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It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.

Sam Harris

Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.
SAM HARRIS

Knowledge Ourselves Reason Science
Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.
SAM HARRIS

Atheist Noise Reason Religion
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

Civilization Cultural Faith Greatness Ourselves Problem Religious
The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you.
SAM HARRIS

Community Face Islam Kill Muslim Religion Yourself
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.
SAM HARRIS

Choice Conversation Faith Human Option Violence
You don’t get anything worth getting, by pretending to know things you don’t know.
SAM HARRIS

Pretend Worth Yourself
You almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don’t like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private.
SAM HARRIS

Argument Change Happiness Privacy Yourself
If premarital sex is a sin, who is the victim?
SAM HARRIS

Sex Victim
The truth is that we simply do not know what happens after death.
SAM HARRIS

Death Philosophy Simplicity Truth
It is time we recognized that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potential.
SAM HARRIS

Action Belief Potential Privacy Time
Words like ‘God’ and ‘Allah’ must go the way of ‘Apollo’ and ‘Baal’ or they will unmake our world.
SAM HARRIS

God Ourselves Word World
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
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 science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It’s really no more inflammatory than that.
SAM HARRIS

Health Moral Science Social
How we pay attention to the present moment…determin es the character of our experience and…the quality of our lives.
SAM HARRIS

Attention Live Moments Ourselves Pay Present Quality
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

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.

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It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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