The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception casts us onto some of the steepest ethical terra… - Sam Harris

It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

The crime of host desecration was punished throughout Europe for centuries.

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.