Sam Harris Quotes - Page 6

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• The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics.

  Sam Harris

  Philosophy, Evil, Faces

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.173, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The wealthiest Americans often live as though they and their children had nothing to gain from investments in education, infrastructure, clean-energy, and scientific research.

  Sam Harris

  Children, Research, Gains

  "A New Year’s Resolution for the Rich" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 29, 2010.

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• A true spiritual practitioner is someone who has discovered that it is possible to be at ease in the world for no reason, if only for a few moments at a time, and that such ease is synonymous with transcending the apparent boundaries of the self.

  Sam Harris

  Spiritual, Self, Ease

  Sam Harris (2014). “Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests.

  Sam Harris

  Men, Religion, Bishops

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.84, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Words like 'God' and 'Allah' must go the way of 'Apollo' and 'Baal' or they will unmake our world.

  Sam Harris

  God, Our World, Apollo

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.14, W. W. Norton & Company

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• An argument can be logically valid, but unsound in that it contains a false premise and, therefore, leads to a false conclusion (e.g., Scientists are smart; smart people do not make mistakes; therefore, scientists do not make mistakes).

  Sam Harris

  Mistake, Smart, People

  Sam Harris (2011). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”, p.132, Simon and Schuster

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• If our well-being depends upon the interaction between events in our brains and events in the world, and there are better and worse ways to secure it, then some cultures will tend to produce lives that are more worth living than others; some political persuasions will be more enlightened than others; and some world views will be mistaken in ways that cause needless human misery.

  Sam Harris

  Views, Political, Brain

  Sam Harris (2011). “The Moral Landscape”, p.191, Random House

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• Recently , crowds of thousands gathered throughout the Muslim world - burning European embassies, issuing threats, taking hostages, even killing people - in protest over twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper. When was the last atheist riot?

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, People, Cartoon

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• The moral landscape is the framework I use for thinking about questions of morality and human values in universal terms.

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Use, Landscape

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• Fundamentalism is only a problem if the fundamentals are a problem

  Sam Harris

  Fundamentals, Problem, Fundamentalism

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• Some ... sexist evil probably predates religion and can be ascribed to our biology, but there is no question that religion promulgates and renders sacrosanct attitudes toward women that would be unseemly in a brachiating ape.

  Sam Harris

  Attitude, Evil, Atheism

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• Indeed, what is startling about the notion of a victimless crime is that even when the behavior in question is genuinely victimless, its criminality is still affirmed by those who are eager to punish it. It is in such cases that the true genius lurking behind many of our laws stands revealed. The idea of a victimless crime is nothing more than a judicial reprise of the Christian notion of sin.

  Sam Harris

  Christian, Law, Ideas

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.159, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds - and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe.

  Sam Harris

  Mind, Suffering, Facts

  Sam Harris (2011). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”, p.195, Simon and Schuster

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• The most transformative experiences people have - bliss, devotion, self transcendence - are currently anchored to the worst parts of culture and to ways of thinking that merely amplify superstition, self-deception, and conflict.

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Self, People

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• As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a creator poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress. If God created the universe, what created God? To say that God, by definition, is uncreated simply begs the question. Any being capable of creating a complex world promises to be very complex himself. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has observed repeatedly, the only natural process we know of that could produce a being capable of designing things is evolution.

  Sam Harris

  Creating, Design, Promise

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• Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is myticism). Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time. It is the denial-at once full of hope and full of fear-of the vastitude of human ignorance.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, Ignorance, World

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• George Bush says he speaks to god every day, & Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.

  Sam Harris

  Christian, Thinking, Hair

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• The power of psychedelics... is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.

  Sam Harris

  Elude Us, Understanding, Depth

  Sam Harris (2014). “Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion”, p.197, Simon and Schuster

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• We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and the human well-being - a conversation in which we avail ourselves of all scientific insights and philosophical arguments that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse - or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.

  Sam Harris

  Philosophical, Years, Two

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• Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, Years, Glue

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• For nearly a century, the moral relativism of science has given faith-based religion--that great engine of ignorance and bigotry--a nearly uncontested claim to being the only universal framework for moral wisdom. As a result, the most powerful societies on early spend their time debating issues like gay marriage when they should be focused on problems like nuclear proliferation, genocide, energy security, climate change, poverty, and failing schools.

  Sam Harris

  Powerful, School, Ignorance

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• Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, Book, People

  "Science Must Destroy Religion" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 2, 2006.

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• Religion provides the only story that is fundamentally consoling in the face of the worst possible experiences - the death of a parent, for instance. In fact, many religions take away the problem entirely, because their adherents ostensibly believe that they're going to be reunited with everyone they love, and death is an illusion.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, Parent, Stories

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• We are faced with the task of convincing a myth infatuated world that love and curiosity are sufficient and you don't have to delude yourself and frighten yourself with Iron Age fairy tales. This is a monumental task. I don't think there is an intellectual struggle more worthy of our efforts.

  Sam Harris

  Struggle, Thinking, Iron

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• Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Book, Why Not

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