Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us. Add weapons of mass destruction to this diabolical clockwork, and you have . . . a recipe for the fall of civilization.

Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.

The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.

Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith.

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

Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am extremely critical of all religious faiths.