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.
This whole universe is but a drop _x000D_ of His Beauty!
Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror.
To look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your own soul - hope you like what you see.
Killing a man in defense of an idea is not defending an idea; it is killing a man.
He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.
The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.
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