Atheist Quotes - Page 3

Take the Holocaust for example: Why did God allow Hitler to kill millions of innocent Jews? Because God didn't want to step on Hitler's toes and interfere with his free will? That's a pretty lame excuse. What about the free will of all those Jews who died? I'm pretty sure that getting gassed to death was obviously not their choice. So, was the Holocaust part of God's great plan? Is that why he allowed it to happen? Is that why God didn't answer the prayers of all those Jews who begged him to make Hitler drop dead? Why didn't God just make Hitler have a heart attack before he could start World War 2? Why didn't he simply prevent Hitler from being born? How could a God who is supposed to be all good all the time allow something like the Holocaust?Or did God not just LET it happen? Maybe God MADE the Holocaust happen, because everything that happens, happens for a good reason? Are our minds simply too tiny, too inferior, to understand God's divine plan? Are we just too stupid to see the greater good that came out of the Holocaust?If that were true, and everything that happens, including the Holocaust, is part of God's perfect plan, then that means that Hitler really wasn't a bad man at all. He was actually doing God's work. And if Hitler did exactly what he was supposed to do in God's great plan, then Hitler obviously didn't have free will, but was just God's puppet. So that means Hitler was a good guy. A man of God.Sorry, but there is no religion in the world that could sell me on believing THAT bullshit.

Oliver Markus

On the revelation that there are no gods or afterlife:-"I do not 'like' the truth any more than you Avil, or anyone. I wrestled with it for a long time, for a while I was distraught, desperate to find that my research had been wrong - the more I searched, the deeper I delved the more clear it became that the truth was what it is. After much reflection, I came to the conclusion that though accepting the truth is hard, moving on from that, it becomes clear that the important thing is to make the world we live in a better place. We get one life, it's our duty to make the most of it."~Brael Truthseeker of House KrazicDeathsworn Arc 2 : The Verkreath Horror

Martyn Stanley

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our atheist thoughts go out to his family following their loss.

Brian Spellman

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

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 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

I am not an atheist. I simply believe in a god different from yours

Bangambiki Habyarimana

God doesn't send atheists to Hell -- there's no room with all the Christians down there.

Quentin R. Bufogle

What sort of a god are you, my Lord? Your punishments seem barbaric to me. Either that or we are more god-like and you’re merely human-like.

theguywiththebrokenpromise

Life operates exactly like the Star Wars prequels. It’s boring, bloated, painful when it shouldn’t be, and lacks a cohesive storyline. And ultimately, it only exists to boost the ego of its creator.

Jake Vander-Ark

I am, perhaps, too intellectual, too modern, for my own comfort! How lovely it would be to sink into the warm comfort of established religion.

Lisa Tuttle

Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor teaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.

D.H. Lawrence

A lie is a lieeven if everyone believes it.

Anonymous

If you invoke faith as justification for your belief, you must accept the same from others. And every person who retreats to faith bears a measure of responsibility for every act of hate and violence justified by it.

Nate Phelps

Tolerance is NOT acceptance. And that's the problem with ALL religion. It teaches acceptance only for those who believe exactly as you do, and at best, tolerance for the rest of us "sinners." Sorry. Not acceptable.

Quentin R. Bufogle

Only those who are brainwashed and foolsbelieve in the existence of a god.Those who are indifferent just pretend.

A.J. Beirens

Atheism is not against god, it is against the religious establishment who use god they have never seen or heard from to establish their influence over the minds of men.

Bangambiki Habyarimana

If you are a pastor there is no way you can lose faith without losing face, you are considered the devil incarnate by your former congregation

Bangambiki Habyarimana

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to uptime causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the Universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and you be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

Carl Sagan

The difference between an atheist and a person of faith? One additional religion in the crazy column. You believe that all religions except yours are crazy. I believe that all religions including yours are crazy.

Quentin R. Bufogle

Father was an atheist; he had even joined the Skeleton Army - a club of men who went about in masks or black faces, with ribald placards and a brass band, to make war upon the Salvation Army.

A.E. Coppard

...for my master, bad as I have thought him, is not half so bad as this woman.--To be sure she must be an atheist!

Samuel Richardson

I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.

Primo Levi

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....Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't.

Erwin Schrödinger

My aim is to argue that the universe can come into existence without intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations.

Peter Atkins

If everything must have a cause, of course, this also applies to God; if God can exist in isolation, then why not the universe?

Etienne Vermeersch

Faith is believing beyond the power of reason, when they're all against you. To one who has faith, no explanation is possible. To one without faith, evidence is necessary.

Esteban Urayoán

Ritual abuse is highly organised and, obviously, secretive. It is often linked with other major crimes such as child pornography, child prostitution, the drugs industry, trafficking, and many other illegal and heinous activities. Ritual abuse is organised sexual, physical and psychological abuse, which can be systematic and sustained over a long period of time. It involves the use of rituals - things which the abusers 'need' to do, or 'need' to have in place - but it doesn't have to have a belief system. There doesn't have to be God or the Devil, or any other deity for it to be considered 'ritual'. It involves using patterns of learning and development to keep the abuse going and to make sure the child stays quiet.There has been, and still is a great deal of debate about whether or not such abuse exists anywhere in the world. There are many people who constantly deny that there is even such a thing as ritual abuse. All I can say is that I know there is. Not only have I been a victim of it myself, but I have been dealing with survivors of this type of abuse for almost 30 years.If there are survivors, there must be something that they have survived.The things is, most sexual abuse of children is ritualised in some way. Abusers use repetition, routine and ritual to forced children into the patterns of behaviour they require. Some abusers want their victims to wear certain clothing, to say certain things. They might bathe them or cut them, they might burn them or abuse them only on certain days of the week. They might do a hundred other things which are ritualistic, but aren't always called that - partly, I think because we have a terror of the word and of accepting just how premeditated abuse actually is.Abusers instill fear in their victims and ensure silence; they do all they can to avoid being caught. Sexual abuse of a child is rarely a random act. It involves thorough planning and preparation beforehand. They threaten the children with death, with being taken into care, with no one believing them, which physical violence or their favourite teddy being taken away. They are told that their mum will die, or their dad will hate them, the abusers say everyone will think it's their fault, that everyone already knows they are bad. Nothing is too big or small for an abuser to use as leverage.There is unmistakable proof that abusers do get together in order to share children, abuse more children, and even learn from each other. As more cases have come into the public eye in recent years, this has become increasingly obvious. More and more of this type of abuse is coming to light.I definitely think it is the word ritual which causes people to question, to feel uncomfortable, or even just disbelieve. It seems almost incredible that such things would happen, but too many of us know exactly how bad the lives of many children are. A great deal of child pornography shows children being abused in a ritualised setting, and many have now come forward to share their experiences, but there is a still tendency to say it just couldn't happen.p204-205

Laurie Matthew

Now, I don't believe that a god exists. I think that gods are creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.

Clive Barker

I regard teaching religion as purveying lies.

Peter Atkins

It is not possible to be intellectually honest and believe in gods. And it is not possible to believe in gods and be a true scientist.

Peter Atkins

I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven. Nabokov summed up a nonbeliever’s view of the cosmos, and our place in it, thus: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” The 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle put it slightly differently: “One life. A little gleam of Time between two Eternities.” Though I have many memories to cherish, I value the present, my time on earth, those around me now. I miss those who have departed, and recognize, painful as it is, that I will never be reunited with them. There is the here and now – no more. But certainly no less. Being an adult means, as Orwell put it, having the “power of facing unpleasant facts.” True adulthood begins with doing just that, with renouncing comforting fables. There is something liberating in recognizing ourselves as mammals with some fourscore years (if we’re lucky) to make the most of on this earth.There is also something intrinsically courageous about being an atheist. Atheists confront death without mythology or sugarcoating. That takes courage.

Jeffrey Tayler

Science discovered long ago that carbon is a source of life. The ashes of my faith have prepared the ground for the planting of seeds that have produced new forms of truth, morality and meaning on my own terms, not according to the dogma laid down by religious ruffians or a vengeful God. If, as believers claim, the word "gospel" means good news, then the good news for me is that there is no gospel, other than what I can define for myself, by observation and conscience. As a journalist and free-thinking human being, I have come not to favor and fear religion, but to face and fight it as an impediment to civilized advancement.

Steve Benson

The nature of atheism merits clarification on two further points which involve less common ideas about theism. The first involves the idea of 'God' which is metaphorical — for example, a theist who believes in 'God' as a principle of conscience or morality. This 'God' exists in a person’s mind and it is not something which atheists will dispute. Atheists agree that gods exist as ideas in people’s minds; the disagreement lies over whether any gods actually exist independently of human beliefs. Those are the gods which atheists disbelieve in or deny.The second type of theism involves gods that exist as physical objects: stones, trees, rivers, or even the universe itself. Believers treat these objects are their gods, but do atheists reject their existence? Of course not — but how do they then remain atheists? The point of disagreement here is whether the label 'god' communicates any information beyond the more common label of 'stone,' 'tree,' or 'universe.' If not, then as far as atheists are concerned, those objects don’t merit the extra label 'god' and they remain atheists.

Austin Cline

The orthodox tend to think that people who, like the postmodernists and me, believe neither in God nor in some suitable substitute, must feel that everything is permitted, that everybody can do what they like.

Richard M. Rorty

I was brought up Christian, then I was agnostic and then I realized I was atheist... This movie [Agora] is about fundamentalism and hate.

Alejandro Amenábar

They hate us because we are atheists and we feel sorry for them because they are religious.

M.F. Moonzajer

I am also atheist or agnostic (I don't even know the difference). I've never been to church and prefer to think for myself.

Steve Wozniak

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....

Jean-Paul Sartre

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

By the time I had complete my 22nd year, I was a new man - an atheist.

Béla Bartók

I implore the atheist not to judge the religious and I implore the religious to not find fault with the atheist. Be a good religious person, or be a good atheist person. How? By putting an end to faultfinding. All do what they believe in their best interest to do and with a little insight and understanding, all can see that the only way anyone can do any good service to the world, is by being thankful for what is been given him, by looking inwards to correct his own faults instead of the perceived faults of others, and by keeping his eye upon his own horizon; not upon the perceived horizons of anybody else.

C. JoyBell C.

Now I have to say I'm a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it's a natural fact of life.

David J. Chalmers

[Religion is] a fantasy [and is] completely empty of any explanatory content. It is also evil.

Peter Atkins

I don't have any relationship with God and I've never wanted it. I don't believe in fate or in any superior entity; if a plane crashes and people die, it's not because Heaven said so.

Fernando Alonso Díaz

It is neither just the religious, the spiritual, the power-hungry, the evil, the ignorant, the corrupt, the Christian, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Jew, nor the atheist that makes a hypocrite, but being a human being. Any man who thinks himself to be free of hypocrisy while committed to cherry-picking others for such, I am confident, the Almighty can prove to him a great deal of his own hypocrisy even beyond his earthly comprehension.

Criss Jami

The atheist suicide bomber is unfaithfully committed to his mission

Dean Cavanagh

[Letter to his wife, Natalia Sedova]In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness.For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.

Leon Trotsky

Reasonableness is a matter of degree. Beliefs can be very reasonable (Japan exists), fairly reasonable (quarks exist), not unreasonable (there's intelligent life on other planets) or downright unreasonable (fairies exist).There's a scale of reasonableness, if you like, with very reasonable beliefs near the top and deeply unreasonable ones towards the bottom. Notice a belief can be very high up the scale, yet still be open to some doubt. And even when a belief is low down, we can still acknowledge the remote possibility it might be true.How reasonable is the belief that God exists? Atheists typically think it very unreasonable. Very low on the scale. But most religious people say it is at least not unreasonable (have you ever met a Christian who said 'Hey, belief in God is no more reasonable than belief in fairies, but I believe it anyway!'?) They think their belief is at least halfway up the scale of reasonableness.Now, that their belief is downright unreasonable might, in fact, be established empirically. If it turned out that not only is there no good evidence of an all-powerful, all-good God, there's also overwhelming evidence against (from millions of years of unimaginable and pointless animal suffering, including several mass extinctions - to thousands of children being crushed to death or buried alive in Pakistan earthquake, etc. etc. etc.) then it could be empirically confirmed that there's no God.Would this constitute a 'proof' that there's no God? Depends what you mean by 'proof'. Personally I think these sorts of consideration do establish beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no all-powerful all-good God. So we can, in this sense, prove there's no God.Yet all the people quoted in my last blog say you cannot 'scientifically' prove or disprove God's existence. If they mean prove beyond any doubt they are right. But then hardly anything is provable in that sense, not even the non-existence of fairies.

Stephen Law

Being an atheist means you have to realise that when you die, that really is it. You've got to make the most of what you've got here and spread as much influence as you can. I believe that you only live through the influence that you spread, whether that means having a kid or making music....I don't believe in heaven or hell, I don't really believe in that version.

Matthew Bellamy

I know many people who believe in God, and I expected to find Him on my way to the South Pole if he exists. My religious experiences were very different however, [only] involving myself, nature and the universe.

Liv Arnesen

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Atheist Quotes - Page 3

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