'Believe in God or Die'???

The latest American Religious Identification Survey shows that the number of those who believe in no religion at all has almost doubled in the last 18 years, rising from 8 percent to 15 percent since 1990.

Great news for Bill Maher. For the rest of us: worrying evidence of the slow decline of the best and freest culture the earth has ever known.

I think you overestimate the importance of religion to the best and freest culture the earth has ever known. Freedom is exactly what is on the rise here.

This idea—the idea of religion as a human evil—strikes me as very strange given the, you know, facts.

Really? So the fact that religious belief has repeatedly led to wars and intense human suffering doesn’t strike you as even a little evil?

None of this is proof of the existence of God, of course, but it is fairly substantial evidence that we need faith in order to thrive, that without it we sink into either murderous violence or suicidal ennui.

Faith may be important, but faith in God is foolishness. Faith in ourselves is what we need to thrive - not faith in some imaginary robed superbeing.

As for all the other, more peaceful faiths that uplift and sustain so many, they may sometimes promulgate ignorance and superstition in trying to speak of what can only in the end be experienced, but just as often, and sometimes simultaneously, they are the source and center-point of the best in our communities and in our hearts. Without them, we won’t be here for long.

I heartily disagree. We would all be better off without faiths that promulgate ignorance and superstition. God is dead - and we’re all better off without.