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We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.

Sam Harris

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Sam Harris
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 9
Author
Blogger
Neuroscientist
Philosopher
Podcaster
Writer
LA
California
Samuel Benjamin Harris
Samuel Harris
Faith
Context
Logical
Rely
Sufficient
Atheist
Claims
Atheism
Evidence
Sensory

More quotes by Sam Harris

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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.
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The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.
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It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.
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Faith enables many of us to endure life's difficulties with an equanimity that would be scarcely conceivable in a world lit only by reason.
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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
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False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
Sam Harris
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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
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It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
Sam Harris
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Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.
Sam Harris
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You cannot take death for apostasy seriously and be working for peace.
Sam Harris
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The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.
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And while Protestant reformers broke with Rome on a variety of counts, their treatment of their fellow human beings was no less disgraceful. Public executions were more popular than ever: heretics were still reduced to ash, scholars were tortured and killed for impertinent displays of reason, and fornicators were murdered without a qualm.
Sam Harris
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One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.
Sam Harris
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It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can erode the prestige of that kind of thinking, we're not going to be able to undermine these divisions in our world.
Sam Harris
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When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we're told that? God is mysterious.
Sam Harris
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Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don't have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.
Sam Harris
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We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas
Sam Harris
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Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.
Sam Harris
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What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.
Sam Harris
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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