Selected excerpts from God Without Religion:
The most convincing explanation for why religious dogma is embraced by so many people may simply be apathy. Organized religions, by providing their followers with answers, suppress the urge for personal investigation -- a tendency as natural as a child's questioning. The idle acceptance of answers can have us believing wholeheartedly in irrational dogma of all sorts, such as the doctrine of eternal heaven and hell to promoted to reward and punish humanity. Few Christians ask themselves whether a fair God would compensate finite actions committed in one brief lifetime with infinite heavenly or hellish consequences. [p.60]
Ultimately, the only sacred book is the opus of nature, which teaches us how to live. [p.64]
The knowledge humanity needs for a scientifically and spiritually advanced world seems to have reemerged and simply needs to be made globally available through a progressive form of education that holds nothing sacred but the search for truth. Even though humanity has a long way to go until it is free of past ignorance, appreciating the incompleteness of our knowledge signals progress over the surety of religious beliefs. [p.98]
To assist citizens in relating to at least the widest group possible, federal governments can oversee only those things to which everyone in the nation identifies. For example, due to the lack of a monolithic social sense of self in America, a small federal government, preferable to the present large one, could be in charge only of defending the country, protecting its citizens, and supporting community life. Individual communities, in recognition of the fact that the societal sense of self varies from place to place, might then be entrusted with overseeing their own systems of education, services for the elderly, health care, distribution of tax revenues, as well as moral and socially lawful jurisdiction. [p.179]
