Sam Harris Quotes About Universe

Quotes about: Universe

• It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Rain, Believe

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

• 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

• 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

  Science, Men, Names

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.227, W. W. Norton & Company

• Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds - and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe.

  Sam Harris

  Mind, Suffering, Facts

  Sam Harris (2011). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”, p.195, Simon and Schuster

• I think when you say to someone You are fool not to believe in evolution or a fool to believe the universe is 6000 years old. I think that gets translated as You are a fool to think that your daughter who died in a car accident is really in heaven with god.

  Sam Harris

  Daughter, Believe, Thinking

• As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a creator poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress. If God created the universe, what created God? To say that God, by definition, is uncreated simply begs the question. Any being capable of creating a complex world promises to be very complex himself. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has observed repeatedly, the only natural process we know of that could produce a being capable of designing things is evolution.

  Sam Harris

  Creating, Design, Promise

• To say that I would have done otherwise had I wanted to is simply to say that I would have lived in a different universe had I been in a different universe.

  Sam Harris

  Different Universes, Done, Wanted

  Sam Harris (2012). “Free Will”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

• Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, Book, People

  "Science Must Destroy Religion" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 2, 2006.

• The fact that one can lose one's sense of self in an ocean of tranquility does not mean that one's consciousness is immaterial or that it presided over the birth of the universe.

  Sam Harris

  Ocean, Mean, Self

  "On Spiritual Truths" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 16, 2011.

• 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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