A Quote by Sam Harris
It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know.
Related Quotes
... moral certainty is certainty which is sufficient to regulate our behaviour, or which measures up to the certainty we have on matters relating to the conduct of life which we never normally doubt, though we know that it is possible, absolutely speaking, that they may be false.
The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.
Religion seems to have always offered us that false duality ... the silences of infinite space or the cozy comfort of inner certainty.
People are saying that they want be convinced [about global warming], perfectly. They want to know the climate science projections with 100 per cent certainty. Well, we know a great deal and even with that there is still uncertainty. But the trend line is very clear. We never have 100 per cent certainty. We never have it. If you wait till you have 100 per cent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield. That's something we know. You have to act with incomplete information. You have to act based on the trend line.
There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man.
Life exists without rules; games cannot exist without rules. So real religion is always without rules; only false religion has rules, because false religion is a game.
To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
In any discussion of religion and personality integration the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not.
Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honor, false glory, and false religion?
That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!
We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.
A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house!
I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty.
As far as the matters of religion are concerned we know for sure that only Islam is the true religion in the eyes of God. In 3:85 it is mentioned that God will never accept any religion other than Islam. As far as the building of churches or temples is concerned, how can we allow this when their religion is wrong? And when worship is also wrong? Thus we will surely not allow such wrong things in our country.
Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.
People have a need for certainty - and that need for certainty is in every human being, certainty that you can avoid pain, certainty that you can at least be comfortable. It's a survival instinct.
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