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Sam Harris Quotes about Religion

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The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.

The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.

Sam Harris
Believe, People, Religion

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

Sam Harris
Beer, Years, Religion
Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.17, W. W. Norton & Company

This is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on their own.

Sam Harris
Believe, People, Religion

The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.

Sam Harris
Atheist, Talking, Religion
"Letter to a Christian Nation". Book by Sam Harris, reason.com. January 8, 2008.

Religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty . . . exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the . . . false to achieve primacy over the facts.

Sam Harris
Religious, Religion, Facts

That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.

Sam Harris
Past, Civilization, Religion
Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we're told that? God is mysterious.

Sam Harris
People, Suffering, Religion

To not believe in God is to know that it falls to us to make the world a better place.

Sam Harris
Fall, Believe, Religion

It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.

Sam Harris
Book, Religion, Ordinary
Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests.

Sam Harris
Men, Religion, Bishops
Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.84, W. W. Norton & Company

Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches.

Sam Harris
Religion, Witch, Murder
Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed (Aquinas).

Sam Harris
Religion, Church, Augustine
"Letter to a Christian Nation". Book by Sam Harris, 2006.

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity?

Sam Harris
Humanity, Religion, Important

And while Protestant reformers broke with Rome on a variety of counts, their treatment of their fellow human beings was no less disgraceful. Public executions were more popular than ever: heretics were still reduced to ash, scholars were tortured and killed for impertinent displays of reason, and fornicators were murdered without a qualm.

Sam Harris
Rome, Religion, Ashes
Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.86, W. W. Norton & Company

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