We Have Had Plenty Of Atheist Presidents;

It's A No Win Situation. It's A Mug's Game. The Religions Have Contrived To Make It Impossible To Disagree With Them Critically Without Being Rude. They Play The Hurt Feelings Card At Every Opportunity.

Isn't It True That Whatever Isn't Determined By Our Genes Must Be Determined By Our Environment? What Else Is There? There's Nature And There's Nurture. Is There Also Some X, Some Further Contributor To What We Are? There's Chance. Luck. This Extra Ingredient Is Important But Doesn't Have To Come From The Quantum Bowels Of Our Atoms Or From Some Distant Star. It Is All Around Us In The Causeless Coin-flipping Of Our Noisy World, Automatically Filling In The Gaps Of Specification Left Unfixed By Our Genes, And Unfixed By Salient Causes In Our Environment.

I Don't Think There Is Any Religious Revival. I Think What We Are Hearing, The Furor, Is Merely The Hysterical Response Of The Churches The Handwriting On The Wall That They Are Seeing.

The Earth Has Grown A Nervous System, And It's Us.

Consciousness Is Cerebral Celebrity--nothing More And Nothing Less. Those Contents Are Conscious That Persevere, That Monopolize Resources Long Enough To Achieve Certain Typical And "symptomatic" Effects--on Memory, On The Control Of Behavior And So Forth.