We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas

A true spiritual practitioner is someone who has discovered that it is possible to be at ease in the world for no reason, if only for a few moments at a time, and that such ease is synonymous with transcending the apparent boundaries of the self.

Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.

Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.

All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the earth.

Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches.

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.