Welcome back to Shemis Poperate. I'm Joe Heschmire. If you're not familiar with the channel,

Big Think on YouTube, they've got 7.43 million subscribers and they explore big, important topics.

And I am happy that their YouTube channel is doing this and not just playing obnoxious

children's music or comedy skits. One of the recent videos from last week already has, as of the time of recording,

550,000 views, I'm sure by the time you watch this, it'll have even more than that.

And it's called Sam Harris, the great problem of our time.

Now, I know you're thinking, that's pretty harsh.

He's not the greatest problem.

Surely there are bigger problems than Sam Harris, but don't worry.

It turns out the colon there means Sam Harris is describing the great problem of our time, not that he is it.

In any case, the problem Sam Harris describes actually has a lot of merit. I think he's right on the money in certain things that he says, namely this. Number

one, belief is incredibly important, not just religious belief, any belief about the world, because

belief is a motivator for action. And we live in a world in which we increasingly, even though we

have this age that allegedly was going to draw us all together, has created echo chambers

and safe spaces and ideological bubbles and ways in which the way we view the world has become

increasingly sort of self-segregated so that you can go your entire life without really

having your points of view challenge. And that that creates certain

problems for collective action, for just how we understand the world, and it creates things like

the specter of violence, all of this. And I largely agree on this thesis. But Sam Harris wouldn't

be Sam Harris if he didn't take the opportunity to make completely unnecessary pot shots against religion.

But along the way, I think he reveals something that I want to speak to it for two reasons.

One, because he's just said this to hundreds of thousands of people.

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