It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can erode the prestige of that kind of thinking, we're not going to be able to undermine these divisions in our world.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the belief that religious organization in this life significantly impacts one's eternal fate.
Sam Harris highlights the ongoing influence of religious beliefs on societal divisions, arguing that the perception of religious organization as vital for eternal significance contributes to conflict and division in the world. He calls for challenging these beliefs to foster unity and understanding among different groups.
In practice
In a speech about unity, one might quote Harris to address the harmful effects of religious divisions in communities.
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.
In Tetrad form, the artifact is seen to be not neutral or passive, bur an active logos or utterance of the human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground.
White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress.
Realization consists of getting rid of the false idea that one is not realized.
What sort of world might it have been if Eve had refused the servants offer and had said to him instead, βlet me not be like God. Let me be what I was made to be - let me be a woman'?
A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
I am in no way different from anyone else, that my predicament, my sense of aloneness or isolation may be precisely what unites me with everyone.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.