Started by Ben
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Vonnie
Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other hand, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument — their intellect — which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously.
- Galen Strawson
The legitimate powers of government extend to only such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.
- Thomas Jefferson
Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates.
- Thomas Jefferson
Reason can never prove the existence of God.
- Immanuel Kant
God is either cruel or incompetent.
- Woody Allen
I don't believe in God, but I'm very interested in her.
- Arthur C. Clark
I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.
- Clarence Darrow
God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That, sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, 'Do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out.' When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment/execution. When a god says the same, we call him loving and build churches in his honor.
- William C. Easttom II
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to... If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked... If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?... If he is unable to do either, then why call him 'God'?
- Epicurus
If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is 'God is crying.' And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is 'Probably because of something you did.'
- Jack Handey
I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
- "Jubal Harshaw", in Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk.
- John Marcellus Huston
All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto de fé, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy — making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.
- Robert Ingersoll
Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.
- Robert Ingersoll
God is only a great imaginative experience.
- D. H. Lawrence
God created the world and then created the devil, to blame for his mistakes.
- Simon Le Bon
You notice how God's not around anymore? He spends all that time playing with Adam and Eve and the Israelites and smiting cities and things and has got bored over the last... recorded history or so. I wonder if he has new toys? And if so, are the old toys still going to be wanted when we show up to cash in the "life everafter" tokens.
- Katie Lucas
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection, creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell.
- Armand Salacrou, in Ceritudes et incertitudes (1943)
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
- Voltaire
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
- Richard Dawkins
Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!
- Christopher Hitchens
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.
- Christopher Hitchens
I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.
- Frederick the Great
I would, like any other scientist, willingly change my mind if the evidence led me to do so. So I care about what's true, I care about evidence, I care about evidence as the reason for knowing what is true. It is true that I come across rather passionate sometimes—and that's because I am passionate about the truth. … I do get very impatient with humbug, with cant, with fakery, with charlatans.
- Richard Dawkins
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
- Albert Einstein
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. ... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
- Albert Einstein
[Worshipping God] is like fellating someone who intermittently stubs fags out on your head for no good reason. And we all know how unsatisfying that can be.
- Charlie Brooker
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
- Albert Einstein
The question of the origin of the matter in the universe is no longer thought to be beyond the range of science -- everything can be created from nothing…it is fair to say that the universe is the ultimate free lunch.
- Alan Guth
I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
God's power is infinite, Whatever he wills is executed; But neither man nor any other animal is happy; therefore he does not will their happiness. Epicurus' old questions are yet unanswered. Is he both able and willing to prevent evil? Then whence cometh evil?
- David Hume
There is in every village a torch: The schoolteacher. And an extinguisher: The priest.
- Victor Hugo
It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
- Richard Dawkins
The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts:
Those with brains, but no religion,
And those with religion, but no brains.
- Abu'l-`Ala' al-Ma`arri
[T]he aim of this conference is to have a constructive dialogue between science and religion. I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.
- Steven Weinberg
Science should be taught not in order to support religion and not in order to destroy religion. Science should be taught simply ignoring religion.
- Steven Weinberg
I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
- former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, August 27 1987; quoted in Free Inquiry magazine, Fall 1988, Volume 8, Number 4, page 16
I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person. . . . I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is.
- President George W. Bush, Washington Times, 12 January 2005
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The fool says in his heart: 'There is no God.' The Wise Man says it to the world.
- Troy Witte
God...a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive."
- Ayn Rand
I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programs a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature, to which I reply and say, "Well, it's funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the almighty, always quote beautiful things, they always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses." But I always have to think, too, of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he's five years old, and I reply and say, "Well, presumably the god you speak about created the worm as well," and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful god with that action.
- David Attenborough
Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.
- Madalyn Murray O'Hair
An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.
- Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Why am I an atheist? The short answer is that I cannot accept any of the alternatives. I simply don't find them believable. As for the accusation of intellectual pride, surely the boot is on the other foot. Atheists don't claim to know anything with certainty—it's the believers who know it all.
- Barbara Smoker
An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the god question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question.