Like heterosexuality, faith in immaterial realities is popularly considered essential to individual morality.

It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages.

What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression.

In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.

Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.

For the most part, executions happen in obscurity. If people did hear about executions, if they were publicized, even televised, I fear more would enjoy them than be repelled by them.

As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought.