Being a Supreme Court Justice

With the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court there has been a lot of talk lately about activist judges, as if any of us ever come to a decision devoid of our own experiences, judges or not. Conservatives have become bent and and of shape about this. They insist that a justice's opinions should have no bearing on their decisions, seeking to separate men and women from the law. The law is the law they posit and there is no room for interpretation. Judges are extricated from their rulings; they become automatons. This being so, I wonder if the religious right conservatives could nominate an atheist to the court. How many votes do you think this one would get among these? Not many, you can believe that.