I think very few people realize how much the separation of church and state has to do with the fact that Americans are not only more religious than a lot of other people in the world but that conversions are much more common here.

Every brand of religion maintains, and is, a permanent mechanism for transmitting ideas and values - whether one regards those values as admirable or ridiculous. Secularist organizations, with their generally looser, nonhierarchical structures, lack the power to hand down and disseminate their heritage in such a systematic way.

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.

Feminists who want to censor what they regard as harmful pornography have essentially the same motivation as other would-be censors: They want to use the power of the state to accomplish what they have been unable to achieve in the marketplace of ideas and images. The impulse to censor places no faith in the possibilities of democratic persuasion.

If enough money is involved and enough people believe that two plus two equals five the media will report the story with a straight face always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that mathematicians however say that two plus two still equals four.

Religious education is only valuable intellectually, if the child is educated in a religion versus [just] about a religion. I don't believe you can have both.

One of the interesting things is is that Judaism was very attractive to the Roman aristocracy.