The Roman Empire was fairly tolerant of religious choice as long as you made a point not of thumbing your nose in public at the Roman gods.

I feel culturally Jewish because of the way that I have lived my adult life.

hope is not a plan of action.

I believe that whether one believes in God or not is - it's very central to who I am.

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.

It is easy to forget, since the Catholic Church is now the only large American religious denomination whose ecclesiastical hierarchy continues to oppose birth control, that only a century ago the leaders of nearly all churches were united in their resistance to any public discussion of the subject.

One of the reasons there are largely Catholic and largely Protestant regions of Germany today is that people did sort themselves out geographically.