The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It’s really no more inflammatory than that.
SAM HARRISValues reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.
More Sam Harris Quotes
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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.
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Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.
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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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Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker
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Islam, at the moment, is the motherlode of bad ideas.
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Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle.
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Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.
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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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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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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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Let me assure you that my intent is not to offend or merely be provocative. I’m simply worried.
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What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ or ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?
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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.
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The power of psychedelics is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.
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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.
SAM HARRIS