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Samuel Benjamin Harris is an American neuroscientist, philosopher, author, and podcast host. His work includes a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, determinism, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. Harris came to prominence for his criticism of religion, and he is known as one of the "Four Ho…
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culture · American neuroscientist and philosopher (born 1967) · philosopher · neuroscientist · writer · blogger · podcaster · religious studies scholar · also Sam Harris, Samuel Harris, Samuel Benjamin Harris, Harris
Born 9 April 1967 · Q296047
65 published statements · 0 followers
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I said: ‘You know that if we decided to burn a Bible on live television tonight it would be controversial, but it wouldn’t ruin our lives. If we decided to burn a Qur’an on the show tonight, the rest of our lives would be spent dealing with the aftermath, and you know that and you’re lying about it.’
That is so wrong and so suicidal.
83%The Washington PostSource
“I said: ‘You know that if we decided to burn a Bible on live television tonight it would be controversial, but it wouldn’t ruin our lives. If we decided to burn a Qur’an on the show tonight, the rest of our lives would be spent dealing with the aftermath, and you know that and you’re lying about it.’”
“That is so wrong and so suicidal.”
“cannot be mapped on to any conceivable reality”
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“dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world”
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Published video “Should You Never Apologize? (featuring Alain de Botton)”.
Published video “Why People Are Boring”.
The Guardian: Agrippa by Robert Harris review – persuasive portrait of rivalry in ancient Rome
The Guardian: Andy Burnham has barely acknowledged the climate crisis. If only Britain’s workers had that luxury | John Harris
The Guardian: Alaska candidate for US Senate rejects Kamala Harris’s unsolicited support
Published video “Knowing You’re a Bit of an Idiot is Very Intelligent”.
Published video “Your Childhood Is Still Making Your Decisions”.
Legacy obituary: Samuel Ernest Harris Obituary (2026) - Wentzville, MO - Newcomer Cremations, Funerals & Receptions - St. Peters
Published video “When Should You Trust Your Intuition?”.
Legacy obituary: Mildred Harris Obituary (2026) - Metropolis, IL - The Paducah Sun
Published video “The Making of Sam Harris”.
Published video “Is AI Already Conscious? (FULL EPISODE)”.
Published video “Sam Harris Revisits His Most Controversial Episode”.
Published video “The New Science of Cancer: A Conversation with Siddhartha Mukherjee (Ep. 485)”.
Published video “Can AI Cure Loneliness?”.
During an interview with The Daily Beast, Harris explained that he had broken away from the intellectual dark web due to disagreements with Weinstein, and Maajid Nawaz's "obsession" with COVID-19 conspiracy theories and
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Said that if COVID-19 had killed more children, there would be no patience for vaccine skepticism
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“use of human shields and genocidal rhetoric towards the Jews. He names these as reasons that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas. During the Gaza war that began in October 2023, Harris expressed support for Israel. He rejected arguments that Israel provoked Hamas by building Israeli settlements in the West Bank, arguing that all Israelis left Gaza in 2005, leaving it to govern itself. He also condemned the October 7 attacks, which led to the war. In the essay”
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Published “2021 ESC Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic heart failure” in European Heart Journal — cited 12,263 times.
Harris stated that he had "turn[ed] in [his] imaginary membership card to this imaginary organization"
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Published “SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python” in Nature Methods — cited 36,949 times.
By Jonathan Matusitz, Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, as "a champion of the counter-jihad left"
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Published “Array programming with NumPy” in Nature — cited 23,753 times.
The Guardian: Sam Harris, the new atheist with a spiritual side
Published “The REDCap consortium: Building an international community of software platform partners” in Journal of Biomedical Informatics — cited 21,959 times.
While discussing his book Waking Up: Searching for Spirituality Without Religion, Harris noted that the West could learn a lot from the East about the traditions of meditation found in Hinduism and Buddhism, though he co
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Robert Wright, a visiting professor of science and religion at Union Theological Seminary, published an article in Wired criticizing Harris, whom he described as "annoying" and "deluded"
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That Trump "has assaulted truth more than anyone in human history"
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And PC Magazine included it in their list of "The Best Podcasts of 2018"
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Harris opposed Executive Order 13769, which limited the entry of refugees from Muslim-majority countries to the United States, stating that it was "unethical with regard to the plight of refugees
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Harris and secular Islamic activist Maajid Nawaz cowrote Islam and the Future of Tolerance
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Chomsky said Harris had not prepared adequately for the exchange and that this revealed his work as unserious
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The Guardian: Ben Affleck: Sam Harris and Bill Maher 'racist' and 'gross' in views of Islam
“especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse”
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That he believes Israel genuinely wants peace and that its neighbors are more devoted to the destruction of Israel
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Harris said he considers Islam to be "especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse", as it involves what Harris considers to be "bad ideas, held for bad reasons, leading to bad behavior
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Published “Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research” in Academic Medicine — cited 10,706 times.
The Guardian: Sam Harris, the New Atheists, and anti-Muslim animus | Glenn Greenwald
“s hostility towards gun culture in the United States and the political influence of the National Rifle Association of America. However, he argued that there is a rational case for gun ownership as the police may not arrive in time. Harris disagreed with an assault weapons ban, which he described as mostly symbolic, arguing that only 3% of murders in the US were committed with rifles of any type, compared to 47% with handguns. Harris also said that the”
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That he understood people's hostility towards gun culture in the United States and the political influence of the National Rifle Association of America
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Harris joined Michael Shermer to debate with Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston on the future of God in a debate hosted by ABC News Nightline
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From the University of California, Los Angeles, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty
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Published “Research electronic data capture (REDCap)—A metadata-driven methodology and workflow process for providing translational research informatics support” in Journal of Biomedical Informatics — cited 47,126 times.
Studied at University of California, Los Angeles, Doctor of Philosophy (2009).
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“The urge for retribution depends upon our not seeing the underlying causes of human behavior.”
“Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.”
“I do not choose to choose what I choose.”
“To say that I would have done otherwise had I wanted to is simply to say that I would have lived in a different universe had I been in a different universe.”
“Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next - a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please - your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this "decision" and believe that you are in the process of making it.”
Harris in the famous "Four Horsemen" debate asked fellow atheists, Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dennett, "Do you feel there's any burden we have, as critics of religion, to be evenhanded in our criticism of religion, or is it
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“s war in Iraq, and all criticism of fiscal policy and the administration”
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Harris described Islam as "all fringe and no center", and wrote in The End of Faith that "the doctrine of Islam
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Harris said that he supported most of the criticism against the Bush administration's war in Iraq, and all criticism of fiscal policy and the administration's treatment of science
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Harris married Annaka Harris (née Gorton), an author and editor of nonfiction and scientific books, after engaging in a common interest about the nature of consciousness
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Published “Activating Mutations in the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Underlying Responsiveness of Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer to Gefitinib” in New England Journal of Medicine — cited 9,581 times.
Published “Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome” in Nature — cited 18,641 times.
Published “The Sequence of the Human Genome” in Science — cited 10,212 times.
Studied at Stanford University, Bachelor of Arts (2000).
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Published “Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology” in Nature Genetics — cited 37,036 times.
After eleven years overseas, Harris returned to Stanford, completing a B
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Born 1967-04-09.
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use of human shields and genocidal rhetoric towards the Jews. He names these as reasons that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas. During the Gaza war that began in October 2023, Harris expressed support for Israel. He rejected arguments that Israel provoked Hamas by building Israeli settlements in the West Bank, arguing that all Israelis left Gaza in 2005, leaving it to govern itself. He also condemned the October 7 attacks, which led to the war. In the essay
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