Quote #16

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.

More from Sam Harris

  1. Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse.[2]
  2. 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 worl…
  3. Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction.[2]
  4. We are no more free to believe whatever we want about God than we are free to adopt unjustified beliefs about science or history, or free t…
  5. We must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it.[2]
  6. To believe that God exists is to believe that I stand in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for my…
  7. Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won't do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make specta…
  8. Beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potentia.[2]

All Sam Harris quotes