How Science Can Determine Human Values: Sam Harris Book

I took a copy of Sam Harris' Book with me on vacation; I knew I'd need an oasis of rationality amidst the irrationality.
The main premise of the book is that science and science alone (that's right - get off your asses scientists!) can determine peaks and valleys of the human moral landscape. For the longest time, scientists have remained silent on how values guided by science, and not religion or hardened supersititious beliefs, can determine the well-being of earthlings.

In the end, religion has failed to maximize our well-being. Beliefs predicated upon irrational thought do not give rise to societies that are happy, confident, equal. Religious societies do not flourish as irrational thoughts/beliefs have real, irrational consequences. How we ought to behave morally falls within the purview of science.

Reading Sam Harris' new book, to quote Lawrence Krauss, has been akin to "drinking water from a cool stream on a hot summer day. He has the rare ability to frame arguments that are not only stimulating, they are downright nourishing."