Welcome to the Council of Tren Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Council Tren Podcast. I'm your host, Cavaganza's Apologist

Tren Horn. Sam Harris was one of the original four horsemen of the New Atheism. He followed

in the footsteps of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and considering religion not just

misguided but dangerous. He wrote his book The End of Faith after the 9-11 terrorist

attacks. And he cites those attacks as proof that religion is a dangerous part of society

that needs to be replaced with a more enlightened rationalism. But Harris' primary critique

of religion, that it justifies violence done in the name of God, also applies to his same

secular philosophy, which, as you'll see, justifies any violence that can be done in the

name of the greater good. But before I talk about that, let me say that I don't want

you to do anything bad in the name of promoting this channel. All I'd love for you to do

is to like this video if you enjoy it, subscribe to our channel to help it grow, and if we can

make 100,000 subscribers by 2024, I'd be very happy, and become a premium subscriber

at Tren Horn Podcast dot com. That's also really helpful.

Okay, so in 2010, Harris published a book on morality called The Moral Landscape, How

Science Can Determine Human Values. Part of Harris' goal was to answer the claim that

atheists cannot ground morality apart from God. But the book was widely panned, because even

if you argue against God being the foundation of morality, that's different than proving

science can ground objective morality. Many philosophers criticized Harris' book, saying

he was mistaken in trying to use science to answer basic moral questions like what is

the good or how should we live. Using science to ground moral truths is like using a yardstick

to weigh a chicken. It's the wrong tool for the job. Science tells us the way things are,

...