A Quote by Sam Harris

To say that I would have done otherwise had I wanted to is simply to say that I would have lived in a different universe had I been in a different universe. — © Sam Harris
To say that I would have done otherwise had I wanted to is simply to say that I would have lived in a different universe had I been in a different universe.
So long as the Universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the Universe is really completely self-contained, it would have neither beginning or end, it would simply be. What place then for a creator?
A vast majority of the geographical area of the country would have been ignored during the campaign, and so the results would have been different. Who's to say Donald Trump would not have done better in California if he'd spent some time out there? And who's to say that Hillary Clinton would have done worse if she'd spent some time out there and actually had been seen by people in California like she was seen elsewhere as having questionable stamina.
I don’t have a definition of God, because I’ve never really understood that word. People have different understandings of it and it’s caused a great deal of conflict. If I had to say what would my definition of God be, if I were going to use that word, I would say that this universe has layers upon layers upon layers of compassion and wisdom beyond ours.
So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?
The universe and the Laws of Physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist: Either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn't combine into molecules, or the stars wouldn't form heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could develop, and so on...
If man had written the Gospels - say Shakespeare or Eugene O'Neill - the story of the gospel would have been drastically different. They would have placed the prince in halls and palaces and had him walking among the great. They would have had him surrounded by the important and significant of the time. Potentates and kings would have been His companions. But how sweetly common was the real God-man; though He had inhabited all eternity, He had come down and was subject to the rising and the setting of the sun.
If it had been any different, if I had been born just one minute later, or been in the wrong pace at the right time or vice versa, the life that I've lived and come to love would not exist. And that is a situation that I would not want to consider in the slightest.
Looking at the data and at my drug use and evaluating it carefully just let me see that I wasn't special, but my drug use challenged what I thought about cocaine. Because I would accept when I would say, "What happened to that person?" and someone would say, "They started using cocaine...they went downhill..." I would just accept that, even though I had a different experience and all these other people had a different experience. But I would throw that out because I thought my experience was an aberration.
One could say: "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary." The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE.
We in astrophysics we think of the universe all the time. So to us, Earth is just another planet. From a distance, it's a speck. And I'm convinced that if everyone had a cosmic perspective you wouldn't have legions of armies waging war on other people because someone would say, "Stop, look at the universe."
We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from it. One might even say we have been empowered by the universe to figure itself out - and we have only just begun.
We're creating a different universe with different rules and a different tone and different villains. We were very careful to honor the iconography of Spider-Man, but we wanted to tell it in a new and different way [in the film].
A universe with a creator would be a totally different kind of universe, scientifically speaking, than one without.
Appealing to his [Einstein's] way of expressing himself in theological terms, I said: If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.
It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.
Part of me thinks that I've been called by the universe, to get all sort of spiritual about it. Like, I've had no actual say in the matter. The universe found me.
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