Sam Harris Says Religion is Science When He Believes In It: Hook, Line and Sinker.

just as we tend to say that beauty is in
the eye of the beholder we have to admit once in a while that deception is in part to be blamed on the people who are themselves being deceived initially when I started researching the religiosity of Sam Harris I mostly blamed him for the deception but as the evidence started to pile up on my desk I couldn't help but feel that there's a very eager participation on the part of the audience and some of the journalists and middlemen look at this chart here when you look at the left-hand side of the screen that's probably the side of Sam Harris you're more accustomed to seeing and hearing about his name linked to this foundation he created himself project reason but that's not the only foundation that he's associated with he's also an important member of and leader of the Hanneman foundation when you instead see him in the context of religious leaders who he himself propounds as having had a profound an important impact on his own life people who he himself says his own meditation practice his own practice as a guru and leader is inspired by modeled on derivative of then we start to see a very different Sam Harris but to his credit he hasn't really kept this concealed it's been an open secret because I think members of the public wanted to be deceived they wanted to see Sam Harris as he appears there on the left-hand side of the screen they just didn't want to see what was hidden in plain sight what was obvious all along that he is the kind of guy who becomes the secretary and treasurer of the Hanneman Foundation and in case you imagine that some kind of tremendously respectable academic institution for the study of Hinduism as a religion no it's not no it's not there's nothing respectable about it it is a religious foundation that exists to propound the teaching of the white Western gentleman whose photographs in the middle of Green there it is a foundation that propounds the spiritual insights of highly eccentric self-made guru Ram Dass and no that's not the name he was born with but to be fair aisel Mozart is not the name I was born with either we look at the list of spiritual leaders including the one I just mentioned that San Maris attaches his own name to people who he says or supremely advanced enlightened thinkers and perfected beings people who demonstrate how wonderful the spiritual path is and people who've inspired his own practice of teaching meditation when we look at this list of names they aren't doing anything to conceal their overtly religious nature nobody here is lying about who they are and what they're teaching except for sam harris so sometimes you can judge a book by the cover and sometimes you can't when you look here at Tulku or yen rinpoche your school can rip O'Shay saya dapat Nita when you look at these names and you look at these these photographs I'm sure nothing leaps into your mind these are secular scientists presenting teachings or presenting methods of meditation that are strictly based on the the latest highly skeptical inquiries into neuroscience into the science of consciousness these are traditional religious authority figures so why is it that when a white Western supposedly scientific figure like Sam Harris steps forward and repeats the same teachings and the same similes verbatim that these people he's when he had he credits his sources fairly enough he says he studied meditation with these people that he is now making money he charges a fee of 120 dollars annually for you to download the app and you can close your eyes and cross your legs and hear his voice when he is giving you this guided meditation if he is repeating verbatim what religious authority figures have taught as religion how could it possibly be that the same doctrine or the same philosophy ceases to be religious when it comes out of the mouth of a white faced clean-shaven Western male as opposed to these gentlemen whom he named as his spiritual teachers as the source of his teachings who are wearing various forms of religious robes and obviously just to dial back to Ram Dass here some of these figures who are his guiding inspirations they were white Western people who also chose to dress in the exotic robes of the Far East okay but our list is not complete after sideout pandita we also have each WL Punja you can judge a book by its cover people this guy is exactly what he seems to be he is the bad stereotype of the Indian mystic guru and you can look up for yourself the unstinting praise that sam harris hasn't this guy do you think do you think just just judge a book by it's cover whom here what do you think the other members of the so-called Four Horsemen of atheism would have to say about hwl puja you can look it up you can do the reading you can listen to lectures from all these people on YouTube including hwl pooja himself what do you think any of the other famed and acclaimed leaders of so-called secular atheist anti-clerical anti religious movements in the West what do you think the leaders of project reason would have to say about the doctrine and teaching of hwl pooja and then what does sam harris have to say by contrast how can it possibly be that the same teachings about meditation spirituality enlightenment the worldview ceases to be religious become secular and scientific just because it's sam harris who sang it instead of a man whom he acknowledges as his own teacher and spiritual guru HIV or pooja terence mckenna in this case again you can read words of unstinting phrase over the top raised from sam harris calling terence mckenna brilliant genius and inspiration path breaker and he's none of those things you can hear terence mckenna's speaking in his own voice here on youtube you can look up his writings I would describe him as a ranting lunatic and the only reason why anyone including sam harris would find any kind of in the ramblings of Terence Mckenna is because they're desperate for anyone to find a spiritual justification for what is simply brain damage in the form of hallucinogenic mind-altering drugs and that's what Terrace McKenna provides you with he provides you with a so-called spiritual excuse to disregard the hard facts of what modern Western science will tell you about hallucination whether drug-induced or otherwise Ram Dass once again a name you guys are all familiar with none of the connections between these people and Sam Harris are just my opinion or my conjecture as you know he has a leadership role in the foundation promoting the teaching of Ram Dass and most of these other connections you can take straight out of Sam Harris's own books or you can also look at the very interesting and in my opinion damning list of other meditation gurus whom Sam Harris has invited on to his show who he claims as masters and who he also invites to provide his followers with guided meditation via the app that too tells you much more about who sam harris really is than the appearance of his face on the poster next to the so called Four Horsemen of atheism and maybe the biggest name of all and the most decisive domino to fall in this analysis is Ken Wilber because there's one thing Ken Wilber has in common with Sam Harris it's that both insist that they have transcended the distinction between science and spirituality that they are the rightly guided Western avatars who will reach around in the stew of Eastern mysticism and extract from it its most nourishing essence to preserve as scientific fact and it was complete [ __ ] when Ken Wilber did this act and in many ways the more you know about ken Wilbur's work the connection between Ken Wilber and Sam Harris it starts to seem like in many ways Ken Wilber really was a guiding influence on Sam Harris and in some ways Sam Harris is trying to be the new Ken Wilber I said at the start of this that these shocking facts have been hidden in plain sight it's also fair to say that both the mainstream press and we as members of the audience have been distracted from the overwhelming significance of Sam Harris's ideological and religious commitment to teaching meditation to being a spiritual guru in his own right by a series of controversies that Samaras has stoked up whether cynically or sincerely resulting in his own shall we say rising star or his self-promotion I think we all have tended to overlook the bizarre religious mission of Sam Harris because one he's kind of right-wing probably most of you in the audience have an uncle who is more right-wing the Samaras but yes it does remain shocking in some circles the extent to which yeah he's kind of a footing - he's kind of racist I'm again you may or may not have an uncle who is at least as racist as Sam Harris it's not tremendously shocking but once the helices up and yeah three he grabs headlines with edgy statements about being Pro torture about being opposed to the tolerance of Islam he manages to make even bland opinions he holds seem offensive and he seems to be constantly flirting with far right-wing figures including yes the notorious charles murray each one of these controversies has effectively promoted his career but it has also distracted us away from the very simple and I think extremely important question that I'm raising this video the critique of sam harris as a right-wing hack precludes putting him in the same category as ken wilber and alan watts and that is precisely the category he belongs in he is a white Western spiritual leader teaching meditation and teaching meditation at a profit claiming to reinterpret the mysterious religions the ancient East that he knows absolutely nothing about let's let's make one thing very clear Alan Watts Ken Wilber and Sam Harris out of the three of them how many could read Sanskrit how many could read Chinese who he could read pally how many could read how many did a legitimate authentic scriptural research and then you could also ask how many of them did any kind of legitimate anthropological research in terms the reality of what these religions are in the real world today and in my in my biased opinion it's a zero across the board perhaps the most shameful question of all is this why don't his atheist colleagues ever criticize his mission and his faith it seems kind of laughable to me that sam harris is sitting on the board of directors he's that the number two man in the hanuman finishin seems titled to me but the other people who are sitting at that table with him literally and figuratively what do you think their perspective on that would be what do you think Richard Dawkins has to say about the handyman foundation the doctrine of Ram Dass CERN and so forth what do you think Richard Dawkins or anyone in his camp would have to say about the excuses for the use of hallucinogenic mind-altering drugs presented by Terence Mckenna right whether we're talking about someone wearing a robe and literally wrapping themselves in the mystique of the far-east or not if we're talking with someone who wears a suit and tie and attempts to sort of cyant I as these claims right what do you think what you're talking some perspective than that there has been a very strange code of silence amongst sam Harris's allies I've got an article clip there in the bottom right corner of the screen Sam Harris the new atheist with a spiritual side there is absolutely nothing but unstinting praise for sam harris in that article in The Guardian newspaper and that's a little bit surprising to me okay but the Guardian newspaper can have whatever kind of bias they want they can promote them from one person to another but I'm asking the question if you are Richard Dawkins or if you're just a fan of Richard Dawkins would you not be inclined to condemn this in the harshest terms possible and not just to condemn it because it's taken the ancient superstitions of India and East Asia and repackaging them promoting them from modern Western consumption but wouldn't you condemn it all the more harshly because it is taking the name of science and dragging it through the mud this is partly an insult to the religions of the Far East but it's much more importantly an insult to science right this is presenting pseudoscience as science in a way that's dangerous and in a way that people like Richard Dawkins are supposed to be passionate about opposing so where is the opposition the fact that sam harris claims his cult of meditation as scientifically valid is nothing new hindus buddhists and con artists like ken wilber alike have claimed for years to reconcile science and Eastern mysticism this makes it more important for real scientists to refute him not less I'm going to close the video by reading to you now a letter from a member of the audience someone who wrote in in response to my earlier videos criticizing sam harris just a few days ago let me remind you that this game of misrepresenting the ancient wisdom of the east as newly discovered european science is not new that was a game really invented in the 1960s by the so called TM movement Transcendental Meditation and what's noteworthy there is that they started off by presenting themselves as westernized and deracinated as possible people would start off being told that Transcendental Meditation was a purely scientific therapeutic exercise of the mind that had scientifically proven benefits medical benefits blah blah blah but then step-by-step they'd be drawn into a cult where they were presenting flowers to a statue of the great leader all dressed in traditional Hindu robes chanting in some kind of broken Sanskrit step-by-step you know the veil of science and scientists tremendously strong cultural continuum what I can only call cult culture so the viewer writes in to say hi I watched your video of meditation I went to a silent view Pastner retreat years ago I realized on day six that the Pastner program started out very secular and little by little it got extremely religious the lecturers started out so friendly and quickly turned to dogma hours were spent meditating and I came to a profound but obvious conclusion while I was there the conclusion is under the right circumstances I can believe anything it wasn't what they were teaching but I figured it out I feel like I got lucky you were one of few people have found kind of saying the same thing that I figured out thanks for your videos I hope we can chance him the study of religion consists of the study of errors accumulated over millennia by humankind the study of religion for those of us who truly are experts burdens us with the awareness that if we don't take urgent action those errors of the ancient past can still be just as powerful in shaping the future of our culture today and even worse terrible people with terrible motivations can reinvent the wheel they can make all the same errors all over again in the pursuit more often than not of money fame power respect and sex and I sympathize to an extent because what most people call the corruption of religion at least I can say that's real when you strip away the ideology then you're left looking at the reality call it corruption or not money fame power respect sex well people tell lies to get those things yes and will other people believe them and make them rich and powerful beyond their wildest dreams that's not just something that happened centuries ago it's happening right now in the 21st century every day and who who was gonna stand up and do something about it there was a time when people were supporting figures like Richard Dawkins because they felt now finally at long last there's somebody will stand up to do something about it and they were wrong