The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution  Foreword by Stephen Fry

The Four Horsemen

The transcript of the one and only conversation between 'the four horsemen' of New Atheism, with  introductions from Dawkins, Dennett and Harris and a sparkling foreword by Stephen Fry.

This transcript  is of historical significance and belongs in the library of all thinking people. A classic for our time...and all time.

Michael Shermer, Publisher Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist Scientific American, Presidential Fellow Chapman University, author of Heavens on Earth, The Moral Arc, The Believing Brain, and Why People Believe Weird Things

I have a short list of intellectual heroes, and Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett each have a place on it—not because I always agree with their views, but because I'm in awe of the way they form, express, and defend their views. If thinking were a sport, these four would be national superstars—and reading The Four Horsemen feels like having a front row seat at the all-star game. This is more than a book about atheism and religion—it's a lesson in how to use our intellect to cut through the haze of delusion and misconception inherent in any human society.

Tim Urban, author of the blog 'Wait But Why'

We are slowly losing the hard-won right, gained by brave heroes of the enlightenment such as Voltaire and Hume, to be free to criticise religion without persecution and prosecution; the crime of blasphemy is creeping back. The words of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett are needed more than ever. These are the heirs to Voltaire.

Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything

I was gripped. Throughout this erudite conversation the humility and openness of science shines against religion’s arrogance, hypocrisy and sheer gall in just ‘making stuff up’. How refreshing it is.

If you had to pick a place for our pop culture to change, Sun Records on December 4, 1956 at a jam session with Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley is a pretty good symbolic spot.  This conversation on September 30th, 2007 with Daniel, Sam, Richard, and Elvis . . . I mean Hitch at Hitch’s pad is as good a place as any to mark the start of the Atheist revolution.

What a gift to be able to eavesdrop on this conversation!  These four are the kinds of thinkers we don’t get enough of anymore; unapologetic, uncompromising, and deeply generous with one another as well as anyone who happens to be listening in. You needn’t be an atheist or a horseman to relish every word of this delightful book. You just need to be hungry for genuine intellectual inquiry and open debate. And, let’s face it, you’re probably starving.

Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion

Reading this book is like to getting to spend a profound afternoon with some of our greatest intellectuals. Blasphemous, erudite, devastatingly truthful, slyly hilarious.  I gasped, I laughed, I nodded, and sometimes had to stop and just think for a moment about what they'd dared to say.

Julia Sweeney, author of Letting Go of God

For people inclined to disbelieve supernatural explanations -- in America, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters -- The Four Horsemen is a smart, fun, funny, seriously provocative primer.

Thrilling...Challenging...This bracing exchange of ideas crackles with energy...an invigorating example of what happens when astute, inquisitive minds engage together on deep questions.

Richard Dawkins (Author) Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries. Sam Harris (Author) Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. His work has been published in more than twenty languages. Harris has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Economist, The Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, Annals of Neurology, and other outlets. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. Please visit his website at SamHarris.org. Daniel C. Dennett (Author) Daniel C. Dennett was an American philosopher and cognitive scientist whose research centred on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He was the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University and a visiting professor at Oxford and the London School of Economics. He is the author of numerous books including Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, Breaking the Spell, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and Consciousness Explained. He died in April 2024. Christopher Hitchens (Author) Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011. Stephen Fry (Foreword By) Stephen Fry is an award-winning comedian, actor, presenter and director. He rose to fame alongside Hugh Laurie in A Bit of Fry and Laurie (which he co-wrote with Laurie) and Jeeves and Wooster, and was unforgettable as General Melchett in Blackadder. He has hosted over 180 episodes of QI, and has narrated all seven of the Harry Potter novels for the audiobook recordings. He is the bestselling author of four novels - The Stars' Tennis Balls, Making History, The Hippopotamus and The Liar - as well as three volumes of autobiography - Moab is My Washpot, The Fry Chronicles and More Fool Me. Mythos and Heroes, his retelling of the Greek myths, are both Sunday Times bestsellers.

Searching for Spirituality Without Religion

Waking Up

Sam Harris reminds us that awakening does not depend on religious belief. With his usual probing clarity, Sam points out the rational methodology for exploring the nature of consciousness.

Joseph Goldstein, author of 'Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening' and 'One Dharma'

So entirely of this moment, so keenly in touch with the growing number ... who are willing to say that they do not find the succor they crave, or a truth that makes sense to them, in organized religion.

Sam Harris ranks as my favourite sceptic, bar none. In Waking Up he gives us a clear-headed, no-holds-barred look at the spiritual supermarket, calling out what amounts to junk food and showing us where real nutrition can be found. Anyone who realizes the value of a spiritual life will find much to savour here – and those who see no value in it will find much to reflect on.

Daniel Goleman, Author of 'Emotional Intelligence' and 'Focus'

Harris shows how our egos are illusions [and] how abandoning this illusion can wake us up to a richer life, more connected to everything around us.

Jerry Coyne, Professor of Biology at the University of Chicago

Waking Up is an extraordinary book ... It will shake up your most fundamental beliefs about everyday experience, and it just might change your life.

Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University

Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. His work has been published in more than twenty languages. Harris has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Economist, The Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, Annals of Neurology, and other outlets. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. Please visit his website at SamHarris.org.

'An extraordinary book . . . It will shake up your most fundamental beliefs about everyday experience, and it just might change your life.' Paul Bloom 
___ 
 
For the millions of people who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris's new book is a guide to meditation as a rational spiritual practice informed by neuroscience and psychology. 
 
 Throughout the book, Harris argues that there are important truths to be found in the experience of contemplatives such as Jesus, Buddha and other saints and sages of history-and, therefore, that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow. 
 
Waking Up is part seeker's memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris-a scientist, philosopher, and famous sceptic-could write it. 
 ___ 
 
'A demanding, illusion-shattering book.' Kirkus Reviews 
'A pleasure to read.' Huffington Post

The Moral Landscape

An explosive book that calls for an end to religion's monopoly on morality, by the bestselling author of The Enf of Faith.

I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me... As for religion, and the preposterous idea that we need God to be good, nobody wields a sharper bayonet than Sam Harris

Sam Harris breathes intellectual fire into an ancient debate. Reading this thrilling, audacious book, you feel the ground shifting beneath your feet. Reason has never had a more passionate advocate

A tremendously appealing vision, and one that no thinking person can afford to ignore

Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology

Readers are bound to come away with previously firm convictions about the world challenged, and a vital new awareness about the nature and value of science and reason in our lives

Lawrence M. Krauss, Professor at Arizona State University

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and the author of the New York Times bestsellers The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Times, Nature and in many other journals. He holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. He is a co-founder of Project Reason. 
www.samharris.org

Sam Harris's first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people - from religious fundamentalists to nonbelieving scientists - agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the primary justification for religious faith. 
 
In this highly controversial book, Sam Harris seeks to link morality to the rest of human knowledge. Defining morality in terms of human and animal well-being, Harris argues that science can do more than tell how we are; it can, in principle, tell us how we ought to be. In his view, moral relativism is simply false - and comes at an increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality. Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our 'culture wars', Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.

A Challenge to the Faith of America

Letter to a Christian Nation

A hard-hitting polemic against religious fundamentalism - Foreword by Richard Dawkins

I dare you to read this book... it will not leave you unchanged. Read it if it is the last thing you do

Sam Harris's elegant little book is the most refreshing and wonderful source of ammunition for those who, like me, hold to no religious doctrine... Read it and form your own view, but do not ignore its message

Sam Harris is a brave, intelligent, clear-sighted author whose brilliant essay should be read by every adult who has ever believed that a religious faith can solve the world's problems

Harris and (Richard) Dawkins both share a wonderfully refreshing refusal to parse their language into more saccharine statements... Guaranteed to enrage all but the most delusional theist

Harris picks apart the very seams of Christian belief in such a convincing fashion that any shred of belief I had has now been obliterated. This is a good thing. We only get one life - why waste one minute of it on mumbo jumbo

' Thousands of people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God. The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ's love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from the Bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse.' 
So begins Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris's hard-hitting rebuttal of religious fundamentalism and blind belief . With deceptively simple arguments, he demolishes the myths on which Christianity was built, challenges believers to open their eyes to the contradictions of their faith and warns us of the dangers of America's ever increasing unification of Church and State.

Sam Harris (Author) Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. His work has been published in more than twenty languages. Harris has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Economist, The Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, Annals of Neurology, and other outlets. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. Please visit his website at SamHarris.org. Richard Dawkins (Foreword By) Richard Dawkins is author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society's Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor's Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.

"A hard-hitting polemic against religious fundamentalism" - Foreword by Richard Dawkins 
 
' Thousands of people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God. The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ's love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While we may want to ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that such hatred draws considerable support from the Bible. How do I know this? The most disturbed of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse.' 
So begins Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris's hard-hitting rebuttal of religious fundamentalism and blind belief . With deceptively simple arguments, he demolishes the myths on which Christianity was built, challenges believers to open their eyes to the contradictions of their faith and warns us of the dangers of America's ever increasing unification of Church and State. 
 
Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestseller The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and winner of the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Non-fiction. He is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University and is now completing a doctorate in neuroscience. He lives in New York.

Sam Harris

I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preached to nor pointlessly provoked. I have never finished a single episode without having learned something and being given pause for real thought.

Even in casual discussion, Sam is intelligent, educated, honest, considered and brave. He’s really not cut out for the Internet.

Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know, not afraid to speak truths out in the open where others keep those very same thoughts buried, fearful of the modish thought police. His literate intelligence and fluency with words has transferred from the written to the spoken medium, and in his podcast he brings out the best in his guests, including those with whom he disagrees.

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion

Do yourself a favor, broaden your perspectives and listen to the Making Sense podcast. Whatever your politics, you will find ideas and points of views you've never considered before, in fields you don't know, from neuroscience to computer science to culture.

Of all the podcasts available, the one nobody should miss is Making Sense. Every episode is stimulating. In an era when everyone seems to have lost their reason, here is one of the few places where reason remains safe.

Douglas Murray, author of The Strange Death of Europe and The Madness of Crowds

In the rapidly expanding universe of podcasts, Sam Harris's Making Sense is a firmly established galaxy of brilliant minds orbiting Sam's shrewd but solar intelligence. I am frequently late for work because I start listening while shaving and can't bring myself to hit pause.

I’ve been an avid listener to Sam's podcast from the beginning and not one episode goes by without me learning something new about life, culture, politics, religion, history, and especially the human mind. Sam is an enlightened, rational voice in a world that needs it now, perhaps more than ever, especially if we are to survive, or thrive, in spite of the collective weaknesses that make us human.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History

There's only one podcast I never miss, and it’s the one that has the most appropriate title in all of broadcasting. Does anyone simply make more sense than Sam Harris?

One of the most consistently intelligent and thought-provoking shows out there, and not just in the podcast space. Sam’s is a much-needed voice during these unprecedented times.

Ian Bremmer, author of Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism

Sam Harris is a genius and his podcast explores many of the important issues of our time. (Yes it’s as good as that sounds.) Sam is a voice of reason and science in an era that needs both more than ever. The Making Sense podcast essentially launched my presidential campaign.

To the raging controversies of the day, Sam Harris adds a voice of civility and reason.

Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower

It's no wonder that Sam attracts a huge audience. He is a thinker with his own ideas, so his interviews are some of the most interesting conversations you are ever likely to hear.

Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation

Sam has given us one of the greatest podcasts in the world for clear thinking. We are better equipped to face the perils and uncertainties of life with it in the air. It’s a stand-out leader in a cluttered field and being Sam’s guest on it was a career highlight.

Derren Brown, author of Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine

Making Sense brings the power and patience of contemplation to the art of conversation. Sam Harris models not only how to articulate complex ideas, but also how to truly hear the ideas of others. This is cognitive jazz at its best.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock

There is no podcast that approaches the intellectual rigor and open mindedness of Sam Harris' Making Sense. It's a regular dose of sane, patient reason and dialogue. In a tribalized world, it reveres the individual, inquisitive mind. And Sam has some balls to talk honestly where so many others won't.

Andrew Sullivan, author of The Conservative Soul

Sam Harris is tremendous at his job; sharp, sceptical in just the best sense, and full of curiosity and openness. He's a terrific questioner, and he greatly enlivens and improves public discourse.

Cass Sunstein, author of Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America

In the huge world of interviewers, Sam Harris stands out at the top for his probing questions, and for his own thoughtful views.

Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel

Sam Harris is a true public intellectual: he thinks deeply about a wide range of issues and engages fearlessly with controversial topics and unpopular opinions. You don't have to agree with him to learn from him—I always come away from his show with new insights and new questions.

Adam Grant, author of Originals and Give and Take, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

This podcast is perfectly named. Sam makes sense of important, difficult, and often controversial topics with deep preparation, sharp questions, and intellectual fearlessness. More, please!

Andrew McAfee, author of More from Less and coauthor of The Second Machine Age

There are precious few spaces in the media landscape where difficult, rigorous and respectful conversations can play out at substantial length, without agenda. Sam Harris created the model for such illuminating exchange, and the Making Sense podcast is a treasure trove of discussions with many of the most compelling and fascinating minds of our era.

Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Self Portrait in Black and White

Making Sense is a refuelling station for the mind, and I visit it regularly. As an interviewer, Sam is both rigorous and generous. His show is completely devoid of the cheap shots and tribal bickering that characterize so much of podcasting. Making Sense is joyful play of the mind, without a trace of the partisan cretinism that disfigures the vast majority of our discourse these days.

Graeme Wood, author of The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State

Making Sense is one of the most thought-provoking podcasts that I've come across. Sam Harris does an incredible job probing—and finding answers to—some of the most important questions of our times.

Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene: An Intimate History

Whether the discussion is about artificial intelligence, the future capacities of knowledge, politics, philosophy, intuition, history (philosopher Thomas Metzinger shares experiences from post–World War II Germany that are hard to look away from), religion, reason, or the nature of consciousness, Harris grounds lofty discussions with concrete examples and his gift for analogy . . . free and open debate, in the best sense of the word . . . the book’s advantage over the podcast is that readers can linger as they need to and cherry-pick interviews at will. Recommended for anyone who wants to spend time with intelligent minds wrestling not with each other but with understanding.

Conversations on Consciousness, Morality and the Future of Humanity

"Civilization rests on a series of successful conversations." Sam Harris 
 
Neuroscientist, philosopher, podcaster and bestselling author Sam Harris, has been exploring some of the greatest questions concerning the human mind, society, and the events that shape our world. 
 
Harris's search for deeper understanding of how we think has led him to engage and exchange with some of our most brilliant and controversial contemporary minds - Daniel Kahneman, Robert Sapolsky, Anil Seth and Max Tegmark - in order to unpack and clarify ideas of consciousness, free will, extremism, and ethical living. 
 
For Harris, honest conversation, no matter how difficult or contentious, represents the only path to moral and intellectual progress. 
 
Featuring eleven conversations from the hit podcast, these electric exchanges fuse wisdom with rigorous interrogation to shine a light on what it means to make sense of our world today. 
 
'I don't have many can't miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list.' - Stephen Fry 
 
'Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know.' - Richard Dawkins

Sam Harris

Praise for Making Sense

**I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list**. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preach ...

Even in casual discussion, Sam is intelligent, educated, honest, considered and brave. He’s really not cut out for the Internet.

Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know, not afraid to speak truths out in the open where others keep those very same thoughts buried, fearful of the modish thought police. His literate in ...

**I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list**. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preach ...

Even in casual discussion, Sam is intelligent, educated, honest, considered and brave. He’s really not cut out for the Internet.

Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know, not afraid to speak truths out in the open where others keep those very same thoughts buried, fearful of the modish thought police. His literate in ...

**I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list**. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preach ...

Even in casual discussion, Sam is intelligent, educated, honest, considered and brave. He’s really not cut out for the Internet.

Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know, not afraid to speak truths out in the open where others keep those very same thoughts buried, fearful of the modish thought police. His literate in ...

Books by Sam Harris

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

Praise for Making Sense

I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preach ...

Even in casual discussion, Sam is intelligent, educated, honest, considered and brave. He’s really not cut out for the Internet.

Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know, not afraid to speak truths out in the open where others keep those very same thoughts buried, fearful of the modish thought police. His literate in ...

I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preach ...

Even in casual discussion, Sam is intelligent, educated, honest, considered and brave. He’s really not cut out for the Internet.

Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know, not afraid to speak truths out in the open where others keep those very same thoughts buried, fearful of the modish thought police. His literate in ...

I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preach ...

Even in casual discussion, Sam is intelligent, educated, honest, considered and brave. He’s really not cut out for the Internet.

Sam Harris is the most intellectually courageous man I know, not afraid to speak truths out in the open where others keep those very same thoughts buried, fearful of the modish thought police. His literate in ...

Books by Sam Harris

**I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list**. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preach ...

**I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list**. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preach ...

**I don’t have many can’t miss podcasts, but Making Sense is right at the top of that short list**. Sam Harris and his varied and fascinating guests generate light but not heat. The choir is neither preach ...