What Do You Most Value In Your

I Say 'merry Christmas' To People I Don't Know, Or To People I Know Are Christians. I Say 'happy Hanukkah' To People I Know To Be Or Suspect To Be Jewish. And I Don't Say 'happy Kwanzaa,' Because I Think African Americans Get Enough Insults All Year Round.

It Is A Horrible Idea That There Is Somebody Who Owns Us, Who Makes Us, Who Supervises Us - Waking And Sleeping - Who Knows Our Thoughts, Who Can Convict Us Of Thought Crime, Thought Crime, Just For What We Think, Who Can Judge Us While We Sleep For Things That Might Occur To Us In Our Dreams, Who Can Create Us Sick, As Apparently We Are - And Then Order Us, On Pain Of Eternal Torture To Be Well Again. To Demand This, To Wish This To Be True Is To Wish To Live As An Abject Slave.

The First Thing I Can Remember I Ever Wanted Was To Go To The United States. And For Reasons That Are As Conventional As You Can Imagine: I Wanted To Know If It Was Really True That It Was The Land Of Opportunity, Of Democracy, And Individual Liberty.

Here Is The Point About Myself And My Co-thinkers. Our Belief Is Not A Belief. Our Principles Are Not A Faith. We Do Not Hold Our Convictions Dogmatically. We Believe With Certainty That An Ethical Life Can Be Lived Without Religion. And We Know For A Fact That The Corollary Holds True - That Religion Has Caused Innumerate People Not Just To Conduct Themselves No Better Than Others, But To Award Themselves Permission To Behave In Ways That Would Make A Brothel-keeper Or An Ethnic Cleanser Raise An Eyebrow.

What Happens To The Faith Healer And The Shaman When Any Poor Citizen Can See The Full Effect Of Drugs Or Surgeries, Administered Without Ceremonies Or Mystifications? Roughly The Same Thing As Happens To The Rainmaker When The Climatologist Turns Up, Or To The Diviner From The Heavens When Schoolteachers Get Hold Of Elementary Telescopes.