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The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.

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
Problem
Sheltered
Believe
Idiots
People
Isolation
Allows
Idiot
Criticism
Atheism
Masse
Religion
Lunatics

More quotes by Sam Harris

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I think when you say to someone You are fool not to believe in evolution or a fool to believe the universe is 6000 years old. I think that gets translated as You are a fool to think that your daughter who died in a car accident is really in heaven with god.
Sam Harris
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I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.
Sam Harris
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It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window.
Sam Harris
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Hope is easy knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe.
Sam Harris
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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
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The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.
Sam Harris
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It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska.
Sam Harris
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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
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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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Where we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another.
Sam Harris
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We are free to burn the Qur’an or any other book, and to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. Let no one forget it.
Sam Harris
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How we pay attention to the present moment...determin es the character of our experience and...the quality of our lives.
Sam Harris
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The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost.
Sam Harris
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My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own. That's not to say that all religious people are lunatics or idiots. It's anything but that.
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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Unreason is now ascendant in the United States - in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.
Sam Harris
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From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.
Sam Harris
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While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.
Sam Harris
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It is difficult to think of anything more important than providing the best education possible for our children. They will develop the next technologies, medical cures, and global industries, while mitigating their unintended effects, or they will fail to do these things and consign us all to oblivion.
Sam Harris
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You cannot take death for apostasy seriously and be working for peace.
Sam Harris