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

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.

There's a way in which all of these grazers at the spirituality buffet are performing a service, because you could argue that grazing leads to a kind of tolerance. People who incorporate teachings from a lot of different traditions into their own belief systems are going to be more tolerant than people who confine themselves within the strict boundaries of one particular religion. Does it contribute to our confusion? I don't know if it contributes to confusion so much as it is evidence of a certain kind of silliness and shallowness.

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.

Spirituality authors, who are generally forgiving of most human foibles ... take a hard line on intellectualism.... Skepticism they view with contempt, as the refuge of the unenlightened.

In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. 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.