Overheard

I'm an atheist. So there you go right there. I can't be elected to anything because polls all say that people won't elect an atheist.
Ron Reagan
Larry King Show, CNN
June 23, 2004

Bush switched from alcoholism to religion. It takes responsibility out of his hands. Being born again is a way of denying the past.
Author Prof. Justin Frank
Bush on the Couch
The Guardian, June 22, 2004

It has been my honor to welcome these very important leaders of different faiths to this dialogue . . . and I thank them for being so faithful to the Almighty God.
Pres. George Bush
Remarks in Turkey
June 27, 2004
White House press release

[I vow to strike with an iron fist at] the atheists and criminals who are targeting the people of Iraq and who are being supported by the remnants of Saddam's regime and his sons Uday and Qusay who went to hell.
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
Swearing-in ceremony
UPI, June 28, 2004

The salient division in American political life where religion is concerned is no longer between Catholics and Protestants, if it ever was, or even between believers and nonbelievers. . . . Suffice it to say that there are those who believe in a sturdy wall between church and state and those who believe that the wall should be remodelled into a white picket fence dotted with open gates, some of them wide enough to drive a tractor-trailer full of federal cash through.
Hendrik Hertzberg
The New Yorker, June 7, 2004

This is God's voice raising in anger . . . at the treatment of Muslims in Abu Ghraib . . . Guantanamo and others.
"Organisation of al-Qaueda in the Arabian Peninsula"
Website statement on beheading of Paul Johnson
BBC News, June 18, 2004

It was clear to me in science, in answering these questions perhaps our answers were incomplete and flawed and our cultural cosmologies, based in religions, were most certainly flawed.
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell
Herald Tribune, Feb. 12, 2004

Europe is a godless quarter of the globe and Britain the most atheistic part of it. Last year, the god-fearing Italians and Irish lost the fight to include reference to our Christian heritage in the preamble to the European constitution. Instead we will vote on our shared heritage of "humanism, equality of persons, freedom and respect for reason." Europe, that seems to say, has shrugged off the age of superstition.

If we are going to live peaceably in a multi-faith society, then tolerance of the beliefs of others will take us only so far. We have also to strengthen the secular framework of the state and ensure that no one is obliged to live according to the religious beliefs of others.
Barbara Gunnell
Newstatesman, May 2004

[Americans need people who have] the moral clarity and courage to do what's right, regardless of consequence, fashion or fad.
Karl Rove
Graduation speech at Falwell's Liberty University
AP, May 10, 2004

[Which celebrity would you most like to make over, and why?] Jerry Falwell, because he's as tragic stylistically as he is politically.
Cooking guru Ted Allen
"Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"
Wisconsin State Journal
May 21, 2004

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. . . . We can laugh at these people, but we should not dismiss them. That their beliefs are bonkers does not mean they are marginal. American pollsters believe that 15-18% of US voters belong to churches or movements which subscribe to these teachings.
Author George Monbiot
The Guardian, April 20, 2004

We believe that only the end of the fundamentalist regime will free women and girls from all the forms of slavery they suffer. There is a growing movement in Iran to oust the ruling clergy.
Ramesh Sepehrrad, President
National Committee of Women for a Democratic Iran
Women's eNews, Feb. 11, 2004

I believe in religious tolerance and the freedom of people to believe in anything, including the literal truth of any book at all, including "Peter Pan." But when such a belief threatens to become the official policy of my country, I think it's OK to be intolerant of intolerance and to try to protect the ideals of science and the primacy of human kindness.
Columnist Jon Carroll
San Francisco Chronicle
March 9, 2004

We're at war, all right, but not just against terrorism. We're fighting an even more massive and ultimately divisive conflict: our internecine battle over America's religiosity and the extent to which we want our secular laws dictated by certain religious beliefs.
Syndicated columnist Bonnie Erbe
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
April 29, 2004

I think monotheism is one of the roots of evil. It is a root cause of dividing people murdering one another in the Name of God. That is one way we beautifully escape the burdens of guilty. Gods--plural--regardless of the powers of their mystery, or the mystery of their powers, were never viewed as embodiments of perfection. Therefore no act could ever be pronounced in the name of a god and thereby be deemed sinless or holy.
Author Nick Tosches
Advance Magazine, September 2002
(submitted by Elsa Kramer)

Our country has been hijacked by a bunch of religious nuts. But how easy it was. That's a little scary.
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh
Wisconsin State Journal
March 2, 2004

My wife and I do not believe in God. Americans will talk of praying as if it were the most normal, rational thing to do. . . And nobody spends more time on his knees--I am back in metaphorical mode here--than George W. Bush. He is famously born again--at the age of 40 it was goodbye Jack Daniels and hello Jesus.
Justin Webb
BBC correspondent in Washington
BBC News, March 14, 2003

Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration--aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals--are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr
The Nation
March 8, 2004

Columnist Needs Educating!

"I have come to believe that one can have a successful Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist society, but not an agnostic or atheistic society that is successful. . .

"I would rather live in a neighborhood of Islamic fundamentalists than in a neighborhood of atheists and agnostics."--Charley Reese, June 1, 2004

(Write him at PO Box 2446, Orlando FL 32802)