I think the root issue is two-fold;

1: Many don't like any respect given to theism, or at least want it in the forefront of discussion that all theism is based on a faulty premise.  Sometimes Harris glosses over that and focuses on the better parts of a particular thing.

2: He uses theistic language and that is often used against atheists.  "Well, Sam Harris says..."  Then you have to try and explain this and that.  Sort of like having to explain that when Einstein was talking about God, he wasn't talking about a personal God.

At least, that's what I've seen people talk about.  I've not read his stuff, personally.

Odd, isn't it?

Sam Harris is not for the casual anti-theism enthusiast. He takes very skeptical viewpoints on topics which are difficult to hear and he gives kudos where it is do, even when it is unpopular to do so. Harris is interested in learning about the topics of faith, religion, and how we make our choices. He is a thinker and is sometimes unpopular because he puts more value in introspective thought than in making a hard argument.

Dawkins and Hitchens are easy to get on board with. They are hard line and don't make exceptions or allowances when they probably should. They embrace the fist waving angry atheist crowd and don't seem to have much interest in looking at the subject from a more productive stance. Taking the "all religious practice is bad no matter what" stance is a good applause line but it is also an intellectually stunted approach to the conversation. Harris just doesn't hedge himself in like that.

My take.

Religious idoctrination is a serious matter.

Both of them realize very clearly, that religions target ignorance, and use the 'target's' ignorance as a means to remove their free will, and behave like automatons, while giving them the illusion that they are in control of their own lives, when they are really motivated by fear, and not by intellectual and rational deliberation.

Neither of them are advocates of living without morals. They just want to expose the placebo effect at work, and free people from the prisons of their minds (fears).

The 'delusion'...

                 Curtisy of the Halton Peel Humanist association;

           http://foratv/2010/11/10SaM_harris_can_science_determine_human_values.

Also, read the Moral Landscape. You want to see how far outside the box he is willing to think, this is a masterful example.

Indeed.

Guys like Dawkins and Hitchens do incredible amounts of good and I, for one, think they should be revered for their efforts and victories. Some guys fight dirty because that's the arena they function better in and they personally feel that there is more to be gained. Some have a clean fight because that's their strength.

When it comes to appraoch we just need to look at results to see if their is value in the tactic. Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris are all incredibly influencial in their communities. Granted, they probably reach slightly different sects of humanity because of their approaches but I suspect they are well aware of this. There is no single method of dealing with people which reaches everyone so we have to decide which method best fits our personality tempered with which audiences we find it most important to reach.

Oh I won't be comparing my IQ to Sam Harris'. I don't nee that kind of bad news.

Sometimes you have to shout down from a mountain top to really grab peoples' attention, and then there's the influence over an arena, than an individual, on the psyche that's distinctly different.

Imagine if you were Moses, and had to go door to door, and go "Hey, let me tell you about these tablets I have, and what some guy I can only tell you about, said that you must do, or you're going to regret it..."

I've seen some of his debates, and seen the 4 Horsemen. I have to say I like his style of speaking, and I've not really heard too much from him that is too dissonant to my ears, though he does start to loose my interest when he gets to playing too much with some philosophies.

But, I'm splitting hairs.

I think he's an important voice for atheism.

I can see where terms like spiritual, transcendent experience, and his statements about making the self "vanish" through meditation can be misconstrued as being nonsense. But he uses them within the context of genuine scientific inquiry and in the realm of reason. It's concepts like these that really do need to be explored with their useful benefits extracted and all the unecessary baggage removed. It also seems like an issue of atheist wanting to be firm in their stance, for example he also mentions that labeling oneself as atheist is not necessary and that simply calling "a spade a spade," would be better. In other words specific claims about the nature of the universe could either be factual or bullshit without the need to label one self. Although I personally identify with the title of atheist I would be more specifically "ignostic." Which is to say that no one has a concrete answer as to what constitutes "GOD," therefore a conversation can not be had on the existence of something without a clear definition. But when asked if I believe in a specific god like the god of abraham or zeus and can say  I am atheist with regards to those gods and any other one with a clear definition.

Sam Harris is right on that. Making the self "vanish" in meditation is a real achievement. I did it once for a moment and it was amazing. It's exactly as Krishnamurti says, "observation with no observer." I mean, there were some inner processes going on in my mind and body, but there was no "me."  "I" was definitely not there. All the bodily processes existed on their own, without any personality present, yet something not identifying itself personally was aware of them. Perhaps the parts of body and brain are aware of each other and whent the synthetic sense of self is withdrawn, the awareness remains. It is very puzzling experience for rational mind to comprehend, because many of us are self-important solipsists. How can I be sure that the world outide me is real? I would respond, how can you be sure that YOU are real? The world within and outside is real, maybe YOU are the illusion.

I've just watched something from Sam Harris on Youtube and he looks really competent. I mean, he says it right. He understands eastern philosophy! Finally someone who doesn't push Descartes down our throats. What he says is basically what Osho also explains, just in more serious style. And so far he doesn't seem condescending, unlike Richard Dawkins.
(My problem with Dawkins: "Isn't it enough, just this natural world that science so far managed to describe in repeated double-blind tests for the past couple of centuries?" No, it isn't !!! )

Funknotik, You sound like a deist.

This is the root of the issue, Funk. Unfortunately people (skeptics and super-naturalists alike) get so focused on our viewpoint that we clog up our ears. Harris talks about a good many things, all within the realm of honest scientific inquiry and progressing the overall well being of mankind. He uses terms which make atheists shut down but that is because they aren't really listening.

In the context of what he is saying, if we are actually listening, he is not condoning anything without testing. Quite the contrary, what he is talking about is what we should be testing! He's talking about what science *can* have an opinion about! He's talking about using our minds to the fullest and not coming to knee jerk conclusions on either side!

I am a moral subjectivist, so I certainly do not agree with his unique attempts at moral realism or his suggestions that morals can be "scientific" truths. In, The End of Faith, he commits what I think is a fairly common error when he argues that moral relativism is internally inconsistent because it asserts that morals are "absolutely" not "absolute." 

No I don't.

Yeah it seems as soon as those nebulous terms come into play people seem to pick them out and not understand the context of the whole presentation. Here is an article accusing him of being a "spiritualist." http://www.sacw.net/free/Trading%20Faith%20for%20Spirituality_%20The%20Mystifications%20of%20Sam%20Harris.html

This is an epic fail of understanding the book from someone claiming to be a skeptic: " He loads spiritual practices with metaphysical baggage, all the while claiming to stand up for reason and evidence. By the end of the book, I could not help thinking of him as a Trojan horse for the New Age. While Harris tries to distance himself from the more extravagant Whole Life Expo type fads (crystals, colonic irrigation and the like), he ends up endorsing fundamental New Age assumptions as rational alternatives to traditional religiosity."

But Harris can defend the rationality of mysticism only by completely contradicting himself, by forgetting the criteria of rationality which he applies so energetically when he is eviscerating faith in God. If he were to apply these same criteria to spirituality as rigorously as he applies them to faith, he will have no choice but to admit that mysticism is as much of an "imposter" as faith.

How is it that we extract such completely different ideas from the same book?

But yet YOU observed it and YOU commited the experience to memory. So YOU didn't vanish.

I think it is really a matter of defining words. We use "I", "me" etc;, They really refer to this location of expereince, body/mind etc.;  This linguistic method of creating the subject of experience and action is associated with consciousness and consciousness in turn thought of as a self or soul.  But other ain't one. It is merely a consctruct of language and thought.

What I got out of my reading of the book was that: a) Harris believes in 'Morality' as being that which leads to more happiness and less misery; and b) that science can determine in an objective way what the results of given behaviors might be with that morality in mind.

It is much more complicated than that, and I must re-read the book more attentively before commenting further, but what I read did seem reasonable. He did not seem to be advocating for the establishment of any moral absolutes - only that science can be used to study moral questions more sensibly than ancient texts.

I'm not so well versed in Harris, as I am in Hitchens, Dawkins, Hawking.

I do like the way he articulates. He appears very self aware, and self disciplined. Almost like a Buddhist or Taoist.

I think he's choosing to look at theism from an oblique angle, instead of just the full frontal view, and attacking it from a Whorfianism perspective, of linguistics that distinguish and differentiate, and the demarcations that occur, and give rise to factions.

We use words to communicate ideas. But words carry much more than their simple meanings, and qualifiers/quantifiers. But single words can carry connotations and implications that are far more communicative than entire phrases, and paragraphs of words.

That's what I believe his angle is.

You and I might have very opposing views on a topic like abortion. And we 'agree' that it's a difficult topic, and that one's personal feelings on it, are unique, and personal, and entirely subjective, and one's 'right' to feel differently than another.

We might vehemently disagree, and even argue over it, but, we don't want to spill blood over it, and we still view each other as peers.

That's being civil, and in control over one's emotions and actions. We'll defend the other's individual 'rights' to think and feel differently about it. That's being impartial.

Now, depending on your 'religion', one might be characterized as 'wicked', or an 'infidel', for having those individual personal beliefs on a topic.

The connotations of the word 'wicked' or 'evil, or 'infidel', are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of control, emotional displays.

It's pathological that one can become on the verge of homicidal for contemplating 'moral' topics that are stay to oneself, and do not impose a will on others.

That's what can be seen and studied objectively.

There are marked differences in morals and ethics, between cultures, and religions. There's nothing subjective about it. There are, or there are not. There's no debate that there are.

Morals and ethics are not universal, therefore, are subjective.

Much to the chagrin of religions.

It's very clear that religions are about oppression, and thought policing.

They want people to not only drink the koolaid, but to recruit and bully others with condemnation, vitriol, contempt, threats and hatred.

That's terrorizing people.

Religious people are selfmotivated to do so. No one has control over them. Religion is often 'blamed', but religion is just an 'idea'. It's just a 'thoughts'.

You're thoughts are your own. They may be influenced by others, but they become your own as soon as you adopt them, and they begin to influence your actions.

Unless you have a gun to your head, and are being forced by a harmful threat to your safety, your actions are 'strictly' your own, and you are accountable for them.

Actions define your character, not your thoughts.

Alot of people experience that same feeling while on mushrooms, mdma, lsd, and various psychedelic drugs. Also while meditating or in extreme states of mind like fighting, prolonged isolation from other people, or really extreme physical exertion or training. It's been referred to as "ego death" or "depersonalization" and seems like it is a dissolving of the ego or sense of self. Psychologists have analyzed the experience for it's use with PTSD and other disorders of the mind. Some people report a prolonged sense of well being afterward and also a greater feelings of empathy and compassion.  The point is that some religious or "mystic" types also experience this and sometimes seem  to attain these states of conscious and you may see them in a trance or lucid state. Think of indigenous rituals, zazen meditation, darmic chants etc. Sam Harris's whole point is that we should observe these experiences for there positive benefit to human well being. Regardless of their previous religious or metaphysical context we can now in a lab setting analyze and observe what these sort of experiences do in the brain and how they affect individuals on various levels.

I've experienced ego death as well after having ingested psilocybin tea and I have to say I will never forget the experience it made me appreciate sound in a new way and was dominated by aural hallucinations which basically solidified the idea that I wanted to make music. Also with the sense of self dissolved Carl Sagans statement about us all being "star stuff" took on new meaning I felt like a part of the universe in a way that I had never felt. It made me more interested in science and I would say a more compassionate and understanding person. It re enforced what Richard Dawkins said about how fortunate we are to be conscious and ask questions about the universe around us. Anytime I think of that trip I think of how fortunate I am to be alive and able to learn about so many amazing things the natural world has to offer without the need for superstition, magical thinking, or anything supernatural. Everything you could want to feel fulfilled, to have a sense of wonderment, a sense of awe, a feeling of belonging, it's all around you in the natural world. I could go on forever about that experience and how it shaped my mentality today but I would probably bore you. Again the whole point is you don't need tarot cards, astrology, and superstition when you can have a telescope, astronomy, pink floyd, and bag of shrooms.

I agree with you and mellestad. Harris does not advocate a stance that science can or should determine some kind of absolute morals. He says this early in The Moral Landscape; he is quite clear, actually.

He is saying that there is no reason we should not look at the question of morality from a scientific viewpoint. If there are facts surounding how people feel and why, then why is it exactly science should have an "oh no, we can't talk about morality, that's naughty" approach? He says that this idea of moral relativism is not helpful and is basically just a retreat from having the conversation at all. As always, Harris wants to have a rational conversation and cut out as much assumption baggage as he can. This is how he goes after god belief and it is exactly the same as his approach toward spirituality and morals. He isn't telling us that we should know the answers, only that science should not be excluded from looking.

It is the best tool set we have for interpereting our surroundings. It is foolish for us to, for some strange reason, exclude it from what many will argue are some of the most important questions we know to ask.