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Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

Sam Harris

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.
SAM HARRIS

Current Hold Holy Thinking
When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don’t believe as you do.
SAM HARRIS

Belief Believe Difference God Impossible Name Respect Right Suffering
Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
SAM HARRIS

Atheist Care Existence God Imagination Stop Wisdom Yourself
Islam, at the moment, is the motherlode of bad ideas.
SAM HARRIS

Bad Born Ideas Mom Moments Religion
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
The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics.
SAM HARRIS

Bad Ethics Evil Freedom God Philosophy Problem
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
Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.
SAM HARRIS

Atheist Noise Reason Religion
It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.
SAM HARRIS

Book Ordinary Product Value
Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don’t have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.
SAM HARRIS

Boundary Human Ourselves Politics Science Thinking Transcendence
We are all prisoners of our thoughts.
SAM HARRIS

Ourselves Prison Thinking
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

Man Measurement Miracle Mystery Name Worth
I’m the Ted Bundy of string theory.
SAM HARRIS

String Theory
False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
SAM HARRIS

Encouragement Fake Motivational Person Purpose
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
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

Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

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Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.

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Popular Authors

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