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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.

Sam Harris

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

Death Philosophy Simplicity Truth
What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody’s beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.
SAM HARRIS

Belief Live Ourselves Place Reason Religion Respect
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
SAM HARRIS

Intellectual Public Reason Science Time
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.
SAM HARRIS

Character Explanation Islam Truth Violence
Everyone who has eyes to see can see that if the God of Abraham exists, He is an utter psychopath–and the God of Nature too. If you can’t see these things just by looking, you have simply closed your eyes to the realities of our world.
SAM HARRIS

Eyes God Nature Ourselves Reality World
It is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.
SAM HARRIS

Belief Difficult Heart Imagination Lying Mental Religious Tradition
The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
SAM HARRIS

Appearance Atheist Fantasy Life Reality Shame Touch
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.
SAM HARRIS

Life Power Reveal Science Time Understand
Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.
SAM HARRIS

Ignorance Knowledge Production Religious Scripture Secularism
As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population.
SAM HARRIS

Atheist Live Myself Offend Population Society
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
We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
SAM HARRIS

Difference Goodness Natural Ourselves Reminder
How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.
SAM HARRIS

Conscience Freedom Ourselves
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?
SAM HARRIS

Goodness Imporatant Lose World Worry
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
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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