“Our Founding Fathers declared we are, “One nation under God,” and you better believe I’ll fight like mad to keep it that way. I can tell you from experience, there are no atheists in foxholes. We are the land of the free because of the brave. Many people don’t know this, but when you survive a near-death experience [as Johnson did when he was a POW in Vietnam, TF], you realize that the only thing you had to hold on to was your faith in God.”

“Ideally, the court would ... recognize that, in an America in which an increasing number of citizens identify with no religion, even nonsectarian, lowest-common-denominator prayers can exclude and marginalize nonbelievers. Obviously a Jew who goes to a town meeting to petition for a permit will be made uncomfortable when he is urged to join in a prayer to 'our Lord Jesus.' But an atheist in the same position will be equally offended by a request that he join in a prayer to a generic God.”

The term “atheist” describes a person who does not believe that God or a divine being exists.  Worldwide there may be as many as a billion atheists, although social stigma, political pressure, and intolerance make accurate polling difficult.

For the most part, atheists have presumed that the most reasonable conclusions are the ones that have the best evidential support.  And they have argued that the evidence in favor of God’s existence is too weak, or the arguments in favor of concluding there is no God are more compelling

They can set up across the street from the Soup Kitchen. They can have the devil there with them, but they better not come across the street.

“If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings I’m still waiting to hear what your point is.”

Atheists can’t be Republicans

I'm pretty sure there's a lot of folks like Camille Paglia, positive this is the truth, that NewAge ended a long time ago:

  I wrote a long piece for Arion at Boston University a couple of years ago called “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s” trying to give reasons—trying to sketch this combination of things with poetry, religion, spirituality that would produce the New Age movement. And then trying to diagnose why the whole thing collapsed,...

Meanwhile, my impression of the current landscape - as a "spiritual" minefield - is confirmed even as it's denied:

  The Theos survey discovered that 40% of the sample (and a small majority of women) had at some time engaged in a "New Age" activity - for example, a Tarot card reading or a Reiki healing session. These activities seem to be equally popular with those who describe themselves as religious and those who do not,…

Which is how and why atheists are doomed to end up alone - as "compassionate" NewAgers  love to point out:

We're not part of their cult,...