Eugene retook Rome amid rivers of blood, justified and profited from the slave trade against non-Christians, and was also one of the most superstitious men of his time.

Leo especially objected to things we take for granted today: secular public education, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, separation of church and state.

Howells cast off his Swedenborgian creed in his youth and became a social liberal and a sentimental Theist. We can see this in his poem "Lost Beliefs."

Ernest Renan, who did not believe in a future life, once said, "I know that when I am dead nothing of me will remain." He remained a Pantheist throughout his life.

"The Passion of the Christ" really amounts to sadomasochism and homeroticism, sending a political message that Mel Gibson’s true passion is anti-Semitism and Catholic fundamentalism.

The truths about the Diocletian Persecution are that a tiny number believed so strongly that they died for their faith, but that the vast majority either went into hiding or abjured the faith.

Wrote Thomas Jefferson, “I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets and believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in [Christianity] than he did.”

Sexual hypocrisy is hardly new to the religion industry, especially among evangelists who preach purity and practice infidelity – infidelity, at least, to their creed or congregation or consort.

A popular Scientology Q&A says, with a bit of historical amnesia about religion, “psychiatric theories that man is a mere animal have been used to rationalize, for example, the wholesale slaughter of human beings in World Wars I and II.”

Even the “Catholic Encyclopedia” admits, "His attitude of mind towards religious truth was that of a rationalist." To Bruno it would have been easier for him to change his sex than to change his mind.