I no more believe in the God of the Jews than I believe in any God.

Atheism is not a religion. One of the things, in fact, that atheism lacks are the kinds of rituals that religion does provide and I would be the first to say that.

That so many manage to accommodate belief systems encompassing both the natural and the supernatural is a testament not to the compatibility of science and religion but to the flexibility, in both the physical and metaphysical senses, of the human brain.

Americans are in serious intellectual trouble - in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

God Bless America started to become an almost ritualistic incantation at the end of political speeches really with Ronald Reagan. It appears occasionally before, but it was not that common. And of course since it was a song that wasn't written by Irving Berlin until the 20th century (laughter), none of the 19th century presidents said God Bless America at the end of speeches, either. I think that the symbolism which suggests that everybody is religious and that even presidents who believe in church and state feel obliged to do this.

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'm not saying that I think atheists are better than other people. God, no. What I am saying is I do feel that this an integral part of who I am. And it's not something that I could comfortably think of not sharing with the person I loved most in the world.