Here is what one of the presidential candidates, Mitt Romney, recently professed:

"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

This has to be one of the most nonsensical statements I have read in a while, and I can only qualify it, nicely, as blabber.

Freedom has nothing to do with religion. If anything, religion has hindered, and is still hindering, freedom in many parts of the world. America, the land of the free, was founded by atheists (at most Deists) and free-thinkers, contrary to what too many in America would like you to believe.

More generally, ethics do not correlate with religion: many religious people behave in a non-ethical way, and many non-religious people behave in an ethical way. There is lot of wishful thinking, but no evidence that I know of showing otherwise.

It is clear that Romney doesn't like to be asked about his religion (Mormonism), which is understandable, but talking nonsense is probably not a good solution to that particular problem: it just makes him sound dumb (which, after all, is fine in my book).