I decided to take God and organized religion seriously, and to reject the secular life which in my teens had looked attractive because it allowed me to act in any way that I wanted.
I did not want to reject religion as nonsense because life seemed to have no ultimate purpose without it, and most of the good people I knew were Christians.
I found myself facing a Christian Science Reading Room. My God! It had been eight years. There had never been any renunciation of religion on my part, but like so many people, it was a gradual fading away.
For as Jews, the problem happens to be more urgent and vital than for others; because the destruction of religion on America will involve the destruction also of the religious training of freedom; and with that our civil liberties.
From the long range point of view, I do not know of anything we can do more important than to make some contribution to the preservation of religion as a vital force in America.
It therefore become essential for the future of Judaism itself that its advancement should be correlated with a similar effort to advance the cause of religion generally.
I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion.
I should like to repeat what I stated recently in the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia: It won't be the religion, but rather the world-view of some of its followers that shall be made current.
As a politician who cherishes religious conviction in his personal sphere, but regards politics as a domain belonging outside religion, I believe that this view is seriously flawed.
