http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/591/print/all
— Mark Oppenheimer:
Religion responds to a deep, satisfying human need for ritual. And it often organises the human quests for ethics and meaning. To think about the common good, the purpose of life and how to live, it has proven useful to use religious stories or theology.
While some religion may be true, religion may also be entirely untrue. If what we mean by religion is the particular claims of scriptures and religious legends, then at the very least, a lot of religion has to be untrue, since major religions make conflicting claims. If Jesus is in fact the messiah, then we can safely say that contemporary Judaism and Islam are false, or at least deeply mistaken; if Jesus is not the messiah, then there are big problems for Christianity. If certain Wicca claims are true, then certain claims of Hinduism are not. And so forth.
— Roger McShane
Voltaire once wrote, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Leaving aside whether we actually did, can the same be said of religion? Most of the world’s population professes religious feelings of some sort, and these beliefs in turn underpin many strong communities, happy individuals and tremendous acts of charity.
— Sam Harris
The important question is whether religion is ever the best force for good at our disposal. And I think the answer to this question is clearly “no”—because religion gives people bad reasons for being good where good reasons are available.