The End of Faith

People act on faith based on the ideas they hold to be true.

Words are meaningless until people imbue them with faith. Imagine how differently you would behave if you sincerely believed the words, “You have only two weeks to live” or “You’ve just won a lottery prize of $100 million dollars.” People hold their religious beliefs so deeply that these ideas shape how they live, even when their beliefs lead them to commit murder.

Many people accept on faith that God wrote a book that tells them how to live. These books set out belief systems, and claim perfection and holiness. Thus, society is divided into factions based on which book people follow. These powerful books are not mutually compatible, and – despite brushes with “ecumenicalism” – they teach intolerance.

However, modern culture regards it as impolite, even incorrect, to judge someone else’s religious practices, although you might easily criticize that person’s concepts about science. So, “when a Muslim suicide bomber obliterates himself along with a score of innocents on a Jerusalem street, the role that faith played in his actions is invariably discounted…Without faith, desperate people would...