Blog - /Quotes

It is time we recognized that the only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is [our] willingness to have [our] beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us. Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. This spirit of mutual inquiry is the very antithesis of religious faith.

While we may never achieve closure in our view of the world, it seems extraordinarily likely that our descendants will look upon many of our beliefs as both impossibly quaint and suicidally stupid. Our primary task in our discourse with one another should be to identify those beliefs that seem least likely to survive another thousand years of human inquiry, or most likely to prevent it, and subject them to sustained criticism. [...]

— Sam Harris, The End of Faith

Well said, but it can be a thoroughly exhausting task even to provide evidence! Nonetheless, I find the introduction of said ideas to be a laudable reason to continue to exist.