About 120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer. If our polls are to be trusted, nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent deity.

We are free to burn the Qur’an or any other book, and to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. Let no one forget it.

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence.

The most transformative experiences people have - bliss, devotion, self transcendence - are currently anchored to the worst parts of culture and to ways of thinking that merely amplify superstition, self-deception, and conflict.

People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.

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