If you spend your life looking in vain for the Loch Ness Monster, stalking the lake with a camera, sounding it with sonar, and sending submersibles i… - Jerry Coyne

The rational scrutiny of religious faith involves asking believers only two questions: How do you know that? What makes you so sure that the claims of your faith are right and the claims of other faiths are wrong?

While our view of the world is filtered through our senses, evolution has, by and large, molded those senses to perceive the world accurately, for there’s a severe penalty to be paid for seeing things wrongly. That holds not only for the external environment, but also for the character of others. Without accurate perceptions, we couldn’t find food, avoid predators and other dangers, or form harmonious social groups. And following those perceptions is indeed the pursuit of “true beliefs”: beliefs based on evidence. Natural selection doesn’t mold true beliefs; it molds the sensory and neural apparatus that, in general, promotes the formation of true beliefs.

One child dead because of superstition is one too many.