The evening of his "definite conversion" (November 23)... was the occasion of what Pascal remembered as a two-hour mystical vision, but what might just have been a misinterpretation of the aura and shimmering lights that occasionally precede a migraine headache. Some of the common triggers for migraines are being tired, stressed or depressed and the let-down after a stressful event — like nearly falling off a bridge.

Evans said, "God, immortality, duty — how inconceivable the first, how unbelievable the second, how peremptory and absolute the third."

"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world," he wrote in a letter to Frederick the Great of Prussia.

In her 1991 Nobel lecture, Gordimer makes a brilliant if veiled charge, using theistic language, that writers are more powerful with their words than religions are with their dogmas.

Bayle was too prudent to criticise God and immortality directly, but it is generally assumed that only an Atheist could write with such tolerant words for religious diversity.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850) It was on this date, November 13, 1850, that Scottish essayist, poet, and author of fiction and travel books, Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. He once quarreled with his father over religion and, thereafter, rarely mentioned his hostility to it. From childhood, Stevenson suffered from tuberculosis. He spend much […]

In an article entitled "What has Christianity Done for Women?" Stanton replied decidedly: Nothing.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr (1922) It was on this date, November 11, 1922, that science fiction and satire writer Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. Vonnegut enrolled at Cornell University as a biochemistry major, but left for the Air Force during World War Two. He was captured in May 1944 during the Battle of the […]

Richard Burton (1925) It was on this date, November 10, 1925, that Welsh actor Richard Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. in Pontrydyfen, the twelfth of thirteen children, born to a hard-drinking miner. He took his stage and screen name from a schoolmaster who helped him enter Oxford, Philip Burton, and studied acting there. […]

The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. (Carl Sagan)