I read this pre-Christmas but rather insult so many who love the holiday (my favorite by the way but not for the religious implications of it) - I held this until today. If you are curious, I claim to be agnostic myself but several of my friends are atheists and understand their point. I just think there are things bigger than us at play in the world.
However, I love this quote from Ani Difranco in 2000 during this interview:
"Well, I'm not a religious person myself. I'm an atheist. I think religion serves a lot of different purposes in people's lives, and I can recognize the value of that, you know, the value of ceremony, the value of community, or even just having a forum to get together and talk about ideas, about morals — that's a cool concept. But then, of course, institutional religions are so problematic."
Amen :)
