entheogensmurf

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot
understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but
honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
-- Albert Einstein

From The End of Faith by Sam Harris----
If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way
that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of
our having dispensed with the dogma of faith. If our tribalism is ever
to give way to an extended moral identity, our religious beliefs can
no longer be sheltered from the tides of genuine inquiry and genuine
criticism. It is time we realized that to presume knowledge
where one has only pious hope is a species of evil. Wherever conviction
grows in inverse proportion to its justification, we have lost the
very basis of human cooperation. Where we have reasons for what
we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we
have lost both our connection to the world and to one another. People
who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the
margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we
should respect in a person's faith is his desire for a better life in this
world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits
him in the next.