Salman Rushdie on Faith & Reason

"My view has been, quite simply, that religion has been one of the ways in which human beings, throughout history, have tried to codify and organize their moral sense of the world. But that's to say, I would argue, that our sense of good and evil, our sense of right and wrong, our moral sense precedes religion. It's not created by it. It is, in fact, what creates our need for religion. So if we can accept that, as human beings, there's something intrinsic in us, which wishes to have an understanding of right and wrong, you know, and that religion is an expression of that, then of course, you can find other expressions of that, which are not formal religions. You know, and I think the history of the last couple hundred years will show there's been much philosophy, much thinking, precisely about this. How do you base a moral view of the world on a non-religious platform?"

For more such wisdom, read Bill Moyers' interview with Salman Rushdie here.