The Moral Landscape --- Skeptic Scholar #1

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris
In this video, I provide a brief summary of the book along with my own commentary about the content. I provide both compliments and criticisms from others about Harris' book. I really enjoyed making this and I'm excited to do more!

Sources:
"The Science of Values: The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris
Reviewed by James W. Diller and Andrew E. Nuzzolilli
"Book review: Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape" Russell Blackford
"Sam Harris is wrong about science and morality"
by Brian D. Earp
"Navigating Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape"
William Lane Craig

If you have any suggestions for other books I should review, please leave them below!

[SilverBow]

This is funny to me because I read a few of Sam Harris books when I was trying to 'figure it all out". I was a skeptic too. Then I read C.S . Lewis, Frank Sheed, Peter Kreeft, and listened to a lot of debates on the topic. John Lennox being one of my favorites. Needlessly to say starting with Atheism and Sam Harris books actually lead me back to the Catholic Church... Good Luck in your journey .

[cadenchitwood]

You should review the Catecism of the Catholic Church next! It gives a very detailed description of Catholic doctrine and is a great way to learn more. I'm curious what you'd think of it.

[godfreydebouillon]

And one more comment. Id highly, highly recommend "The Last Superstition" by Ed Feser. Hes a Catholics philosopher. It deals with the likes of Sam Harris, and includes inteoductory understand of Thomism (the official philosophy of the Catholic Church from St Thomas Aquinas).
I wouldn't say its simple to understand, but once you do, even a little, you can't unsee it. Arguments from people like Harris will sound ignorant.

[JM-usfr]

As an atheist, I have a couple issues with The Moral Landscape. First is just the same as that one comment said: he’s making a value judgement. Now this is fine, after all if we are going to have a foundation, we need to axiomatize morality somehow. My issue is in subsequent discussions about his morality, Sam never admits that he is axiomatizing morality like this. He keeps trying to pass it off as obvious, and ignores the good criticisms of moral realism.

My second problem is that this is nothing new; it’s just a rebranding of utilitarianism. Instead of pain and pleasure, he makes suffering and well-being his foundation. Maybe Sam sees a distinction, in which case it would just be consequentialism. Again this wouldn’t be an issue if Sam could just admit it, but in subsequent conversations he talks about how some acts are never okay, such as lying. So in the end, Sam just blurs the line between consequentialism and deontology, so his morality doesn’t really provide a reconciliation to the problem of conflicting moral theories (as he claimed it would).

All in all, I generally like Sam Harris. I just wish he would admit how his philosophy is nothing new, and be humble in his moral foundation.

[RuthvenMurgatroyd]

3:25 Sounds like a restatement of John Rawls' "veil of ignorance" argument.

[apocryphanow]

This happens commonly with both science and the Bible. While someone may claim they have a scientific or a scriptural basis for something, often as they continue to talk, it can be realized they are really using it as an opportunity to preach their opinion. They may hide behind the idea that they are interpreting the scientific data or the scripture, but often times they have gone so far away from the reference data or scripture that it is clear they are not interpreting, but only using the science or scripture to give the appearance their personal opinions have been backed up by a greater authority.

[Manuelswwplanechannel]

Father Spitzer at the Magis Center or crediblecatholic have information about science as proof of God, the soul, etc

[Korban]

Great video. Very balanced perspective.

I look forward to your longer video on morality without God, because I think most reasonable religious people would say that people can live generally moral lives without being religious.

The trouble is that one cannot get to objective morality apart from religion, which is what Harris tries and fails to do here. The utilitarian veiw that Harris supports has no scientific basis, and is generally illogical from an individualist perspective, which I think is the most reasonable one if there is no God. If good things happen to me and mine, while bad things happen to people I don't care about, this is a legitimate biological strategy that seems to be reflected in nature.

The final quote could easily replace "moral prigress" with "moral squeamishness".

Not having objective morality might not be a problem for non-believers. The Existentialists outline a pretty good case for living morally without objective meaning. But I haven't seen compelling evidence for objective morality without religion.

That's a lot of text. Good luck with the channel!

[bigbassbomb]

Have a look at cs lewis (mere christianity)
I'm sure you will find it fascinating and I would like 2 see you review it.

[randywayne]

Ayn Rand is the only secular philosopher with a solid moral foundation.
Although she is hugely misunderstood, she is the only philosopher who has tied morality back to reality.

[LuisAngel-]

As far as science and religion goes, I'd like to point you in the direction of Bishop Barron and his Word on Fire show/YT Channel/Apostolate. If you're looking for something more scholarly I'd suggest the various teachings and writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Lastly Can I suggest G.K. Chesterton: Orthodoxy or his book The Everlasting Man.

[Aglovale]

You say that WLC's claim that without God there is no morality and that nothing is then prohibited is a slippery slope fallacy. However, I think you misunderstand. A slippery slope claim is that if we will slide from bad to worse. Without a foundation for morality, there can be no sliding one way or another.

Without God there is no foundation for morality. Without an external lawgiver, who knows in every single situation exactly what is right and what is wrong, then there is no objective moral law. There is only relativity. While under God we must attempt to interpret the law as best we can, without God every person must create the law and also interpret it. They can do this according to whatever standards they wish, but ultimately the individual can choose to define good and evil however he wishes. This does not necessarily mean that society will inevitably transform into the USSR or Nazi Germany, and in fact most people will and do simply adopt the morality of the culture around them, but it does mean that there is no authoritative way to say any action is wrong.

Also, I think it's a bit silly to pretend that mass murder and persecution isn't a likely result of people deciding for themselves what is right and wrong. What society values tends to change over time and that is why countries have constitutions - to prevent that natural value shift from transforming the foundation of society into something unrecognizable and undesirable. And given human history, the development of atrocities should be anticipated.

As a final note, you say that a good criticism of God as a source of morality is that religious people act badly. However, that is only a good criticism if those people are acting in accordance with their religion. For example, if a suicide bomber is product of a religion that encourages murder, then that a good argument that that religion promotes bad morals. But if the bomber believes his religion encourages murder when it plainly doesn't, than the fault lies with the bomber, not the religion.

[StormShadow]

A good book to read in juxtaposition with this book is The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis. He lays out a very compelling case for objective moral values and, in my opinion, utterly dismantles the notion that science can determine moral values.

[byrondickens]

Sam Harris needs to stick to neuroscience because, just like Richard Dawkins, he has amply demonstrated himself to be remarkably inept at philosophy and breathtakingly ignorant of theology, psychology and history.

[Entropyko]

Well you started more or less at the bottom of the barrel of the "Four Horsemen" literature. Harris' "Moral Landscape" has been more or less panned both by theists and atheists across the board. His main failure that essentially trying to "get morality from science", but this has been shown not to work by many philosophers, including atheist philosophers. The main problem is that in the end he still ends up doing philosophy and not natural science, which undermines his whole thesis.

[jordanbertke]

At 13:50 you talk about the Golden Rule and mention that Sam Harris says that scripture doesn't provide it. Sam's wrong on that. Mark 12:31 says "The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” This is based on Leviticus 19:18 which says "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

[Lerian_V]

You should read up on Natural Law. Catholic Encyclopedia and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph #1954 - 1960) deals with Natural Law.

[cydra_infinity]

Sam Harris certainly is an excellent scientist but he's no expert philospher. Alex O'Conner (another athiest) had an intersting dicussion with him about this.

[TheGettierProblem]

William Lane Craig pretty much completely debunked this whole book. Harris is a joke of a philosopher. You should really do some more research on philosophy because it shows the absurdity of atheism.

[Shane_The_Confessor]

With Sam Harris it's like a scooby doo episode where they take the "objective" mask off and its old man relativist.