KidSpirit

Free teen magazine

I have to let the loudness of God take me away to wherever I need to be. I'll still go to seven different churches and read through the piles of religious of books I've hoarded in my room, but they can't tell me anything compared to what God can tell me.

Chris Stedman

Author of 'Faitheist', Humanist Chaplain, Atheist and Interfaith Activist

I feel more convinced than ever that interfaith efforts should include LGBTQ voices; if such work is intended to bring together people with different and sometimes contradicting convictions and identities, then it has to.

Davide Mastracci

Journalist, Student

I am an atheist because I tend to not believe in things I have no evidence for. Yet New Atheists believe scores of myths, with no evidence, about Muslims and Islam.

Ali A. Rizvi

Pakistani-Canadian writer, physician and musician

Just like Judaism is a religion that can exist independently from Jewish ethnicity or Jewish culture, Islam is a religion, and even though Muslims are ethnically and racially varied, there really is such a thing as a Muslim culture that can exist separately from Islam.

Richard W. Kropf

Author, 'Forever: Evolution and the Quest for Life Beyond Life'

We all know, or think we do, what religion is. Nor is there any question in anyone's mind regarding the finality of suicide. But regardless of all the ranting against secularism by churchmen or religionists, there seems to be quite a bit of confusion on the subject.

Rabbi Adam Jacobs

Managing Director, Aish Center in Manhattan

In the same way as you would never use a Stradivarius as a door stop or a Porsche as a plough, we must strive to not cause the masses to believe that authentic, transformational, brilliant and beautiful spirituality is just so much vapor.

Rabbi David Wolpe

Author and Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles

Dawkins on biology is an elegant, lucid and even enchanting explicator of science. Dawkins on religion is historically uninformed, outrageously partisan and morally obtuse. If Dawkins is indeed our best, the life of the mind is in a precarious state.

Richard Abrons

Playwright; Vice Chairman & Fmr. President, Henry St. Settlement; Director, Grow NYC; Retired founding partner, First Manhattan Co.

Big topic. All encompassing. From Ra to Zeus to Moses to Jesus to Muhammad to Buddah. From Cotton Mather to Rush Limbaugh. From the Crusades to Shiites and Sunnis. Well, leave me out.

Mickey Roundtree

Student

As a girl who grew up in the LDS Church, having friends who are part of religions that contradict my own is really uncommon.

Sandra Charron

Mother to four; wife; nurse

The energy and ardor we see flung with feverish force at the sight of certain key words would be far more beneficial if harnessed and used to rid the world of its eternal anger and insults.

Rev. Michael Dowd

Religious naturalist, evidential mystic, big history evangelist, and author of 'Thank God for Evolution'

Christianity is shipwrecked on the rock of "biblical authority." Twelve hundred people a day leave the church. The Bible, once an asset, has become a liability.

Usaama al-Azami

PhD Candidate in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University

Dawkins and his fellows may remonstrate that what they object to is a belief system, freely adopted by its holders, but they are still participating in the unhealthy marginalization of a minority group.

Tara Brach

Clinical Psychologist, Author, Teacher of Buddhist Mindfulness

Probably the deepest inquiry in any of the spiritual traditions is the question, "Who am I?" If we look behind the roles and images that our culture gives us, behind the ideas that we internalize from our family, who's really here?

Greg M. Epstein

Humanist Chaplain, Harvard University

Including the nonreligious in interfaith ceremonies doesn't have any negative impact on religious communities. It's not about anything other than inclusion in America. Let's make that happen for the good of all.

Edward Falzon

Author, 'Being Gay Is Disgusting' (a biblical parody)

In the Boston interfaith service, though there were some words of comfort that dispensed with religious phrasing, a secular humanist could be forgiven for being distracted and put off by the repeated invocations to the Abrahamic god.

Daniel Cox

Research Director, Public Religion Research Institute

One of the more notable findings from a recent American Values Survey analysis is that atheists and agnostics have significantly higher socio-economic status than either secular Americans or unattached believers.