Overheard

Symbols are not benign--or as Chief Justice Rehnquist labeled the Texas Ten Commandments monument: "passive." They are bold assertions that this is what the government values and supports.
L.B. Madison
Online Journal, July 13, 2005

It is not the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments that form the bedrock of American values. It is the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution. If anything should be chiseled in stone on our public buildings, it's the Bill of Rights.
Author Harvey Wasserman
Freepress.org, June 27, 2005

American moguls, snake-oil salesmen and politicians looking to score riches or power will stop at little if they feel it is in their interests to exploit God to achieve those ends.
Columnist Frank Rich
"The God Racket, from Demille to Delay"
The New York Times, March 25, 2005

What's under siege here is nothing less than the Enlightenment.
Today's religious extremists . . . long for the predemocratic world of absolutes circa 1500. . . . in a democracy, nothing is scarier than a political force convinced it is getting irrefutable truth directly from God.
Columnist Robert Kittner
"Whose Nation Under God?"
Boston Globe, April 27, 2005

This [the tenth commandment] accords the same status to your neighbor's wife as, say, his SUV or new deck with hot tub.
Wives as personal property is not a cherished, universal value in 2005.
Columnist Chris Christoff
Detroit Free Press, March 14, 2005
(Submitted by Helen Weaver, Mich.)

It's [his book Acts of Faith] about the curdling of faith into fanaticism. You lose your capacity for doubt. You lose capacity to see anything except what is presented to you through the prism of a particular belief system. The ultimate expression of that would be the 9/11 hijackers. They blew themselves into vapor quite sure that this would all meet with the approval of Allah.
Author Philip Caputo
Chicago Tribune, May 17, 2005

If God were truly answering these ritualistic government prayers for wisdom, there would be a lot fewer strip malls in the world. . . . stick to the secular stuff at City Hall that everybody pays for, and let everyone pray or not pray on his or her own time.
Columnist Howard Troxler
St. Petersburg Times, March 8, 2005

I never thought of myself as a writer about religion until a religion came after me. . . .
Now, 16 years later, religion is coming after us all . . .
People have always turned to religion for the answers to the two great questions of life: Where did we come from? and how shall we live? But on the question of origins, all religions are simply wrong. . . . And on the social question, the simple truth is that, wherever religions get into society's driving seat, tyranny results. The Inquisition results, or the Taliban.
In today's United States, it's possible for almost anyone--women, gays, African Americans, Jews--to run for, and be elected to, high office. But a professed atheist wouldn't stand a popcorn's chance in hell.
Salman Rushdie
"The Trouble with Religion"
The New York Times, March 2005