harris and the other three Horsemen. Thank you all!

I think the best metaphor I can come up with for Sam's point about "spirituality" is the experience of pain. We have all felt pain of some kind, but the way our brain processes it is unique based on our perception of the pain's effect (whether it's "useful" pain--good or bad), our cognitive tools for responding to the pain, and the specific type of pain. So someone who repeatedly caned themselves for hours everyday has a different experience of pain than someone who lifts weights for hours every day. They both cause pain (different levels of it to be sure), but both parties likely believe that pain to be beneficial. So what can we learn about someone who willingly beats themselves? Well, they might have a terrible reason for doing so, but we can learn a great deal about the human brain, psyche, etc. simply by being honest in acknowledging that they are likely experiencing something wholly unique from our own experience--that they have felt a different type of pain for a different length of time for a wholly unfamiliar reason than we ever have. This does not make their reasons for harming themselves at all more valid. But it doesn't mean that what they have experienced in the name of that silliness is not real and potent and possibly beyond our comprehension. Ultimately, I think Sam is arguing against the kind of easy dismissals of religious ecstasy or "hippie-ness" or what-have-you that religious people often have towards the term "atheist". We should know better than to assume our knowledge and experience is universal.

Such a great Lecture!

i declare that I am a non-Astronaut and a non-Brain Surgeon

His description of the search for happiness is brilliant!

Is that an introduction or her HBO special?

"this is a basis for hope of sorts" He is great.

The way to stay happy is to be happy in the eternal quest for knowledge and understanding.

i absolutely love this talk

I absolutely loved his talk about spirituality and mysticism. It's a rare sight in an atheist convention.

I just say, "I'm not religious."

This man is amazingly brilliant. Though the video is over an hour long, it certainly didn't feel like it.

He's touching on what Alan Watts have said all a long, very intellectual, but if you think meditating for 18 hours will do something or get you in higher state of conciousness, you're missing the point. This was a good listen.

23:21 - The good stuff starts here.

I think Harris is right. My mother understands the technical details of how the Bible and does not take it literally. I think she does not even take region literally, but it speaks to her on a "spiritual" level. It does touch on an area that i find that many Atheists (#notallatheists) "seems" to just dismiss as illusion. But sometimes the illusion is the point. I think that the his point is that maximizing people resisting bad ideas it is best not to make it atheist vs religion. Make it just about the idea. So many more disagree with extreme laws than are willing to leave there religious "tribe". If you just ask them to stand against the issue at hand instead of leaving their tribe.

great talk! thank you for sharing it :D

I guess the booing came later

"The desire to actually know what's going on in the world is very difficult to argue with, and insofar as we represent merely that desire, _we_ become difficult to argue with." - S.H. -- That is the bedrock and tl;dr of this speech and one of the most simple, salient things I think a human being has ever said. As a religious adherent in my youth, this is also what I thought I was up to, as every new experience only bolstered my inherited worldview again and again. I wanted to know what was going on in the world, and by luck, every new encounter lined right up with the religious outlook I was lent at birth. Lucky me! Imagine an entire planet of religious subscribers luxuriating in this thinking in a dozen mutually exclusive flavors every day without so much as a whiff of irony, and a firm pat on the back from moral relativist non-believers who entertain the idea that criticism of this farce would constitute some kind of moral shortcoming.

this is my favorite sam harris lecture. I still cant understand why everyone has a problem with not calling themselves atheists. just destroy bad logic where ever you find it.

Great Video!!

He made a great argument and one I never considered

13.20 "...we should simply advocate Intellectual Honesty & Reason ..."

We've shown that it can occur: -Miller-Urey demonstrated that lightning in a reducing atmosphere can produce dozens of complex organic molecules. -Similar experiments have demonstrated that adenine (a nucleotide base necessary for both DNA and RNA) can be produced from lightning as well. -Others have demonstrated that some 'pure' RNA molecules (without any cell structure around them) can reproduce themselves indefinitely, given the right concentrations of chemicals in the water around them.

Once you label me, you negate me. - Søren Kierkegaard

Well start sharing it with people - I've just posted it on reddit

Incredibly good!

Most people don't ever click on any video longer than 10 min.

And so, if we are wrong about these being bad ideas, than others will stand up and support the other side... through reason. This is the point. To open dialogues and to change the current framework of public discourse. The core principal he is trying to expose is for us all as individuals to question everything for ourselves, and for us to be free to think for ourselves and share our thoughts with one another- as a collaborative, ongoing effort.

I'm an atheist so I have difficulty putting in a comment that may be unwanted, but at the same time I feel that it should be addressed. I didn't even get to Sam Harris giving his talk and stopped. I still need to hear it and I will after my comment. The entire time this young was addressing the audience, there was whispering going on. Continued whispering in sentences and not just a "excuse me". I don't care what role people have to take in delivering a program. Talking or whispering does not show respect to the one speaking, and it bothers me and I'm sure others notice it as well. Now I will listen to Sam.

The audio quality sucks, it needs to be processed cleaned and enhanced before posting, please do it so.

In physics, we learn that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I think the same is true in life, meaning everything we do has consequences, sometimes good, sometimes bad. But it really isn't what happens, but what we tell ourselves about it, that makes a difference. So, in regard to identifying as an atheist, doing so puts us in a small minority. At least right now it does. But I think it is useful, because the more we do, the more common the word will become, and the easier it will be for someone else down the road to identify as an atheist, and the more likely it might be that someone can be elected who will help this country become more secular, and thus improve our overall quality of life.

I am with the woman at the end because for half of his talk all I could think was "Sam has never taken mind altering drugs". It is well known that solitude and meditation can create altered mind states, the difference between someone like me taking drugs (may years back) and someone who meditates is generally seeking a spiritual experience. Had I taken LSD seeking a spiritual experience I am certain my mind was thus altered to take any pre-set path. You get out what you put in and nothing more.

The only sense in which a physicist might say the universe 'began to exist' is that there may have been (note 'may have been', since the nature of time is still incredibly uncertain) no physical property called time until the big bang's expansion occurred. So if that's your definition of 'begins to exist' in premise 2, try applying it to premise one. How many everyday examples do you have of objects 'beginning to exist' by virtue of time itself coming into existence? The answer is none.

It's easy for me to believe that deep meditation, & taking time to understand yourself by removing yourself from all the worlds distractions & just concentrating on where your thaughts are coming from & where they lead to can help you understand yourself in a much deeper way. There certainly doesn't need to be any kind of other worldly nonsense going on just to be introspective. I would see it as looking deeper into that place where such things as artistic inspiration comes from.

Brilliant here.

One misconception about atheists is that we aren't appreciative of the "spiritual" or "transcendent" experience. Another is that we aren't imaginative enough to entertain the idea of something beyond what we can prove. It is our responsibility to help others understand that it is these experiences and our imagination that DRIVE our atheism. As skeptics, we push into all "dark corners" of our knowledge with intense curiosity and creativity, and we feel religion is confining to this effort.

I love his endeavor here, to provoke a thought community like this rather than preaching to the choir (pun intended). And I agree with most of his points on the downsides of the atheist label. However, the comments about the need for organizing under a common purpose - and the need of somehow naming that organization - seem to hold merit. People seem to need stories containing more than just abstract ideas, but also characters, antagonists - as well as a label/structure to connect the ideas to. This is a concrete challenge that I find he didn't answer completely. In the example of racism this also seemed to be the case, well, maybe not through "non-racism", but something like the "civil rights movement" played a role, didn't it? ;)

Yeah, I posted it to reddit last week and no one clicked on it

The last question wasn't fair. It's quite possible those people did come with interesting thoughts after months of seclusion, the problem is those thoughts were very likely to refer to their religion. As such, they were original, interesting thoughts based on stupid religious ideas, thus becoming stupid by association. On the other hand, we might be simply unable to understand it. Laymen don't understand Einstein, just as we wouldn't understand somebody who practiced meditation for 20 years.

3:55 you’ll thank me

-_- You do realize that Borel even discredits arguments like this in his book where this "law" was put forth. Borel says, when confronted with such creationist arguments: namely, that "probability estimates that ignore the non-random elements predetermined by physics and chemistry are meaningless."

Am I missing something here. Sam talks about Danish cartoonists, but that shooting happened 8 years after this lecture.

Just be a kind and caring person for all around you right?

I think his handle tells you what to expect. Get a lot of those on yt.

thank you

skip to 4:00.

-> Borel shows examples of the kind of logic that any scientist might use to generate estimates of the minimum probability below which events of a particular type are considered negligible. It is important to stress that EACH OF THESE ESTIMATES ARE CREATED FOR SPECIFIC PHYSICAL PROBLEMS, NOT AS A UNIVERSAL LAW.

Then we're talking about probability, a precise measurement of chance. Just because the probability is low in this case doesn't mean it will never happen or couldn't happen.

I agree with Sam. Unfortunately the other side will still use labels. Those negative labels of us aren't negative in themselves, however, the negative spin they put on those labels undoubtedly will have negative consequences.

The most honest answer to give to the question of why the universe is here is: "I don't know."

It's Pat!!!!!

sure no worries

This is Sam Harris’s greatest public appearance. Totally changed my life.

At the very least we should never use the term atheism. It can be replaced with atheists in all instances and we should do that.

I didn't comment right after he mentioned it, so I might have missed some of his point after watching the entire video and time had gone by. I admittedly wasn't sure of his exact words by the time I commented, I just thought of it during the video and the only thing that really had stuck in my memory was that argument. Sorry if I may have misrepresented Sam, that was never my intention.

@sylviabombs15 I am in total agreement, Sylvia. I have spent many hours pondering the bases for the grumblings towards Sam's thesis from this day. I think, frankly, it exposes some of the tribal, visceral, in/out group tendencies of all humans, theist or non-theist.

Fucking genius!

he has actually.

(cont) And again, my other objection was that you would have to know 'everything' to even make the first claim, and you don't. Another important point is that 'begins to exist' in the first premise is based on the way already existing particles form new objects, that kind of beginning to exist is something we see all the time. But in the second premise, it means creation ex nihilo, out of nothing, which we've never seen. The argument is invalid, because it's using an equivocation fallacy.

The argument from imperfection suggests that if the Universe were designed to be fine-tuned for life, it should be the best one possible and that evidence suggests that it is not. In fact, most of the Universe is highly hostile to life.

Julia Sweeney was in Pulp Fiction?

i don't think anyone is claiming against what you are arguing

lol. This is just outstanding. I can't even tell if you're a poe; you nailed crazy nonsense logic so well. :P

(part 2) You're free to believe what you wish but Harris clearly brings up at least one issue that Atheists must think about. Namely, the neglecting of another person's experiences without at least attempting to replicate that person's situation in an effort to achieve the same result or gain insight into what happened. From the point of view of someone who didn't grow up as a theist, I know he's right. It does make a person less wise and leaves them blinded, putting them at great disadvantage.

Matter was created from energy in the early universe. Observations indicate that the positive energy of matter is exactly balanced by negative gravitational potential energy. Thus, the total energy of the universe is zero and no energy (or very little--just the amount allowed by quantum mechanics) was required to produce the universe.

It's Pat!!

Yes, very random, but near the end, after Travolta and Jackson get washed off. She helps out with the car I think, or something like that. She's only on screen for a tiny bit. But yeah, her one-woman show is brilliant! I wonder if that's how she got hooked up with the organization. Another great actor is Stephen Frye. (Sorry if this is obvious, but it's always good to spread the word about free thinking actors!)

Where did order come from? It could have been produced spontaneously by natural processes of a type that are now beginning to be understood in physics. One such process is called "spontaneous symmetry breaking." It's like the formation of a snowflake.

Three consecutive comment boxes. Well I'm glad you've got that off your chest.

I understand exactly what he is saying here, if you take a hard stance by saying I'm an atheist then your stuck with the same arguments about God and the origin and complexity of life. If instead you systematically attack specific beliefs in religion with reason and logic you have a better chance of eroding those beliefs one by one until eventually all people have is the belief in God, which is harmless without all the other bullshit.

38:32 this didnt age well. however, this remains to be one of my top 5 of his talks.

@Mr111810 I completely agree.

Sam is my favorite of all the New Atheists, I've wanted to give every member of my fundiemental family a copy of the End of Faith.

If someone doesn't believe something, you have to assess whether that's due to ignorance/lack of fact checking, as would be the case for someone who doesn't believe the holocaust occurred, or due to a rejection of arguments for that belief. I don't believe because I've encountered countless arguments for gods, and they all fail. Calling a belief properly basic doesn't remove the burden of proof from you, it's still something you believe, and requires justification in order to be believed.

Which is precisely why I call myself an agnostic. A Christian agnostic.

Reddit is fickle mistress.. still haven't figured out why sometimes good content goes under the radar the first time...

This is 1st grade Mozambique urban city book test language

The "law" is also discredited when applied to evolution. It becomes axiomatically incorrect. It assumes that the event one is trying to measure is completely random, and some use this argument to prove that evolution could not possibly occur, since its probability would be much less than that of the universal probability bound (borels law). This, however, is fallacious, given that evolution is not a completely random effect (genetic drift), but rather proceeds with the aid of natural selection.

Little did Sam know that in 13 years identifying as anti-racist would become the zeitgeist

I think Sam Harris is right that we not label ourselves as atheists, etc. A hundred years from now (if extremists haven't destroyed the world) with labels we could find secular sectarian groups. Isn't it a waste of energy to identify oneself by what you don't believe? People who have rejected and moved past superstition and dogma will continue to share productive ideas, engage in reason and rational thought, and progress towards higher levels of well being. Tribal names are not required.

Margaret

8:10 not only in america in the world!!

She says keep you're thoughts to yourself , but she wrote a book . May only you share you're thoughts ? ... It took me 5 minutes to recover from that notion and to try and gather some thoughts on what to say , .... then it downed on me that with reasoning like this, I'd be better looking at something more logical ..

It's tangible, testable and doesn't demand your fealty or money :) And healthy!

"I have NO such burden to prove that which by very concise and unambiguous definition is NOT contingent on proof, being faith." Great, then we have nothing further to discuss, you've just decided that you get to believe in things without any evidence, why should anyone take you seriously?

It's not a false analogy because I can ascribe any attributes to Santa-Claus that I want. There is not set in stone definition for Santa Claus. Even if we take Santa Claus out of the picture, I can just make another character up, ascribe what ever attributes I want to it, then additionally ascribe characteristics of God to it. You can't refute it, doesn't mean you should believe me.

I am not supposing that there were no examples of good science in antiquity. But the flat earth example certainly is one which did not have those rigors applied to it. I think the important thing science does with regards to purview is say "we dont know enough". the flat earth for example didnt go out and gather more data in order to accuratly know, its a guess based on initial observations, rather than a theory. Most scientific studies involve huge portions of data gathering. (cont)