120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.

A true spiritual practitioner is someone who has discovered that it is possible to be at ease in the world for no reason, if only for a few moments at a time, and that such ease is synonymous with transcending the apparent boundaries of the self.

Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well--by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God.

Any conception of human well-being you could plausibly have, the Taliban patently fails to maximize it.

From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.

The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.