Am I responsible for my life?  Are my choices really free for me to make on my own?  Or is my whole life and all my choices predetermined?  As most of our moral system and the justice system that legislates that morality assumes that we are each responsible for own actions, and therefore can be held responsible for them, even in a court of law, this seems like a huge and important question.

And there are several possible answers to the question.  In this experience, the main content focuses on one view that challenges man to consider that we are not free, and to thus reconsider how we view our own actions and those of others.  The presenter will cite recent scientific evidence that purports to defeat the idea that we truly choose anything with full conscious control of those choices.

Sam Harris is the author of the bestselling books, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, and Lying. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing has been published in more than 15 languages. Mr. Harris and his work have been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, Newsweek, The Times(London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.

Mr. Harris is a cofounder and the CEO of Project Reason, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.

Before Mr. Harris presents his lecture, an overview of the subject is presented by physicist, Michio Kaku: