We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.

It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.

You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.

We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).

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.

What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity?