What Is the Proximate Cause of the 30 Years War?

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I don't mean to be fatalistic in the sense of saying human beings are groupish and therefore there's always going to be the same amount of conflict in every age. But I think that in many ways those religious conflicts were the proximate cause of the 30 years war of all of those kinds of things. It's hard to have any real handle on whether the world really would have been better if those religions, Christianity and Islam and this context in particular, had not arisen. And it's really hard to know what those would have been like and how much conflict they would have caused.

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, author, and the host of the Making Sense podcast. He rose to prominence as a member of the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism, which also included Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Sam Harris discuss the intellectual case for atheism; why both left and right have become more extreme in recent years; and the prospects of a more rational politics in the near future.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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