One thing we tend to lose sight of is that a privately held belief may never become public, may never be known. In a society or culture or time when almost everyone espouses a similar belief, it is safer and less troublesome to publicly object.

A person may well be a believer in an atheistic society but not dare, for whatever reason, to say so. Conversely, a person may well be a non-believer in a believing society (whether Christian or functioning under any other label) and find it less trouble to keep his or her silence. I know that on occasion I have not spoken up; I try to pick my battles and being in the presence of an assertion of faith amongst the elderly or the imprisoned or the dying is not the battle I would pick. It would be tactless, at the very least, and grievously insensitive at the worst.

I doubt this has changed much over the centuries. I would guess that some of the most soaring religious music was composed by unbelievers, and that some of the most rational dissertations were presented by believers.

After all, it is really no one else's business what each of us privately believes.

That said, it is also not my business to question what - or whom - the anguished and torn may turn to in the dark hour of the night.