We are now in the 21st century: all books, including the Koran, should be fair game for flushing down the toilet without fear of violent reprisal. - Sam Harris

In the best case, notions of God’s love and grace provide some relief — but the central message of these faiths is that each of us is separate from, and in relationship to, a divine authority who will punish anyone who harbors the slightest doubt about His supremacy.

The sense that we are unified subjects is a fiction, produced by a multitude of separate processes and structures of which we are not aware and over which we exert no conscious control.

Whether it is useful to emphasize the punishment of certain criminals — rather than their containment or rehabilitation — is a question for social and psychological science. But it seems clear that a desire for retribution, arising from the idea that each person is the free author of his thoughts and actions, rests on a cognitive and emotional illusion — and perpetuates a moral one.