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8cbe1e8
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It should go without saying that these rival belief systems [Judaism, Islam, Christianity] are all equally uncontaminated by evidence.
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Sam Harris |
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342b52f
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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
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Sam Harris |
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76b9f7b
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In fact, we can directly experience that consciousness is never improved or harmed by what it knows. Making this discovery, again and again, is the basis of spiritual life.
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Sam Harris |
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5308084
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I still considered the world's religions to be mere intellectual ruins, maintained at enormous economic and social cost, but I now understood that important psychological truths could be found in the rubble.
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Sam Harris |
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f477cb0
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In those circumstances where we deem it obviously necessary to lie, we have generally determined that the person to be deceived is both dangerous and unreachable by any recourse to the truth. In other words, we have judged the prospects of establishing a genuine relationship with him to be nonexistent.
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Sam Harris |
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c4beb38
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Happily, the benefits of training in meditation arrive long before mastery does.
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Sam Harris |
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a6f610e
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The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world.
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Sam Harris |
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17ad448
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You are not in control of your mind--because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.
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Sam Harris |
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fc08e5b
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Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith that keeps the whole terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over our world.
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logic
reason
religion
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Sam Harris |
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59ffc5d
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People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs--that is, the more a person's well-being demands a correct understanding of the world or of other people's opinions--the more consequential the lie.
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Sam Harris |
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ffcde91
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the four factors in radicalization: a grievance narrative, whether real or perceived; an identity crisis; charismatic recruiters; and ideological dogma.
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Sam Harris |
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7a86442
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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."
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Sam Harris |
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a4aeb0b
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To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose. Of course, this insight does not make social and political freedom any less important. The freedom to do what one intends, and not to do otherwise, is no less valuable than it ever was. Having a gun to your head is still a problem worth rectifying, wherever intentions come from. But the idea that we, as consciou..
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Sam Harris |
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3e48457
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Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. [...] The first thing to observe about the moderate's retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God's utterances difficult to accept as written.
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Sam Harris |
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5799136
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While the stoning of children for heresy has fallen out of fashion in our country, you will not hear a moderate Christian or Jew arguing for a "symbolic" reading of passages of this sort. [...] it is only by ignoring such barbarisms that the Good Book can be reconciled with life in the modern world. This is a problem for "moderation" in religion: it has nothing underwriting it other than the unacknowledged neglect of the letter of the divin..
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Sam Harris |
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a7faf75
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When we consider that so few generations had passed since the church left off disemboweling innocent men before the eyes of their families, burning old women alive in public squares, and torturing scholars to the point of madness for merely speculating about the
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catholic
church
excommunication
ss
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Sam Harris |
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bc6529c
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The fact that the universe is illuminated where you stand--that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character in this moment--is a mystery, exceeded only by the mystery that there should be something rather than nothing in the first place. Although science may ultimately show us how to truly maximize human well-being, it may still fail to dispel the fundamental mystery of our being itself.
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Sam Harris |
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e370c88
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Most moral relativists believe that tolerance of cultural diversity is better, in some important sense, than outright bigotry. This may be perfectly reasonable, of course, but it amounts to an overarching claim about how all human beings should live. Moral relativism, when used as a rationale for tolerance of diversity, is self-contradictory.
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Sam Harris |
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902bbd8
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As we have seen, there is something that most Americans share with Osama bin Laden, the nineteen hijackers, and much of the Muslim world. We, too, cherish the idea that certain fantastic propositions can be believed without evidence. Such heroic acts of credulity are thought not only acceptable but redeeming -- even necessary.
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Sam Harris |
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7c0a442
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Making distinctions of this kind, however, is deeply unfashionable in intellectual circles. In my experience, people do not want to hear that Islam supports violence in a way that Jainism doesn't, or that Buddhism offers a truly sophisticated, empirical approach to understanding the human mind, whereas Christianity presents an almost perfect impediment to such understanding. In many circles, to make invidious comparisons of this kind is to ..
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Sam Harris |
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0b5f375
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Our habitual identification with thought--that is, our failure to recognize thoughts *as thoughts,* as appearances in consciousness--is a primary source of human suffering. It also gives rise to the illusion that a separate self is living inside one's head.
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Sam Harris |
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8169577
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If being prepared for death entails knowing when and where it will happen, the odds are you will not be prepared. Not only are you bound to die and leave this world; you are bound to leave it in such a precipitate fashion that the present significance of anything -- your relationships, your plans for the future, your hobbies, your possessions -- will appear to have been totally illusory.
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Sam Harris |
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947cc2e
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When we presume to lie for the benefit of others, we have decided that we are the best judges of how much they should understand about their own lives--about how they appear, their reputations, or their prospects in the world. This is an extraordinary stance to adopt toward other human beings, and it requires justification. Unless someone is suicidal or otherwise on the brink, deciding how much he should know about himself seems the quintes..
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Sam Harris |
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3c541c2
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The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness--rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.
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Sam Harris |
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835c1a2
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But if they don't try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in their adult lives, I will wonder whether they had missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.
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Sam Harris |
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2e54902
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If my brain were surgically divided by callosotomy tomorrow, this would create at least two independent conscious minds, both of which would be psychologically continuous with the person who is now writing this paragraph. If my linguistic abilities happened to be distributed across both hemispheres, each of these minds might remember having written this sentence. The question of whether I would land in the left hemisphere or the right doesn..
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Sam Harris |
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8769766
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I fear that my lesson in this lifetime is humility... and I think that lesson is beneath me.
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Sam Harris |
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45cfaa3
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Word was that God could heal anyone. The wounded, the infirm, even lepers. I figured I should be a breeze.
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Sam Harris |
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7264a3a
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In a now famous thought experiment, the philosopher Derek Parfit asks us to imagine a teleportation device that can beam a person from Earth to Mars. Rather than travel for many months on a spaceship, you need only enter a small chamber close to home and push a green button, and all the information in your brain and body will be sent to a similar station on Mars, where you will be reassembled down to the last atom. Imagine that several of y..
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Sam Harris |
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26d0a75
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Critiquing Islam, critiquing any idea, is not bigotry. "Islamophobia" is a troubled and inherently unhelpful term. Yes, hatred of Muslims by neo-Nazi-style groups does exist, and it is a form of cultural intolerance, but that must never be conflated with the free-speech right to critique Islam. Islam is, after all, an idea; we cannot expect its merits or demerits to be accepted if we cannot openly debate it."
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Sam Harris |
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aaffa8d
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Every lie is an assault on the autonomy of those we lie to.
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Sam Harris |
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72376e1
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What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose on earth? These are some of the great, false questions of religion. We need not answer them, for they are badly posed, but we can live our answers all the same. At a minimum, we can create the conditions for human flourishing in this life--the only life of which any of us can be certain. That means we should not terrify our children with thoughts of hell or poison them with hatred for infidel..
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philosophy
religion
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Sam Harris |
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bf98a2b
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A great liberal betrayal is afoot. Unfortunately, many "fellow-travelers" of Islamism are on the liberal side of this debate. I call them "regressive leftists"; they are in fact reverse racists. They have a poverty of expectation for minority groups, believing them to be homogenous and inherently opposed to human rights values. They are culturally reductive in how they see "Eastern"--and in my case, Islamic--culture, and they are culturally..
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Sam Harris |
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4bfdf4f
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Eventually, it begins to seem as if you are repeatedly awakening from a dream to find yourself safely in bed. No matter how terrible the dream, the relief is instantaneous.
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Sam Harris |
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3f49318
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The urge for retribution depends upon our not seeing the underlying causes of human behavior.
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Sam Harris |
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942bcb4
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Our sense of our own freedom results from our not paying attention to what it is actually like to be what we are. The moment we do pay attention, we begin to see that free will is nowhere to be found, and our subjectivity is perfectly compatible with this truth. Thoughts and actions simply arise in the mind. What else could they do? The truth about us is stranger than many suppose: The illusion of free will is itself an illusion.
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Sam Harris |
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d7821b2
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Religion raises the stakes of human conflict much higher than tribalism, racism, or politics ever can, as it is the only form of in-group/out-group thinking that casts the differences between people in terms of eternal rewards and punishments.
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conflict
religion
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Sam Harris |
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0bd8174
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Mentir es, casi por definicion, negarse a cooperar con los demas. Mentir combina en un unico acto la falta de confianza y de honradez. Es al mismo tiempo un fallo de comprension y una falta de voluntad de ser comprendido. Mentir es dar un paso atras en la relacion.
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Sam Harris |
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b443ef5
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What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?
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Sam Harris |
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2073e37
|
The great liberal betrayal of this generation is that in the name of liberalism, communal rights have been prioritized over individual autonomy within minority groups. And minorities within minorities really do suffer because of this betrayal. The people I really worry about when we have this conversation are feminist Muslims, gay Muslims, ex-Muslims--all the vulnerable and bullied individuals who are not just stigmatized but in many cases ..
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Sam Harris |
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9875de6
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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. Cancer is perfectly natural, and yet its eradication is a primary goal of modern medicine. Evolution may have selected for territorial violence, rape, and other patently unethical behaviors as strategies to propagate one's genes--but our collective well-being clearly depends on our opposing such natural tendencies.
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Sam Harris |
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5e5f606
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To point out nonepistemic motives in another's view of the world, therefore, is always a criticism, as it serves to cast doubt upon a person's connection to the world as it is.
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criticism
skepticism
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Sam Harris |
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a446888
|
The reality that the West currently enjoys far more wealth and temporal power than any nation under Islam is viewed by devout Muslims as a diabolical perversity, and this situation will always stand as an open invitation for jihad. Insofar as a person is Muslim--that is, insofar as he believes that Islam constitutes the only viable path to God and that the Koran enunciates it perfectly--he will feel contempt for any man or woman who doubts ..
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Sam Harris |
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617efa0
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Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us simply knows more about certain matters than anyone did two thousand years ago.
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Sam Harris |