No, he doesn't. Harris argues that it's hypocritical and illogical to be willing to accept civilian "collateral damage" in the name of stopping terrorism, but not be willing to torture a known terrorist in the name of stopping terrorism. He has clearly stated that he does not support torture and that he hopes torture remains illegal.
Sorry, but he does support torture and his book makes this clear.
He simply pointed out that killing people is generally considered worse than torturing people, and doing bad things to innocent people is generally considered worse than doing bad things to bad people. So if you're willing to kill innocent people to further your goal (for example, by destroying an entire building full of people with a smart bomb in order to kill a handful of terrorists inside), then logically you should be willing to torture guilty terrorists to further that same goal, since torturing a terrorist isn't as bad as killing an innocent person. His intention was to make people realize how hypocritical their ethical standards are, not convince people that torture is moral.
Again, that is not what he was doing. He spend many pages developing the argument and it was not simply to point out people's hypocrisy, that would be a waste of paper in a book like his. It might make sense in a philosophy book, showing how people do not think clearly, but his book was definitely as suggestion about what he considered both moral and necessary. Further since he supports just wars, if his own argument is correct, then he supports torture. His own logic holds for him.
Of course, this didn't stop lots people who already didn't like him (even though they don't actually read what he writes) from misconstruing his comments and going nuts with the whole "Sam Harris wants to torture people!" thing.
I read his book carefully. I had to. I ended up in a debate on the topic on his website forum and had to back it up with quotes from his book. After a while those who disagreed realized they had not read his work carefully.
The rest of you post is hallucinations about me or whomever it is you are thinking about.
Based on what you've said so far, I am very skeptical that you have actually read 100 pages of Harris's writing.
Oh, but you are wrong. Have you read End of Faith?
I no longer have a copy of his book, but here is a column he wrote IN DEFENSE OF TORTURE.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-torture_b_8993.html
If you have read End of Faith, then you know that he wants us to equate beliefs with actions. He spends many, many pages arguing that because beliefs lead to actions, we can, morally, treat people with certain beliefs as if they have performed those actions. Couple his notions of the morality of torture and you get a very ugly picture.
Notice he refers, at the end of the above article, to torturing a certain class of criminal
suspects.
My emphasis.
Suspects.
Essentially he is a taking a moral stance that goes against American law and fundamentally.
Here's one quote I saved in my computer....
The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people.
Note: this comes up during an argument in favor of torture. Here he is advocating killing people for their beliefs.
So let's look at what he is saying. He is saying that collateral damage in a war, including killing, is worse than torture. He than says that some beliefs are so bad that killing people for these beliefs is moral. IOW we can treat beliefs as actions and treat people as if they have acted on these beliefs. If torture is not as bad as killing - as he says in his argument - then torture for certain beliefs is also possible. Especially given that he think torture is OK for use on suspects.
And by the way I never said Sam Harris liked torture. Which is how you referred to my position. I said he argued for preemptive torture. The above quote makes it absolutely clear he is in favor of pre-emptive killing. IOW he thinks it can be moral to kill you because your beliefs might lead to you doing something. And note: The End of Faith repeatedly uses Muslims as the example of people who believe bad things.
