I think there are universal principles that we should want to understand, but that are not necessarily good for us. We could recognise universal propensities which current cultures can't fully eradicate, which we would want to eradicate if we could. Let's say, a tendency for tribal violence. Or racism.
Sam HarrisIgnorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.
Sam HarrisWhen 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 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 HarrisIn the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise.
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 Harris