"Faith is the permission the religious give themselves when reason fails." - Harris

Can someone explain how this quote by Neuroscience and atheist Sam Harris is wrong ?

 

Are you asking whether it is wrong? Do you think that it's wrong and don't know why? Or are you just reposting old quotes for no particular reason?

 

It is true. The answer of "it takes faith" is given any time that a questions is answered that does not have a logical answer.

 

They are not combined.

I know from science that 2 + 2 is 4 yet I still believe in God.

 

My thought here is that this can't be where Sam Harris left off, because faith is also used to override reason. Faith in the religious context is a euphemism for superstitious thinking taken to an extreme. Faith is what people use when their desires and hopes and dreams are not satisfied by reason and the reality staring them in the face.

 

but do you concede the former takes no faith but the latter does ?

 

Of course......If God came and sat on a mountain where everyone could see him then how would he know who the faithful is?

Listen...for us Christians we see God all the time working in our lives.....absolutely no doubt about it.......but we can't prove it to non-believers.

IF you need proof you have enough out there to believe, God does the rest.

 

Why would an omniscient god need to test the faithful to know who they are?

 

Permission for what?

 

Actually, if god came and sat on a mountain, he'd have a far better idea of who his acolytes were. those who dismissed him despite his presence on the mountain would be clearly 'rejecting' him. as it stands, it's all very bloody muddy.

I see candy-striped unicorns working in my life all the time, no doubt about it. but I can't prove it to non-believers. I say that only to demonstrate the 'cheapness' of such assertions. anyone can say it about any un-falsifiable entity. and since many do say it, about different entities, they must all be real. right?

I need proof that gods exist. Why don't you?

- - - Updated - - -

especially since he planned whether or not they'd BE faithful in the first place. the whole premise is absurdly silly.

- - - Updated - - -

permission to believe bizarre old myths, full of violence and human frailty.

 

Sam Harris is a hardboiled philosophical materialist, so all that he believes in, is based upon the assumption that matter is fundamental. Not that I disagree with all that Sam says, but he is blinded by the premise which dictates the way he thinks about things.

Also Sam is really big on something like transcendental meditation, and has followed a regimen since he was a young man. But all of meditation that uses a mantra, or watching ones breath, while it can help with stress, and energy, has no concern with the cessation of thought. And so he then claims that from meditation, there is never a sense of an OTHER, of something outside of the human ego, and therefore there is nothing religious that comes from meditation. And he is right, for he may see a slowing down of thought, but he has never been in a state where thought has gone completely silent. For if he had, he could not claim what he claims about meditation. Real meditation, the kind that affects ego consciousness has nothing to do with mantra, or anything else that is done as a practice. Hell, you could say coca cola long enough and feel something different in consciousness, but its not the cessation of thought. It's probably closer related to self hypnosis which has nothing to do with real meditation, just a parlor trick of the mind.

So when he claims that his meditation ,or anyones meditation doesn't bring a sense of the sacred, he is practicing something that has little value in changing one's life, although granted it may relieve stress, but you can do this for 60 years and still be ruled over by the human ego. And all of them are.

 

I assume the Big Bang Theory is probably off-topic.

 

the tv show?

 

are you able to appreciate that thinking another's form of meditation is 'inferior', or 'incorrect' is an ego trip?

 

Kaley Cuoco's tv show is never off topic

 

To me it's a different way to say that faith begins where reason ends.

 

She's an impressively unattractive woman

 

I agree with this. Atheist have a ton of faith too.

 

Faith is complete confidence or trust in someone or something.

The quote is wrong because faith is trust, nothing more.

 

Indeed, but their faith does not begin where reason ends.

 

...Without or despite the evidence.

 

Doesn't matter. You don't need evidence to trust something or someone.

 

Sure it does.
Most atheists believe in abiogenesis. It requires a great deal of faith to believe in that.

 

Yeah I get what you are saying. Faith is complete trust in something.

 

Not exactly we believe it happened since life is here and I'm typing this but science has yet to develop a good working hypothesis that will lead to a demonstrated theory so for now we say we don't know how it happened which is fine.

We have more demonstration it happened compared to Deists claims of the Supernatural we are here, angels and demons and unicorns and dragons are fictional until we can see evidence of them.