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From My Point Of View, Compatibilism Is A Little Like Saying: A Puppet Is Free So Long As It Loves Its Strings.
-Sam Harris
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From My Point Of

Sam Harris
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From My Point Of View, Compatibilism Is A Little Like Saying: A Puppet Is Free So Long As It Loves Its Strings.

Understanding the Quote: "from my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a..."

This quote by Sam Harris reflects deeply on the theme of views. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Views, Long, Puppets, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Sam Harris interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Sam Harris

Sam Harris is celebrated for insightful thoughts on views and long. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Views
Long
Puppets
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We Will Continue To Spill Blood In What Is, At Bottom, A War Of Ideas
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To Speak Specifically Of Our Problem With The Muslim World, We Are Meandering Into A Genuine Clash Of Civilizations, And We're Deluding Ourselves With Euphemisms. We're Talking About Islam Being A Religion Of Peace That's Been Hijacked By Extremists. If Ever There Were A Religion That's Not A Religion Of Peace, It Is Islam.
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This Is The True Horror Of Religion. It Allows Perfectly Decent And Sane People To Believe By The Billions, What Only Lunatics Could Believe On Their Own.
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Perhaps One Day We Will Do “everything That We Can To Protect Our People And The Timeless Values That We Stand For.” But Today, We Won’t Even Honestly Describe The Motivations Of Our Enemies. And In The Act Of Lying To Ourselves, We Continue To Pay Lip Service To The Very Delusions That Empower Them.
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There Is No Question But That Nominally Religious Scientists Like Francis Collins And Kenneth R. Miller Are Doing Lasting Harm To Our Discourse By The Accommodations They Have Made To Religious Irrationality.
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It Is Taboo In Our Society To Criticize A Persons Religious Faith... These Taboos Are Offensive, Deeply Unreasonable, But Worse Than That, They Are Getting People Killed. This Is Really My Concern. My Concern Is That Our Religions, The Diversity Of Our Religious Doctrines, Is Going To Get Us Killed. I'm Worried That Our Religious Discourse- Our Religious Beliefs Are Ultimately Incompatible With Civilization.
Religious
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Nothing In Chomsky's Account Acknowledges The Difference Between Intending To Kill A Child, Because Of The Effect You Hope To Produce On Its Parents (we Call This “terrorism”), And Inadvertently Killing A Child In An Attempt To Capture Or Kill An Avowed Child Murderer (we Call This “collateral Damage”). In Both Cases A Child Has Died, And In Both Cases It Is A Tragedy. But The Ethical Status Of The Perpetrators, Be They Individuals Or States, Could Not Be More Distinct For Chomsky, Intentions Do Not Seem To Matter. Body Count Is All.
Children
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Life Is A Continuous Flux. Our Nonhuman Ancestors Bred, Generation After Generation, And Incrementally Begat What We Now Deem To Be The Species Homo Sapiens - Ourselves. There Is Nothing About Our Ancestral Line Or About Our Current Biology That Dictates How We Will Evolve In The Future. Nothing In The Natural Order Demands That Our Descendants Resemble Us In Any Particular Way. Very Likely, They Will Not Resemble Us. We Will Almost Certainly Transform Ourselves, Likely Beyond Recognition, In The Generations To Come.
Life
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Faith Does Not Offer A Strong Link Between Our Beliefs And Actual States Of The World.
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Faith Enables Many Of Us To Endure Life's Difficulties With An Equanimity That Would Be Scarcely Conceivable In A World Lit Only By Reason.
Faith
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Theology Is Now Little More Than A Branch Of Human Ignorance.
Ignorance
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Littles
Religious Moderation Is The Product Of Secular Knowledge And Scriptural Ignorance.
Religious
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Meditation Puts Into Question More Or Less Everything You Tend To Do In Your Search For Happiness. But If You Lose Sight Of This, It Can Become Just Another Strategy For Seeking Happiness - A More Refined Version Of The Problem You Already Have.
Sight
Meditation
Problem
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.
Running
Country
Believe
Ten Years Have Now Passed Since Many Of Us First Felt The Jolt Of History-when The Second Plane Crashed Into The South Tower Of The World Trade Center. We Knew From That Moment That Things Can Go Terribly Wrong In Our World-not Because Life Is Unfair, Or Moral Progress Impossible, But Because We Have Failed, Generation After Generation, To Abolish The Delusions Of Our Ignorant Ancestors.
Years
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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.
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The Problem I Want To Talk To You About Tonight Is The Problem Of Belief. What Does It Mean To Believe? We Use This Word All The Time, And I Think Behind It Lurk Some Really Extraordinary Taboos And Confusions. What I Want To Argue Tonight Is That How We Talk About Belief- How We Fail To Criticize Or Criticize The Beliefs Of Others, Has More Importance To Us Personally, More Consequence To Us Personally And To Civilization Than Perhaps Anything Else That Is In Our Power To Influence.
Atheist
Believe
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An 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).
Mistake
Smart
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The Problem Of Human Suffering Is Never Too Much Rational Thinking, Or Too High A Demand For Evidence. But The Solutions Are. ... Reason Is Nothing Less Than The Guardian Of Love.
Thinking
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Strange Bonds Of Trust And Self-deception Tend To Grow Between Journalists And Their Subjects.
Self
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We Have Christians Against Muslims Against Jews, And No Matter How Liberal Your Theology, Merely Identifying Yourself As A Christian Or A Jew Lends Tacit Validity To This Status Quo. People Have Morally Identified With A Subset Of Humanity Rather Than With Humanity As A Whole.
Christian
People
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Needless To Say, This Would Be An Unthinkable Crime—as It Would Kill Tens Of Millions Of Innocent Civilians In A Single Day—but It May Be The Only Course Of Action Available To Us, Given What Islamists Believe
Believe
May
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Lying Is, Almost By Definition, A Refusal To Cooperate With Others. It Condenses A Lack Of Trust And Trustworthiness Into A Single Act. It Is Both A Failure Of Understanding And An Unwillingness To Be Understood. To Lie Is To Recoil From Relationship.
Lying
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It Is Time That We Admitted That Faith Is Nothing More Than The License Religious People Give One Another To Keep Believing When Reasons Fail.
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Many Of My Fellow Atheists Consider All Talk Of 'spirituality' Or 'mysticism' To Be Synonymous With Mental Illness, Conscious Fraud, Or Self-deception. I Have Argued Elsewhere That This Is A Problem - Because Millions Of People Have Had Experiences For Which 'spiritual' And 'mystical' Seem The Only Terms Available.
Spiritual
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Christians Have Abused, Oppressed, Enslaved, Insulted, Tormented, Tortured, And Killed People In The Name Of God For Centuries, On The Basis Of A Thelogically Defensible Reading Of The Bible.
Christian
Reading
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Everyone Who Has Eyes To See Can See That If The God Of Abraham Exists, He Is An Utter Psychopath--and The God Of Nature Too. If You Can't See These Things Just By Looking, You Have Simply Closed Your Eyes To The Realities Of Our World.
Eye
Reality
Our World
And While Protestant Reformers Broke With Rome On A Variety Of Counts, Their Treatment Of Their Fellow Human Beings Was No Less Disgraceful. Public Executions Were More Popular Than Ever: Heretics Were Still Reduced To Ash, Scholars Were Tortured And Killed For Impertinent Displays Of Reason, And Fornicators Were Murdered Without A Qualm.
Rome
Religion
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It's Not So Much Religion Per Se, It's False Certainty That Worries Me, And Religion Just Has More Than Its Fair Share Of False Certainty Or Dogmatism. I'm Really Concerned When I See People Pretending To Know Things They Clearly Cannot Know.
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Pretending
The Principal Tenet Of Jainism Is Non-harming. Observant Jains Will Literally Not Harm A Fly. Fundamentalist Jainism And Fundamentalist Islam Do Not Have The Same Consequences, Neither Logically Nor Behaviorally.
Islam
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We Are Faced With The Task Of Convincing A Myth Infatuated World That Love And Curiosity Are Sufficient And You Don't Have To Delude Yourself And Frighten Yourself With Iron Age Fairy Tales. This Is A Monumental Task. I Don't Think There Is An Intellectual Struggle More Worthy Of Our Efforts.
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Death Is, In Some Ways, Unacceptable. It's Just An Astonishing Fact Of Our Being Here That We Die; But I Think Worse Than That Is If We Live Long Enough, We Lose Everyone We Love In This World. I Mean People Die And Disappear, And We're Left With This Stark Mystery: Just The Sheer Not Knowing Of What Happened To Them.
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We Do Not Know What Awaits Each Of Us After Death, But We Know That We Will Die. Clearly, It Must Be Possible To Live Ethically-with A Genuine Concern For The Happiness Of Other Sentient Beings-without Presuming To Know Things About Which We Are Patently Ignorant. Consider It: Every Person You Have Ever Met, Every Person You Will Pass In The Street Today, Is Going To Die. Living Long Enough, Each Will Suffer The Loss Of His Friends And Family. All Are Going To Lose Everything They Love In This World. Why Would One Want To Be Anything But Kind To Them In The Meantime?
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We Are Now In The 21st Century: All Books, Including The Koran, Should Be Fair Game For Flushing Down The Toilet Without Fear Of Violent Reprisal.
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A True Spiritual Practitioner Is Someone Who Has Discovered That It Is Possible To Be At Ease In The World For No Reason, If Only For A Few Moments At A Time, And That Such Ease Is Synonymous With Transcending The Apparent Boundaries Of The Self.
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From My Point Of View, Compatibilism Is A Little Like Saying: A Puppet Is Free So Long As It Loves Its Strings.
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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.
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The Truth Is That We Simply Do Not Know What Happens After Death.
Death
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Each Increment Of Knowledge Imparted In This Way Is So Satisfying-and One's Ignorance At Every Stage So Consequential-that The Process Of Learning Bjj Can Become Remarkably Addictive. I Have Never Experienced Anything Quite Like It.
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Our Moral Reasoning Is Plagued By Two Illusions. The First Illusion Can Be Called The Wag-the-dog Illusion: We Believe That Our Own Moral Judgment (the Dog) Is Driven By Our Own Moral Reasoning (the Tail). The Second Illusion Can Be Called The Wag-theother-dog's-tail Illusion: In A Moral Argument, We Expect The Successful Rebuttal Of An Opponent's Arguments To Change The Opponent's Mind. Such A Belief Is Like Thinking That Forcing A Dog's Tail To Wag By Moving It With Your Hand Will Make The Dog Happy.
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If Premarital Sex Is A Sin, Who Is The Victim?
Sex
Sin
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Just As There Is No Such Thing As Christian Physics Or Muslim Algebra, We Will See Tht There Is No Such Thing As Christian Or Muslim Morality.
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Morality
Physics
Nonbelievers Like Myself Stand Beside You, Dumbstruck By The Muslim Hordes Who Chant Death To Whole Nations Of The Living. But We Stand Dumbstruck By You As Well--by Your Denial Of Tangible Reality, By The Suffering You Create In Service To Your Religious Myths, And By Your Attachment To An Imaginary God.
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False Encouragement Is A Kind Of Theft: It Steals Time, Energy, And Motivation A Person Could Put Toward Some Other Purpose.
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Water Is Two Parts Hydrogen And One Part Oxygen. What If Someone Says, “well, That’s Not How I Choose To Think About Water.”? All We Can Do Is Appeal To Scientific Values. And If He Doesn’t Share Those Values, The Conversation Is Over. If Someone Doesn’t Value Evidence, What Evidence Are You Going To Provide To Prove They Should Value It? If Someone Doesn’t Value Logic, What Logical Argument Could You Provide To Show The Importance Of Logic?
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Oxygen
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People 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 Person’s 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.
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When The Stakes Are This High- When Calling God By The Right Name Can Make The Difference Between Eternal Happiness And Eternal Suffering, It Is Impossible To Respect The Beliefs Of Others Who Don't Believe As You Do.
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You 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.
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How Can We Encourage Other Human Beings To Extend Their Moral Sympathies Beyond A Narrow Locus? How Can We Learn To Become Mere Human Beings, Shorn Of Any More Compelling National, Ethnic, Or Religious Identity? We Can Be Reasonable. It Is In The Very Nature Of Reason To Fuse Cognitive And Moral Horizons. Reason Is Nothing Less Than The Guardian Of Love.
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Identity
By Lying, We Deny Others A View Of The World As It Is. Our Dishonesty Not Only Influences The Choices They Make, It Often Determines The Choices They Can Make—and In Ways We Cannot Always Predict. Every Lie Is A Direct Assault Upon The Autonomy Of Those We Lie To.
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The Moral Landscape Is The Framework I Use For Thinking About Questions Of Morality And Human Values In Universal Terms.
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Landscape
Indeed, What Is Startling About The Notion Of A Victimless Crime Is That Even When The Behavior In Question Is Genuinely Victimless, Its Criminality Is Still Affirmed By Those Who Are Eager To Punish It. It Is In Such Cases That The True Genius Lurking Behind Many Of Our Laws Stands Revealed. The Idea Of A Victimless Crime Is Nothing More Than A Judicial Reprise Of The Christian Notion Of Sin.
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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.
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Self
Recently , Crowds Of Thousands Gathered Throughout The Muslim World - Burning European Embassies, Issuing Threats, Taking Hostages, Even Killing People - In Protest Over Twelve Cartoons Depicting The Prophet Muhammad That Were First Published In A Danish Newspaper. When Was The Last Atheist Riot?
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According To The Most Common Interpretation Of Biblical Prophecy, Jesus Will Return Only After Things Have Gone Horribly Awry. Imagine The Consequences If Any Significant Component Of The U.s. Government Believed That The World Was About To End And That Its Ending Would Be Glorious. The Fact That Nearly Half Of The American Population Apparently Believes This Should Be Considered A Moral And Intellectual Emergency.
Jesus
Believe
Biblical
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.
Thinking
Racism
Principles
Islam, At The Moment, Is The Motherlode Of Bad Ideas.
Ideas
Islam
Moments
Fundamentalism Is Only A Problem If The Fundamentals Are A Problem
Fundamentals
Problem
Fundamentalism
We Are Free To Burn The Qur’an Or Any Other Book, And To Criticize Muhammad Or Any Other Human Being. Let No One Forget It.
Book
Forget
Muhammad
The 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.
Philosophy
Evil
Faces
I Consistently Encounter People In Academic Settings And Scientists And Journalists Who Feel That You Can't Say That Anyone Is Wrong In Any Deep Sense About Morality, Or With Regard To What They Value In Life. I Think This Doubt About The Application Of Science And Reason To Questions Of Value Is Really Quite Dangerous.
Thinking
People
Doubt
[i]t Is Difficult To Imagine A Set Of Beliefs More Suggestive Of Mental Illness Than Those That Lie At The Heart Of Many Of Our Religious Traditions.
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Religious
Lying
Despite A Full Century Of Scientific Insights Attesting To The Antiquity Of The Earth, More Than Half Of Our Neighbors Believe That The Entire Cosmos Was Created Six Thousand Years Ago. This Is, Incidentally, About A Thousand Years After The Sumerians Invented Glue.
Believe
Years
Glue
How Can We Be “free” 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 Can’t.
Brain
Events
Agents
If Our Well-being Depends Upon The Interaction Between Events In Our Brains And Events In The World, And There Are Better And Worse Ways To Secure It, Then Some Cultures Will Tend To Produce Lives That Are More Worth Living Than Others; Some Political Persuasions Will Be More Enlightened Than Others; And Some World Views Will Be Mistaken In Ways That Cause Needless Human Misery.
Views
Political
Brain
George Bush Says He Speaks To God Every Day, & Christians Love Him For It. If George Bush Said He Spoke To God Through His Hair Dryer, They Would Think He Was Mad. I Fail To See How The Addition Of A Hair Dryer Makes It Any More Absurd.
Christian
Thinking
Hair
The Fact That My Continuous And Public Rejection Of Christianity Does Not Worry Me In The Least Should Suggest To You Just How Inadequate I Think Your Reasons For Being A Christian Are.
Christian
Thinking
Worry
It Is Easy To See What Many People, Women Especially, Admire About Sarah Palin. Here Is A Mother Of Five Who Can See The Bright Side Of Having A Child With Down Syndrome And Still Find The Time And Energy To Govern The State Of Alaska.
Mother
Children
Alaska
The Power Of Psychedelics... Is That They Often Reveal, In The Span Of A Few Hours, Depths Of Awe And Understanding That Can Otherwise Elude Us For A Lifetime.
Elude Us
Understanding
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We 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.
Christian
Real
Land
It's Simply Untrue That Religion Provides The Only Framework For A Universal Morality.
Morality
Framework
Universal
Principle #1: Avoid Dangerous People And Dangerous Places. Principle #2: Do Not Defend Your Property. Principle #3: Respond Immediately And Escape.
People
Principles
Dangerous
While Religious Tolerance Is Surely Better Than Religious War, Tolerance Is Not Without Its Liabilities. Our Fear Of Provoking Religious Hatred Has Rendered Us Incapable Of Criticizing Ideas That Are Now Patently Absurd And Increasingly Maladaptive.
Religious
War
Ideas
Everything We Do Is For The Purpose Of Altering Consciousness. We Form Friendships So That We Can Feel Certain Emotions, Like Love, And Avoid Others, Like Loneliness. We Eat Specific Foods To Enjoy Their Fleeting Presence On Our Tongues. We Read For The Pleasure Of Thinking Another Person's Thoughts.
Loneliness
Thinking
Like Love
The Atheist, By Merely Being In Touch With Reality, Appears Shamefully Out Of Touch With The Fantasy Life Of His Neighbors.
Atheist
Reality
Fantasy
I Know Of No Society In Human History That Ever Suffered Because Its People Became Too Desirous Of Evidence In Support Of Their Core Beliefs.
Faith
People
Support
That Religion May Have Served Some Necessary Function For Us In The Past Does Not Preclude The Possibility That It Is Now The Greatest Impediment To Our Building A Global Civilization.
Past
Civilization
Religion
The Moral Truth Here Is Obvious: Anyone Who Feels That The Interests Of A Blastocyst Just Might Supersede The Interests Of A Child With A Spinal Cord Injury Has Had His Moral Sense Blinded By Religious Metaphysics.
Religious
Children
Might
To Not Believe In God Is To Know That It Falls To Us To Make The World A Better Place.
Fall
Believe
Religion
The Position Of The Muslim Community In The Face Of All Provocations Seems To Be: Islam Is A Religion Of Peace, And If You Say That It Isn't, We Will Kill You.
Community
Islam
Faces
As An Atheist, I Am Angry That We Live In A Society In Which The Plain Truth Cannot Be Spoken Without Offending 90% Of The Population.
Atheist
Offending
Population
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.
Mind
Suffering
Facts
It Is Time We Recognized That Belief Is Not A Private Matter; It Has Never Been Merely Private. In Fact, Beliefs Are Scarcely More Private Than Actions Are, For Every Belief Is A Fount Of Action In Potential.
Matter
Facts
Belief
Nothing Guarantees That Reasonable People Will Agree About Everything, Of Course, But The Unreasonable Are Certain To Be Divided By Their Dogmas. It Is Time We Recognized That This Spirit Of Mutual Inquiry, Which Is The Foundation Of All Real Science, Is The Very Antithesis Of Religious Faith.
Religious
Real
Guarantees That
There's No Way To Reconcile Islam With Christianity. This Difference Of Opinion Admits Of Compromise As Much As A Coin Toss Does.
Differences
Islam
Doe
We Have A Choice. We Have Two Options As Human Beings. We Have A Choice Between Conversation And War. That's It. Conversation And Violence. And Faith Is A Conversation Stopper.
Atheist
War
Two
The Perpetrators Of The Inquisition - The Torturers, Informers, And Those Who Commanded Their Actions - Were Ecclesiastics Of One Rank Or Another. They Were Men Of God - Popes, Bishops, Friars, And Priests.
Men
Religion
Bishops
Religion Provides The Only Story That Is Fundamentally Consoling In The Face Of The Worst Possible Experiences - The Death Of A Parent, For Instance. In Fact, Many Religions Take Away The Problem Entirely, Because Their Adherents Ostensibly Believe That They're Going To Be Reunited With Everyone They Love, And Death Is An Illusion.
Believe
Parent
Stories
We Are All Prisoners Of Our Thoughts.
Prisoner
Our Thoughts
What We Do In Every Other Area Of Our Lives (other Than Religion), Is, Rather Than Respect Somebody's Beliefs, We Evaluate Their Reasons.
Atheist
Atheism
Belief
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.
Different Universes
Done
Wanted
To Speak Plainly And Truthfully About The State Of Our World - To Say, For Instance, That The Bible And The Koran Both Contain Mountains Of Life-destroying Gibberish - Is Antithetical To Tolerance As Moderates Currently Conceive It. But We Can No Longer Afford The Luxury Of Such Political Correctness. We Must Finally Recognize The Price We Are Paying To Maintain The Iconography Of Our Ignorance.
Ignorance
Our World
Luxury
About 120 Million Of Us Place The Big Bang 2,500 Years After The Babylonians And Sumerians Learned To Brew Beer. If Our Polls Are To Be Trusted, Nearly 230 Million Americans Believe That A Book Showing Neither Unity Of Style Nor Internal Consistency Was Authored By An Omniscient, Omnipotent And Omnipresent Deity.
Believe
Book
Beer
The Men Who Committed The Atrocities Of September 11 Were Certainly Not "cowards," As They Were Repeatedly Described In The Western Media, Nor Were They Lunatics In Any Ordinary Sense. They Were Men Of Faith—perfect Faith, As It Turns Out—and This, It Must Finally Be Acknowledged, Is A Terrible Thing To Be.
Men
Media
Perfect
The Deity Who Stalked The Deserts Of The Middle East Millennia Ago-and Who Seems To Have Abandoned Them To Bloodshed In His Name Ever Since-is No One To Consult On Questions Of Ethics.
Names
Middle East
Desert
If One Doesn't Value Logic, What Logical Argument Would You Invoke To Prove They Should Value Logic?
Logical Arguments
Should
Prove
Of Course, The Liar Often Imagines That He Does No Harm As Long As His Lies Go Undetected.
Liars
Lying
Long
We Should Profile Muslims, Or Anyone Who Looks Like He Or She Could Conceivably Be Muslim, And We Should Be Honest About It.
Looks
Honest
Profile
Muslims Must Learn That If They Make Belligerent And Fanatical Claims Upon The Tolerance Of Free Societies, They Will Meet The Limits Of That Tolerance.
Tolerance
Limits
Claims
Many Scientists Have Been Drawn To Buddhism Out Of A Sense That The Western Tradition Has Delivered An Impoverished Conception Of Basic, Human Sanity. In The West, If You Speak To Yourself Out Loud All Day Long, You Are Considered Crazy. But Speaking To Yourself Silently - Thinking Incessantly - Is Considered Perfectly Normal.
Crazy
Buddhism
Thinking
A Kernel Of Truth Lurks At The Heart Of Religion, Because Spiritual Experience, Ethical Behavior, And Strong Communities Are Essential For Human Happiness. And Yet Our Religious Traditions Are Intellectually Defunct And Politically Ruinous. While Spiritual Experience Is Clearly A Natural Propensity Of The Human Mind, We Need Not Believe Anything On Insufficient Evidence To Actualize It.
Spiritual
Religious
Strong
The Problem Is That Religion Tends To Give People Bad Reasons To Be Good.
People
Giving
Problem
You Can Learn Something About A Person By The Company She Keeps.
Company
Persons
It Is Still Fashionable To Believe That How You Organize Yourself Religiously In This Life May Matter For Eternity. Unless We Can Erode The Prestige Of That Kind Of Thinking, We're Not Going To Be Able To Undermine These Divisions In Our World.
Believe
Thinking
Our World
There Is No Reason Whatsoever To Think That Buddhism Can Compete Successfully With The Relentless Evangelizing Of Christianity And Islam. Nor Should It Try To.
Buddhism
Thinking
Trying
You Know, When You Get To The New World And You Develop Your Three Branches Of Government And You Have A Civil Society, You Can Just Jettison All The Barbarism I Recommended In The First Books.
Book
Government
Three
A Puppet Is Free As Long As He Loves His Strings.
Long
Puppets
Strings
If History Reveals Any Categorical Truth, It Is That An Insufficient Taste For Evidence Regularly Brings Out The Worst In Us. Add Weapons Of Mass Destruction To This Diabolical Clockwork, And You Have . . . A Recipe For The Fall Of Civilization.
Fall
Mass Destruction
Civilization
Some ... Sexist Evil Probably Predates Religion And Can Be Ascribed To Our Biology, But There Is No Question That Religion Promulgates And Renders Sacrosanct Attitudes Toward Women That Would Be Unseemly In A Brachiating Ape.
Attitude
Evil
Atheism
We Do Not Respect People's Beliefs, We Evaluate Their Reasons. If My Reasons Are Good Enough For Believing What I Believe, You Will Helplessly Believe What I Believe. I Will Give You My Reasons And Reasons Are Contagious. That Is What It Is To Be A Rational Human Being.
Believe
People
Giving
The Problem That Religious Moderation Poses For All Of Us Is That It Does Not Permit Anything Very Critical To Be Said About Religious Literalism.
Religious
Doe
Problem
Compatibilism Amounts To Nothing More Than An Assertion Of The Following Creed: A Puppet Is Free As Long As He Loves His Strings.
Long
Puppets
Creeds
Religious Faith Obscures Uncertainty Where Uncertainty . . . Exists, Allowing The Unknown, The Implausible, And The . . . False To Achieve Primacy Over The Facts.
Religious
Religion
Facts
The Faith Of Religion Is Belief On Insufficient Evidence.
Atheist
Atheism
Belief
Martin Luther And John Calvin Advocated The Wholesale Murder Of Heretics, Apostates, Jews, And Witches.
Religion
Witch
Murder
The Problem With Religion, Because It's Been Sheltered From Criticism, Is That It Allows People To Believe En Masse What Only Idiots Or Lunatics Could Believe In Isolation.
Believe
People
Religion
The Habit Of Spending Nearly Every Waking Moment Lost In Thought Leaves Us At The Mercy Of Whatever Our Thoughts Happen To Be. Meditation Is A Way Of Breaking This Spell.
Meditation
Way
Waking
God Is Great"). Conversations About The Practical Impossibility Of God's Existence And The Science-based Irrationality Of An Afterlife Slid Seamlessly Into Xenophobia Over Muslim Immigration Or The Practice Of Veiling. The New Atheists Became The New Islamophobes, Their Invectives Against Muslims Resembling The Rowdy, Uneducated Ramblings Of Backwoods Racists Rather Than Appraisals Based On Intellect, Rationality And Reason. "islam, More Than Any Other Religion Human Beings Have Devised, Has All The Makings Of A Thoroughgoing Cult Of Death.
Atheist
Xenophobia
Practice
Our World Is Fast Succumbing To The Activities Of Men And Women Who Would Stake The Future Of Our Species On Beliefs That Should Not Survive An Elementary School Education.
School
Men
Our World
I Think It [getting A Gun] Should Be Like Getting A Pilot's License. I Think You Should Require Training To Get A License To Have A Gun.
Gun
Thinking
Training
Words Like 'god' And 'allah' Must Go The Way Of 'apollo' And 'baal' Or They Will Unmake Our World.
God
Our World
Apollo
It Is As Though A Portal In Time Has Opened, And The Christians Of The 14th Century Are Pouring Into Our World.
Christian
Our World
Pouring
Let Me Assure You That My Intent Is Not To Offend Or Merely Be Provocative. I'm Simply Worried.
Worried
Provocative
Let Me
Moderates Want Their Faith Respected. They Don't Want Faith Itself Criticized, And Yet Faith Itself Is What Is Bringing Us All This - This Lunacy.
Want
Lunacy
Moderates
Values Reduce To Facts About The Well-being Of Conscious Creatures.
Facts
Conscious
Well Being
Human Experience Depends On Everything That Can Influence States Of The Human Brain, Ranging From Changes In Our Genome To Changes In The Global Economy.
Brain
Influence
Economy
It Seems To Me Patently Obvious That We Can No More Respect And Tolerate Vast Differences In Notions Of Human Well-being Than We Can Respect Or Tolerate Vast Differences In The Notions About How Disease Spreads, Or In The Safety Standards Of Buildings And Airplanes.
Motivation
Inspiration
Airplane
Mahavira, The Jain Patriarch, Surpassed The Morality Of The Bible With A Single Sentence: Do Not Injure, Abuse, Oppress, Enslave, Insult, Torment, Torture, Or Kill Any Creature Or Living Being. Imagine How Different Our World Might Be If The Bible Contained This As Its Central Precept.
Our World
Abuse
Might
Consider It: Every Person You Have Ever Met, Every Person Will Suffer The Loss Of His Friends And Family. All Are Going To Lose Everything They Love In This World. Why Would One Want To Be Anything But Kind To Them In The Meantime?
Loss
Suffering
Family And Friends
Human Well-being Is Not A Random Phenomenon. It Depends On Many Factors - Ranging From Genetics And Neurobiology To Sociology And Economics. But, Clearly, There Are Scientific Truths To Be Known About How We Can Flourish In This World. Wherever We Can Have An Impact On The Well-being Of Others, Questions Of Morality Apply.
Impact
World
Morality
It Was Even Possible For The Most Venerated Patriarchs Of The Church, Like St. Augustine And St. Thomas Aquinas, To Conclude That Heretics Should Be Tortured (augustine) Or Killed (aquinas).
Religion
Church
Augustine
To Treat Others Ethically Is To Act Out Of Concern For Their Happiness And Suffering.
Suffering
Morality
Treats
Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, The Netherlands, Denmark, And The United Kingdom Are Among The Least Religious Societies On Earth. According To The United Nations' Human Development Report (2005), They Are Also The Healthiest, As Indicated By Life Expectancy, Adult Literacy, Per Capita Income, Educational Attainment, Gender Equality, Homicide Rate, And Infant Mortality. . . . Conversely, The Fifty Nations Now Ranked Lowest In Terms Of The United Nations' Human Development Index Are Unwaveringly Religious.
Religious
Educational
Australia
Either God Can Do Nothing To Stop Catastrophes Like This, Or He Doesn't Care To, Or He Doesn't Exist. God Is Either Impotent, Evil, Or Imaginary. Take Your Pick, And Choose Wisely.
Evil
Care
Choose Wisely
The Idea, Therefore, That Religious Faith Is Somehow A Sacred Human Convention—distinguished, As It Is, Both By The Extravagance Of Its Claims And By The Paucity Of Its Evidence—is 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 Singularity—a Vanishing Point Beyond Which Rational Discourse Proves Impossible.
Religious
Ideas
Mind
In Fact, "atheism" Is A Term That Should Not Even Exist. No One Ever Needs To Identify Himself As A "non-astrologer" Or A "non-alchemist." We Do Not Have Words For People Who Doubt That Elvis Is Still Alive Or That Aliens Have Traversed The Galaxy Only To Molest Ranchers And Their Cattle. Atheism Is Nothing More Than The Noises Reasonable People Make In The Presence Of Unjustified Religious Beliefs.
Religious
Atheist
People
All Civilized Nations Must Unite In Condemnation Of A Theology That Now Threatens To Destabilize Much Of The Earth.
Civilized Nations
Earth
Condemnation
Rather Than Bring The Full Force Of Our Creativity And Rationality To Bear On The Problems Of Ethics, Social Cohesion, And Even Spiritual Experience, Moderates Merely Ask That We Relax Our Standard Of Adherence To Ancient Superstitions And Taboos, While Otherwise Maintaining A Belief System That Was Passed Down To Us From Men And Women Whose Lives Were Simply Ravaged By Their Basic Ignorance About The World.
Spiritual
Creativity
Ignorance
If You Are Perpetually Angry, Depressed, Confused, And Unloving, Or Your Attention Is Elsewhere, It Won't Matter How Successful You Become Or Who Is In Your Life - You Won't Enjoy Any Of It.
Confused
Successful
Matter
Atheism Is Not A Philosophy; It Is Not Even A View Of The World; It Is Simply A Refusal To Deny The Obvious. Unfortunately, We Live In A World In Which The Obvious Is Overlooked As A Matter Of Principle.
Philosophy
Views
Atheism
Indeed, Religion Allows People To Imagine That Their Concerns Are Moral When They Are Highly Immoral - That Is, When Pressing These Concerns Inflicts Unnecessary And Appalling Suffering On Innocent Human Beings. This Explains Why Christians Like Yourself Expend More "moral" Energy Opposing Abortion Than Fighting Genocide. It Explains Why You Are More Concerned About Human Embryos Than About The Lifesaving Promise Of Stem-cell Research. And It Explains Why You Can Preach Against Condom Use In Sub-saharan Africa While Millions Die From Aids There Each Year. (25)
Christian
Fighting
Condom Use
One Of The Worst Things About Breaking The Law Is That It Puts One At Odds With An Indeterminate Number Of Other People. This Is Among The Many Corrosive Effects Of Having Unjust Laws: They Tempt Peaceful And (otherwise) Honest People To Lie So As To Avoid Being Punished For Behavior That Is Ethically Blameless.
Lying
Odds
Law
It Is Time That Scientists And Other Public Intellectuals Observed That The Contest Between Faith And Reason Is Zero-sum.
Zero
Reason
Scientist
We Can Either Have A Twenty-first-century Conversation About Morality And The Human Well-being - A Conversation In Which We Avail Ourselves Of All Scientific Insights And Philosophical Arguments That Have Accumulated In The Last Two Thousand Years Of Human Discourse - Or We Can Confine Ourselves To A First-century Conversation As It Is Preserved In The Bible.
Philosophical
Years
Two
The Problem Is Not That Religious People Are Stupid. It's Not That Religious Fundamentalists Are Stupid. I Happen To Think That You Can Be So Well Educated That You Can Build A Nuclear Bomb, And Still Get--and Still Believe That You Will Get The 72 Virgins In Paradise--that Is The Problem. The Problem Is That--religion--because It Has Been Sheltered From Criticism As It Has Been--allows People--perfectly Sane, Perfectly Intelligent People--to Believe En Masse, What Only Idiots Or Lunatics Could Believe In Isolation.
Religious
Stupid
Believe
You Can Do What You Decide To Do — But You Cannot Decide What You Will Decide To Do.
Free Will
Can Do
If Faith Is What You Have To Go On, If Faith Is The Link Between Your Beliefs And The World At Large, Your Beliefs Are Very Likely To Be Wrong. Beliefs Can Be Right Or Wrong. If You Believe You Can Fly, That Belief Is Only True If Indeed You Can Fly. Somebody Who Thinks He Can Fly, And Is Wrong About It, Will Eventually Discover There's A Problem With His View Of The World.
Atheist
Believe
Thinking
Advance Warning Of Katrina's Path Was Wrested From Mute Nature By Meteorological Calculations And Satellite Imagery. God Told No One Of His Plans. Had The Residents Of New Orleans Been Content To Rely On The Beneficence Of God, They Wouldn't Have Known That A Killer Hurricane Was Bearing Down Upon Them Until They Felt The First Gusts Of Wind On Their Faces. And Yet, As Will Come As No Surprise To You, A Poll Conducted By The Washington Post Found That 80 Percent Of Katrina's Survivors Claim That The Event Only Strengthened Their Faith In God.
New Orleans
Wind
Atheism
People Who Harbor Strong Convictions Without Evidence Belong At The Margins Of Our Societies, Not In Our Halls Of Power.
Strong
Atheist
People
We Will See That The Greatest Problem Confronting Civilization Is Not Merely Religious Extremism: Rather, It Is The Larger Set Of Cultural And Intellectual Accommodations We Have Made To Faith Itself.
Religious
Atheist
Civilization
It Is Difficult To Think Of Anything More Important Than Providing The Best Education Possible For Our Children. They Will Develop The Next Technologies, Medical Cures, And Global Industries, While Mitigating Their Unintended Effects, Or They Will Fail To Do These Things And Consign Us All To Oblivion.
Children
Technology
Thinking
When Considering The Truth Of A Proposition, One Is Either Engaged In An Honest Appraisal Of The Evidence And Logical Arguments, Or One Isn't. Religion Is One Area Of Our Lives Where People Imagine That Some Other Standard Of Intellectual Integrity Applies.
Integrity
Logical Arguments
People
You Are Not Controlling The Storm, And You Are Not Lost In It. You Are The Storm.
Storm
Lost
How We Pay Attention To The Present Moment...determin Es The Character Of Our Experience And...the Quality Of Our Lives.
Character
Quality
Pay
Could There Be Any Doubt That The Jews Would Seek To Harm The Son Of God Again, Knowing That His Body Was Now Readily Accessible In The Form Of Defenseless Crackers?
Son
Knowing
Doubt
In My Own Case, The Most Inflammatory Statements I Have Ever Made Are Ones That I Have Written And Remain Willing To Defend.
Made
Cases
Willing
Any Conception Of Human Well-being You Could Plausibly Have, The Taliban Patently Fails To Maximize It.
Failing
Well Being
Wells
The Difference Between Science And Religion Is The Difference Between A Willingness To Dispassionately Consider New Evidence And New Arguments , And A Passionate Unwillingness To Do So.
Differences
Passionate
Argument
One Could Surely Argue That The Buddhist Tradition, Taken As A Whole, Represents The Richest Source Of Contemplative Wisdom That Any Civilization Has Produced.
Buddhist
Taken
Civilization
One Of The Greatest Challenges Facing Civilization In The Twenty-first Century Is For Human Beings To Learn To Speak About Their Deepest Personal Concerns-about Ethics, Spiritual Experience, And The Inevitability Of Human Suffering-in Ways That Are Not Flagrantly Irrational. We Desperately Need A Public Discourse That Encourages Critical Thinking And Intellectual Honesty. Nothing Stands In The Way Of This Project More That The Respect We Accord Religious Faith.
Spiritual
Religious
Honesty
Religious Faith Is The Only Area Of Discourse Where Immunity Through Conversation Is Considered Noble . It's The Only Area Of Our Lives Where Someone Can Win Points For Saying, "there's Nothing That You Can Do To Change My Mind And I'm Taking No State Of The World Ultimately Into Account In Believing What I Believe. There's Nothing To Change About The World That Would Cause Me To Revise My Beliefs.
Religious
Believe
Winning
Almost All Our Suffering Is The Product Of Our Thoughts. We Spend Nearly Every Moment Of Our Lives Lost In Thought, And Hostage To The Character Of Those Thoughts. You Can Break This Spell, But It Takes Training Just Like It Takes Training To Defend Yourself Against A Physical Assault.
Character
Training
Suffering
‎faith, If It Is Ever Right About Anything, Is Right By Accident
Accidents
Ifs
The Second Commandment Is "thou Shall Not Construct Any Graven Images." Is This Really The Pinnacle Of What We Can Achieve Morally? The Second Most Important Moral Principle For All The Generations Of Humanity?
Humanity
Religion
Important
Religious Faith Is The One Species Of Human Ignorance That Will Not Admit Of Even The Possibility Of Correction.
Religious
Ignorance
Possibility
Spiritual Life Can Certainly Follow The Pattern One Sees In The Fake Martial Arts, With Most Teachers Making Nebulous And Magical Claims That Never Get Tested, While Their Students Derange Themselves With Weird Ideas, Empty Rituals, And Other Affectations.
Spiritual
Teacher
Art
Where We Have Reasons For What We Believe, We Have No Need Of Faith; Where We Have No Reasons, We Have Lost Both Our Connection To The World And To One Another.
Atheist
Believe
Connections
The Only Thing That Permits Human Beings To Collaborate With One Another In A Truly Open-ended Way Is Their Willingness To Have Their Beliefs Modified By New Facts. Only Openness To Evidence And Argument Will Secure A Common World For Us.
World
Way
Facts
The Conflict Between Religion And Science Is Inherent And (very Nearly) Zero-sum. The Success Of Science Often Comes At The Expense Of Religious Dogma; The Maintenance Of Religious Dogma Always Comes At The Expense Of Science.
Religious
Zero
Maintenance
Science, In The Broadest Sense, Includes All Reasonable Claims To Knowledge About Ourselves And The World.
World
Claims
Reasonable
The Point Is That Most Of What We Currently Hold Sacred Is Not Sacred For Any Reason Other Than That It Was Thought Sacred Yesterday.
Yesterday
Sacred
Reason
For Nearly A Century, The Moral Relativism Of Science Has Given Faith-based Religion--that Great Engine Of Ignorance And Bigotry--a Nearly Uncontested Claim To Being The Only Universal Framework For Moral Wisdom. As A Result, The Most Powerful Societies On Early Spend Their Time Debating Issues Like Gay Marriage When They Should Be Focused On Problems Like Nuclear Proliferation, Genocide, Energy Security, Climate Change, Poverty, And Failing Schools.
Powerful
School
Ignorance
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.
Atheist
Rain
Believe
As A Man Believes, So He Will Act.
Believe
Men
Belief
Mysticism Is A Rational Enterprise. Religion Is Not. The Mystic Has Recognized Something About The Nature Of Consciousness Prior To Thought, And This Recognition Is Susceptible To Rational Discussion. The Mystic Has Reasons For What He Believes, And These Reasons Are Empirical. The Roiling Mystery Of The World Can Be Analyzed With Concepts (this Is Science), Or It Can Be Experienced Free Of Concepts (this Is Myticism). Religion Is Nothing More Than Bad Concepts Held In Place Of Good Ones For All Time. It Is The Denial-at Once Full Of Hope And Full Of Fear-of The Vastitude Of Human Ignorance.
Believe
Ignorance
World
This Is How You Play Tennis Without The Net
Play
Tennis
I'm The Ted Bundy Of String Theory.
Ted Bundy
Strings
Theory
We Must Continually Remind Ourselves That There Is A Difference Between What Is Natural And What Is Actually Good For Us.
Differences
Natural
Liberals Tend To Understand That A Person Can Be Lucky Or Unlucky In All Matters Relevant To His Success. Conservatives, However, Often Make A Religious Fetish Of Individualism. Many Seem To Have Absolutely No Awareness Of How Fortunate One Must Be To Succeed At Anything In Life, No Matter How Hard One Works. One Must Be Lucky To Be Able To Work. One Must Be Lucky To Be Intelligent, Physically Healthy, And Not Bankrupted In Middle Age By The Illness Of A Spouse.
Religious
Intelligent
Healthy
Unlike Statements Of Fact, Which Require No Further Work On Our Part, Lies Must Be Continually Protected From Collisions With Reality.
Lying
Reality
Facts
Reason Is Nothing Less Than The Guardian Of Love
Reason
Guardian
The President Of The United States Has Claimed, On More Than One Occasion, To Be In Dialogue With God. If He Said That He Was Talking To God Through His Hairdryer, This Would Precipitate A National Emergency. I Fail To See How The Addition Of A Hairdryer Makes The Claim More Ridiculous Or Offensive.
Atheist
Talking
Religion
You Don't Get Anything Worth Getting, By Pretending To Know Things You Don't Know.
Pretending
Knows
Science Does Not Limit Itself Merely To What Is Currently Verifiable. But It Is Interested In Questions That Are Potentially Verifiable (or, Rather, Falsifiable).
Doe
Limits
120 Million Of Us Place The Big Bang 2,500 Years After The Babylonians And Sumerians Learned To Brew Beer.
Beer
Years
Religion
You Can't Take Credit For Your Talents, But It Matters That You Use Them. You Can't Really Be Blamed For Your Weaknesses, But It Matters That You Correct Them. So Pride And Shame Don't Make A Lot Of Sense, In The Final Analysis, But They Weren't Much Fun Anyway.
Fun
Pride
Weakness
We Know Enough At This Moment To Say That The God Of Abraham Is Not Only Unworthy Of The Immensity Of Creation; He Is Unworthy Even Of Man.
Faith
Science
Men
It Is Utterly Astonishing How Ordinary A Book Can Be And Still Be Thought The Product Of Omniscience.
Book
Religion
Ordinary
When 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.
People
Suffering
Religion
The Most Transformative Experiences People Have - Bliss, Devotion, Self Transcendence - Are Currently Anchored To The Worst Parts Of Culture And To Ways Of Thinking That Merely Amplify Superstition, Self-deception, And Conflict.
Thinking
Self
People
You Almost Never Get The Pleasure Of Seeing That You Won The Argument In Real Time. People Just Don't Like To Publicly Change Their Minds. They Change Their Minds In Private.
Real
People
Mind
Faith Drives A Wedge Between Ethics And Suffering. Where Certain Actions Cause No Suffering At All, Religious Dogmatists Still Maintain That They Are Evil And Worthy Of Punishment. . . . And Yet, Where Suffering And Death Are Found In Abundance Their Causes Are Often Deemed To Be Good. . . . This Inversion Of Priorities Not Only Victimizes Innocent People And Squanders Scarce Resources; It Completely Falsifies Our Ethics.
Religious
Punishment
Suffering And Death
Jesus Christ—who, As It Turns Out, Was Born Of A Virgin, Cheated Death, And Rose Bodily Into The Heavens—can Now Be Eaten In The Form Of A Cracker
Jesus
Rose
Heaven
It Is Terrible That We All Die And Lose Everything We Love; It Is Doubly Terrible That So Many Human Beings Suffer Needlessly While Alive. That So Much Of This Suffering Can Be Directly Attributed To Religion—to Religious Hatreds, Religious Wars, Religious Delusions And Religious Diversions Of Scarce Resources—is What Makes Atheism A Moral And Intellectual Necessity.
Religious
War
Hatred
There Must Be Right And Wrong Answers To Questions Of Morality And Values That Potentially Fall Within The Purview Of Science. On This View, Some People And Cultures Will Be Right (to A Greater Or Lesser Degree), And Some Will Be Wrong, With Respect To What They Deem Important In Life.
Fall
Views
People
It Is Time We Realize That Belief Is Not A Private Matter. As A Man Believes, So He Will Act. Believe That You Are A Member Of A Chosen People, Awash In The Salacious Exports Of An Evil Culture That Is Turning Your Children Away From God, Believe That You Will Be Rewarded With An Eternity Of Unimaginable Delights By Dealing Death To These Infidels—and Flying A Plane Into A Building Is Only A Matter Of Being Asked To Do It.
Children
Believe
Men
It Is Time We Admitted That We Are Not At War With “terrorism.” We Are At War With Islam.
War
Islam
Terrorism
Unreason Is Now Ascendant In The United States - In Our Schools, In Our Courts, And In Each Branch Of The Federal Government. Only 28 Percent Of Americans Believe In Evolution; 68 Percent Believe In Satan. Ignorance In This Degree, Concentrated In Both The Head And Belly Of A Lumbering Superpower, Is Now A Problem For The Entire World.
Believe
School
Ignorance
What Are The Chances That We Will One Day Discover That Dna Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With Inheritance? They Are Effectively Zero.
Zero
Dna
One Day
What I'm Asking You To Entertain Is That There Is Nothing We Need To Believe On Insufficient Evidence In Order To Have Deeply Ethical And Spiritual Lives.
Inspirational
Motivational
Spiritual
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