It is rational, even, for Muslim women to encourage the suicides of their children, as long as they are fighting for the cause of God. Devout Muslims… - Sam Harris

I would challenge anyone here to think of a questions upon which we once had a scientific answer, however inadequate, but for which now the best answer is a religious one.

We hear everywhere about this false trade-off between freedom of speech and freedom of religion, as though there were some kind of balance to be struck here. There is no balance to be struck. Freedom of speech never infringes on freedom of religion. There is nothing I can say in this podcast about religion in general, or about Islam in particular, that would infringe upon someone else's freedom to practice his or her religion. If your freedom of religion entails that you force those who do not share it to conform to it, well that's not freedom of religion. We have a word for that – that's theocracy. This respect that we are all urged to show for "religious sensitivity" is actually a demand that the blasphemy laws of Islam be followed by non-muslims.

Criticizing a person’s ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not.