Submitted by Nina, May 14, 2007 01:57

I don't find religious belief either facile or frivolous, and I am an atheist. Indeed, I do not usually think about it at all, unsurprisingly. Still, it is clear, from the scope and intensity of the belief/non-belief debate that something significant is afoot. I suggest that the fundamentalist religious right has so frightened atheists, agnostics and the religiously moderate with intemperate demands for representation and domination in areas as vastly different as education, politics, health, reproduction, and entertainment, to name a few, that it now seems to be an urgent matter to resist the encroaching religion-isation of social and political life.

To that extent, not only Mr. Hitchens, but other atheists take religion very very seriously indeed. We would be happy to be quiet and broadly non-assertive again as soon as we receive assuarance that we are not going to be forced into a religion-dominated society at odds with the secular political principles of the Founding Fathers and at even greater odds with our secular realities. We'll probably turn back into your polite neighbours, colleagues and friends just as soon as we feel safe again.

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