This is how you play tennis without the net

Spiritual life can certainly follow the pattern one sees in the fake martial arts, with most teachers making nebulous and magical claims that never get tested, while their students derange themselves with weird ideas, empty rituals, and other affectations.

It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed (Aquinas).

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

Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places. Principle #2: Do not defend your property. Principle #3: Respond immediately and escape.

The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago-and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since-is no one to consult on questions of ethics.

To not believe in God is to know that it falls to us to make the world a better place.