Islam, At The Moment, Is The Motherlode

It Is Time That We Admitted That Faith Is Nothing More Than The License Religious People Give One Another To Keep Believing When Reasons Fail.

It Is Time That Scientists And Other Public Intellectuals Observed That The Contest Between Faith And Reason Is Zero-sum.

Our World Is Fast Succumbing To The Activities Of Men And Women Who Would Stake The Future Of Our Species On Beliefs That Should Not Survive An Elementary School Education.

It Is Terrible That We All Die And Lose Everything We Love; It Is Doubly Terrible That So Many Human Beings Suffer Needlessly While Alive. That So Much Of This Suffering Can Be Directly Attributed To Religion—to Religious Hatreds, Religious Wars, Religious Delusions And Religious Diversions Of Scarce Resources—is What Makes Atheism A Moral And Intellectual Necessity.

The Idea, Therefore, That Religious Faith Is Somehow A Sacred Human Convention—distinguished, As It Is, Both By The Extravagance Of Its Claims And By The Paucity Of Its Evidence—is Really Too Great A Monstrosity To Be Appreciated In All Its Glory. Religious Faith Represents So Uncompromising A Misuse Of The Power Of Our Minds That It Forms A Kind Of Perverse, Cultural Singularity—a Vanishing Point Beyond Which Rational Discourse Proves Impossible.