We have Christians against Muslims against Jews, and no matter how liberal your theology, merely identifying yourself as a Christian or a Jew lends tacit validity to this status quo. People have morally identified with a subset of humanity rather than with humanity as a whole.
Interpretation
The quote critiques how religious identities can lead to division among people rather than unity.
Sam Harris highlights the problematic nature of religious affiliations, suggesting that identifying with specific religious groups creates divisions among humanity. He argues that such identifications reinforce the status quo of conflict and prevent people from viewing each other as part of a larger human community.
In practice
In a discussion about global conflicts, one might quote this to emphasize the need for unity beyond religious differences.
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.
Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion.
People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.
Each one of us is a custodian of India's well-being and of the legacy that we will pass on to coming generations.
The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don’t ever ask for the true story.
The mill wheel turns, it turns forever, though what is uppermost remains not so.
Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
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