The Iranian people were converted to Islam not very much longer after the conquest of the Arab world by Islam, but they refused to adopt the Arabic language, and it's a great point of pride to them that Persian culture and the Persian language and Persian literature survived the conversion to Islam. And the conversion to Islam also was for most of them not the Sunni majority form, but the Shia one. So there's a great discrepancy between Iranian society and many other of what we think of as Arab Muslim States and systems.

We have millions and millions of North Korean children totally stunted in mind and body and will have to be dealt with at some point, who have been raised to believe that they live in a regime that is run by a god.

I'm not that keen on the idea of being unconscious.

I personally want to "do" death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.

I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.

[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.

Religion gets its morality from us. We don't get our morality from religion.