Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction.
Sam HarrisTake a moment to reflect upon the existence of the musical The Book of Mormon. Now imagine the security precautions that would be required to stage a similar production about Islam. The project is unimaginableโnot only in Beirut, Baghdad, or Jerusalem, but in New York City.
Sam HarrisNeedless to say, this would be an unthinkable crimeโas it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single dayโbut it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe
Sam HarrisYou are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible - and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world.
Sam HarrisReligious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.
Sam HarrisAs 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