Sam Harris

Sam Harris earned a degree in philosophy from Stanford University before pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA, shaping his interdisciplinary approach to questions of consciousness, free will, and morality. His early interests included extensive meditation practice—over three decades, with two years on silent retreats under teachers like Sayadaw U Pandita, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, and Joseph Goldstein—which informed his critiques of religion and spirituality. Harris rose to prominence as a key figure in New Atheism, alongside Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, known as the 'Four Horsemen.' Motivated by the September 11, 2001 attacks, he published The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason in 2004, a New York Times bestseller that criticized Islam, Christianity, and Judaism while advocating reason over faith. He followed with Letter to a Christian Nation in 2006, further targeting Christianity, and later works like The Moral Landscape (2010), arguing science can determine moral values based on conscious well-being, rejecting relativism. In subsequent years, Harris expanded into podcasts, launching Making Sense to discuss philosophy, science, politics, and AI risks, with episodes as recent as September 2025 featuring guests on superintelligence and politics. He co-founded Project Reason, a nonprofit promoting science and secularism, and developed the Waking Up app, offering meditation tools grounded in neuroscience rather than religion. His work consistently challenges illusions of self, free will, and determinism while promoting ethical living through evidence.