I was lucky to watch this video of Sam Harris earlier today, and I want to share it with you because I feel he touches on some important topics concerning death and atheism. As usual, Sam Harris discusses these profound matters much more cogently than I can, and with a dry sense of humor that I personally find delightful.

One aspect that I relate with Harris on is the willingness he has to acknowledge the importance of spirituality in our lives, something I have argued for a long time. No, not spirituality in the sense of “believing in paranormal, unprovable mystical theologies” but spirituality as an emotion. Spirituality is the awe we feel for nature, for beautiful poetry and art; it is the calm and serenity and compassion we experience during and after meditating; it is the feeling of being both greater than your ego and smaller than the molecules we are made of. Like love and joy and grief, there is nothing supernatural about spirituality, and Harris has a very accessible way of explaining that.

Anyway, here is the vid; it is worth the 45 minutes out of your present moment to listen:

Fair warning, I will be addressing this vid again in another post soon, simply because Harris covers so many topics worth discussing that atheists don’t talk about, particularly in regards to death, grief and mourning.

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