We Know Enough At This

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 That The Respect We Accord Religious Faith.

The Problem With Religion, Because It's Been Sheltered From Criticism, Is That It Allows People To Believe En Masse What Only Idiots Or Lunatics Could Believe In Isolation.

Strange Bonds Of Trust And Self-deception Tend To Grow Between Journalists And Their Subjects.

I Think There Are Universal Principles That We Should Want To Understand, But That Are Not Necessarily Good For Us. We Could Recognise Universal Propensities Which Current Cultures Can't Fully Eradicate, Which We Would Want To Eradicate If We Could. Let's Say, A Tendency For Tribal Violence. Or Racism.

False Encouragement Is A Kind Of Theft: It Steals Time, Energy, And Motivation A Person Could Put Toward Some Other Purpose.