Sam Harris Quotes About Giving

Quotes about: Giving

• 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.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Believe, People

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

• Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.

  Sam Harris

  Christian, Cheating, Atheist

• Countries with high levels of atheism are . . . the most charitable both in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote to social welfare programs and the percentage they give in aid to the developing world.

  Sam Harris

  Country, Welfare Programs, Giving

• We do not respect people's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons. If my reasons are good enough for believing what I believe, you will helplessly believe what I believe. I will give you my reasons and reasons are contagious. That is what it is to be a rational human being.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, People, Giving

• The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.

  Sam Harris

  People, Giving, Problem

  "Print: Atheism's Poster Boy Sam Harris on the Science of Morality". Interview with Olivia Koski, www.wired.com. November 29, 2010.

• It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.

  Sam Harris

  Helping Others, Thinking, People

  "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival" symposium, November 2006.

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