Sam Harris on Religion and societal harm
Harris argues that religious faith is uniquely dangerous because it allows otherwise normal people to believe by the billions what only lunatics could believe on their own.
Harris's The End of Faith (2004) was written in the wake of September 11th and argues that religious faith — not just extremism, but mainstream faith — is one of the greatest threats to human civilisation. His central thesis is that faith, as a principle of epistemology, is inherently dangerous because it exempts beliefs from the scrutiny that every other domain of human discourse requires.
He draws a direct line from moderate religious belief to extremist violence: the moderate believer who teaches that faith is a virtue and that certain books are sacred provides the cultural context in which the extremist can flourish. Without the widespread acceptance of faith as legitimate, the suicide bomber's worldview would be unintelligible rather than merely extreme.
Harris is particularly concerned about the intersection of religious belief with geopolitics and weapons of mass destruction. A world in which millions of people believe they will be rewarded in paradise for dying in God's cause, and in which nuclear weapons are increasingly available, is, he argues, a world heading toward catastrophe.
“Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.”
“Religious faith allows otherwise normal people to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.”