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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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Sam Harris
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 9
Author
Blogger
Neuroscientist
Philosopher
Podcaster
Writer
LA
California
Samuel Benjamin Harris
Samuel Harris
Probably
Sexist
Religion
Apes
Evil
Attitudes
Women
Biology
Predates
Would
Atheism
Sacrosanct
Toward
Unseemly
Attitude
Ascribed
Question
Renders

More quotes by Sam Harris

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The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.
Sam Harris
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We have Christians against Muslims against Jews. They're making incompatible claims on real estate in the Middle East as though God were some kind of omniscient real estate broker parsing out parcels of land to his chosen flock. People are literally dying over ancient literature.
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.
Sam Harris
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Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
Sam Harris
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You don't get anything worth getting, by pretending to know things you don't know.
Sam Harris
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Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places. Principle #2: Do not defend your property. Principle #3: Respond immediately and escape.
Sam Harris
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As a man believes, so he will act.
Sam Harris
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Each increment of knowledge imparted in this way is so satisfying-and one's ignorance at every stage so consequential-that the process of learning BJJ can become remarkably addictive. I have never experienced anything quite like it.
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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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
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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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Countries with high levels of atheism are . . . the most charitable both in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote to social welfare programs and the percentage they give in aid to the developing world.
Sam Harris
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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.
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
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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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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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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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We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation he is unworthy even of man.
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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We are all prisoners of our thoughts.
Sam Harris