I'm Alan Alda and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

I feel comfortable saying that I'm an atheist. Even though you can't prove there's no God, there's no way to prove a negative,

God is conveniently invisible. I don't need to give that particular

imaginary creature any more benefit of my doubt than I give, you know,

monsters that may or may not be in the closet of my kids room, right?

Why do we have a much much higher requirement for this

particular imaginary being than we have for other ones that we easily say no no that's not true it was made up that's

Washington Post columnist Kate Cohen she's written a thoughtful book called

we of little faith why I stopped pretending to believe thoughtful book called We of Little Faith, Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe, and maybe you should too.

It's about the difficulty she had in finally admitting to family and friends that she was an atheist.

Her goal, she says, isn't to convince believers to become unbelievers, but to convince

non-believers like her of the value of being honest and forthright about their non-belief.

You know we talk a lot about communication on this

and one of the most difficult communications to have is a difficult conversation

about coming out and your story is not like most coming out stories is it? No I guess it isn't. For so many years once you

realize you weren't a believer you found it hard to tell others that you were an atheist. Why did it take so long?

I wanted everyone to like me.

And growing up in America, I absolutely got the, I think, probably true impression that atheists or people who didn't believe in God were suspect in some way.

Possibly immoral, absolutely alien, and so I wasn't honest with people around me.

And that included your family, didn't it? That certainly included my parents, my family that I grew up with. I was raised reform Jewish. We went to synagogue and we had Shabbas dinner every Friday night we lit candles and I was

but My sisters and I were all about mitzvah and I would sit in synagogue and pray and sing like everybody else but I never really

believed that the person that there was a

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