#481 — Sam Harris Receives the 2026 Richard Dawkins Award

**Robin Blumner** (0:20)
Welcome, everyone, to the 2026 Richard Dawkins Award presentation. My name is Robin Blumner. I'm president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry and executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, which is a subpart of the Center for Inquiry. Both CFI and the Richard Dawkins Foundation share a mission to promote reason, science and secularism. To that end, as you will hear from Richard Dawkins himself, the Richard Dawkins Award honors the men and women who have been at the forefront of promoting critical thinking, rationalism, and scientific truth. Past recipients include Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Andrean, and Ricky Gervais.
I can think of no one more deserving to be part of this illustrious group than today's awardee, Sam Harris.
During the last part of this hour-long event, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris will be answering your questions. So please use the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen to submit those questions. Now, I give you Richard Dawkins with a previously recorded tribute.

**Richard Dawkins** (1:38)
This award was established, not by me, to honor those who have made an outstanding contribution to the public understanding of science, reason, and secular values. Science gives us the way to understand reality, reason gives us the way to argue about it without throwing things, and secularism shows people of very different beliefs how to live together in relative peace.
These are what makes civilization civilized. They are the antidote to superstition, tribalism, and wishful thinking. Sam Harris has been one of the clearest, most intelligent, and most courageous voices in this endeavor. I first encountered Sam through his writing. I was halfway through writing The God Delusion myself when The End of Faith was published. When I read those extraordinary opening pages, I remember thinking to myself, this man really knows how to write. And the feeling grew on me as I read on. The End of Faith appeared at a moment when the world was being reminded rather dramatically that religious beliefs are not mere private curiosities. They have consequences. One phrase from Sam bored into my brain like a gimlet. These people really believe what they say they believe. Mullahs and Imams, Southern Baptists who have the ear of Presidents, the odious Ayatollahs of Iran. No matter how ridiculous their beliefs, they really believe them. And we better believe they believe them, because they act on those beliefs. With consequences, incredible as it may seem to us, these people really do believe what they say they believe. There's nothing too bulking mad for somebody to believe it, and if they really sincerely believe it, they're liable to act on it.
This Sam said more clearly than any of us, and it was a wake up call. The 9-11 perpetrators were not evil men. They were believers. What they believed was palpable nonsense, but they sincerely believed it, and their terrible actions were a direct consequence. By their own lights, however ridiculous, they were righteous men. Since his first book hit the bestseller lists, followed by The Short Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam's books have explored an impressive range of further subjects. The nature of consciousness, the foundations of morality, free will, honesty and lying, the science of meditation, and a collaboration with a reformed Islamist fanatic. He has moved between science, philosophy, political and public debate with admirable clarity and with a calm intelligence that is probably assisted rather more by meditation than most of us manage.
His Making Sense podcast has a strong claim to be the best in the world. He is able to attract thinkers of the caliber of David Deutsch, Max Tegmark, Dan Dennett, Steven Pinker, Colman Hughes, David Chalmers, Nick Bostrom and Daniel Kahneman. But he doesn't just interview these world-class intellects. He gives as good as he gets in a conversation rather than a conventional interview. Sam is walking evidence that scientists can do philosophy at least as well as philosophers can. And he has the added value that you can understand what he's talking about.
He's also shown a notable willingness to enter difficult conversations. In our present climate, where asking an innocent question is frequently treated as heresy, the strength to be controversial is a notable feat of intellectual courage. Sam sticks his neck out, where so many who share his opinions crouched uneasily below the parapet. He follows an argument to its logical conclusion, even in the teeth of fashion and at the cost of unpopularity. He bears the brunt of a tax which by rights should be shared out among others who share his beliefs, but not his courage. And beyond the arguments themselves, there is something deeper at work in Sam's writing and his work. A deep-rooted, humane, humanistic altruism.