Sam Harris

“Theology is ignorance with wings.”

“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 c...”

“Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.”

“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...”

“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.”

“What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.”

“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.”

“Let me assure you that my intent is not to offend or merely be provocative. I'm simply worried.”

“The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.”

“We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.”

“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 w...”

“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 ta...”

“Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.”

“120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.”

“All I’m arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive, where there’s no taboo against criticizing bad ideas, and where everyone who shows up, in...”

“Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of wishful thinking? Hope is easy; know...”

“What are the chances that we will one day discover that DNA has absolutely nothing to do with inheritance? They are effectively zero.”

“The answer to the question, 'What should I believe, and why should I believe it?' is generally a scientific one. Believe a proposition because it is well supported by theory and evidence; be...”

“Because most religions conceive of morality as a matter of being obedient to the word of God (generally for the sake of receiving a supernatural reward), their precepts often have nothing to...”

“Clearly, the chief enemy of open conversation is dogmatism in all its forms. Dogmatism is a well-recognized obstacle to scientific reasoning, and yet, because scientists have been reluctant...”