Bothwell [the atheist in question] was raised a Presbyterian but began questioning Christian beliefs at a young age and considered himself an atheist by the time he was 20. He's an active member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville, and he still celebrates Christmas, often hanging ornaments on his fishhook cactus.

The Welsh say that there are three things that only God knows: the beginning of things, the cause of things, and the end of things. They seem like natural-born physicists.

[...and...]

Soot forms as fuel molecules agglomerate into carbonaceous particles large enough to be pulled down by gravity instead of riding on the wind. Besides making a greasy film on city windowills, they are carcinogenic. Yes, Virginia, Santa Claus would never survive exposure to so much chimney soot.

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.