Sam Harris Quotes
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.
He was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church for figuring out that the earth revolved around the sun which was contrary to church teaching at the time.
One of the reasons that this quotation is so significant is that the Roman Catholic Church had been historically antithetical to science and scientists. It took hundreds of years before the church would admit that Galileo was right and the church wrong about the earth revolving around the sun. But Pope John Paul II, along with his other major accomplishments removed the traditional Catholic hostility in theology and tradition. He even acknowledged the validity of the Theory of Evolution and taught that there was nothing inherent in evolution that denied God or scripture.
This view of intelligence is what makes many deeply religious people suspicious of intellectuals. However, while higher intelligence and educational attainment are somewhat correlated with atheism, many of the most brilliant people are religious—for example, Albert Einstein. Atheists include many who are not well educated or brilliant.
Samuel Benjamin Harris is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, and podcast host. His work touches on a wide range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. Harris came to prominence for his criticism of religion, and Islam in particular, and is described as one of the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse", along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.
