Part II - Peter Foster's assessment of Harris's new book:
Sam Harris is one of the “New Atheists,” joining Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens as a bold slayer of mental viruses that prevent people from thinking straight. That is, like him.Great stuff.
... Like Richard Dawkins, himself a reflexive socialist, Mr. Harris believes that man can transcend himself (Mr. Hitchens is much less naïve). It doesn’t occur to him that the notion of self-transcendence might be the most dangerous, moralistic self-delusion of all. Meanwhile he fails to register that the greatest horrors of the past century have all been perpetrated in the name of “scientific” socialism, whose root is the “moral” rejection of capitalism.
... Meanwhile it’s not just a mental illness, it’s a plot. “Because there are no easy remedies for social inequality, many scientists and public intellectuals also believe that the great masses of humanity are best kept sedated by pious delusions.” This is pure Marxist “opiate of the masses.” Meanwhile nowhere are these “scientists and public intellectuals” named.
... Mr. Harris makes only the most tangential reference to the mass murder and poverty brought about by the secular religion of Communism.
By contrast, his anti-business and anti-“conservative” bias is blatant, indeed sometimes hilarious.
... Science may help us better examine moral values, but only if attached to historical knowledge and philosophical wisdom. Mr. Harris might consider removing the beam from his own liberal eye before he pretends to deal with the conservative mote that he finds so annoying in the eyes of others.
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