Sam Harris Reverses His Position on Free Speech, Calls for Censorship of Conservatives
One of the leaders of the 2000s' "New Atheist" movement now wants those on the right to shut up.
Sam Harris, prominent atheist, philosopher, neuroscientist, and defender of democracy, believes conservatives should have no voice in public policy matters such as climate, vaccines, or the war in Ukraine. Here’s a Harris quote taken from Jeffrey Lord’s piece on Newsbusters.
“We’re swimming in a sea of misinformation, where you’ve got people who are moving the opinions of millions of others, who should not have an opinion on these topics.”
Yet only 17 years earlier after the cartoons of Muhammed appeared in a Danish newspaper, prompting the US and Britain to criticize the right of Demark to publish the cartoons, Sam Harris had then said, “It is time we realized that the endgame for civilization is not political correctness.”
What changed for Sam?
Perhaps not believing in God allowed policy matters, like the climate and vaccines, to sink into his unconscious and then grow in religious importance. Dostoevsky understood that once a person stops believing in God the danger wasn’t that they’d believe in nothing, but that they’d believe in anything. For example, the global warming apocalypse (the most expensive hoax in human history) demands faithful adherence for Harris and other elites in academia, entertainment, and politics. Sam’s latest whim, destroying the voices of conservatives, sunk in the ocean of the unconscious and absorbed the energy of religion.
Harris surfaced with his plan to save the world from misinformation generated by the great unwashed. Perhaps he thought that his bright take on current events was only an imaginative swim in a summer lake high in the Catskills, when, in fact, his dive landed him in a psychic Mariana Trench where the pressure turns everyday political disagreements into a crushing apocalypse.
In cancelling his political enemies, Sam Harris has developed a taste for savagery: the tyrannical urge to replace God and create “heaven on earth.” He never learned that a powerful spiritual/religious urge in every human is not a delusion to be wiped out by therapy, but an event as powerful as the will to survive.
Age-old religions like Judaism and Christianity give us maps, called scripture. In Judeo-Christianity our faith over thousands of years has been plumbed, pondered, lived, all the while studying the mysteries of a God-created universe. It’s a faith in contact with our everyday life. The Ten Commandments is a fine example that details the darkest practices of the human heart: murder, theft, and bearing false witness, demanding that they’re brought into the light to be confessed and confronted.
Sam’s unaware of those things that belong to Caesar and those things that belong to God. Everything he currently believes is for the state, for the manmade. His new religion calls for social media to cancel the voices of misinformation—the clarion call of the petty tyrant.
Sam’s been a beneficiary of that beautiful passage of Christ’s: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s…
In the everyday world he has succeeded fabulously, enjoying the fruits of his work with his publications and admirers. However, engulfed by the energy of the spirit realm, Harris can only create a caricature of the religious experience. The fruit he dived for withered quickly at the surface. A second-rate ventriloquist, he struts onto the stage holding a wooden dummy that mouths proclamations against conservatives.
A century ago, Belgian priest Georges Lemaitre would say Mass in the morning, distribute communion, and then put on his physicist hat and go about discovering the Big Bang Theory. The Belgian priest was motivated by his love of science, not to either prove or disprove the existence of God.
The religion of a personal savior, of a God who loves his creation, has served men like Father Lemaitre well, and millions of others throughout history. They approach life fastened to their personal responsibilities, yet burning with the freedom of adventure: their spirit and eyes wide open. Sam Harris’s religion has not served him well.
