And there’s a certain ghoulish element, even about the nice people who’ve been praying for me. Because they are not just praying for my recovery, they’re praying for my reconciliation with religion. And I—I proposed a tradeoff the other day, I said, I tell you what, what if we secularists stop going to hospitals and walking around the wards and asking if people are religious when they are in extremis and in their last days and saying look, you’ve still got a little time, why don’t you live the last few days of it as a free person. You’ll feel much better. All that nonsense they taught you. You know you could still have every chance to give it up. Experience the life of a free thinking autonomous person. Don’t live in fear, don’t believe in mythology. They – I don’t think they’d welcome it. And of course, we don’t do that. But it seems to be considered the right of almost everybody to do it the other way around.
-- Christopher Hitchens