Objections to Sam Harris’s Critic of Religion (2025)

Should There Really Be an “End of Faith”? Hybridity and Sam Harris’s Proposal for an “End” to Religion

2016

In two books, entitled The End of Faith1 and Letter to a Christian Nation,2 which catapulted him to fame, vocal atheist Sam Harris advocates an “end” to religious faith. He is convinced that religion is an “obscenity”3 because it represents “a near-perfect barrier to honest inquiry”4 and “gives shelter to extremists of all faiths,”5 among other reasons. Where does that invalidation of religion leave the believer or, in my case, the critical believer–scholar involved in Religious Studies who, like Harris, seeks to maintain intellectual integrity yet, unlike him, continues to think that there is a great value to religion and faith?

The secular faith of Sam Harris

ON LINE Opinion, 2018

In the last few years we’ve seen an explosion of popular books on philosophy and psychology, many aimed at stressed out millenials who are unfamiliar with the history of human thought. Such books repackage old wine in shiny new bottles and promise shortcuts to success. One of these bestselling books is a well-written but frustrating guide to spirituality by Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and outspoken commentator on science and the meaning of life.

The Epistemic Violence of Sam Harris' Doxastic Theory of Action in The End of Faith

This text is a revised excerpt from a longer and more detailed manuscript that examines the phenomenon of New Atheism as a social-intellectual movement aimed at emancipating humanity from violence and religious faith by propagating rationalism, scientism, and a particular brand of atheism. In it, I scrutinise its treatment of Islam by focusing on one particularly influential publication by the author and neuroscientist Sam Harris, 'The End of Faith – Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.' I advance two arguments. The first is that the emancipatory universalism of Harris' liberationist programme is sustained by its opposition to the Muslim Other, and thereby follows an Orientalist paradigm. I seek to integrate two seemingly disparate theories of racism: Deleuze and Guattari's account of racism in the form of inclusive universalist cosmologies on the one hand; and the clearly excluding binomial oppositions of Orientalism on the other. The second argument is that the corollaries of this binary structure are used to justify various forms of violence against Muslims, from torture, military intervention, imposition of and support for dictatorships, to 'preventive' nuclear strikes. This excerpt reproduces only the first argument, elucidating Harris' theoretical underpinnings of what may be termed his 'doxastic model of action'. The analysis of this particular New Atheist edifice bears out my contention that a new, synthetic framework is needed to make sense of both the incorporating and the othering dimensions of this form of contemporary anti-Muslim racism.

Review: Religion and the new atheism: A critical appraisal

This edited volume of essays will provide an extremely useful, critical companion to the writings of the four horsemen of the new atheism, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens. The remarkable interest in the writings and pronouncements of these new atheists certainly requires interrogation, and the essays in this excellent book offer a range of perspectives for reflecting on, among other things, the substance of the new atheist critique of religion, the links between atheism and science, sociological explanations for the sudden and unexpected surge of interest in atheism, theological engagements with secular critiques and the epistemological links between the new atheism and religious fundamentalism. Ably put together by the editor Amarnath Amarasingam with the support of Warren Goldstein, series editor for Studies in Critical Research on Religion for Brill, I expect this volume to become essential reading for scholars and students, whether from theological, philosophical, sociological or religious studies disciplinary backgrounds. In what follows, I will outline the contents of the book before selecting, perhaps arbitrarily, two of the essays for more sustained reflection.

A Faith in Ends: Sam Harris and the Gospel of Neo-Atheism

2007

A critique of moral optimism of Sam Harris. Polemical comments, Studia Religiologica, 47 (4) 2014, pp. 321-329.

Sam Harris, one of the new atheists, believes that science is an authority in moral issues. Science can help us understand what our moral duties are, and what is right and wrong in a moral sense. However, the cultural and historical diversity of human behaviours, especially the history of wars and conflicts, suggests that it is difficult to show one, common and universal kind of morality. Here we show that Harris's moral theory is a particular project which could not be " scientifically " justifiable .

James F. Harris: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Faith and Philosophy, 2005

Review of Dustin J. Byrd, The Critique of Religion and Religion's Critique

Religion, 2021

Review Essay: A Metaphysical History of Atheism. Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 14/1 (2010), 52-65

Sam Harris’s Science of Morality: A Philosophical, Historiographical, and Theological Critique

In 2010, Sam Harris, an atheist neuroscientist with academic training in philosophy, has proposed an interesting moral theory (he called it, the ‘Moral Landscape’) that not only argued for the existence of objective moral values, but also suggested when morality is envisioned as “maximizing the well-being of sentient creatures,” it could be conceived as a science based on hard facts. Thereby he seeks to remove religion’s role in morality altogether and also blot out the relativism that pervades the other naturalistic moral theories. Has Harris succeeded in his endeavor? In this paper, I take a brief look at Harris’s moral theory, critically engaging it from a philosophical, historiographical, and theological perspective and conclude that Harris has not been successful.