"Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath at the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy." -Wuthering Heights

"Auschwitz, the Soviet gulags, and the killing fields of Cambodia are not examples of what happens to people when they become too reasonable. To the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of political and racial dogmatism. It is time that Christians stop pretending that a rational rejection of faith entails the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. One need not accept anything on insufficient evidence to find the virgin birth of Jesus to be a preposterous idea...I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

While you believe that bringing an end to religion is an impossible goal, it is important to realize that much of the developed world has nearly accomplished it. Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on earth. According to the UN Human Development Report they are also the healthiest, as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate, and infant mortality. Insofar as there is a crime problem in Western Europe, it is largely the product of immigration. Seventy percent of the inmates of France's jails, for instance, are Muslim...conversely, the fifty nations now ranked lowest in terms of the United Nations' human development index are unwaveringly religious.

Other analyses paint the same picture: the US is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious adherence; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality. The same comparison holds true within the US itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious literalism, are especially plagued by the above indicators of social dysfunction, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms.

...Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve questions of causality- belief in God may or may not lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor may enable the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of mischief. Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, however, these statistics prove that atheism is compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society; they also prove, conclusively, that widespread belief in God does not ensure a society's health."

-Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

A Christian society condemns the torture of Jews during the Holocaust while worshiping a God who intends for Jews to be tortured for all of eternity.

Is there something wrong with this picture?

"We live in an age in which most people believe that mere words- "Jesus," "Allah," "Ram" - can mean the difference between eternal torment and bliss everlasting. Considering the stakes here, it is not surprising that many of us occasionally find it necessary to murder other human beings for using the wrong magic words, or the right ones for the wrong reasons. How can any person presume to know that this is the way the universe works? Because it says so in our holy books. How do we know that our holy books are free from error? Because the books themselves say so. Epistemological black holes of this sort are fast draining the light from our world...Because most religions offer no valid mechanism by which their core beliefs can be tested and revised, each new generation of believers is condemned to inherit the superstitions and tribal hatreds of its predecessors....The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday. Surely, if we could create the world anew, the practice of organizing our lives around untestable propositions found in ancient literature-to say nothing of killing and dying for them- would be impossible to justify. What stops us from finding it impossible now?"

-Sam Harris

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Fallen

"God has been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at the once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down." - C.S Lewis, A Grief Observed

I'm not a Mac user, and the only Apple product I own is an old iPod. However, I can't seem to escape Steve Jobs quotes this week with his recent passing, and this one in particular inspired me. It was from a speech he gave at a Stanford commencement a few years ago, and can't seem to describe my life more perfectly right now...

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.”

I know I dreamed you a sin and a lie

I have my freedom

But I don't have much time

Faith has been broken

Tears must be cried

Let's do some living before we die.

Wild horses couldn't drag me away

Wild, wild horses,

we'll ride them someday