Overheard

In medical school, they don't show you how to birth a baby and also say, 'A stork may bring it. That's not a competing school of thought.'

Comedian Bill Maher
San Antonio Express-News, Sept. 25, 2006

The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America's open society and build a theocratic state.

Chris Hedges
America's Holy Warriors
Truthdig.com, Dec. 31, 2007

It's nice that David Kuo, the evangelical Christian who served in the White House office of faith-based initiatives, wrote a book describing the Bush Administration's lack of commitment to so-called compassionate conservatism. But honestly, the man is a nudnik (see Alan Wolfe's devastating review in The New Republic). The handwriting was on the wall about faith-based funding from the moment it was devised. It was never anything but a flatly unconstitutional bribe to Christian conservatives, and many, many secularists--from People for the American Way and the Freedom From Religion Foundation down to, yes, me, right here--pointed this out. Why not credit the ones who were right all along? And PS: If the pastors and priests didn't get all the money they wanted for their evangelical prisons and fetal-protection programs, good!

Columnist Katha Pollitt
"Happy New Year!"
The Nation, Jan. 22, 2007

Religious conflict [in the 21st century] will be less a matter of struggles between belief and unbelief than of clashes between believers who make room for doubt and those who do not.

Prof. Mark C. Taylor
Williams College
New York Times, Dec. 21, 2006

Science works best when scientists can pursue all avenues of research. If the cure for Parkinson's disease or juvenile diabetes lay behind one of four doors, shouldn't you want the option to open all four doors at once instead of one door?

Story Landis, Chair
NIH stem cell taskforce
Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2007

Voter guides are given out in churches and worshipers are all but told that God wants them to vote Republican. They're told to take everything on faith, not just their religion, but also their science and politics. It's virtuous not to think, and it's evidence of disobedience or doubt to think too hard.

Movie critic Mick LaSalle
Re: "Friends of God"
San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 25, 2007

Leviticus is filled with laws imposing the death penalty for everything from eating catfish to sassing your parents. If you accept one as the absolute, unequivocal word of God, you must accept them all.

For many of gay America's loudest critics, the results are unthinkable. First, no more football. At least not without gloves. Handling a pig skin is an abomination. Second, no more Saturday games even if you can get a new ball. Violating the Sabbath is a capital offense according to Leviticus. . .

Selectively hanging onto these ancient prescriptions for gays and lesbians exclusively is unfair according to anybody's standard of ethics. We lawyers call it "selective enforcement," and in civil affairs it's illegal.

Olive "Buzz" Thomas
USA Today, Nov. 20, 2006

I don't believe in a god. I have helped many people to die and believe that it's ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

I believe that heaven and hell are present every day.

Helen Caldicott
Credo
The Independent (UK), Nov. 14, 2006