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"What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?"
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Exlpore more Determinism quotes
"I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day."
"Believe it or not, the notions of free will and destiny are not mutually exclusive.Predestination is the universal framework of limits (based on natural physical laws) placed upon us.Free will is our infinite ability to make choices within that framework.Because the universal scale is so great-and most of it constitutes an undiscovered frontier-our choices are only limited by our knowledge, our abilities, and our imagination.To put it simply, the world is such a huge playground sandbox that we will never run out of sand or reach the faraway safety fence of destiny.So go out there and play!"
"The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine."
"The present is the necessary product of all the past the necessary cause of all the future."
"The only thing God is afraid of is a strong-willed human!"
"...if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices - that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula - then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of that sort; for what is a man without desires, without freewill and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?"
"What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?"
Explore more quotes by Sam Harris
"We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation, he is unworthy even of man."
"When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do."
"There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion-a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in every moment. It is a mode of cognition that is, above all, undistracted, accepting, and (ultimately) nonconceptual. Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. Mindfulness is a vivid awareness of whatever is appearing in one's mind or body-thoughts, sensations, moods-without grasping at the pleasant or recoiling from the unpleasant."
"Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their co-religionists. Otherwise, we will have to win some very terrible wars in the future."
"120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer."
"Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected. But the one lied to almost never shares this view. The moment we consider our dishonesty from the point of view of those we lie to, we recognize that we would feel betrayed if the roles were reversed."
"The realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts, but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening. If you can do that, you have already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life."
"The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an argument for the truth of any religious doctrine. It's not an argument that it's reasonable to believe that Jesus really was born of a virgin or that the Bible is the perfect word of the creator of the universe."
"It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions."
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