It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can erode the prestige of that kind of thinking, we're not going to be able to undermine these divisions in our world.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the belief that religious organization in this life significantly impacts one's eternal fate.
Sam Harris highlights the ongoing influence of religious beliefs on societal divisions, arguing that the perception of religious organization as vital for eternal significance contributes to conflict and division in the world. He calls for challenging these beliefs to foster unity and understanding among different groups.
In practice
In a speech about unity, one might quote Harris to address the harmful effects of religious divisions in communities.
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.
It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.
The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
When you step further into the story you came to live, not only does the mythic territory open, but the deep self moves and the world of imagination and meaning comes towards you.
Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a clown.
If your busy with yourself now, you will be busy with yourself then. If you are busy with Allah now, you will be with Him then.
You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
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