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The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.

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
Point
Thought
Reason
Currently
Yesterday
Sacred
Hold

More quotes by Sam Harris

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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
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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.
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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.
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It is important to realize that our inability to answer a question says nothing about whether the question itself has an answer.
Sam Harris
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Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see tht there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.
Sam Harris
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If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?
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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Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.
Sam Harris
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Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well--by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God.
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The second commandment is Thou shall not construct any graven images. Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity?
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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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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The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you.
Sam Harris
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Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.
Sam Harris
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[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.
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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A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
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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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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I think it [getting a gun] should be like getting a pilot's license. I think you should require training to get a license to have a gun.
Sam Harris