Penn Jillette contributed today to NPR's series, This I Believe, a collection of audio essays about personal philosophies and values. Penn's entry, There Is No God, explains how atheism makes him a better person:
Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day. Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Penn breaks no new ground here (of course, you wouldn't really expect him to, in a two-minute-or-so radio essay), but it's worth reading in full.