There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on the subject of morality.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the influence of flawed philosophical ideas on scientific understanding of morality.
Sam Harris highlights the shortcomings in philosophical dogmas and double standards that have misled scientific inquiry into morality. He suggests that these flawed ideas create confusion, making it challenging for scientists to reach a clear understanding of moral issues, implying the necessity for a more coherent approach that combines philosophy and science.
In practice
In a lecture on ethics, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for clearer definitions and understanding in discussions of morality.
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.
Victory and defeat are each of the same price.
Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problem of wheat.
The thought that we're in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with a world to win.
There was only the broad square with the scattered dim moons of the street lamps and with the monumental stone arch which receded into the mist as though it would prop up the melancholy sky and protect beneath itself the faint lonely flame on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which looked like the last grave of mankind in the midst of night and loneliness.
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
A journey never ends. Only the travellers end.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.