Living with uncertainty is hard for many people, and is one of the reasons why people prefer religious truths that are presented as absolute. - Jerry Coyne

The GOP, with 100+ of its Congresspeople joining the crazy Texas lawsuit trying to overturn the election, has become a swarming beehive of truthers, conspiracy theorists, and, of course, gun nuts.

“Safety” and “harm” have become the new buzzwords to use when somebody does something you don’t like.

I could go on, but the point is clear: religions make explicit claims about reality—about what exists and happens in the universe. These claims involve the existence of gods, the number of such gods (polytheism or monotheism), their character and behavior (usually loving and beneficent, but, in the case of Hindu and ancient Greek gods, sometimes mischievous or malevolent), how they interact with the world, whether or not there are souls or life after death, and, above all, how the deities wish us to behave—their moral code.
These are empirical claims, and although some may be hard to test, they must, like all claims about reality, be defended with a combination of evidence and reason. If we find no credible evidence, no good reasons to believe, then those claims should be disregarded, just as most of us ignore claims about ESP, astrology, and alien abduction. After all, beliefs important enough to affect you for eternity surely deserve the closest scrutiny.