Controversial Atheist Sam Harris Confesses

For Harris, lying is always wrong — except when it harms Trump. Then it becomes a moral duty.

Few figures in modern intellectual life are as polarizing — and as paradoxical — as Sam Harris. As one of the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism movement, the perpetually perplexed-looking polemicist burst onto the scene in the mid-2000s. First came his blistering critique of religion in The End of Faith, quickly followed by explorations of consciousness, spirituality, and, most intriguingly, the ethics of honesty. A philosopher at heart, a neuroscientist by profession, and a provocateur by reputation, Harris seems willing to incinerate reputations and friendships in pursuit of truth. Or, more specifically, what he considers truth.
And yet, the deeper you follow Harris into his thinking, the more unsettled that word “truth” becomes. Especially now.
His latest assertion, made in a recent interview, is about children. More specifically, about whether it is ever morally permissible to lie to them. “No,” Harris says. Not even about Santa Claus. Not even for the sake of wonder or nostalgia. He argues, as he did in his 2011 long-form essay “Lying,” that every lie, even the innocent kind, damages the trust that underpins all meaningful relationships. And this includes the one between parent and child. The moment they discover you’ve been deceiving them, you’ve invited doubt into the bond. You've made truth negotiable.
It’s a bold claim. And on one level, it is exactly what we expect from Harris: absolute moral clarity, surgically argued. But it also invites something more provocative, something Harris himself may not have intended. It begs a larger, messier question: Can a man who advocates radical honesty in all things still justify, as he once did, lying to the public about things like Hunter Biden’s laptop because Trump is a “worse person” than Bin Laden?
Can a man obsessed with truth be trusted to always tell it?
Let’s start with the principle. Harris believes that lying — any lying — is a kind of violence. A severing of mutual understanding. In “Lying,” he writes, “To...