It is time we realize that belief is not a private matter. As a man believes, so he will act. Believe that you are a member of a chosen people, awash in the salacious exports of an evil culture that is turning your children away from God, believe that you will be rewarded with an eternity of unimaginable delights by dealing death to these infidels—and flying a plane into a building is only a matter of being asked to do it.

As a man believes, so he will act.

Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

If Jesus does come down out of the clouds like a superhero, Christianity will stand revealed as a science . That will be the science of Christianity.

It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.

Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.

The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism.