A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying.
Sam HarrisThe 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 HarrisWe read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of Godโs teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her fatherโs doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).
Sam HarrisJesus Christโwho, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavensโcan now be eaten in the form of a cracker
Sam HarrisAn 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 HarrisAn average Christian, in an average church, listen to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse -- and there have been some extraordinary arrogant scientists.
Sam HarrisAll I'm arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive, where there's no taboo against criticizing bad ideas, and where everyone who shows up, in order to get their ideas entertained, has to meet some obvious burdens of intellectual rigor and self-criticism and honesty-and when people fail to do that, we are free to stop listening to them. What religion has had up until this moment is a different set of rules that apply only to it, which is you have to respect my religious certainty even though I'm telling you I arrived at it irrationally.
Sam Harris