Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect.” “Yes, it is. But it is politically correct.” (The Rise of Political Correctness).

Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as sentimental wishful thinking. Would not that same uncluttered mind also see the attempts to reconcile science and religion by disparaging the reduction of the complex to the simple as attempts guided by muddle-headed sentiment and intellectually dishonest emotion?...Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny. Through fear of being shown to be vacuous, religion denies the awesome power of human comprehension. It seeks to thwart, by encouraging awe in things unseen, the disclosure of the emptiness of faith. Religion, in contrast to science, deploys the repugnant view that the world is too big for our understanding. Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great questions of being to rational discussion, to discussion with the prospect of resolution and elucidation. Science, above all, respects the power of the human intellect. Science is the apotheosis of the intellect and the consummation of the Renaissance. Science respects more deeply the potential of humanity than religion ever can.

Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot therefore be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in errors.

I learned how to argue. They called it ‘Debate’. I learned how to worship. I learned how to become an eager worker and a passive consumer.But I didn’t learn anything practical, like how to purify water, build a home, start a fire, grow food, or survive without the help of corporations.

I learned how to argue. They called it ‘Debate’. I learned how to worship. I learned how to become an eager worker and a passive consumer.But I didn’t learn anything practical, like how to purify water, build a home, start a fire, grow food, or survive without the help of corporations.

A person who says “every person has a right to a decent education” may not actually mean “people should be robbed to support bad schools” or “all children should be forced into a prison-like building for 12 years.

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.

Most people do not have a problem with you thinking for yourself, as long as your conclusions are the same as or at least compatible with their beliefs.

The goal of intellectual life should be to see and understand what is true, not merely to adhere to a prevailing orthodoxy.

I always hear parents talking about how outraged they are because their kid saw a boob or something like that on TV. I never hear anyone say that they're outraged because a cartoon character in a commercial that aired during a children's television program told them it was healthy to eat a bowl of chocolate and marshmallows for breakfast. If I had kids, I'd be outraged about that.