There is an unusually high and consistent correlation between the stupidity of a given person and that person’s propensity to be impressed by the measurement of IQ.

Religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled.

Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion.

The amazing fact is that America is founded on a document. It's a work in progress. It can be tested by each generation.