"Those with power to elect our president and congressmen— and many who themselves get elected— believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the earth, and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God.

Among developed nations, America stands alone in these convictions. Our country now appears, as at no other time in history, like a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant. Anyone who cares about the fate of civilization would do well to recognize that the combination of great power and great stupidity is simply terrifying, even to one's friends.

The truth, however, is that many of us may not care about the fate of civilization. Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here on earth. It is therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves— socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency." (xi-xii)

"Questions of morality are questions about happiness and suffering. This is why you and I do not have moral obligations toward rocks. To the degree that our actions can affect the experience of other creatures positively or negatively, questions of morality apply." (8)

"People have been cherry-picking the Bible for millennia to justify their every impulse, moral and otherwise. This does not mean, however, that accepting the Bible to be the word of God is the best way to discover that abducting and enslaving millions of innocent men, women, and children is morally wrong. It clearly isn't, given what the Bible actually says on the subject. The fact that some abolitionists used parts of scripture to repudiate other parts does not indicate that the Bible is a good guide to morality. Nor does it suggest that human beings should need to consult a book in order to resolve moral questions of this sort. The moment a person recognizes that slaves are human beings like himself, enjoying the same capacity for suffering and happiness, he will understand that it is patently evil to own them and treat them like farm equipment, It is remarkably easy for a person to arrive at this epiphany— and yet, it had to be spread at the point of a bayonet throughout the Confederate South, among the most pious Christians this country has ever known." (18-19)

"One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not— that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral— that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more 'moral' energy opposing abortion that fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year.

You believe your religious concerns about sex, in all their tiresome intensity, have something to do with morality. And yet, your efforts to constrain the sexual behavior of consenting adults— and even to discourage your own sons and daughters from having premarital sex— are almost never geared toward the relief of human suffering. In fact, relieving suffering seems to rank rather low on your list of priorities. Your principal concern appears to be that the creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of yours contributes daily to the surplus of human misery." (25-26)

"The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a child with a spinal cord injury has had his moral sense blinded by religious metaphysics. The link between religion and 'morality'— so regularly proclaimed and so seldom demonstrated— is fully belied here, as it is wherever religious dogma supersedes moral reasoning and genuine compassion." (32)

"If you are right to believe that religious faith offers the only real basis for morality, then atheists should be less moral than believers. In fact, they should be utterly immoral. Are they? Do members of atheist organizations in the United States commit more crimes? Do the members of the National Academy of Sciences, 93 percent of whom do not accept the idea of God, lie and cheat and steal with abandon? We can be reasonably confident that these groups are  at least as well behaved as the general population. And yet, atheists are the most reviled minority in the United States. Polls indicate that being and atheist is a perfect impediment to running for high office in our country (while being black, Muslim, or homosexual is not)." (38-39)

"It is time that Christians like yourself stop pretending a rational rejection of your faith entails the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. One need not accept anything on insufficient evidence to find the idea of virgin birth of Jesus to be a preposterous idea. The problem with religion— as with Nazism, Stalinism, or any other totalitarian mythology— is the problem of dogma itself. I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became to desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs." (42-43)

"... the United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious adherence; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality. The same comparison hold true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious literalism, are especially plagued by the above indicators of social dysfunction, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms.

While political party affiliation in the United States is not a perfect indicator of religiosity, it is no secret that the 'red states' are primarily red because of the overwhelming political influence of conservative Christians. If there were a strong correlation between Christian conservatism and societal health, we might expect to see some sign of it in red-state America. We don't. Of the twenty-five cities with the lowest rates of violent crime, 62 percent ate in 'blue' states and 38 percent are in 'red' states. Of the twenty-five most dangerous cities, 76 percent are in red states." (44-45)

"Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, however, these statistics prove that atheism is compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society; they also prove, conclusively, that widespread belief in God does not ensure a society's health.

Countries with high levels of atheism are also the most charitable in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote to social welfare programs and the percentage they give in aid to the developing world. The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is belied by other indices of social equality. Consider the ratio of salaries paid to top-tier CEOs those paid to those same firms' average employees: in Britain it is 24:1; in France 15:1; in Sweden 13:1; in the United States, where 80 percent of the population expects to be called before God on Judgement Day, it is 475:1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to pass through the eye of a needle." (45-46)

"The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, 'atheism' is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a 'non-astrologer' or a 'non-alchemist'. We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest farmers ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make the the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. An atheist is simply a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87 percent of the population) claiming to 'never doubt the existence of God' should be obliged to present evidence for his existence— and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. An atheist is a person who believes the murder of a single little girl— even once in a million years— casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God." (51-52)

"It is time we recognized the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. It is time we acknowledged how disgraceful it is for the survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Once you stop swaddling the reality of the world's suffering in religious fantasies, you will feel in your bones just how precious life is— and indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all." (53-54)

"Can you prove that Zeus does not exist? Of course not. And yet, just imagine if we lived in a society where people spent billions of dollars of their personal income each year propitiating the gods of Mount Olympus, where the government spent billions more in tax dollars to support institutions devoted to these gods, where untold billions more in tax subsidies were given to pagan temples, where elected officials did their best to impede medical research out of deference to The Iliad and The Odyssey, and where every debate about public policy was subverted to the whims of ancient authors who wrote well, but didn't know enough about the nature of reality to keep their excrement out of their food. This would be a horrific misappropriation of  our material, moral, and intellectual resources. And yet that is exactly the society we are living in. This is the woefully irrational world that you and your fellow Christians are working so tirelessly to create.

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 taboos, and religious diversions of scarce resources— is what makes the the honest criticisms of religious faith a moral and intellectual necessity. Unfortunately, expressing such criticism places the nonbeliever at the margins of society. By merely being in touch with reality, he appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors." (56-57)

"The truth, however, is that the conflict between religion and science is unavoidable. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science. Our religions do not simply talk about 'a purpose for human existence'. Like science, every religion makes specific claims about the way the world is. These claims purport to be about facts— the creator of the universe can hear (and will occasionally answer) your prayers; the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception; if you do not believe the right things about God, you will suffer terribly after death. Such claims are intrinsically in conflict with the claims of science, because they are claims made on terrible evidence." (63-64)

"In the broadest sense, 'science' (from the Latin scire, 'to know') represents our best efforts to know what is true about our world. We need not distinguish between 'hard' and 'soft' science here, or between science and branch of the humanities like history. It is a historical fact, for instance, that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Consequently, this fact forms part of the worldview of scientific rationality. Given the evidence that attests to this fact, anyone believing that it happened on another date, or that the Egyptians really dropped those bombs, has a lot of explaining to do. The core of science is not controlled experiment or mathematical modeling, it is intellectual honesty. It is time we acknowledged this as a basic feature of human discourse: when considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives that where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies." (64-65)

"All complex life on Earth has developed from simpler life forms over billions of years. This is a fact that no longer admits of intelligent dispute. If you doubt that human beings evolved from prior species, you may as well doubt  that the sun is a star. Granted, the sun doesn't seem like an ordinary star, but we know that it is a star that just happens to be relatively close to the earth. Imagine your potential for embarrassment if your religious faith rested on the presumption that the sun was not a atar at all. Imagine millions of Christians in the United States spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to battle the godless astronomers and astrophysicists on this point. Imagine them working passionately to get their founded notions about the sun taught in our nation's schools. This is exactly the situation you are now in with respect to evolution.

Christians who doubt the truth of evolution are apt to say things like 'Evolution is just a theory, not a fact'. Such statements betray a serious misunderstanding of the way the term 'theory' is used in scientific discourse. In science, facts must be explained with reference to other facts. These larger explanatory models are 'theories'. Theories make predictions and can, in principle, be tested. The phrase 'the theory of evolution' does not in the least suggest that evolution is not a fact. One can speak about 'the germ theory of disease' or ' the theory of gravitation' without casting doubt upon disease or gravity as facts of nature." (68-69)

"In 2005, a survey was conducted in thirty-four countries measuring the percentage of adults who accept evolution. The United States ranked thirty-third, just above Turkey. Meanwhile, high school students in the United States test below those of every European and Asian nation in their understanding of science and math. These data is unequivocal: we are building a civilization of ignorance." (70)

"Any intellectually honest person will admit that he does not know why the universe exists. Scientists, of course, readily admit their ignorance on this point. Religious believers do not. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be appreciated in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists and other nonbelievers for their intellectual arrogance. There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell.... An average Christian, in an average church, listening to an average Sunday sermon had achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse— and there have been some extraordinarily arrogant scientists." (74-75)

"One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns— about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering— in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. We desperately need a public discourse that encourages critical thinking and intellectual honesty. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith." (87)

"Clearly, it is time we learned to meet our emotional needs without embracing the preposterous. We must find ways to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity— birth, marriage, death— without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality. Only then will the practice of raising our children to believe that they are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish be widely recognized as the ludicrous obscenity that it is. And only then will we stand a chance of healing  the deepest and most dangerous fractures in our world." (88)

"This letter is the product of failure— the failure of the many brilliant attacks upon religion that preceded it, the failure of our schools to announce the death of God in a way that each generation can understand, the failure of the media to criticize the abject religious certainties of our public figures—  failures great and small that have kept almost every society on this earth muddling over God and despising those who muddle differently." (91)

 "Hoping to reconcile their faith with our growing scientific understanding of the world, many believers have taken refuge in Stephen J. Gould's quisling formulation of 'nonoverlapping magisteria'— the idea that science and religion, properly construed, cannot be in conflict, because they represent different domains of expertise. Let's see how this works: while science is the best authority on the workings of physical universe, religion is the best authority on... what exactly? The non-physical universe? Probably not. What about meaning, values, ethics, and the good life? Unfortunately, most people— even most scientists and secularists— have ceded these essential components of human happiness to the care of theologians and religious apologists without argument. This has kept religion in good standing while its authority has been battered and nullified on every other front." (108)

"Is there a conflict between justified and unjustified belief? Of course, and it is zero-sum. Given that faith is generally nothing more than the permission religious people give one another to believe things strongly without evidence, a conflict between science and religion is unavoidable." (110)