The core of science is not a mathematical modeling — it is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrai… - Sam Harris

Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction.

Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe. The methodology isn't perfect, and the history of science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected by-what, religion? No, by good science.

Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one.