I just think the way (for instance) evangelicals talk about God or Jesus, as in "Jesus says" or "the Bible says" points up a lack of honesty.

The secular humanist, although he would never dream of committing the social faux pas of calling a black man a negro, feels perfectly free to castigate Christians and their leaders in any way he likes.

We are always in transition.

Take empathy, something added to human nature very recently and moving as we speak. Less than 300 years ago, Christians were enjoying watching a bear and dogs fight in a pit, racing Jews like horses, and had a life expectancy of less than 50 years. Today there are vegans who won't kill a fly, and yet wars too.

There is nothing more profane than the image of an atheist with tears in his eyes conducting the glory and passion of Handel's Messiah.

Since science is fashionable today, it allows its fraternity to propose cloddish monstrosities as a solution to man's problems in many fields. Fashion rules and, anyway, who but the experts can even dare to speak up?

The Republican base is now made up of religious and neoconservative ideologues, and the uneducated white underclass with a token person of color or two up front on TV to obscure the all-white, all reactionary all backward — there-is-no-global-warming — rube reality. Actual conservatives, let alone the educated classes, have long since fled.