Throughout the three decades preceding the Civil War, the anticlerical ethos of the radical abolitionists was used against them by religious opponents of emancipation, who . . . even described abolitionism itself as an atheist plot.

If you chose a particular religion, you were siding with the government religion of whatever region you were in. That's never been true in America, but also, the United States also has so many more immigrant groups which also tends to imply more religious diversity right away.

For one thing, the Catholic Church in particular has this one thing - confession - in which you could go, confess to a priest and obtain absolution of your sins. And there was a routine and a ritual and I think - I think that it did help.

Whether you are religious or nonreligious, may you find solace in the knowledge that the suffering is ours, but that those we love suffer no more.

I have received many touching letters and emails from people who live in the most religious parts of the country, in places like rural Texas, saying it is so good to see someone be able to say I am an atheist without shame.

I feel Jewish in the sense of culturally Jewish, I suppose the way Bernie Sanders feels Jewish, but not Jewish in a religious sense.

My atheism doesn't define my day-to-day life at all. But I realize - and maybe it is because, unlike people who sort of stay comfortably in a religion, I had to do a lot of thinking and reading before I realized that I was an atheist.