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 HARRISAn 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.
More Sam Harris Quotes
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People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.
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Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.
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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.
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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.
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Atheism is just a way of clearing the space for better conversations.
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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.
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Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.
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The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim violence.
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Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.
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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.
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Most of us are wiser than we may appear to be. On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow oneÂ’s own advice.
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If premarital sex is a sin, who is the victim?
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The truth is that we simply do not know what happens after death.
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It’s simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.
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Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education.
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The core of science is not a mathematical modeling–it is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrained by good evidence and good argument.
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Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name.
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We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That’s it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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This is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on their own.
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In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise.
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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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Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.
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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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