To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered poverty vanished war eliminated.

The people on my mum's side of the family are atheist intellectuals who are ueber-proper. My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life.

My dad was a militant atheist or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious.

Unhappy let alone angry religious people provide more persuasive arguments for atheism and secularism than do all the arguments of atheists.