It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
Interpretation
The conflict between faith and reason leads to a situation where one cannot coexist with the other as both are vying for dominance.
Sam Harris suggests that there is an inherent conflict between faith and reason, indicating that the reliance on faith undermines the pursuit of rational understanding. This contention asserts that whenever one side gains influence or acceptance, the other diminishes, creating a zero-sum scenario where faith and reason cannot thrive together.
In practice
In a debate about the role of science in society, one might cite this quote to emphasize the importance of reason over blind faith.
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 also true that the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance that is very difficult to correct for.
The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
A strong human spirit with control over appetites of the flesh is master over emotions and passions and not a slave to them. That kind of freedom is as vital to the spirit as oxygen is to the body! Freedom from self-slavery is true liberation!
Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.
We were told that they wished merely to pass through our country. . . to seek for gold in the far west . . . Yet before the ashes of the council are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. . . . His presence here is . . . an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be allowed for corn?
As to gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or do not exist, or what they are like.
He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.
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