A no-brainer: Thanksgiving is for all Americans, of all races, ethnic backgrounds, religious beliefs, or nonreligious beliefs.

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I don't accept the premise of the question--that "millions of Americans in mixed marriages are unsure about their conception of God." For the most part, what bothers parents in mixed marriages--if in fact they are bothered--is how to mediate between cultural traditions rooted in conflicting ideas not only about God but about history itself.

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Since I do not believe in God, I could hardly believe that he has a son. Nor do I believe in the Holy Ghost.

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Catholic school was my formative religious experience. In parochial school, at least two hours out of each day were devoted to Mass or religious instruction. As a child, I always assumed that my classmates were as skeptical as I was about the religious indoctrination to which we were subjected on a daily basis--and that they remained silent only because they feared the wrath of the nuns. I was wrong.

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As an atheist and a freethinker, I cannot offer any contribution to the dialogue between people of faith about the position of gays within their religious traditions. I must say, though, that the spectacle of Episcopalians approaching a schism over this issue is, well, unholy.

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If we are talking about the end of life as we know it on earth, scientists tell us that in an expanding universe, the end will surely come in a natural, not a supernatural, fashion. As for the timing, science and religion agree on one point: "Thou knowest neither the day nor the hour."

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Here, at last, is a point on which an atheist and a good Christian can surely agree: the mortal remains of the crucified Jesus are never going to be found by mortal man.

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As someone who is often asked how those who don't believe in God can survive tragedies, I can offer nothing more eloquent than this excerpt from a speech, delivered on January 8, 1882, by Robert Green Ingersoll. Ingersoll, who was known as "the Great Agnostic," was speaking at the burial service for a friend's young child.

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Oh, for heaven's sake. This question irritates the...inferno out of me. Of all the pointless, utterly childish notions associated with traditional religion, belief in eternal bliss in heaven or eternal damnation in hell surely tops the list.

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Since I never had a high opinion of Mother Teresa in the first place, this shameless publicity ploy to foster her candidacy for sainthood--in the form of a collection of tormented letters to her spiritual advisers over the years--does not make me think more or less of her. The media frenzy over Teresa's apparently unending crisis of faith offers a spectacular and comical example of the irrationality, credulity, and unwillingness to face facts that inform all conventional wisdom concerning religion and holiness.

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This question is really the only question for anyone who believes in God (loving or otherwise), and its unanswerability is the main reason why I, and every other atheist I know, can never accept the existence of any deity.

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No, of course I don't believe in life after death--not as a return of consciousness, as a physical resurrection of the body, or as reincarnation in some other state of being. I do believe that the understandable desire for immortality, and for reunion with loved ones who have gone before, is the chief reason for the persistence of religion in the modern world.

We are an arrogant species. Even the most tough-minded rationalists have trouble contemplating their own extinction. Susan B. Anthony, an agnostic (although she hid her beliefs in order to avoid offending Christian suffragists), mused, "If it be true that we die like the flower, leaving behind only the fragrance...what a delusion has the race ever been in..what a dream is the life of man."

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This question has almost nothing to do with religion.I can't imagine that American Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Pagans, or atheists could be offended by a discussion of why so many family gatherings are filled with tension between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Spend a holiday with someone else's family, observe quarrels and tensions in which you actually play no emotional role, and you will see that heartburn-inducing gravy and inflated expectations induce snapping and growling among family members who actually love (and may even like) one another.

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Actually, we don't know "what Jewish Identity has meant in the past"--especially in the United States. The controversy over the title of the PBS series--"Jewish Americans" versus "American Jews"--tells us so. Only in America, and only fairly recently (since the Second World War) have Jews enjoyed the historic luxury, whether they are religious or not, of full acceptance in a country with a non-Jewish majority.

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The Question: E-mail: Blessing or Curse?

Are eating utensils a blessing or a curse? They're a blessing if you want to eat food while keeping your hands clean (which people didn't seem to care about for most of the history of our species) and a curse if you want to feed yourself as quickly as possible. That's why we enjoy hands-on food like pizza and why pizza is rarely served at formal dinners. It's a great mistake to attribute a philosophical dimension to any tool--including email in particular and computers in general.

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That one out of five Americans who identify themselves as atheists also say that they believe in God or a "universal spirit" and that one out of ten pray at least once a week can lead to only one conclusion. These people don't know that an atheist is, by definition, someone who does not believe in God or in the supernatural. To say that you're an atheist who believes in God and prays is the equivalent of saying that you're a vegetarian who loves to scarf down barbecued ribs and T-bone steak. Or a Christian who rejects the teachings of the New Testament. Or a religiously observant Jew who also believes that Jesus was the Messiah. Or a Muslim who believes that Jesus was God.

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