the Vatican is an organization that excommunicates women for attempting to become priests13 but does not excommunicate male priests for raping childr… - Sam Harris

Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn’t choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime — by your genes, your physical development since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from?

Well, that’s a very interesting question,” he said — to which he had no interesting or even sane answer. He simply conceded that if the Messiah came back and reconvened the Sanhedrin, well, then, yes — though mere mortals like ourselves might not see the wisdom of it — homosexuals, adulteresses, witches, and Sabbath breakers would be killed, and every other barbaric prescription found in the Old Testament would apply. As I was contemplating where on his person I should aim my vomit, he managed this final defense of his religion: “You just don’t understand what an obscenity — what a sacrilege — these things would represent in the presence of the Messiah

You can’t get enough of your favorite meal until, in the next moment, you find you are so stuffed as to nearly require the attention of a surgeon — and yet, by some quirk of physics, you still have room for dessert.