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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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Sam Harris
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 9
Author
Blogger
Neuroscientist
Philosopher
Podcaster
Writer
LA
California
Samuel Benjamin Harris
Samuel Harris
Broadest
Includes
Reasonable
Claims
Knowledge
Science
Sense
World

More quotes by Sam Harris

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We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.
Sam Harris
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People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.
Sam Harris
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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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I consistently encounter people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can't say that anyone is wrong in any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life. I think this doubt about the application of science and reason to questions of value is really quite dangerous.
Sam Harris
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To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding ourselves with euphemisms. We're talking about Islam being a religion of peace that's been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion that's not a religion of peace, it is Islam.
Sam Harris
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Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.
Sam Harris
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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
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Although many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power. Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs, and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them.
Sam Harris
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The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics.
Sam Harris
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Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.
Sam Harris
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It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.
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.
Sam Harris
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An average Christian, in an average church, listen to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse -- and there have been some extraordinary arrogant scientists.
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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If one doesn't value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?
Sam Harris
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In my own case, the most inflammatory statements I have ever made are ones that I have written and remain willing to defend.
Sam Harris
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We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.
Sam Harris
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As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population.
Sam Harris
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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
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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