Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes, we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

There are very interesting controversies within evolution; however, whether evolution occurs is not one of them. It definitely does.

Theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Issac should not be taken as literal fact. And the appropriate response is twofold: first, many, many people even to this day, do take the whole of their Scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Second, if not of literal fact, how should we take the story? As an alagory? Then an alagory for what? Surely, nothing praiseworthy. As a moral lesson? But what kind of morals could one derive from this appalling story?

Blasphemy is a Victimless Crime.

Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [...] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis.

I'm easily persuaded that a really good novelist who gets inside somebody else's head could be serving a valuable purpose. I enjoy satirical novels that take a wry, humorous, ironic look at modern life.

Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry begins, and astrology ends and astronomy begins.