“Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.”

I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.

The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.

The evidence for evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy, but of course from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences.

Cost is always an object – the second law of thermodynamics sees to that.

In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure.

Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

The haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes.

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

True, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.

It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.

It’s a no win situation. It’s a mug’s game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity.

There’s no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) ‘Do you realize you’ve wasted your life?