Sam Harris
Sam Harris
Samuel Benjamin "Sam" Harrisis an American author, philosopher, and neuroscientist. He is the co-founder and chief executive of Project Reason, a non-profit organization that promotes science and secularism, and host of the podcast Waking Up with Sam Harris. His book The End of Faith, a critique of organized religion, appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks and also won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction in 2005. Letter to a Christian Nationwas a response...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionStage Actor
Date of Birth4 June 1961
CountryUnited States of America
You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books.
Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live.
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.
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.
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.
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 Every scientific domain -- from cosmology to psychology to economics -- has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture.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.
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.
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.
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.
It was very violent, ... We had gunfire. They shot at our trucks, they shot at the captain of police, ran barricades.
It's going to be great for the entire downtown.
It's going to be a car show for people who don't ordinarily go to car shows. There will be lots of things for mom and the kids to do.
It should create lots more walk-around traffic. You can walk to the movies, you can walk to Kaiser Grill or the Chop House or my place, you can walk to the Spa casino. There's just a lot more out here than there used to be.