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eda1c4b
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A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. If our concern is about suffering in this universe, it is rather obvious that we should be more concerned about killing flies than about killing three-day-old human embryos... Many people will argue that the difference between a fly and a three-day-old human embryo is that a thr..
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Sam Harris |
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d34d41f
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There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion--a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in every moment. It is a mode of cognition that is, above all, undistracted, accepting, and (ultimately) nonconceptual. Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. M..
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spirituality
mindfulness
experience
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Sam Harris |
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c84f7e1
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I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.
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faith
religion
sam
harris
delusion
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Sam Harris |
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42a67b0
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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.
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Sam Harris |
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5240a68
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It has been estimated that 50 percent of all human conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, usually without a woman even realizing that she was pregnant. In fact, 20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. There is an obvious truth here that cries out for acknowledgment: if God exists, He is the most prolific abortionist of all.
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Sam Harris |
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aea0896
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The men and women on death row have some combination of bad genes, bad parents, bad environments, and bad ideas (and the innocent, of course, have supremely bad luck). Which of these quantities, exactly, were they responsible for? No human being is responsible for his genes or his upbringing, yet we have every reason to believe that these factors determine his character. Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us c..
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Sam Harris |
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de1e98e
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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?"
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Sam Harris |
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45c8b61
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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 th..
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Sam Harris |
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d43824d
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This is not (as you have charged) to paint religion with a broad brush. I am very quick to distinguish gradations of bad ideas; some clearly have no consequences at all (or at least not yet); some put civilization itself in peril. The problem with dogmatism, however, is that one can never quite predict how terrible its costs will be. To use one of my favorite examples, consider the Christian dogma that human life begins at the moment of con..
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Sam Harris |
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9cff7e5
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Your frequent claim that we must understand religious belief as a "social construct," produced by "societal causes," dependent upon "social and cultural institutions," admitting of "sociological questions," and the like, while it will warm the hearts of most anthropologists, is either trivially true or obscurantist. It is part and parcel of the double standard that so worries me--the demolition of which is the explicit aim of The Reason Pro..
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Sam Harris |
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2ea2f84
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In the face of God's obvious inadequacies, the pious have generally held that one cannot apply earthly norms to the Creator of the universe. This argument loses its force the moment we notice that the Creator who purports to be beyond human judgment is consistently ruled by human passions-- jealousy, wrath, suspicion, and the lust to dominate. A close study of our holy books reveals that the God of Abraham is a ridiculous fellow--capricious..
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Sam Harris |
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3adf0a0
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The core of science is not controlled experiment or mathetical modeling; it is intellectual honesty. It is time we acknowledge a basic feature of human discourse: 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.
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Sam Harris |
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be744e6
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120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.
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religion
big-bang
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Sam Harris |
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68fb37e
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our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-theother-dog's-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent's arguments to change the opponent's mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog's t..
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morality
neuroscience
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Sam Harris |
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3dfe93a
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Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers?
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christianity
god
son-of-god
mass
catholicism
jesus-christ
christian
jews
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Sam Harris |
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f46c421
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A moment or two of serious self-scrutiny, and you might observe that you no more decide the next thought you think than the next thought I write.
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Sam Harris |
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24d72c0
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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.
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Sam Harris |
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bffcd6c
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Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on [E]arth. 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. Insofar as there is a crime p..
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Sam Harris |
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0ecc46d
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Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see tht there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.
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morality
muslim
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Sam Harris |
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33facb7
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There is no doubt that the United States has much to atone for, both domestically and abroad...To produce this horrible confection at home, start with our genocidal treatment of the Native Americans, add a couple hundred years of slavery, along with our denial of entry to Jewish refugees fleeing the death camps of the Third Reich, stir in our collusion with a long list of modern despots and our subsequent disregard for their appalling human..
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faith
religion
terrorism
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Sam Harris |
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2683047
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Spirituality must be distinguished from religion--because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences.
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Sam Harris |
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316c530
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Some people are content in the midst of deprivation and danger, while others are miserable despite having all the luck in the world. This is not to say that external circumstances do not matter. But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Your mind is the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to tr..
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Sam Harris |
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202c0c4
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On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one's own advice.
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Sam Harris |
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4a6519e
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Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love
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Sam Harris |
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2d70ecd
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How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages--but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out.
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Sam Harris |
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69b0290
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Everyone who has eyes to see can see that if the God of Abraham exists, He is an utter psychopath--and the God of Nature too. If you can't see these things just by looking, you have simply closed your eyes to the realities of our world.
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Sam Harris |
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e0884e6
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To agree to keep a secret is to assume a burden
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Sam Harris |
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72ebb2c
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Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction.
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Sam Harris |
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46ddbd6
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Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
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Sam Harris |
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f7711e3
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Once a person believes - really believes - that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one.
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Sam Harris |
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afd1912
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We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises. To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.
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Sam Harris |
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3e05ac6
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The truth, however, is that the conflict between religion and science is unavoidable. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.
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Sam Harris |
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75e5c9d
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The problem is that moderates of all faiths are committed to reinterpreting, or ignoring outright, the most dangerous and absurd parts of their scripture--and this commitment is precisely what makes them moderates. But it also requires some degree of intellectual dishonesty, because moderates can't acknowledge that their moderation comes from outside the faith. The doors leading out of the prison of scriptural literalism simply do not open ..
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Sam Harris |
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02d58e1
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Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.
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Sam Harris |
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2c6a344
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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.
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Sam Harris |
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e625607
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There is a sense in which all cognition can be said to be motivated. One is motivated to understand the world, to be in touch with reality, to remove doubt, etc. Alternately one might say that motivation is an aspect of cognition itself. Nevertheless, motives like wanting to find the truth, not wanting to be mistaken, etc., tend to align with epistemic goals in a way that many other commitments do not. As we have begun to see, all reasoning..
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emotion
morality
motivation
religion
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Sam Harris |
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8ede382
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If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil.
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Sam Harris |
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e6d58dc
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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 c..
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evolution
reason
rationale
logic
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Sam Harris |
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b5f79e9
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We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress.
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thought-provoking
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Sam Harris |
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0cb0dfa
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we are all seeking fulfillment while living at the mercy of changing experience. Whatever we acquire in life gets dispersed. Our bodies age. Our relationships fall away. Even the most intense pleasures last only a few moments. And every morning, we are chased out of bed by our thoughts.
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Sam Harris |
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9a9b98d
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Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others.
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Sam Harris |
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b21ed54
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We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
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natural
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Sam Harris |
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34431f4
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Honest people are a refuge: You know they mean what they say; you know they will not say one thing to your face and another behind your back; you know they will tell you when they think you have failed--and for this reason their praise cannot be mistaken for mere flattery.
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Sam Harris |
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646053e
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I generally start each day with a cup of coffee or tea--sometimes two. This morning, it was coffee (two). Why not tea? I am in no position to know. I wanted coffee more than I wanted tea today, and I was free to have what I wanted. Did I consciously choose coffee over tea? No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I, as the conscious witness of my thoughts and actions, could not inspect or influence. Could I have "changed my..
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Sam Harris |