Review: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This author narrated his own audiobook and as I often feel in those cases, he shouldn't have. I only got past his kinda quick, kinda monotone delivery by the second half. The first half was very important; tying morality to well-being and the argument that on some level well-being can be treated objectively. ...probably worth reviewing that part. Two things were interesting in the second half to me:

1. Harris goes all Richard Dawkins kinda unexpectedly to assault The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Author Francis Collins is an American physician-geneticist, noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes, and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He at the time of this writing served as the Director of the US National Institutes of Health. In the book, Collins describes briefly the process by which he became a Christian and Harris is fairly appalled that a leading scientist would hold such beliefs. I am an atheist but I don't feel that makes me anti-Christian any more than I feel I should loathe kids believing in Santa. It just seemed out of place and unnecessarily underscored.

2. References to the studies of E. Margaret Evans et al on the affinity of the young toward magical thinking and Creator-belief resonated with me like the similar portions of How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like.

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