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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.
-Sam Harris
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I Think It [getting

Sam Harris
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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.

Understanding the Quote: "i think it [getting a gun] should be like getting a pilot's..."

This quote by Sam Harris reflects deeply on the theme of gun. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Gun, Thinking, Training, 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 gun and thinking. 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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Topic
Gun
Thinking
Training
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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.
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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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Words Like 'god' And 'allah' Must Go The Way Of 'apollo' And 'baal' Or They Will Unmake Our World.
God
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Apollo
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
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My Concern With Religion Is That It Allows Us By The Millions To Believe What Only Lunatics Or Idiots Could Believe On Their Own. That's Not To Say That All Religious People Are Lunatics Or Idiots. It's Anything But That.
Religious
Believe
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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.
Religious
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Ignorance In This Degree, Concentrated In Both The Head And Belly Of A Lumbering Superpower, Is Now A Problem For The Entire World.
Ignorance
Degrees
World
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
We Rely On Faith Only In The Context Of Claims For Which There Is No Sufficient Sensory Or Logical Evidence.
Atheist
Atheism
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Imagine A World In Which Generations Of Human Beings Come To Believe That Certain Films Were Made By God Or That Specific Software Was Coded By Him. Imagine A Future In Which Millions Of Our Descendants Murder Each Other Over Rival Interpretations Of Star Wars Or Windows 98. Could Anything -- Anything -- Be More Ridiculous? And Yet, This Would Be No More Ridiculous Than The World We Are Living In.
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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
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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
Depth
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.
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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.
Mean
Thinking
Knowing
Hope Is Easy; Knowledge Is Hard. Science Is The One Domain In Which We Human Beings Make A Truly Heroic Effort To Counter Our Innate Biases And Wishful Thinking. Science Is The One Endeavor In Which We Have Developed A Refined Methodology For Separating What A Person Hopes Is True From What He Has Good Reason To Believe.
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Unreason Is Now Ascendant In The United States—in Our Schools, In Our Courts, And In Each Branch Of The Federal Government.
School
Government
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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
Order
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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.
Worry
People
Pretending
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
In 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.
Believe
Years
Two
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
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
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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 Only Thing That Guarantees An Open-ended Collaboration Among Human Beings, The Only Thing That Guarantees That This Project Is Truly Open-ended, Is A Willingness To Have Our Beliefs And Behaviors Modified By The Power Of Conversation.
Atheist
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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
I Think When You Say To Someone You Are Fool Not To Believe In Evolution Or A Fool To Believe The Universe Is 6000 Years Old. I Think That Gets Translated As You Are A Fool To Think That Your Daughter Who Died In A Car Accident Is Really In Heaven With God.
Daughter
Believe
Thinking
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
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
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
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
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
A Puppet Is Free As Long As He Loves His Strings.
Long
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Strings
The Science Of Morality Is About Maximizing Psychological And Social Health. It's Really No More Inflammatory Than That.
Maximizing
Morality
Ethics
Any Conception Of Human Well-being You Could Plausibly Have, The Taliban Patently Fails To Maximize It.
Failing
Well Being
Wells
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
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
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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.
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Martin Luther And John Calvin Advocated The Wholesale Murder Of Heretics, Apostates, Jews, And Witches.
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Witch
Murder
Anyone Familiar With My Work Knows That I Am Extremely Critical Of All Religious Faiths.
Religious
Familiar
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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
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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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Reality
Attachment
Of Course, The Liar Often Imagines That He Does No Harm As Long As His Lies Go Undetected.
Liars
Lying
Long
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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Believe
Sea
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
The Truth That We Must Finally Confront Is That Islam Contains Specific Notions Of Martyrdom And Jihad That Fully Explain The Character Of Muslim Violence.
Character
Islam
Violence
It Is Important To Realize That Our Inability To Answer A Question Says Nothing About Whether The Question Itself Has An Answer.
Important
Inability
Answers
We Must Continually Remind Ourselves That There Is A Difference Between What Is Natural And What Is Actually Good For Us.
Differences
Natural
Take 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 Unimaginable—not Only In Beirut, Baghdad, Or Jerusalem, But In New York City.
New York
Book
Cities
We 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 God’s 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 Father’s Doorstep (deuteronomy 22:13-21).
Father
Teaching
Night
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.
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Evil
Faces
You Are Not Controlling The Storm, And You Are Not Lost In It. You Are The Storm.
Storm
Lost
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.
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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.
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People
Humanity
Atheism Is Nothing More Than The Noises Reasonable People Make When In The Presence Of Religious Dogma.
Religious
Atheist
People
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
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Trying
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
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.
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Views
People
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.
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Political
Brain
What Are The Chances That We Will One Day Discover That Dna Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With Inheritance? They Are Effectively Zero.
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One Day
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
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.
Book
Games
Toilets
Religious Faith Obscures Uncertainty Where Uncertainty . . . Exists, Allowing The Unknown, The Implausible, And The . . . False To Achieve Primacy Over The Facts.
Religious
Religion
Facts
Tell A Devout Christian That His Wife Is Cheating On Him, Or That Frozen Yogurt Can Make A Man Invisible, And He Is Likely To Require As Much Evidence As Anyone Else, And To Be Persuaded Only To The Extent That You Give It. Tell Him That The Book He Keeps By His Bed Was Written By An Invisible Deity Who Will Punish Him With Fire For Eternity If He Fails To Accept Its Every Incredible Claim About The Universe, And He Seems To Require No Evidence What So Ever.
Christian
Cheating
Atheist
Let Me Assure You That My Intent Is Not To Offend Or Merely Be Provocative. I'm Simply Worried.
Worried
Provocative
Let Me
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.
Atheist
Believe
Differences
Religious Moderation Is The Product Of Secular Knowledge And Scriptural Ignorance.
Religious
Atheist
Ignorance
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
Islam, At The Moment, Is The Motherlode Of Bad Ideas.
Ideas
Islam
Moments
If Jesus Does Come Down Out Of The Clouds Like A Superhero, Christianity Will Stand Revealed As A Science . That Will Be The Science Of Christianity.
Jesus
Clouds
Superhero
It Is Time We Admitted That We Are Not At War With “terrorism.” We Are At War With Islam.
War
Islam
Terrorism
Reason Is Nothing Less Than The Guardian Of Love
Reason
Guardian
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
Understanding
Definitions
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
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
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
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
All Civilized Nations Must Unite In Condemnation Of A Theology That Now Threatens To Destabilize Much Of The Earth.
Civilized Nations
Earth
Condemnation
The Atheist, By Merely Being In Touch With Reality, Appears Shamefully Out Of Touch With The Fantasy Life Of His Neighbors.
Atheist
Reality
Fantasy
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?
Death
Loss
Genuine Concern
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.
Love
Religious
Identity
You Can Do What You Decide To Do — But You Cannot Decide What You Will Decide To Do.
Free Will
Can Do
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
Our Wills Are Simply Not Of Our Own Making. Thoughts And Intentions Emerge From Background Causes Of Which We Are Unaware And Over Which We Exert No Conscious Control. We Do Not Have The Freedom We Think We Have.
Thinking
Causes
Intention
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
Names
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
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
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
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
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
Most Of Us Are Wiser Than We May Appear To Be. … On One Level, Wisdom Is Nothing More Profound Than An Ability To Follow One’s Own Advice.
Profound
Advice
Levels
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
Suffering
Demand
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
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
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
120 Million Of Us Place The Big Bang 2,500 Years After The Babylonians And Sumerians Learned To Brew Beer.
Beer
Years
Religion
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
I Am One Of The Few People I Know Of Who Has Argued In Print That Torture May Be An Ethical Necessity In Our War On Terror.
War
People
May
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.
Science
Men
Names
If Premarital Sex Is A Sin, Who Is The Victim?
Sex
Sin
Victim
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
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
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
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
Atheist
Self
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
It Is Time That Scientists And Other Public Intellectuals Observed That The Contest Between Faith And Reason Is Zero-sum.
Zero
Reason
Scientist
You Can Learn Something About A Person By The Company She Keeps.
Company
Persons
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
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
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
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
Unlike Statements Of Fact, Which Require No Further Work On Our Part, Lies Must Be Continually Protected From Collisions With Reality.
Lying
Reality
Facts
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
Either Our Wills Are Determined By Prior Causes And We Are Not Responsible For Them, Or They Are The Product Of Chance And We Are Not Responsible For Them.
Causes
Determined
Chance
Science, In The Broadest Sense, Includes All Reasonable Claims To Knowledge About Ourselves And The World.
World
Claims
Reasonable
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
People
It Is Safe To Say That Almost Every Person Living In New Orleans At The Moment Hurricane Katrina Struck Shared Your Belief In An Omnipotent, Omniscient, And Compassionate God. But What Was God Doing While Katrina Laid Waste To Their City? Surely He Heard The Prayers Of Those Elderly Men And Women Who Fled The Rising Waters For The Safety Of Their Attics, Only To Be Slowly Drowned There.
Prayer
Men
Elderly
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
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
An 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.
Christian
Sunday
Average
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.
Believe
People
Religion
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
The Truth Is That We Simply Do Not Know What Happens After Death.
Death
Truth Is
Happens
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
If One Doesn't Value Logic, What Logical Argument Would You Invoke To Prove They Should Value Logic?
Logical Arguments
Should
Prove
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
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
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.
Strong
People
Desire
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
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
What Would Our World Be Like If We Ceased To Worry About 'right' And 'wrong,' Or 'good' And 'evil,' And Simply Acted So As To Maximize Well-being, Our Own And That Of Others? Would We Lose Anything Important?
Our World
Evil
Worry
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.
Spiritual
Self
Ease
If Someone Doesn’t Value Evidence, What Evidence Are You Going To Provide That Proves They Should Value Evidence. If Someone Doesn’t Value Logic, What Logical Argument Would You Invoke To Prove They Should Value Logic?
Logical Arguments
Should
Evidence
The Problem Is That Religion Tends To Give People Bad Reasons To Be Good.
People
Giving
Problem
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.
Motivation
Lying
People
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 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
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 Rather More Noble To Help People Purely Out Of Concern For Their Suffering Than It Is To Help Them Because You Think The Creator Of The Universe Wants You To Do It, Or Will Reward You For Doing It, Or Will Punish You For Not Doing It. The Problem With This Linkage Between Religion And Morality Is That It Gives People Bad Reasons To Help Other Human Beings When Good Reasons Are Available.
Helping Others
Thinking
People
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
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
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
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
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
The Faith Of Religion Is Belief On Insufficient Evidence.
Atheist
Atheism
Belief
Countries With High Levels Of Atheism Are . . . The Most Charitable Both In Terms Of The Percentage Of Their Wealth They Devote To Social Welfare Programs And The Percentage They Give In Aid To The Developing World.
Country
Welfare Programs
Giving
Principle #1: Avoid Dangerous People And Dangerous Places. Principle #2: Do Not Defend Your Property. Principle #3: Respond Immediately And Escape.
People
Principles
Dangerous
It Is Utterly Astonishing How Ordinary A Book Can Be And Still Be Thought The Product Of Omniscience.
Book
Religion
Ordinary
People Who Harbor Strong Convictions Without Evidence Belong At The Margins Of Our Societies, Not In Our Halls Of Power.
Strong
Atheist
People
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
Values Reduce To Facts About The Well-being Of Conscious Creatures.
Facts
Conscious
Well Being
Theology Is Now Little More Than A Branch Of Human Ignorance.
Ignorance
Branches
Littles
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
Our World
Ignorant
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.
Struggle
Thinking
Iron
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
From My Point Of View, Compatibilism Is A Little Like Saying: A Puppet Is Free So Long As It Loves Its Strings.
Views
Long
Puppets
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
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
Some Propositions Are So Dangerous That It May Even Be Ethical To Kill People For Believing Them.
Believe
People
May
Strange Bonds Of Trust And Self-deception Tend To Grow Between Journalists And Their Subjects.
Self
Deception
Strange
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
Differences
Parent
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 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
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
Would Be
World
‎faith, If It Is Ever Right About Anything, Is Right By Accident
Accidents
Ifs
To Treat Others Ethically Is To Act Out Of Concern For Their Happiness And Suffering.
Suffering
Morality
Treats
Unfortunately, Failure Enjoys A Natural Advantage. Wrong Answers To Any Problem Outnumber Right Ones By A Wide Margin, And It Seems That It Will Always Be Easier To Break Things Than To Fix Them.
Failure
Wrong Answers
Problem
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
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
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.
Religious
Believe
People
It's Simply Untrue That Religion Provides The Only Framework For A Universal Morality.
Morality
Framework
Universal
The Freedom To Think Out Loud On Certain Topics, Without Fear Of Being Hounded Into Hiding Or Killed, Has Already Been Lost.
Thinking
Topics
Hiding
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
If We Cannot Find Our Way To A Time When Most Of Us Are Willing To Admit That, At The Very Least, We Are Not Sure Whether Or Not God Wrote Some Of Our Books, Then We Need Only Count The Days To Armageddon-because God Has Given Us Far Many More Reasons To Kill One Another Than To Turn The Other Cheek.
Atheist
Book
Way
I'm The Ted Bundy Of String Theory.
Ted Bundy
Strings
Theory
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
Mean
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
Science Has Long Been In The Value Business. Despite A Widespread Belief To The Contrary, Scientific Validity Is Not The Result Of Scientists Abstaining From Making Value Judgments; Rather, Scientific Validity Is The Result Of Scientists Making Their Best Efforts To Value Principles Of Reasoning That Link Their Beliefs To Reality, Through Reliable Chains Of Evidence And Argument.
Reality
Objectivity
Best Effort
Religious 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.
Religious
Book
Why Not
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
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.
Ignorance
Mma
Way
It Is Also True That The Less Competent A Person Is In A Given Domain, The More He Will Tend To Overestimate His Abilities. This Often Produces An Ugly Marriage Of Confidence And Ignorance That Is Very Difficult To Correct For.
Ignorance
Ugly
Produce
[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.
Faith
Religious
Lying
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.
Dog
Atheist
Moving
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
Fundamentalism Is Only A Problem If The Fundamentals Are A Problem
Fundamentals
Problem
Fundamentalism
The Wealthiest Americans Often Live As Though They And Their Children Had Nothing To Gain From Investments In Education, Infrastructure, Clean-energy, And Scientific Research.
Children
Research
Gains
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
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
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
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.
Ocean
Mean
Self
The Core Of Science Is Not A Mathematical Modeling--it Is Intellectual Honesty. It Is A Willingness To Have Our Certainties About The World Constrained By Good Evidence And Good Argument.
Honesty
Intellectual
World
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
How We Pay Attention To The Present Moment...determin Es The Character Of Our Experience And...the Quality Of Our Lives.
Character
Quality
Pay
We Will Continue To Spill Blood In What Is, At Bottom, A War Of Ideas
War
Blood
Ideas
As 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.
Creating
Design
Promise
False Encouragement Is A Kind Of Theft: It Steals Time, Energy, And Motivation A Person Could Put Toward Some Other Purpose.
Encouragement
Motivation
Energy
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
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 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
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
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