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 HarrisWe have Christians against Muslims against Jews. They're making incompatible claims on real estate in the Middle East as though God were some kind of omniscient real estate broker parsing out parcels of land to his chosen flock. People are literally dying over ancient literature.
Sam HarrisPeople who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a personโs faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next.
Sam HarrisHow can we be โfreeโ 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 canโt.
Sam HarrisThe idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human conventionโdistinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidenceโis really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularityโa vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.
Sam Harris