Sam Harris Quotes About Religion

Quotes about: Religion

• Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Stars, War

• While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Believe, Sea

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

• 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

  Religious, Atheist, Civilization

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.45, W. W. Norton & Company

• The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, People, Religion

• The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Talking, Religion

  "Letter to a Christian Nation". Book by Sam Harris, reason.com. January 8, 2008.

• 120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.

  Sam Harris

  Beer, Years, Religion

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.17, W. W. Norton & Company

• Theology is ignorance with wings.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Ignorance, Wings

• When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.

  Sam Harris

  Integrity, Logical Arguments, People

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

• 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, People, Religion

• It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.

  Sam Harris

  Book, Religion, Ordinary

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

• Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on earth. According to the United Nations' Human Development Report (2005), they are also the healthiest, as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate, and infant mortality. . . . Conversely, the fifty nations now ranked lowest in terms of the United Nations' human development index are unwaveringly religious.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Educational, Australia

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

• The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests.

  Sam Harris

  Men, Religion, Bishops

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.84, W. W. Norton & Company

• [I]t 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

  Faith, Religious, Lying

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.72, W. W. Norton & Company

• We do not know what awaits each of us after death, but we know that we will die. Clearly, it must be possible to live ethically-with a genuine concern for the happiness of other sentient beings-without presuming to know things about which we are patently ignorant. Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?

  Sam Harris

  Death, Loss, Genuine Concern

• Religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty . . . exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the . . . false to achieve primacy over the facts.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Religion, Facts

• Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches.

  Sam Harris

  Religion, Witch, Murder

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

• If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us. Add weapons of mass destruction to this diabolical clockwork, and you have . . . a recipe for the fall of civilization.

  Sam Harris

  Fall, Mass Destruction, Civilization

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.26, W. W. Norton & Company

• And while Protestant reformers broke with Rome on a variety of counts, their treatment of their fellow human beings was no less disgraceful. Public executions were more popular than ever: heretics were still reduced to ash, scholars were tortured and killed for impertinent displays of reason, and fornicators were murdered without a qualm.

  Sam Harris

  Rome, Religion, Ashes

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.86, W. W. Norton & Company

• Faith drives a wedge between ethics and suffering. Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they are evil and worthy of punishment. . . . And yet, where suffering and death are found in abundance their causes are often deemed to be good. . . . This inversion of priorities not only victimizes innocent people and squanders scarce resources; it completely falsifies our ethics.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Punishment, Suffering And Death

• The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious literalism, are especially plagued by [high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality], while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European standards.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Pregnancy, Sexually Transmitted Diseases

• Missionaries in the developing world waste a lot of time and money (not to mention the goodwill of non-Christians) proselytizing to the needy. . . . While missionaries do many noble things at great risk to themselves, their dogmatism still spreads ignorance and death. By contrast, volunteers for secular organizations . . . do not waste . . . time telling people about the virgin birth of Jesus. Nor do they tell people in sub-Saharan Africa - where nearly four million people die from AIDS every year - that condom use is sinful.

  Sam Harris

  Christian, Jesus, Ignorance

• 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

• It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed (Aquinas).

  Sam Harris

  Religion, Church, Augustine

  "Letter to a Christian Nation". Book by Sam Harris, 2006.

• When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we're told that? God is mysterious.

  Sam Harris

  People, Suffering, Religion

• The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity?

  Sam Harris

  Humanity, Religion, Important

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