Sam Harris Wha— ?

  • Posted by smijer
  • January 6, 2007

If this is true (via 1gm), freethinkers should run, not walk, away from Sam Harris as fast as our short little legs will carry us.

Frankly I’ve always admired Harris’s ability to turn a phrase and make a succinct case. I have one of his quotes in rotation at the top of the page (something about a hairdryer). I don’t guess I’ll remove it - I’ll just bear in mind that it seems to apply equally well to Harris as to its intended target (who is, as of this writing, the President of the United States of America).

It’s a weird, weird world.

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January 6th, 2007
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Anonymous
Posted on:
January 7, 2007 at 1:15 am

I’m on Sam Harris’ mailing list, and this article seems to have upset him sufficiently that he has sent out a response. (Some of that article is just blatantly false: for instance, the idea that Sam believes in the Hindu pantheon. Apparently the author does not know what “atheist” means.) This is what Sam wrote:

“Dear Readers –

Some of you may have noticed an article about me that is now running on Alternet.org. The writer, John Gorenfeld, has taken a ninety minute telephone interview, along with selective passages from my books, and made of them a poisonous of mash of misquotation and paraphrasis for the purpose of portraying me as an evil lunatic. While some level of innocent distortion can be expected in print interviews, this case appears genuinely malicious.

You can find Gorenfeld’s account of me here. Please feel free to post comments of you own to the site.

If you want to alert the management at Alternet of your displeasure, the contact page can be found here.

As you will see, Gorenfeld distorts my views on torture, spiritual experience, and the paranormal. For the record, I have summarized my views on these subjects on my website.

All the best,

Sam”

The final sentence contains this link where Sam clears up some of his views on torture, meditation, and paranormal phenomena, which Gorenfeld really does seem to have distorted: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=tymqm8bab.0.cjurm8bab.ekkouxbab.6062&ts=S0216&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.samharris.org%2Fsite%2Ffull_text%2Fresponse-to-controversy2%2F

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
smijer
Posted on:
January 7, 2007 at 10:24 am

Reading the explanation you linked, Harris comes off much more reasonable than the article portrays him. I’ll re-read it as well.