
The Moral Landscape
How Science Can Determine Human Values
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Narrated by:
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Sam Harris
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By:
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Sam Harris
About this listen
Sam Harris’s first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people—from religious fundamentalists to nonbelieving scientists—agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the most common justification for religious faith. It is also the primary reason why so many secularists and religious moderates feel obligated to "respect" the hardened superstitions of their more devout neighbors.
In this explosive new book, Sam Harris tears down the wall between scientific facts and human values, arguing that most people are simply mistaken about the relationship between morality and the rest of human knowledge. Harris urges us to think about morality in terms of human and animal well-being, viewing the experiences of conscious creatures as peaks and valleys on a "moral landscape". Because there are definite facts to be known about where we fall on this landscape, Harris foresees a time when science will no longer limit itself to merely describing what people do in the name of "morality"; in principle, science should be able to tell us what we ought to do to live the best lives possible.
Bringing a fresh perspective to age-old questions of right and wrong and good and evil, Harris demonstrates that we already know enough about the human brain and its relationship to events in the world to say that there are right and wrong answers to the most pressing questions of human life. Because such answers exist, moral relativism is simply false—and comes at increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality.
©2010 Sam Harris (P)2010 Simon & Schuster, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Audiobook review (just a podcast collection)
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Story
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I don't completely agree. BUT THAT SAID...
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Here is an impassioned plea for reason in a world divided by faith. This important and timely work delivers a startling analysis of the clash of faith and reason in today's world. Harris offers a vivid historical tour of mankind's willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs are used to justify harmful behavior and sometimes heinous crimes.
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Audiobook review (just a podcast collection)
- By Amazon Customer on 12-21-20
By: Sam Harris
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Lying
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- Narrated by: Sam Harris
- Length: 1 hr and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption - even murder and genocide - generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie. In Lying, bestselling author and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie.
-
-
"Telling The Truth...
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-
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- Narrated by: Sam Harris
- Length: 1 hr and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.
-
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-
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- Narrated by: Jordan Bridges
- Length: 1 hr and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next 50 years," writes Sam Harris. "Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this...should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."
-
-
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- By Stanley on 12-20-06
By: Sam Harris
-
Waking Up
- A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
- By: Sam Harris
- Narrated by: Sam Harris
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From multiple New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, and "new atheist" Sam Harris, Waking Up is for the 30 percent of Americans who follow no religion, but who suspect that Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history could not have all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds.
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Performance
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Overall
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Performance
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"Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next 50 years," writes Sam Harris. "Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this...should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency."
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By: Sam Harris
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- Narrated by: Sam Harris
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption - even murder and genocide - generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie. In Lying, bestselling author and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie.
-
-
"Telling The Truth...
- By Douglas on 11-29-13
By: Sam Harris
-
Waking Up
- A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
- By: Sam Harris
- Narrated by: Sam Harris
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From multiple New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, and "new atheist" Sam Harris, Waking Up is for the 30 percent of Americans who follow no religion, but who suspect that Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history could not have all been epileptics, schizophrenics, or frauds.
-
-
I don't completely agree. BUT THAT SAID...
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Overall
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Story
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-
Must read for an honest debate on the topics
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God Is Not Great
- How Religion Poisons Everything
- By: Christopher Hitchens
- Narrated by: Christopher Hitchens
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris' recent best-seller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos.
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5-Star Writing. Perfect Author Narration.
- By Michael on 12-13-09
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Breaking the Spell
- Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why - and how - it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma.
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Great Reader Actually Enhances A Great Book!
- By Don Caliente on 07-14-14
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The Blank Slate
- The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
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Don't bother. Outdated science & poor logic...
- By ejf211 on 03-31-10
By: Steven Pinker
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The Portable Atheist
- Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
- By: Christopher Hitchens
- Narrated by: Nicholas Ball
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Abridged
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Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case for a splendidly godless universe in this first-ever gathering of the influential voices past and present that have shaped his side of the current (and raging) God/no-god debate. With Hitchens as your erudite and witty guide, you'll be led through a wealth of philosophy, literature, and scientific inquiry, including generous portions of the words of Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, and more.
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This is ABRIDGED
- By David Wolf on 06-05-08
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Mortality
- By: Christopher Hitchens
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this riveting account of his affliction, Hitchens poignantly describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us. By turns personal and philosophical, Hitchens embraces the full panoply of human emotions as cancer invades his body and compels him to grapple with the enigma of death.
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Death IS the DARK backing
- By Darwin8u on 09-05-12
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Outgrowing God
- A Beginner's Guide
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In 12 fiercely funny, mind-expanding chapters, Dawkins explains how the natural world arose without a designer - the improbability and beauty of the "bottom-up programming" that engineers an embryo or a flock of starlings - and challenges head-on some of the most basic assumptions made by the world’s religions: Do you believe in God? Which one? Is the Bible a "Good Book"? Is adhering to a religion necessary, or even likely, to make people good to one another? Outgrowing God is a concise, provocative guide to thinking for yourself.
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No new ground is covered.
- By God(less) on 11-05-19
By: Richard Dawkins
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Moral Tribes
- Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
- By: Joshua Greene
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.
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Good Science, Bad Philosophy
- By Jacob on 10-27-16
By: Joshua Greene
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Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens
- By: Christopher Hitchens
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 28 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The first new collection of essays by Christopher Hitchens since 2004, Arguably offers an indispensable key to understanding the passionate and skeptical spirit of one of our most dazzling writers, widely admired for the clarity of his style, a result of his disciplined and candid thinking. Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell.
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Grab it
- By Davol2449 on 09-02-11
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Good Without God
- What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe
- By: Greg Epstein
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A provocative and positive response to Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and other New Atheists, Good Without God makes a bold claim for what nonbelievers do share and believe. Epstein's Good Without God provides a constructive, challenging response to these manifestos by getting to the heart of Humanism and its positive belief in tolerance, community, morality, and good without having to rely on the guidance of a higher being.
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Speaker sounds too robotic
- By Lisa S. on 08-27-21
By: Greg Epstein
What listeners say about The Moral Landscape
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- Gerald Schoen
- 10-31-10
The book says what many feel, but fear to say
I was expecting an anti-religious dialogue; however, I found myself repeatedly saying, “I feel the same way”.
The author clearly makes the point that religions have so many contradictions in their message that thinking people cannot understand what the message really is; while others pick and choose what they believe from the contradictions. These people often become a part of the religious fringe that drives so many others from the good things that many religions offer.
I enjoyed and learned much about religions that I had not known. I also found the Mr. Harris had done his research well when I checked his statements.
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- Alex
- 07-02-15
really good argument.
Sam sometimes whistles on his s's and it hurts my ears sometimes. I really enjoyed the book however.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Roger Loomis
- 02-03-17
Brilliant!
To explain where I'm coming from, I was raised Mormon and became an atheist in my mid 20's--nearly 20 years ago now. Religion has remained a fascinating topic for me, and I've spent some time over the years discussing it with believers and non believers alike.
The most challenging topic has been morality. Certain believers are adamant that there is absolutely no basis of morality without a God to give the rules, keep score, and inflict judgment. Is that true? Taking a step back, what causes a thing to be moral or immoral, regardless of whether there is a god or not? Or is morality something that doesn't actually exist in the real world?
In The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris discusses this issue head on. The tone is intelligent, insightful, optimistic, and humble. Yes, morality exists, and yes, in principle at least it is accessible to science. There are many very tough questions regarding ethics and Harris doesn't shy away from them or pretend to have all the answers. But he has a few answers, including a clear understanding of how the problem should be framed.
I've read a couple of books by "new atheists" Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and frankly wasn't that impressed. Attacking religion is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, and can lead to being a little lazy in how you describe things. This book is completely different--it's a thoughtful and insightful discourse on a challenging and important topic.
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- LaMar Fam
- 03-22-18
Wow
Maybe the best book that I have ever read! Has radically affected the way that I view morality and how and where we should direct it going forward. I can think of no higher praise than what I would give this wonderful book.
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- Peter
- 08-11-15
...not what, but how you think.
Clearly reasoned, written, and read, the Moral Landscape takes obscure and sensitive subject matter seriously. Sam expresses his concerns and critiques without obscurantist rhetoric and, while some readers will inevitably detect condescension toward certain world views, Sam never relies on tone or characterization to do more than give color his arguments which are always backed up with examples and sensible comparisons. When discussing scientific particularities, such as brain structures and experimental procedures, he is explicit without getting bogged down in jargon, minutia or interminable lists. All sources are clearly cited. I personally believe that anyone who takes morality and questions of social good seriously is obligated to read this book.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-19-17
Founding the Science of maximizing human welbeing
Seems to me that morality is the set of tools provided by biological and cultural evolution to manage cooperation within our social groups. Since our social groups are now larger and more dangerous than ever before we certainly need to refine those tools. I don't care if the idea that maximizing human wellbeing can be defined as right in a philosophical sense. Obviously we need to make a science of maximizing wellbeing and working out moral rules around that regardless of the should and oughts that come out of the current tool kit. It also seems that Harris hits quite a few nails on the head in this book. I can understand his frustration with the irrationality of religion but would like to see him recognize and acknowledge the useful tools that it provides, as well as highlighting the very real problems it creates.
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- Jeffrie Benedetti
- 07-11-20
wow
I mean come on how do I even how do I even review this thing this was the best book I could imagine Sam could have written at the time yeah
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- OrionDeHunter
- 03-18-20
You have no idea.
Ever thought about right and wrong before?
Not like this.
Sam offers us a guide to rational morality. You should listen to it.
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- Cohen
- 02-13-21
Enlightening!
An invaluable book to me in thinking on the topic of morality. I am convinced by the point that it is possible and necessary to invest in a science of morality and the overwhelming positive implications it might have for humanity in the future.
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- Gus
- 07-18-19
Best Harris book
Without a doubt Harris's best work. By that I mean that it shed the most light on his positions.
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