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You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

Sam Harris

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 HARRIS

Argument Assumption Fake Leadership Logic Mistake Science
Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction.
SAM HARRIS

Correct Faith Human Ignorance Possible Religious
What I’m asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.
SAM HARRIS

Believe Deep Entertainment Ethics Live Spiritual
Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.
SAM HARRIS

Creature Fact Reduce Value
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
SAM HARRIS

Born Eat Food God Heaven Virgin
Atheism is just a way of clearing the space for better conversations.
SAM HARRIS

Atheist Better Conversation Space
Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.
SAM HARRIS

Belief Faith Link Strong World
Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.
SAM HARRIS

Direction Human Perfection Religious Result Serious
The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.
SAM HARRIS

Collaboration End Evidence Human Open Ourselves Security World
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

Argument Evidence Logic Prove Value Yourself
People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.
SAM HARRIS

Evidence Hall Ourselves People Power Society Strong
To say that I would have done otherwise had I wanted to is simply to say that I would have lived in a different universe had I been in a different universe.
SAM HARRIS

Different Live Myself Simplicity Universe
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.
SAM HARRIS

Believe Ourselves Perfection Religion True
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

Difficult Endurance Faith Life Reason
One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.
SAM HARRIS

Argument Civilization Production Representation Tradition
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.
SAM HARRIS

Argument Evidence Honesty Science

You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

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You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

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