That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.

Our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-theother-dog's-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent's arguments to change the opponent's mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog's tail to wag by moving it with your hand will make the dog happy.

The moral landscape is the framework I use for thinking about questions of morality and human values in universal terms.

The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost.

We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.

Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.

There's no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity. This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does.