Background Image

...

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.

-Sam Harris

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Idea, Therefore, That

Sam Harris

...

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.

Views: 87620

Topic

More From Sam Harris

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Although Many Things Can Be Said In Criticism Of Religious Faith, There Is No Discounting Its Power. Millions Among Us, Even Now, Are Quite Willing To Die For Our Unjustified Beliefs, And Millions More, It Seems, Are Willing To Kill For Them.

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.

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.

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?

Logical Arguments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We Rely On Faith Only In The Context Of Claims For Which There Is No Sufficient Sensory Or Logical Evidence.

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.

Guarantees That

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

This Is How You Play Tennis Without The Net

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.

‎faith, If It Is Ever Right About Anything, Is Right By Accident

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.

All Civilized Nations Must Unite In Condemnation Of A Theology That Now Threatens To Destabilize Much Of The Earth.

Civilized Nations

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Don't Get Anything Worth Getting, By Pretending To Know Things You Don't Know.

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.

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.

There's No Way To Reconcile Islam With Christianity. This Difference Of Opinion Admits Of Compromise As Much As A Coin Toss Does.

We Are All Prisoners Of Our Thoughts.

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?

Genuine Concern

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.

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.

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.

You Cannot Take Death For Apostasy Seriously And Be Working For Peace.

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.

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.

Religious Faith Is The One Species Of Human Ignorance That Will Not Admit Of Even The Possibility Of Correction.

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.

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.

If One Doesn't Value Logic, What Logical Argument Would You Invoke To Prove They Should Value Logic?

Logical Arguments

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.

Religious Moderation Is The Product Of Secular Knowledge And Scriptural Ignorance.

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.

People Who Harbor Strong Convictions Without Evidence Belong At The Margins Of Our Societies, Not In Our Halls Of Power.

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.

Guarantees That

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.

The Truth Is That We Simply Do Not Know What Happens After Death.

In My Own Case, The Most Inflammatory Statements I Have Ever Made Are Ones That I Have Written And Remain Willing To Defend.

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.

Most Of Us Are Wiser Than We May Appear To Be. On One Level, Wisdom Is Nothing More Profound Than An Ability To Follow Ones Own Advice.

How We Pay Attention To The Present Moment...determin Es The Character Of Our Experience And...the Quality Of Our Lives.

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.

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.

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.

Ignorance In This Degree, Concentrated In Both The Head And Belly Of A Lumbering Superpower, Is Now A Problem For The Entire World.

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.

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.

You Are Not Controlling The Storm, And You Are Not Lost In It. You Are The Storm.

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.

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.

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.

It's Simply Untrue That Religion Provides The Only Framework For A Universal Morality.

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.

The Freedom To Think Out Loud On Certain Topics, Without Fear Of Being Hounded Into Hiding Or Killed, Has Already Been Lost.

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.

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.

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.

Mass Destruction

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Can Learn Something About A Person By The Company She Keeps.

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

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.

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.

To Not Believe In God Is To Know That It Falls To Us To Make The World A Better Place.

The Moral Landscape Is The Framework I Use For Thinking About Questions Of Morality And Human Values In Universal Terms.

Martin Luther And John Calvin Advocated The Wholesale Murder Of Heretics, Apostates, Jews, And Witches.

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.

[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.

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.

Science Does Not Limit Itself Merely To What Is Currently Verifiable. But It Is Interested In Questions That Are Potentially Verifiable (or, Rather, Falsifiable).

Science, In The Broadest Sense, Includes All Reasonable Claims To Knowledge About Ourselves And The World.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm The Ted Bundy Of String Theory.

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.

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.

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?

Compatibilism Amounts To Nothing More Than An Assertion Of The Following Creed: A Puppet Is Free As Long As He Loves His Strings.

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.

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.

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.

Welfare Programs

Some Propositions Are So Dangerous That It May Even Be Ethical To Kill People For Believing Them.

You Can Do What You Decide To Do — But You Cannot Decide What You Will Decide To Do.

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.

120 Million Of Us Place The Big Bang 2,500 Years After The Babylonians And Sumerians Learned To Brew Beer.

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?

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 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.

Words Like 'god' And 'allah' Must Go The Way Of 'apollo' And 'baal' Or They Will Unmake Our World.

Atheism Is Just A Way Of Clearing The Space For Better Conversations.

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.

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.

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.

As A Man Believes, So He Will Act.

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.

It Is As Though A Portal In Time Has Opened, And The Christians Of The 14th Century Are Pouring Into Our World.

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.

Missionaries In The Developing World Waste A Lot Of Time And Money (not To Mention The Goodwill Of Non-christians) Proselytizing To The Needy. . . . While Missionaries Do Many Noble Things At Great Risk To Themselves, Their Dogmatism Still Spreads Ignorance And Death. By Contrast, Volunteers For Secular Organizations . . . Do Not Waste . . . Time Telling People About The Virgin Birth Of Jesus. Nor Do They Tell People In Sub-saharan Africa - Where Nearly Four Million People Die From Aids Every Year - That Condom Use Is Sinful.

Principle #1: Avoid Dangerous People And Dangerous Places. Principle #2: Do Not Defend Your Property. Principle #3: Respond Immediately And Escape.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Family And Friends

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.

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.

It Is Time That Scientists And Other Public Intellectuals Observed That The Contest Between Faith And Reason Is Zero-sum.

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.

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.

It Is Utterly Astonishing How Ordinary A Book Can Be And Still Be Thought The Product Of Omniscience.

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.

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.

What We Do In Every Other Area Of Our Lives (other Than Religion), Is, Rather Than Respect Somebody's Beliefs, We Evaluate Their Reasons.

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.

Theology Is Now Little More Than A Branch Of Human Ignorance.

The Science Of Morality Is About Maximizing Psychological And Social Health. It's Really No More Inflammatory Than That.

Reason Is Nothing Less Than The Guardian Of Love

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.

We Should Profile Muslims, Or Anyone Who Looks Like He Or She Could Conceivably Be Muslim, And We Should Be Honest About It.

We Must Continually Remind Ourselves That There Is A Difference Between What Is Natural And What Is Actually Good For Us.

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Faith Does Not Offer A Strong Link Between Our Beliefs And Actual States Of The World.

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.

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.

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.

One Could Surely Argue That The Buddhist Tradition, Taken As A Whole, Represents The Richest Source Of Contemplative Wisdom That Any Civilization Has Produced.

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.

Theology Is Ignorance With Wings.

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.

Islam, At The Moment, Is The Motherlode Of Bad Ideas.

Anyone Familiar With My Work Knows That I Am Extremely Critical Of All Religious Faiths.

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.

Values Reduce To Facts About The Well-being Of Conscious Creatures.

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.

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.

Unlike Statements Of Fact, Which Require No Further Work On Our Part, Lies Must Be Continually Protected From Collisions With Reality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

To Treat Others Ethically Is To Act Out Of Concern For Their Happiness And Suffering.

It Is Time We Admitted That We Are Not At War With “terrorism.” We Are At War With Islam.

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

The Atheist, By Merely Being In Touch With Reality, Appears Shamefully Out Of Touch With The Fantasy Life Of His Neighbors.

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.

Logical Arguments

Strange Bonds Of Trust And Self-deception Tend To Grow Between Journalists And Their Subjects.

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.

Every One Of The World's "great" Religions Utterly Trivializes The Immensity And Beauty Of The Cosmos. Books Like The Bible And The Koran Get Almost Every Significant Fact About Us And Our World Wrong. Every Scientific Domain -- From Cosmology To Psychology To Economics -- Has Superseded And Surpassed The Wisdom Of Scripture. Everything Of Value That People Get From Religion Can Be Had More Honestly, Without Presuming Anything On Insufficient Evidence. The Rest Is Self-deception, Set To Music.

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.

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.

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.

Of Course, The Liar Often Imagines That He Does No Harm As Long As His Lies Go Undetected.

Science Is The Most Durable And Nondivisive Way Of Thinking About The Human Circumstance. It Transcends Cultural, National, And Political Boundaries. You Don't Have American Science Versus Canadian Science Versus Japanese Science.

Unreason Is Now Ascendant In The United States—in Our Schools, In Our Courts, And In Each Branch Of The Federal Government.

Trending Author

Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

George McGovern

Category