Although many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power. Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs, and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them.

And yet, the fact that we are no longer killing people for heresy in the West suggests that bad ideas, however sacred, cannot survive in the company of good ones forever.

Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed.

It is time we realized that we need not be unreasonable to suffuse our lives with love, compassion, ecstacy, and awe; nor must we renounce all forms of spirituality or mysticism to be on good terms with reason.

It is important to realize that a healthy, scientific skepticism is compatible with a fundamental openness of mind.

Jesus Christ -- who as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens -- can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite Burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a lone subscriber to these beliefs would be considered mad? Rather, is there any doubt that he would be mad? The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?

Nor can I say things like "I believe in God because it makes me feel good." The fact that I would feel good if there were a God does not give me the slightest reason to believe that one exists. This is easily seen when we swap the existence of God for some other consoling proposition. Let's say that I want to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in my yard that is the size of a refrigerator. It is true that it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. But do I have any reason to believe that there is actually a diamond in my yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered? No.

It is often argued that religious beliefs are somehow distinct from other claims to knowledge about the world. There is no doubt that we treat them differently -- particularly in the degree to which we demand, in ordinary discourse, that people justify their beliefs -- but that does not indicate that religious beliefs are special in any important sense.

Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.

"Allvaret i judarnas lidande genom tiderna, som kulminerade i Förintelsen

gör det nästan omöjligt att underhålla antydan om att judar [själva]
skulle ha fört sina bekymmer på sig.
Detta är dock, i en ganska snäv bemärkelse, sanningen."
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Sitatet skriver seg ikke fra Hitlers dager, og ikke fra noe Ny-Nazi miljø.

Ordene er skrevet av Sam Harris, en 'forstandens stormester' ifølge enkelte.
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Resonnementet er tatt under mer inngående tolkning her, >

hvor det også vurderes hva innvirkning det skulle kunne ha
på jødeutryddelsen, ifall Hitler hadde vært buddhist.