Books

The Sam Harris Delusion

Book 22 - The God Series

There are two kinds of intellectual: Philosophers and Sophists. The former seek the absolute truth while the latter seek the "practical" truth that brings them worldly prestige and success.

The Philosophers develop positions that rely on the highest intelligence and are as far removed as possible from the "common sense" of the mob. The common herd hold Philosophers in more or less complete contempt. The greatest Philosopher of all was Leibniz, a man unknown to the general public, and relatively obscure even within intellectual circles.

Sophists are those who are forever invoking common sense arguments, making direct appeals to the mob, producing arguments based on sensory "evidence" (which they regard as unarguable truth rather than highly arguable interpretation), and who rubbish all reference to an invisible noumenal world of things in themselves underlying the phenomenal world of appearances. Precisely for these reasons, the weak-minded are far more influenced by Sophists than Philosophers, to the severe detriment of the intellectual progress of humanity.

Philosophers have a position based on rationalism, idealism, metaphysics and mathematics, while Sophists hold a position reflecting empiricism, materialism, physics and science.

One of the most prominent Sophists in today's world is Sam Harris, an American controversialist who supports scientism, atheism, and the claim that free will is illusory. All of his positions are closely connected, and the purpose of this book is to expose the fallacies that lie at the heart of the Sophists' worldview, and Harris's in particular.

Ultimately, the difference between Philosophy and Sophistry reduces to the difference between mathematics and science, and how each relates to ultimate reality.

Table of contents

  • The Copy Without An Original?
  • The Freedom Double Whammy
  • Mythos Madness
  • Mythos and Logos
  • The Denial
  • The Soul Atom
  • The Question
  • Free Will and Abrahamism
  • Christian Freedom?
  • The Science Delusion
  • Neuroscience
  • Where’s the Evidence?
  • Eastern Wisdom?
  • Free Will and Sam Harris
  • Sam Harris Contra Free Will
  • The Unconscious
  • Daniel Dennett
  • The Libet Experiment
  • The Language Deception
  • Living in the Past?
  • The Two-Stage Model of Free Will
  • The Free Will Illusion
  • Karma
  • Different Types of Atheist
  • Science versus Pseudoscience
  • The Betrayal of Reason
  • Capitalism and Science
  • Randomness
  • Seeing is Believing
  • The Cure for Science
  • The Design Flaw
  • What’s the Point?
  • Horizontal and Vertical Causation
  • The Karma Delusion
  • The Epistemic Fallacy
  • Revelation?
  • The Cosmological Argument
  • The Insult
  • Failure To Launch
  • Manmade Global Warming?
  • “Scenario Fulfilment”
  • An Inconvenient Truth
  • Aunt Sally
  • The Skeptics
  • The Useful Errors
  • Nietzsche on Cause and Effect
  • Atheism = Nihilism
  • The Parable of the Madman by Nietzsche
  • The Formula for Success
  • Ragnarok
  • The Hollow Men
  • The Proper Definition of Atheism
  • Mind Blindness
  • The Soul Equation
  • Nescience
  • The Perversion of Language
  • Souldust or Stardust?
  • Prophecy?
  • End the Madness
  • Mind Phase
  • Are you Enlightened?
  • Satisfaction?
  • The Smart Ones
  • Enlightenment
  • The Miracle
  • Video Games
  • The Mysterians
  • Peer Review
  • The Killers
  • The Scientific Inquisition
  • In the Name of God
  • The Four Ways
  • Monsters
  • The Cosmic Murderer
  • God’s Truth?
  • The Multi-Denial
  • Evil Atoms
  • The Wisdom of Murphy’s Law (Arthur Bloch)
  • Your Story
  • The Shooters
  • Mummies
  • Ritual
  • Zombie Ideas
  • The Tree of Life or Death?
  • The Abandonment
  • Teleology
  • Darwinism versus Hegelianism
  • Lamarckian Evolution
  • Dogs
  • Scientism
  • Kant’s Third Antinomy (of Freedom)
  • Evolution and Chance
  • The Unwisdom of Sam Harris
  • The Blind Leading the Blind
  • The Cult of Sam Harris
  • Rational Religion
  • Natural Selection?
  • Atheism and Chance
  • Kant on Compatibilism
  • What Kind of Person Are You?
  • Transcendental Freedom
  • Automata
  • The Newton of the Mind
  • The Sophists
  • The Darwinist Fallacy
  • The Causal Flow
  • The Existential Deception
  • Science = Sophistry
  • Natural Selection and Quantum Mechanics
  • C. S. Lewis
  • Life without Free Will
  • The Nature of Reason
  • Plato versus Science
  • The Harris Fallacy
  • The Two-Stage Model of Free Will
  • Behaviourism
  • Humans and Hidden Variables
  • Flying Transcendence
  • The Irrational Ones
  • The Disaster
  • The Error
  • Conclusion