Overheard

If you think of religion as a great lake, it's a lake of gasoline, and all it's going to take is someone to drop a match into it for a terrible conflagration.

Author Oren Jacoby
Former Roman Catholic priest
Constantine's Sword
New York Times, April 18, 2008

"Report: 32% Of Prayers Deflected Off Passing Satellites"

Headline
The Onion
March 20-26, 2008

My doubts really began when I realized that the people we were working with on the Religious Right were profoundly antiAmerican. . . . When I was working with the Religious Right, they seemed to be rooting for the failure of America. Bad news was good news for them.

Frank Schaeffer
Son of Francis Schaeffer
Church & State, March 11, 2008

Fundamentalist conclusions often rest on authority figures, "literal" readings of old books, superstition, a frank appeal to fear and the veneration of blind belief in a virtue rather than the deformity that it actually is. Indeed, the faithful often deem it sinful to even think about the core religious issues. But it's thinking that makes us human.

Columnist/physicist Art Hobson
"In Praise of Reason"
Northwest Arkansas Times
March 1, 2008

I think that the statue [of Galileo newly erected in the Vatican garden] is a way for the Church to get away [from] the Galileo affair without embarrassment. [But to win the support of scientists, the Vatican must] concentrate on present problems--such as stem cells, contraceptives, euthanasia, abortion--and open a fair debate.

Astrophysicist Simone Recchi
University of Trieste, Italy
Science Magazine, March 14, 2008

As much as possible, the presidential candidates should refrain from talking about their religious beliefs. Perhaps even a self-imposed ban on public avowals of religion would be wise. It's all too easy to cross the fine line between expressing faith and aggressively declaring it, and religious tolerance is, I think, inversely proportional to the latter.

Author John Allen Paulos
ABC News
February 3, 2008

Listen to Freethought Radio's April 26 interview of Paulos, author of the bestseller Innumeracy, whose latest book is Irreligion.

I have a disease [Lou Gehrig's disease] you wouldn't give to your worst enemy. If you believe in a caring, all-knowing God, how can you reconcile that? I can only approach it fatalistically. Stuff happens.

Dying Law Prof. Steven Gey
(an atheist)
St. Petersburg Times, April 20, 2008

Unfortunately, misplaced sensitivity is being used by tyrants and fanatics to justify murder and silence criticism. Right now the Organization of Islamic Countries is conducting a successful campaign at the United Nations to rewrite international human-rights standards to curtail the right to free speech. Last year the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution against "defamation of religion," calling on governments around the world to clamp down on cartoonists, writers, journalists, artists and dissidents who dare to speak up.

Flemming Rose, culture editor
Hyllands-Posten, Denmark
Wall Street Journal, Feb. 15, 2008

It's high time for Floridians to reject bible-thumping piety, get religion out of politics, and to stop its being wielded as a wedge issue ˆ la Karl Rove.

Right is on the side of secularism.

Editorial: "Secularism Only Way"
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Dec. 23, 2007

It's not surprising then that they [people] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Barack Obama
San Francisco fundraiser
April 6, 2008