c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
An all-loving god would surely not damn his children to an eternity of torture simply for being born into a culture that believes in the wrong deity, follows the wrong holy book or attends the wrong type of church services.
— Armin Navabi, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
There is no evidence to suggest that God helps people. There is, however, ample evidence that people can help themselves and each other.
— Armin Navabi, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
It is a challenge to love someone who does not see the divine as you do, and much harder still to date someone who considers your spirituality a design flaw in an otherwise worthwhile human being.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little goodevidence.
— Carl Sagan
Every situation is of man's making and can only contain what man contains.
— Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel
Scriptures may have grains of historical truth within them, but there is also ample hyperbole, speculation and mythology.
— Armin Navabi, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
It is likely that religious beliefs have been so widespread because they tap into the psychological desires of many people, not because there is any external proof of their veracity.
— Armin Navabi, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
Science doesn't claim to have absolute certainty about the world; it creates models that provide the best explanation based on the available evidence. If additional evidence is found, the model can be changed.
— Armin Navabi, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
The impasse was this: If I let myself speculate even tentatively about that something, if I acknowledged the possibility of a nonhuman agent or agents, some mysterious Other, intervening in my life, could I still call myself an atheist?
— Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
The Ten Commandments, for example, were no more challenging than the Girl Scout oath, and why should anyone be tempted to put one false god ahead of another?
— Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
My religious friends - and my friends were almost all Catholics or Protestants or occasionally something more exotic like Jewish or Greek Orthodox - were convinced that God had a "plan" for us, and since God was good, it was a good plan, which we were required to endorse even without having any idea what it was. Just sign the paperwork; in other words, don't overintellectualize.
— Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
You call yourself an Atheist because you don’t believe in the supernatural. But one thing you do not realize is that your unbelief in the supernatural is a belief in its own nature.
— King Samuel Benson
The conventional term is "mystical experience," meaning something that by its very nature lies beyond the reach of language, except for some vague verbal hand-wavings about "mystery" and "transcendence." As far as I was concerned - as a rationalist, an atheist, a scientist by training - this was the realm of gods and fairies and of no use to the great human project of trying to retain a foothold on the planet for future generations.
— Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
An unknown cause is not the same as divine intervention.
— Armin Navabi, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God
The path of life on our planet and maybe many others does not need a divinity to thrive, it needs no excuse to live, owes no debt to the universe because it is a part of the universe, no driving force other than the primal forces of physics and chemistry are needed, those two sets created biology, and if you backtrack all of the life on the Earth, you inevitably end up looking at stardust.
— Steve Merrick
Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached.
— Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
I guess, like some guy once said, if triangles invented a god, the chances are high it would have three sides.
— Michael Marshall Smith, One of Us
Remember young man, unceasingly,' Father Paissy began, without preface, 'that the science of this world, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analysed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous. Yet the whole world still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it Has it not lasted nineteen centuries, is it not still a living, a moving power in the individual soul and in the masses of the people? It is still as strong and living even in the souls of atheists, who have destroyed everything! For even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Religion + Good Works = Good WorksSolve for Religion.
— Dan Barker
Storyboarded by the West Coast’s finest, the ceiling celebrated the exploits of that most durable of action heroes—God.
— Michael Marshall Smith, Spares
This is God's world, so everything, even if it intends to efface God, bears witness to God – understood and interpreted through biblical eyeglasses.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
I believe in steel swords, gold coins, and man's wits. (...) And I believe there once were dragons. I've seen their skulls, after all.
— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
Blindness to knowledge was his mother and despair of death his father. Darkness and fear gave birth to God. Awareness of truth will kill him.
— C.J. Anderson, Survive Ruinland: Chronicles of Lauren Vasquez
Prior to Flew, major apologies for atheism were those of Enlightenment thinkers (David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Friedrich Nietzsche).Major philosophers of Flew’s generation who were atheists: W. V. O. Quine and Gilbert Ryle. But none took the step of developing book-length arguments to support their personal beliefs.In later years, atheist philosophers who critically examined and rejected the traditional arguments for God’s existence: Paul Edwards, Wallace Matson, Kai Nielsen, Paul Kurtz, J. L. Mackie, Richard Gale, Michael Martin. But their works did not change the agenda and framework of discussion the way Flew’s innovative publications did.
— Antony Flew, There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
There's almost always a church youth group at the soup kitchen. I have yet to see an atheists' youth group. Yeah, I know, religious people don't have a monopoly on doing good. I'm sure that there are many agnostics and atheists out there slinging mashed potatoes at other soup kitchens. I know the world is full of selfless secular gropus like Doctors without Borders. But I've got to say: It's a lot easier to do good if you put your faith in a book that requires you to do good.
— A.J. Jacobs
Who am I? What am I doing here? Who are these others? This trilogy of spiritual conundrums is as practical as it is philosophical. Mindful inquiry devoted to these three questions is as spiritual as it is material and as obvious as it is unanswerable. Knowledge isn’t to comfort our souls; it is to enhance awareness—that is what some call an awakening. Some things have to be believed to be seen. Feelings articulate truth in ways that our brains cannot. We may have a sense about who we are, what our purpose is and how we relate to the rest of the world even without the vocabulary to articulate it. Recovery is visceral as much as it is intellectual. The Eleventh Step is our spiritual barometer, feeding back sensations, feelings and thoughts as we observe our life.
— Joe C., Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life: Finally, a Daily Reflection Book for Nonbelievers, Freethinkers and Everyone
The Big Book’s chapter We Agnostics draws a line in the sand: God either is or He isn’t. What was our choice to be (Alcoholics Anonymous, 53)? Nature abhors a vacuum and a state of nothing can’t exist in either the material or spiritual world. This kind of binary thinking made sense in the autocratic world of 1939. But in a democratic, pluralist society, all-or-nothing thinking is a cognitive distortion—a philosophical assumption that everything is right or wrong, good or evil, superior or inferior. In this millennium, people can hold opposing views and be equals in the same community. Our Traditions, lovingly and tolerantly, make room for more than one truth. That’s a good thing, because the only problem with the truth is that there are so many versions of it.
— Joe C., Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life: Finally, a Daily Reflection Book for Nonbelievers, Freethinkers and Everyone
Humanity without religion is equivalent to a slave without its chains. To end human fear is to end human faith. Beyond the dread of death humanity has no need for delusions of an afterlife. A single human mind void of religion can accomplish more than a thousand thoughtful of God.
— C.J. Anderson, Survive Ruinland: Chronicles of Lauren Vasquez
If the creation of the Universe was left up to a atheist, we would still have nothing.
— Josko J. Sestan
Either blasphemy is a victimless crime or its victim is powerful enough to take care of himself without any help from you.
— Richard Dawkins
Our atheist thoughts go out to his family following their loss.
— Brian Spellman
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.
— Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.
— Gustave Flaubert, The Letters, 1830-1880
God seemed to have become a brand, a packaging, and people purchase this trusted brand with such faith and devotion that they no longer care who the vendor is.
— Justin Villanueva, Conversations with the Light Bearer
To believe a thing is not to make it true.
— Robert Jordan, The Shadow Rising
Religion allows people to ignore the needs of real beings in favour of the supposed wishes ofa being that does not exist.
— Alom Shaha, The Young Atheist's Handbook: Lessons for Living a Good Life Without God
Just say it, she thought. Say what everyone in this bunker is thinking. Say what we all know to be true. The truth that we are all going to die down here, and death is the end. Nobody wakes up to a heaven or paradise. Your life will be gone. You will be gone. Forever. Uncover the truth. Tear off the bandages of delusion. Open your hearts and minds to the real world. We were doomed the day we were born. We lived and we will die and the only immortals are the people who did something worth remembering while they lived. My genetics are prime. I am pleasing to the eyes of man and machine. A dripping fountain of pleasure. Their organic sanctuary. And in time? Aging. Fading. Graying. What am I? Who am I? What makes me human? Emotions? My conscience? The soul is an old testament myth. No one shall ascend anywhere except into annihilation. The dust of earth and stars are the only eternals, she said.
— C.J. Anderson, Enter Ruinland
Do you think a sociopath cries to God as they die? Ironic that one counterfeit being would cry out to another for help, said Chiron.
— C.J. Anderson, Enter Ruinland
Sometimes people have been stepping so long, they have forgotten what it's like to be stepped on.
— Lauren Lilly Conrad
An atheist is a man who does not believe the existence of a God; now, no one can be certain of the existence of a being whom he does not conceive, and who is said to unite incompatible qualities.
— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, The System of Nature, Vol. 2
It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.
— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
But to declare his wishes only in some unknown corner of Asia, to choose the most double-dealing and the most superstitious of peoples as followers, and the vilest, most ridiculous, and most roguish working man as representative, to muddle up the message so much that it is impossible to comprehend, to teach it only to a tiny number of individuals while leaving everyone else in the dark, and to punish them for remaining there... Oh, no, Therese, no, no, such atrocities cannot be our guide. I would rather die a thousand times than believe in them. When atheism wants martyrs, let it choose them and my blood is ready.
— Marquis de Sade, Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue
The termination is not based on innocence or guilt, but on biology. The sociopath personality is fraudulent. They are impostors within the human species. Killing a sociopath is equivalent to killing God. Neither exists in reality. They are empty shells of imagination, said Chiron
— C.J. Anderson, Enter Ruinland
I mean, whatWhat if no one's watchingWhat if when we're deadWe are just deadI mean, whatWhat if it's just us down hereWhat if God is just an ideaSomeone put in your head
— Ani DiFranco
Evidence is of no longer consequence when hope enters the fray, and this is where faith is born—a seemingly abundant commodity certain powerful organizations feed on fervently, if not lavishly.
— Justin Villanueva, Conversations with the Light Bearer
Love has no value in the absence of truth.
— C.J. Anderson
Evidence is of no longer consequence when hope enters the fray, and this iswhere faith is born—a seemingly abundant commodity certain powerfulorganizations feed on fervently, if not lavishly.
— Justin Villanueva, Conversations with the Light Bearer
atheists are the most faithful people I ever met
— Dean Cavanagh
When a politician spends a million on himself, we rally and call him a thief. But when a cardinal spends the same amount on his attire, we kneel down and kiss his hand.
— Justin Villanueva, Conversations with the Light Bearer
My uncle Ernie didn't believe in God.At least that's what he said. But he alwaysWent to church on Christmas. Which I thoughtSeriously compromised his atheism.
— Eugene H. Peterson, Holy Luck
The surname of an atheist is compound unfortunate plus being, therefore unfortunate-beings, making all atheists unfortunate beings because human beings are created by God and not products of big bang atoms undergoing evolution.
— S. E. Entsua-Mensah
The true atheist is the one who refuses to see God's image in the face of their neighbour.
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
[A]ny being with the supposed capacity to create the logically impossible must himself be logically impossible.
— George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God
I am passionate about the truth. Passion is very different from fundamentalism.
— Richard Dawkins
An atheist who is a statist is just another theist.
— Stefan Molyneux
[A]ny being with thesupposed capacity to create the logically impossible must himself be logically impossible.
— George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God
The remnant of the human species must understand that faith was the narcotic that fueled the insanity of religion.Conclusion: Invisible love is wasted. Invisible evidence is worthless. Invisible God is non-existent.
— C.J. Anderson, Enter Ruinland
To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.
— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him)...
— George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
I'm an atheist. I wouldn't even call myself an agnostic. I am an atheist.
— Nadine Gordimer, The Quotable Gordimer; or, The Wit and Wisdom of Nadine Gordimer
Live with the consequences of your deeds and enjoy the warmth they create. The only warmth in the cold, indifferent universe is that which we create ourselves. And that is what a work of art is, it is what a constructed life is, a fulfilled life, the warmth of acts.
— Peter Watson, The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God
From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man—the function of his reasoning mind.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
The human species – mammalian primates though undoubtedly (s)he is, and made out of the dust of exploded suns - does have the need for the transcendent, the numinous, even the ecstatic. I wouldn’t trust anyone who hadn’t had this. This has to do with landscape, light, music, love and an awareness of the transience of all things, and the melancholy that invests all this. So it isn’t just gaping happily at the sunset while listening to music, and doing that while knowing that it can’t last very long. But there is no need for the supernatural in this at all. There is no dimension of the supernatural of which this gives one a share.
— Christopher Hitchens
We are all born free from all religious affiliations and only come to believe in such things after being introduced to it ― so, atheism is the default position. Although some children are not indoctrinated with a specific religion before the age of reason, there are many more who are.
— David G. McAfee, Mom, Dad, I'm an Atheist: The Guide to Coming Out as a Non-Believer
I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.
— C.G. Jung
So you are Catholic? Didn't know that.I am nothing, I said. God knows God is no friend of mine. But I envy people who believe in this crap. They don't worry about the meaning of life and things, whereas I do.
— Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project
Religion as a philosophy is superior to religion as a practice.
— Daya Kudari
Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience.
— Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne - Complete
If a supernatural being is to be exempt from natural law, it cannot possess specific, determinate characteristics. These attributes would impose limits and these limits would restrict the capacities of this supernatural being. In this case, a supernatural being would be subject to the causal relationships that mark natural existence, which would disqualify it as a god. Therefore, we must somehow conceive of a being without a specific nature, a being that is indeterminate—a being, in other words, that is nothing in particular. But these characteristics (or, more precisely, lack of characteristics) are incompatible with the notion of existence itself.
— George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God
If a supernatural being is to be exempt from natural law, it cannot possess specific, determinatecharacteristics. These attributes would impose limits and these limits would restrict the capacitiesof this supernatural being. In this case, a supernatural being would be subject to the causalrelationships that mark natural existence, which would disqualify it as a god. Therefore, we mustsomehow conceive of a being without a specific nature, a being that is indeterminate—a being, inother words, that is nothing in particular. But these characteristics (or, more precisely, lack ofcharacteristics) are incompatible with the notion of existence itself.
— George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God
To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life.
— George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God
I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place.
— Christian B. Anfinsen
Who has stopped worshiping us?""Everyone in the old world," April said little harshly. "But of course they have, young woman. We left, didn't we? We came to Everworld. How can you expect people to worship a God they can't see from time to time?""Yeah April," Jalil prodded, failing to suppress a smirk. "How can you?
— K.A. Applegate
If it is the case that we are merely slaves to the natural processes computing our advanced fight and flight responses, then we are never truly thinking, which means that logic and reason - the things we hold so dear - do not exist either.
— Lewis N. Roe, From A To Theta: Taking The Tricky Subject Of Religion And Explaining Why It Makes Sense In A Way We Can All Understand
Naturalistic atheism debunks itself. It has no power to explain even some of the most basic principles of the universe and existence. It cannot even explain how its own claims can be reasonably believed.
— Lewis N. Roe, From A To Theta: Taking The Tricky Subject Of Religion And Explaining Why It Makes Sense In A Way We Can All Understand
Coincidentally, the words RELIGION and BULLSHIT both have eight letters.
— Daya Kudari
Religion waited for man to evolve. It waited an eternity like a desolate lover awaiting its unborn soulmate. When man was able to accept religion it captured his heart and enslaved his mind. The supreme delusion united with the supreme host.
— C.J. Anderson, Ruinland Chronicles Vol.3
Religion suits everyone’s needs, believers, agnostics, atheists and god, just in case it exists
— Daya Kudari
We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of a lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis fails to become a Christian because of a lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with god.
— William Lane Craig
Religion is a distraction from true education.
— Richard Dawkins
I waited in vain for someone like me to stand up and say that the only thing those of us who don't believe in god have to believe is in other people and that New York City is the best place there ever was for a godless person to practice her moral code. I think it has to do with the crowded sidewalks and subways. Walking to and from the hardware store requires the push and pull of selfishness and selflessness, taking turns between getting out of someone's way and them getting out of yours, waiting for a dog to move, helping a stroller up steps, protecting the eyes from runaway umbrellas. Walking in New York is a battle of the wills, a balance of aggression and kindness. I'm not saying it's always easy. The occasional "Watch where you're going, bitch" can, I admit, put a crimp in one's day. But I believe all that choreography has made me a better person. The other day, in the subway at 5:30, I was crammed into my sweaty, crabby fellow citizens, and I kept whispering under my breath "we the people, we the people" over and over again, reminding myself we're all in this together and they had as much right - exactly as much right - as I to be in the muggy underground on their way to wherever they were on their way to.
— Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot
There was something built into the human brain by natural selection which was once useful, and which now manifests itself as religion.
— Richard Dawkins
All the three monotheist religions (Jewish, Christianity and Islam)claims that their God (Yahweh, God and Allah) created humans in a similar way: this indicates that creationist have not yet established the creator.
— Ajay Kansal
Atheism is the default position in any scientific inquiry, just as a-quarkism or a-neutrinoism was. That is, any entity has to earn its admission into a scientific account either via direct evidence for its existence or because it plays some fundamental explanatory role. Before the theoretical need for neutrinos was appreciated (to preserve the conservation of energy) and then later experimental detection was made, they were not part of the accepted physical account of the world. To say physicists in 1900 were 'agnostic' about neutrinos sounds wrong: they just did not believe there were such things.As yet, there is no direct experimental evidence of a deity, and in order for the postulation of a deity to play an explanatory role there would have to be a lot of detail about how it would act. If, as you have suggested, we are not “good judges of how the deity would behave,” then such an unknown and unpredictable deity cannot provide good explanatory grounds for any phenomenon. The problem with the 'minimal view' is that in trying to be as vague as possible about the nature and motivation of the deity, the hypothesis loses any explanatory force, and so cannot be admitted on scientific grounds. Of course, as the example of quarks and neutrinos shows, scientific accounts change in response to new data and new theory. The default position can be overcome.
— Tim Maudlin
The imperfections of religions can only be understood by their unfollowers, not followers.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
Leaving one religion for the sake of another one is like breaking with a rapist for the sake of dating a misogynist.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
What can I do? Pray? Would God allow such agony? Sure he would, they would say. To test your faith. She laughed. My heart is crumbling, she said. But I will not give my last love to an imaginary being.
— C.J. Anderson, Enter Ruinland
The difference between a theist and an atheist is the degree to which God has revealed himself to them.
— Eli Of Kittim, The Little Book of Revelation: The First Coming of Jesus at the End of Days
I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed.(from Who's Who in Hell)
— Jack London
I don't know if there's a God. (And neither do you, and neither does Professor Dawkins, and neither does anybody. It isn't the kind of thing you can know. It isn't a knowable item.) But then, like every human being, I am not in the habit of entertaining only the emotions I can prove. I'd be a unrecognizable oddity if I did.
— Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense
It was a feeling which he had seen before in his mother
—  but no chord within vibrated to it.
Where human knowledge ends the imagined God begins.
— C.J. Anderson, Enter Ruinland
A long time ago I learned that an atheist and a believer trying to have a discussion about God and religion is like shooting the breeze and having it shoot back.
— T. K. Decker
Mankind's most dangerous enemy is the human imagination. What their minds can imagine is far more malicious than the deepest furnaces of their chimerical Hell. They imagined an invisible god to corrupt their thoughts with everlasting fantasies and eternal lies. When the human species invented God the darkness of imagination was present. Mankind imagined an unseen creator to form their bodies and then to reform them indestructible upon death. The mortal truth became the immortal delusion. They possessed no knowledge of God so they invented him. Where human knowledge ends the imagined God begins.
— C.J. Anderson, Ruinland Chronicles Vol.2
The claim 'God does not exist' is just as much a claim to know something as saying 'God does exist,' meaning the atheist needs just as much substantiation for his claim as the theist does for his.
— Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture
Atheists are spiritual slackers, right? We are the stoners of the cosmos. We think we’re all over-intelligent, free-thinking, free-spirited, uber-cool, hippy-dippy, science-minded, leaning-to-the-left, hedonistic, children of Theodorus the Atheist. We’re all like “Dude, I don’t need no stinkin’ deity” and if we came face-to-face with the Grim Reaper himself we’d say, “No worries, Bro, let’s do this! Game over!
— T. K. Decker
Religious freedom doesn't include the freedom to disregard the law and restrict another's freedom to believe and act differently. No one's forcing Catholic nuns to practice birth control, or priests to wear condoms (good idea tho). If you really feel your religious beliefs conflict with the mandates of running a business, the solution is simple: Get your ass out of the boardroom and back to the pulpit (where it belongs).
— Quentin R. Bufogle
You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children.
— Stephen Fry
Spiritual": religion without any rules. All the comfort of fictitious friends with none of their demands.
— Stefan Molyneux
I agree with Pierre Bayle and with Unamuno that when cold reason contemplates the world it finds not only an absence of God, but good reasons for supposing that there is no God at all. From this perspective, from what Unamuno called the 'tragic sense of life', from this despair, faith comes to the rescue, not only as something nonrational but in a sense irrational. For Unamuno the great symbol of a person of faith was his Spanish hero Don Quixote. Faith is indeed quixotic. It is absurd. Let us admit it. Let us concede to everything! To a rational mind the world looks like a world without God. It looks like a world with no hope for another life. To think otherwise, to believe in spite of appearances, is surely a kind of madness. The atheist sees clearly that windmills are in fact only windmills, that Dulcinea is just a poor country bumpkin with a homely face and an unpleasant smell. The atheist is a Sarah, justifiably laughing in her old age at Abraham's belief that God will give them a son.What can be said in reply? How can a fideist admit that faith is a kind of madness, a dream fed by passionate desire, and yet maintain that one is not mad to make the leap?
— Martin Gardner
One response was given by the innkeeper when Mary and Joseph wanted to find a room where the Child could be born. The innkeeper was not hostile; he was not opposed to them, but his inn was crowded; his hands were full; his mind was preoccupied. This§ is the answer that millions are giving today. Like a Bethlehem innkeeper, they cannot find room for Christ. All the accommodations in their hearts are already taken up by other crowding interests. Their response is not atheism. It is not defiance. It is preoccupation and the feeling of being able to get on reasonably well without Christianity.
— Billy Graham
'I thought you were an atheist,' Sjurd commented to hide the clench of his gut. He couldn't be stuck here while his country burned. 'Nobody's an atheist in a storm,' Celyn said absently, still frowning at the sky.
— Amy Rae Durreson, The Lodestar of Ys
You know, people always talk about how Jesus came down to Earth as a human being. He became a human being, But no one ever takes into account what that means.
— David Javerbaum
Plain speaking is necessary in any discussion of religion, for if the freethinker attacks the religious dogmas with hesitation, the orthodox believer assumes that it is with regret that the freethinker would remove the crutch that supports the orthodox. And all religious beliefs are 'crutches' hindering the free locomotive efforts of an advancing humanity. There are no problems related to human progress and happiness in this age which any theology can solve, and which the teachings of freethought cannot do better and without the aid of encumbrances.
— David Marshall Brooks, The Necessity of Atheism
On the first day, man created God
— Daniel Delgado F.
Atheism is not synonymous with anti-theism and not all atheists are 'active.' There are many non-believers who aren’t activists, who don’t oppose religion at all, or who are simply not all are interested in discussing belief or lack thereof.
— David G. McAfee
He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.
— Karl Marx
No the first day, man crea tee God
— Daniel Delgado F.
science is one , gods are manyscience allows change and accept new tested things but religion notscience laws are same all over earth but religions have different
— er.teji
Every agnostic has a minister, Mike. Otherwise, they's be atheists.
— Jared C. Wilson, Otherworld
I did apply for more than 200 scholarships and finally I got one, but you are telling me now “God gave it to me!” Don’t you think you are too stupid?
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
I’ve often wondered how the term “'New Atheism”' gained such currency. It is a misnomer. There is nothing new about nonbelief. All of us, without exception, are born knowing nothing of God or gods, and acquire notions of religion solely through interaction with others – or, most often, indoctrination by others, an indoctrination usually commencing well before we can reason. Our primal state is, thus, one of nonbelief. The New Atheists (most prominently Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens) have, in essence, done nothing more than try to bring us back to our senses, to return us to a pure and innate mental clarity.
— Jeffrey Tayler
I am a cuddly atheist... I am against creationism being taught in schools because there is empirical evidence that it is a silly notion... I am passionately concerned about the rise in pseudo-science; in beliefs in alternative medicine; in creationism. The idea that somehow it is based on logic, on rational arguments, but it's not. It doesn't stand up to empirical evidence.In the same way in medicine, alternative medicines like homeopathy or new age therapies – reiki healing – a lot of people buy into it and it grates against my rationalist view of the world. There is no evidence for it. It is deceitful. It is insidious. I feel passionately about living in a society with a rationalist view of the world.I will be vocal on issues where religion impacts on people's lives in a way that I don't agree with – if, for instance, in faith schools some of the teaching of religion suggests the children might have homophobic views or views that are intolerant towards other belief systems...I am totally against, for example, bishops in the House of Lords. Why should someone of a particular religious faith have some preferential treatment over anyone else? This notion that the Church of England is the official religion of the country is utterly outmoded now.
— Jim Al-Khalili
By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were.
— Erwin Schrödinger, A Life of Erwin Schrödinger
You don’t want atheism shoved down your throat? OK. We will stock knocking on doors spreading our ‘Truth,’ and having tax-exempt organizations dedicated to atheism that have influential political action committees. We will also stop printing ‘In atheism we trust’ on all US currency and saying, ‘One nation, under atheism” in the pledge of allegiance. We will also stop insisting that everyone who disagrees with us will be sentence to eternal damnation… Wait…
— David G. McAfee
By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them- all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, -too; cutting the unborn child from the mothers womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful theologians such as Bonhoeffer is that gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
If heaven was hot and hell was chilly, tell me, why would you go to heaven?
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Our historical pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, 'on its meek eyes,' everyone must have seen it. It's peculiarly Russian. He describes how a feeble little nag has foundered under too heavy a load and cannot move. The peasant beats it, beats it savagely, beats it at last not knowing what he is doing in the intoxication of cruelty, thrashes it mercilessly over and over again. 'However weak you are, you must pull, if you die for it.' The nag strains, and then he begins lashing the poor defenceless creature on its weeping, on its 'meek eyes.' The frantic beast tugs and draws the load, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic action- it's awful in Nekrassov. But that only a horse, and God has horses to be beaten.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
But I've still better things about children. I've collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, 'most worthy and respectable people, of good education and breeding.' You see, I must repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing children, and children only. To all other types of humanity these torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane Europeans; but they are very fond of tormenting children, even fond of children themselves in that sense. it's just their defencelessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden- the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on."This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty- shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God'! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I'll leave off if you like
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Maybe scientists are fundamentalist when it comes to defining in some abstract way what is meant by 'truth'. But so is everybody else. I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
If one religion were 'true,' we would expect to see, even if only once in all of recorded history, a religious missionary that had stumbled upon a culture that shared the same revelations — brought forth by the same deity.
— David G. McAfee
Atheism is not a philosophy
—  it is not even a view of the world
As soon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: "I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise." In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would have at once become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Atheists determine there is no God based on their own intellect. I've determined there is a God based on His intellect.
— William Branks
There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
It is possible to conceive, Anselm said, of a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Even an atheist can conceive of such a superlative being, though he would deny its existence in the real world. But, goes the argument, a being that doesn't exist in the real world is, by that very fact, less than perfect. Therefore we have a contradiction and, hey presto, God exists!
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
If I am not master of my life, not sultan of my own being, then no man's logic and no man's ecstatic fits may force me to find less silly my impossibly silly position: that of God's slave; no, not his slave even, but just a match which is aimlessly struck and then blown out by some inquisitive child, the terror of his toys.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Despair
—Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a protestant?—I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed 'holy' leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife. Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism.
— Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists
How could any Lord have made this world?... there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for this world to commit... No happiness lasted.
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I'm an atheist, but I believe in art. I go to galleries like my mother went to church. It helps me understand the way I live.
— Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World
If there's a god, it knows exactly what it would take to convince me and has refused to provide it. In fact, it has gone to great lengths to hide any evidence of its existence. That doesn't seem like a deity that wants to be worshiped to me.
— David G. McAfee
The idea of God was invented in the small hours of history by a scam who had genius; it somehow reeks too much of humanity, that idea, to make its azure origin plausible...
— Vladimir Nabokov, Despair