I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of questioning one's beliefs and seeking evidence rather than blindly accepting them.
Sam Harris suggests that a society does not suffer from an excessive desire for evidence to support its core beliefs. Instead, it points to the potential harm of adhering to beliefs without scrutiny, implying that critical thinking and validation are essential for societal progress and well-being.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of science in education.
Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person's thoughts.
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.
The core of science is not a mathematical modeling--it is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrained by good evidence and good argument.
It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
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 concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.
My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them (the framers of the Constitution) to speak the language of 'We, the People,' instead of 'We, the States'?
If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to.
There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that that have nothing to lose. People who have stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.
Paris is the fountain-head of European civilisation, as Gomukhi is of the Ganga.
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