The embrace of atheism by some/many must be seen as baffling since atheism is a true-blue dismal ideology. Atheist biologist Jay Gould speaks for fellow atheists when he pontificates that death is the end; that there is no cosmic purpose or divine justice, and that free will is but an illusion.

Today's atheists are Johnnies-come-lately, really. They follow in the faded footsteps of chaps such as the ancient-Greek philosophers Epicurus (born 341 BC) and Democritus (born ca 460 BC), and the Roman philosopher Lucretius (born ca 99 BC). The threesome believed that material reality is all there is. Epicurus confessed that his aim was to get rid of the gods and the idea of immortal souls; he also desired to remove people's longing for immortality. Had those three gentlemen lived around the time of Christ, they, too, might have championed Christianity - like Paul of Tarsus who, initially, was an overzealous persecutor of Christians.

Many centuries later, David Nicholls, President of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, echoes Epicurus and the latter's soul mates. David's materialistic philosophy regarding the killing of the unborn, the killing of fetuses for research purposes and the killing of adults on demand, should not surprise us: his ideas are natural outcomes of an earthbound and dead-end philosophy.