Right now I am reading "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" by Sam Harris.
I think this is a must read for Atheists. For too long have skeptics placed a divide between science and objective moral values. Theists have taken advantage of this time and time again in debates. Theists will posit that objective moral values have to come from God otherwise they are subjective and relative to the whims of society. I'm only one chapter in but Sam has already done quite a bit to chip away of that notion.
Here's a
DEBATE between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig. Harris owns Craig. It's a bloodbath. Craig seems to panic during his rebuttals. The debate is about whether God is needed for humans to have objective moral values. You can get a good sense of what is in Harris' book by watching this debate. It's really good.
I only have a cursory understanding of the material of the book right now but I thought I would make the thread now anyway so that maybe some of you can start to read it and we can discuss it as we read.
Here's an excerpt from the book that sums up its premise.
"While the argument I make in this book is bound to be controversial, it rests on a very simple premise: human well-being entirely depends on events in the world and on states of the human brain. Consequently, there must be scientific truths to be known about it. A more detailed understanding of these truths will force us to draw clear distinctions between different ways of living in society with one another, judging some to be better or worse, more or less true to the facts, and more or less ethical.
I am not suggesting that we are guaranteed to resolve every moral controversy through science. Differences of opinion will remain--but opinions will increasingly constrained by facts. And it is important to realize that our inability to answer a questions says nothing about whether the question itself has an answer."
Here's Richard Dawkins' review of the book.
"Beautifully written as they were (the elegance of his prose is a distilled blend of honesty and clarity) there was little in Sam Harris's previous books that couldn't have been written by any of his fellow "horsemen" of the "new atheism." This book is different, though every bit as readable as the other two. 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. It should change it for philosophers too. Philosophers of mind have already discovered that they can't duck the study of neuroscience, and the best of them have raised their game as a result. Sam Harris shows that the same should be true of moral philosophers, and it will turn their world exhilaratingly upside down. As for religion, and the preposterous idea that we need God to be good, nobody wields a sharper bayonet than Sam Harris." --Richard Dawkins