Sam Harris Quotes

I think that the issues we have with science these days are not restricted to what's happening with respect to religion. There are a lot of very religious scientists around.

There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion.

You ask people, do you pray to [a person or] God. If you say yes to that, you're religious by, presumably, anybody's standards of your conduct. And it's the yes to that question that applies to 40% of scientists. So, there're plenty of atheists who are scientists or not scientists. There maybe a conflict but many people in this country coexist in both worlds.

I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.

You could have ten scientists in this room. You could ask them all: 'Who's religious?' About three to four will put their hands up.

The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism.

I actually do not believe that there are any collisions between what I believe as a Christian, and what I know and have learned about as a scientist. I think there's a broad perception that that's the case, and that's what scares many scientists away from a serious consideration of faith.

Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.

If any expert or scientist reaches a conclusion or espouses a view that departs from the ideologue’s world view, it is the expert that he examines carefully and not his ideology.

I have a friend — or had a friend, now dead — Abdus Salam, a very devout Muslim, who was trying to bring science into the universities in the Gulf states and he told me that he had a terrible time because, although they were very receptive to technology, they felt that science would be a corrosive to religious belief, and they were worried about it… and damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive of religious belief, and it’s a good thing too.

It is at least scientifically respectable to postulate that at the centre of a black hole the laws of nature no longer apply. Since most scientists are just a bit religious and most religious are seldom wholly unscientific we find humanity in a comical position. His scientific intellect believes in the possibility of miracles inside a black hole while his religious intellect believes in them outside it.

[The Royal Society] is quite simply the voice of science in Britain. It is intellectually rigorous, not afraid to be outspoken on controversial issues such as climate change, but it is not aggressively secular either, insisting on a single view of the world. In fact, there are plenty of eminent scientists - Robert Winston, for instance - who are also men of faith.

Religion is still parasitic in the interstices of our knowledge which have not yet been filled. Like bed-bugs in the cracks of walls and furniture, miracles lurk in the lacunae of science. The scientist plasters up these cracks in our knowledge; the more militant Rationalist swats the bugs in the open. Both have their proper sphere and they should realize that they are allies.

Great scientific minds, from Claudius Ptolemy of the second century to Isaac Newton of the seventeenth, invested their formidable intellects in attempts to deduce the nature of the universe from the statements and philosophies contained in religious writings.... Had any of these efforts worked, science and religion today might be one and the same. But they are not.

One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

This doesn't mean that they commit themselves to the view that this is all there is. Many scientists (including me) think that this is the case, but other scientists are religious, and believe that what is observed in nature is at least in part a result of God's will.

My religious background is that my mother is a Christian Dior Scientist.

I don't understand why so many people who are sophisticated in science go on believing in God. I wish I did.

Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.

Most scientists I know don't care enough about religion even to call themselves atheists.

Faith in order, which is the basis of science, cannot reasonably be separated from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion.

Our religion will not clash with nor contradict the facts of science in any particular.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.

True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.

I happen to be a scientist. My background is in nuclear physics. I was a nuclear engineer. But I don't see any incompatibility at all with my religious faith and God the creator of everything and the incompatibility between when the earth was created as specified in the Bible. I don't see any incompatibility there because those that were interpreting God's overall message didn't know anything about modern-day science.