Hitchen’s Zeitgeist takes another step forward.

“Campaigns Like These Make It Hard to Find a Reason to Believe”
by Eduardo Porter 12/14/2007

I’m an atheist. When people trot out the well-worn John Adams quote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” I can’t help feeling squeezed out of the polity.

Atheists have solid reasons not to believe. We don’t need a divine being to explain the natural world, and don’t know why we should trust claims about humankind’s divine origins because they are in religious texts.

There are 81 comments (11:22pm) [ HERE ] for further reading (doesn’t look like it requires login; not sure)

Thank God, - strike that - “goodness” the NY Times saw fit to print the thoughts of an atheist about this current crop of Republican/religious blowhard candidates.

Here is my favorite letter:

I have always liked my son’s take on atheism. Essentially, he believes that if one lives a virtuous life in order to obtain a reward, such as a place in Heaven, one’s virtuousness has less moral value than if one lives a virtuous life with no expectation or hope of reward. An atheist acts ethically simply because it is right. In his version of Pascal’s wager, it would be better to be an atheist, since a truly benevolent Deity would think more highly of those who make good moral choices without any belief that God is watching.