Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident
Interpretation
Faith is often mistaken for certainty, but true understanding comes through evidence and reason, not chance.
In this quote, Sam Harris suggests that faith is not a reliable means of arriving at truth or correctness. Rather, he argues that any correct belief held by faith would be purely accidental, emphasizing the importance of rationality and empirical evidence over unsubstantiated belief. This perspective invites deeper reflection on the nature of belief systems and encourages a more skeptical approach to understanding the world.
In practice
In a debate about religious beliefs, one might use this quote to argue for the necessity of evidence-based reasoning.
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.
The more you fulfill yourself, the less you will seek God.
How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.
I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people, oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful. That is the idea that has moved me, and that alone.
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
The worse a person is the less he feels it.
When he sees little kids sitting in the backseat of cars, in those little car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver's seat.
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