Overheard

Guest Marie Osmond: Do you ever question your faith?

Host Larry King: I'm an agnostic. I question all faiths.

Larry King Live
CNN, May 16, 2006

I've often thought the bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith. [When asked by NBC reporter Matt Lauer if "The Da Vinci Code" needs a disclaimer.]

Actor Ian McKellen
The Today Show, May 17, 2006

I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo. [After Pope John Paul II told him, "It's OK to study the universe and where it began. But we should not inquire into the beginning itself because that was the moment to creation and the work of God."]

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking
Associated Press, June 15, 2006

The founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry. They possessed a great confidence in an individual's ability to understand the world and its most fundamental laws through the exercise of his or her reason. This core set of beliefs led the founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.

U.S. Dist. Judge John E. Jones
(Dover, Penn., judge)
Dickinson College commencement address
May 21, 2006

It is odd that some conservatives are eager to promote the semantic vanity of the phrase 'values voters.' And it is odder still that the media are cooperating with those conservatives. . . . And by ratifying the social conservatives' monopoly of the label 'values voters,' the media are furthering the fiction that these voters are somehow more morally awake than others.

Columnist George F. Will
Who Isn't a 'Values Voter'?
Washington Post, May 18, 2006

The prohibitions of a religion apply to the adherents of that religion only, and no one else is under any compulsion to obey. Imagine generalizing such prohibitions. No one is allowed to draw cartoons that offend Muslims. No one may drink coffee because it offends Mormons. No one may eat bacon because it offends orthodox Jews and Muslims. No women may uncover their heads because it offends orthodox Jews and Muslims. No one may drive an automobile because it offends the Amish. The absurdity quickly becomes obvious.

Prof. Denise Giardina
West Virginia State University
Op-ed, Charleston Gazette
March 20, 2006

Churches may control who is married by their clerics and institutions. But no group's religious views should stand in the way of two consenting adults who want to go to a courthouse, city hall or Las Vegas love chapel to marry.

What Dobson and his followers are trying to impose is a Christian version of sharia--religious law. That wouldn't bode well for an Iraqi democracy, and it wouldn't bode well for this democracy, either.

Columnist Cynthia Tucker
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 7, 2006