Sam Harris on the science of good and evil

11 Apr 2011

Speakers: Sam Harris, Revd Dr Giles Fraser, Jeremy O'Grady

Sam Harris advocates a secular morality based on fact and science, and goes as far as to encourage a new type of spirituality ‘devoid of faith’. He feels we need a ‘robust sense of right and wrong’, without which ‘humanity will lose its way’. Here, speaking with Revd Dr Giles Fraser, the canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, Harris tells us that science holds the answers.

Harris and Fraser discuss outcomes, intentions, the difference between 'is' and 'ought' and the central question of how to maximise human happiness, or 'wellbeing'. Drawing on Leibniz’s concept of ‘the best of all possible worlds,’ Harris turns the idea on its head, and asks us to consider ‘the worst possible misery for everyone’. He argues that wanting to avoid this eventuality proves a logical foundation for moral choices: people are genetically coded to want to be in a state of wellbeing.