"…for every evil that exists, a sufficiently clever theist might be able to imagine a scenario, no matter how farfetched, wildly implausible, or outrageously ad hoc, that if it were true, would justify God’s permission of that evil."
-Keith Parsons
"While many think they have arrived at their Christian beliefs through logical deduction and not childhood indoctrination, prominent skeptic Michael Shermer demonstrates the existence of an intellectual attribution bias that helps dispel the claims of believers who think they are an exception to the indoctrination process. He shows that an individual is nearly nine times more likely to think he arrived at his religious position using reason than he is to think any other Christian did the same. People are able to accept the fact that many religious believers have adopted their faiths because of societal influence, but they refuse to consider that the same might be true of themselves. Finding the gullibility of others is an easy task; finding it within ourselves can be a difficult and discomforting one."
-The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, John W. Loftus
"When religious believers are willing to admit that people often believe what they are raised to believe and that people are often incapable of rational thinking due to the effects of cognitive dissonance, they will often fall back to utilizing the arguments from experts who agree with them. However, if you wanted safety information on a used car, would it be wiser to trust the word of a used car salesperson or the findings of a consumer report? Similarly, if you wanted to obtain information on the historicity and veracity of Islam, would you ask only an Islamic scholar who has been taught about Islamic sanctity since childhood, or would you also ask a secular scholar with no emotional investment in Islam?"
-The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, John W. Loftus