.E-
H
E
Sir Arthur Eddington
We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by
accident, bits of a star gone wrong.
Thomas Edison
I do not believe that any type of religion should
ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States.
My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing
as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply
do not believe it.
All Bibles are man-made.
So far as religion of the day is concerned, it
is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk.
I have never seen the slightest scientific proof
of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals,
or of a personal God.
Faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not
fiction— faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.
I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk
of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is
born of our tenacity of life... our desire to go on living... our dread
of coming to an end.
Albert Einstein
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, 1954
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.... This is
a somewhat new kind of religion.
The minority, the ruling class at present, has
the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This
enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its
tool of them.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes
the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own --
a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can
I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although
feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
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; 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.
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed. ~ “Religion and Science,” New York
Times Magazine, November 9, 1930
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 Human Side
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually
on sympathy, education, and social ties; 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.
I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself
in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself
with the fates and actions of human beings.
Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of
us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine
a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing
we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men -- above all for
those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
Scientific research is based on the idea that
everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore
this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist
will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a
prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend
personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and
the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the
experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism
answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with
modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.
I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that
could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent
structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill
a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious
feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.
I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at
the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses
to appreciate it.
The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics
to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind
it.
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend
only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling
of “humility.” This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to
do with mysticism.
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product
of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive
legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter
how subtle can change this [for me]. ~ Jan. 3, 1954 letter written as a
response to the philosopher Eric Gutkind.
Einstein was educated at a Roman Catholic primary school, but given
private tuition in Judaism. He later wrote that the "religious paradise
of youth" -- when he believed what he was told -- was crushed when he started
questioning religion at the age of 12. "The consequence was a positively
fanatic freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is being deceived
by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression."
Religion is an attempt to find an out where there is no door.
Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and
I'm not sure of the former.
A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education,
and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. If people are
good only because they fear punishment and hope for a reward, then we are
a sorry lot indeed.
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. These subtilised interpretations are
highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do
with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions
is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.
All Bibles are man-made.
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important
thing is not to stop questioning.
Steve Eley
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know
this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like
all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both
logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that
they are invisible because we can't see them.
George Eliot 1819–1880
My childhood was full of deep sorrows -- colic, whooping-cough, dread
of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when I ate
too much plumcake.
Helen Ellerbe
As the Church assumed leadership, activity in the fields of medicine,
technology, science, education, history, art and commerce all but collapsed.
Europe entered the Dark Ages.
Albert Ellis
For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish
dependency.
Havelock Ellis
The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence
from [ancient] Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease
of the intellect
.The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates,
tyrannizes over a village of God's empire but it is not the immutable universal
law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as
a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way
for truth.
Epicurus
(341–270 B.C.)
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able
nor willing? Then why call him God?
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; Or he can, but does not
want to; Or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot,
he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. But, if
God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come evil is in the world?
If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished;
for they are forever praying for evil against one another.
Rocco A. Errico, Ph.D. ~
Lecturer, author, Bible scholar, ordained minister
God found out about the Trinity in 325 A.D.
Susan Ertz
Millions long for immortality who don't know
whaat to do on a rainy afternoon.
Parsons always seem to be specially horrified about things like sunbathing
and naked bodies. They don't mind poverty and misery and cruelty to animals
nearly as much.
Greg Erwin
Nearly every human group has created something in the way of a religion,
no two of which are the same. When something is based on reality, like
mathematics or scientific medicine, groups of people independently arrive
at the same answers. This is a good way to tell the difference between
shit and shinola.
The kind of things that religious people offer as evidence for their
brand of religion, they do not accept as evidence when proferred by adherents
of other religions. Religions do not accept each others' miracles, revelations,
prophets, or holy books. In the absence of any convincing reason to accept
one set of claims while rejecting the rest, the simplest conclusion is
that they are all ****.
Euripides (484-406 BC)
He was a wise man who originated the idea of gods.
Simon Ewins
God is a perfect example of the kind of aberration that can result
from an untrained intellect combining with an unrestrained imagination.
F
Catherine Fahringer
We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been
for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best
minds at the stake.
Dan Fake
You can go off and delude yourself all you want,
but when you start threatening nonbelievers, when you start damaging the
education systems, when you start considering the evil and horror bestowed
upon humankind by your religious beliefs in the past and you refuse to
accept any responsibility for them, that's when things get a bit scary
in the real world of which you and I are a part.
Oriana
Fallaci
The Muslims refuse our culture and try to impose
their culture on us. I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward
my culture - it is toward my values, my principles, my civilization.
The struggle for freedom does not include the submission to a religion
which, like the Muslim religion, wants to annihilate other religions.
The West reveals a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered
pathological; it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive.
James Feibleman
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
Minucius Felix ~ (Christian author,
circa 200 A.D.)
We Christians neither want nor worship crosses as the pagans do.
Ludwig Feuerbach
It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But,
on the contrary, man created God in his own image.
My purpose is to transform theologians into anthropologists, lovers
of God into lovers of man, candidates for the next world into students
of this world ... I negate the fantastic hypocracy of theology and religion
only in order to affirm the true nature of man
Henry Fielding
No man has ever sat down calmly unbiased to reason
out his religion, and not ended by rejecting it.
There are a set of religions, or rather moral writings, which teach
that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this
world. A very wholdwome and comfortable doctirine, and to which we have
but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
Emmett F. Fields
Atheism has one doctrine: To Question | Atheism has one dogma:
To Doubt | The Atheist Bible has but one word: THINK.
Nothing changes history like the Christian Historian
Harvey Fierstein
The Catholic Church is the only organization
on record to dispense money from a slush fund set up solely for the paying
off of abused children's families. So always remember you cannot judge
a man by his collar.
First Amendment, Bill of Rights,
U.S. Constitution
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Gustave Flaubert
My kingdom is as wide as the universe and my wants have no limits.
I go forward always, freeing spirits and weighing worlds, wthout fear,
without compassion, without love, without God. I am called Science.
Dr. E. Florenza ~ The Holocaust
as Interruption
Christian biblical theology must recognise that its articulation of
anti-Judaism in the New Testament ... generated the unspeakable sufferings
of the Holocaust.
George W. Foote 1850
- 1915
It will yet be the proud boast of women that
they never contributed a line to the Bible.
There are two things in the world that can never get together-
religion and common sense.
Gerald Ford ~ US President
I believe that prayer in public schools should be voluntary.
It is difficult for me to see how religious exercises can be a requirement
in public schools, given our Constitutional requirement of separation of
church and state. I feel that the highly desirable goal of religious
education must be principally the responsibility of church and home.
I do not believe that public education should show any hostility toward
religion, and neither should it inhibit voluntary participation, if it
does not interfere with the educational process.
E. M. (Edward Morgan)
Forster
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch,
which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff.
My motto is: "Lord, I disbelieve -- help thou my unbelief.
I do not believe in belief.
Diane Fortune
A religion without a goddess is half-way to atheism.
Don Fouts
I'm a polyatheist - there are many gods I don't
believe in.
Robin Lane Fox ~ Historian
~ Fellow, New College, Oxford
The process of creating new scripture by constructive
abuse of the old reaches its climax in the letters ascribed to Paul.
It is an unusual book which begins with two contradictory stories and
with a narrative whose time and place are false. [Yet] for centuries that
book [the Bible] has been read as the source of truth.
The Pope should be reminded that if God wanted us to pray outdoors,
he wouldn’t have given us multi-million dollar cathedrals.
Anatole France
My humble friend, we know not how to live this
life which is so short yet seek one that never ends.
We thank God for having created this world, and
praise Him for having made another, quite different one, where the wrongs
of this one are corrected.
The impotence of God is infinite.
Ben Franklin
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible.
Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when
it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so
that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis
a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of
reason: The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your
Candle. - Poor Richard's Almanack, 1758
Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect
that his mind was forever young, his temper ever serene; science, that
never grows grey, was always his mistress. He was never without an object,
for when we cease to have an object, we become like an invalid in a hospital
waiting for death. ~ Thomas Paine
Lighthouses are more helpful then churches.
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
How many observe Christ's birthday! How few his precepts! O! 'tis easier
to keep holidays than commandments.
Frederick the Great (1712-1786) Prussian
king
Religion is the idol of the mob; they adore everything they do not
understand.
There are so many things to be said against religion that I wonder they
don't not occur to everyone.
Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939)
The idea of God was not a lie but a device of
the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god
was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity
sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for
justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection
of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding
sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race;
it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity.
It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that
humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind.
The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible
to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.
When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal
and wholesome life.
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that
it falls in with our instinctual desires.
Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret
of being an out-and-out unbeliever.
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of
the psychic activity of man.
The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that
to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that
the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view
of life.
Erich Fromm
Once a doctirne, however irrational, has gained power in a society,
millions of people will believe it rather than feel ostracised and isolated.
If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated
as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by
science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can
be validated.
Mike Fuhrman
I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary
cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and
ignorance, and then sends me to Hell if I’m ‘bad’.
G
Yuri Gagarin
(1934-1968) Cosmonaut
- first man in space
I don't see any god up here.
Ernest Gaines
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable
seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?
Galileo Galilei
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same
God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for
us to forgo their use, giving us by some other means the information that
we could gain through them.
In the discussion of natural problems we ought
to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.
They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may
oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no
trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the
new doctrine from the very pulpit.
It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is
proved.
The doctrine that the earth is neither the center
of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is
absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least
an error of faith. ~ Catholic Church's decision against Galileo Galilei
Mohandas
K Gandhi
The most henious and the must cruel crimes of
which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion
or equally noble motives. ~ Young India, July 7, 1950, quoted from
Laird Wilcox, ed., “The Degeneration of Belief”
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.
Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what
religion is.
Guillermo Garcia
You are a good person because you fear damnation.
I am a good person without obligation.
Helen
H. Gardner
Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women in a Christian
country has been "authorized by the Bible" and riveted and perpetuated
by the pulpit.
Bill Gates
Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very
efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.
Henry George (1839-1897)
No theory is too false, no fable too absurd for acceptance when embedded
in common belief. Men will submit to torture and death, mothers will immolate
their children [for] beliefs they accept.
Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe
I would be well pleased if after the close of
this life we should be blessed with another, but I would beg not to have
there for companions any who have believed it here.
The happy do not believe in miracles.
Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896) French
writer
If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than
religion.
Mikhail Gorbachev
I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked
to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are
my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature.
Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) ~
U.S.
President and Civil War General
Leave the matter of religion to the family altar,
the church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions.
Keep the church and the state forever separated.
I would like to call your attention to ... an
evil that, if allowed to continue, will probably lead to great trouble.
It is the accumulation of vast amounts of untaxed church property.
I would suggest the taxation of all property
equally whether church or corporation.
Robert Graves (1895-1985)
British novelist
By Jesus's time the Law of Moses, originally established for the government
of a semi-barbarous nation of herdsmen and hill-farmers, resembled a petulant
great-grandfather who tries to govern a family business from his sick-bed.
. . unaware of the changes that have taken place in the world since he
was able to get about.
Ruth Hurmence
Green
It is possible to pull out justification for
imposing your will on others, simply by calling your will God's will.
If the concept of a father who plots to have his
own son put to death is presented to children as beautiful and as worthy
of society's admiration, what types of human behaviour can be presented
to them as reprehensible?
There was a time when religion ruled the world.
It is known as The Dark Ages.
Graham Greene
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
Bryan Emmanuel Gutierrez
God should be executed for crimes against humanity.
H
Ernst Haeckel
Convinced that there is no eternal life awaiting
him man will strive all the more to brighten his life on earth and rationally
improve his condition in harmony with that of his fellows.
J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964) British scientist
I believe that the scientist is trying to express
absolute truth and the artist absolute beauty, so that I find in scinece
and art, and in an attempt to lead a good life, all teh religion that I
want.
E. Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951) American
publisher
The influences that have lifted the race to a
higher moral level are education, freedom, leisure, the humanizing tendency
of a better-supplied and more interesting life. In a word, science and
liberalism have accomplshed the very things for which religion claims the
credit.
Don't take our word for it. Read the Bible itself.
Read the statements of preachers. And you will understand that God
is the most desperate character, the worst villain in all fiction.
The Bible was a collection of books written at different times by different
men -- a strange mixture of diverse human documents -- and a tissue of
irreconcilable notions. Inspired? The Bible is not even intelligent.
It is not even good craftsmanship, but is full of absurdities and contradictions.
Why should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church which he despises
should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can the apologists for
the church exemption answer it?
Jack Handey ~ Deep Thoughts
My young son asked me what happens after we die. I told him we get
buried under a bunch of dirt and worms eat our bodies. I guess I should
have told him the truth--that most of us go to Hell and burn eternally--but
I didn't want to upset him.
Ken Harding
Why did god bother creating all the generations between Adam and Noah?
I mean, if he was going to kill everyone off, all the humans (men, women,
innocent children and babies), guiltless animals, and all the plants too,
and HE KNEW IT IN ADVANCE, why in the hell didn’t he just start with Noah
in the first place?
Thomas Hardy
We enter church, and we have to say, 'We have
erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep,' when what we want to
say is, 'Why are we made to err and stray like lost sheep?'
I have been looking for god for fifty years and
I think if he had existed I should have discovered him.
Sam Harris in The End of Faith
Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when
in the presence of religious dogma.
The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human
beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because
each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need
not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still
besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves
over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically
absurd could be possible.
Because most religions offer no valid mechanism by which their core
beliefs can be tested and revised, each new generation of believers is
condemned to inherit the superstitions and tribal hatreds of its predecessors.
Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other
over riva interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -
anything - be more ridicuous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous
that the world we are living in.
That so much . . . suffering can be directly attributed to religion
- to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious taboos, and religious
diversions of scarce resources - is what makes the honest criticism of
religious faith a moral and intellectual necessity.
The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human
convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims
and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to
be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising
a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural
singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.
10 Myths and 10
Truths About Atheism
John Hattan
I understand prayer quite well. It's a masturbatory
exercise that gives catharsis to the pray-er and a placebo effect
to the pray-ee, but only if the pray-ee knows he's being prayed for.
Everyone who converts to theism does it within
an enormous supportive community. Everyone who deconverts to atheism does
it alone and is often met with nothing but hostility.
A god's responsibilities are basically the same
as those a political party. He takes the credit for everything good, refuses
to accept blame for anything bad, and ultimately doesn't do a damn
thing.
James A. Haught ~ Holy Horrors
1990
In another area of human rights, many Christian
clergymen advocated slavery. Historian Larry Hise notes in his book 'Pro-Slavery'
that ministers 'wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published
in America.' He lists 275 men of the cloth who used the Bible to prove
that white people were entitled to own black people as work animals.
The advance of Western civilization has been partly a story of gradual
victory over oppressive religion. The rise of humanism slowly shifted
society’s focus away from obedience to bishops and kings, onto individual
rights and improved living conditions.
Obviously, religion has a Jekyll-and-Hyde nature--
with Dr. Jekyll always in the spotlight, and Mr. Hyde little noticed.
In the year 415, the woman scientist Hypatia,
head of the legendary Alexandria library, was beaten to death by Christian
monks who considered her a pagan. The leader of the monks, Cyril,
was canonized a saint.
Stephen Hawking
I do not believe in a personal God.
Black holes would seem to suggest that God not only plays dice, but
also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.~ NATURE, 1975
What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe
began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would
not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This
doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.
So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator.
But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or
edge, it would neither be created nor destroyed… it would simply be.
What place, then, for a creator?
We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal
God. There’s not much personal about the laws of physics.
Judith Hayes
If we are going to teach 'creation science' as
an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory
as an alternative to biological reproduction.
The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most
implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example, while
loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine?
If judged only by the results that challenge the laws of probabilities,
then the power of prayer is nil.
Life can be beautiful, profound, and awe-inspiring, even without an
irate god threatening us with eternal torment.
Peace on Earth? Not as long as there are religions.
If a plane crashes and 99 people die while 1 survives, it is called
a miracle. Should the families of the 99 think so?
Brian Hayward
Religion is a result of primal urges, and I hope that it, like murder
and septic personal hygiene, becomes unfashionable.
There is no sin. It is an invention to shame people into believing fantasies.
We are the only animals known to desire to act differently (often better)
than we do. This is a glorious quality, and provides optimism that we will
will eventually improve ourselves. We should be proud of it, not
ashamed.
Robert Heinlein
What a queer thing is Christian salvation! Believing in firemen will
not save a burning house; believing in doctors will not make one well,
but believing in a savior saves men. Fudge!
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins'
are invented nonsense.
History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has
any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to
stand up to the unkonwn without help. But, like dandruff, most people do
have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable
pleasure from fiddling with it.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856
In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in pitch-black
night a blind man is the best guide. . . . When daylight comes, however,
it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.
Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.
Ernest Hemingway
All thinking men are atheists.
Hippocrates (460-377 BC)
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they
do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then
ceast to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.
Where prayer, amulets and incantations work it
is only a manifestation of the patient's belief.
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield
Religion drove those planes into those buildings,
it's amazing how good religion is at mobilizing people to do awful,
murderous things. There is this dark side to it, and anyone who loves religious
experience, including me, better begin to own that there is a serious shadow
side to this thing.
Christopher Hitchens
I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist;
I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth,
but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious
belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion, I
do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they
were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think
that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable
if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case.
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.
Why do people keep saying, 'God is in the details'? He isn't in ours,
unless his yokel creationist fans wish to take credit for his clumsiness,
failure and incompetence.
Religion comes from the terrified infancy of our species. ... [It] is
innately coercive as well as innately incoherent. Because it's man-made,
there's an infinite variety of it for them all, and these sects proceed
to quarrel among themselves, religious warfare having being one of the
great retardances of civilization of the time we've been alive and very
much to this day.
Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry
begins and astrology ends, and astronomy begins.
Those of us who disbelieve in the heavenly dictatorship also reject
many of its immoral teachings, which have at different times included the
slaughter of other “tribes,” the enslavement of the survivors, the mutilation
of the genitalia of children, the burning of witches, the condemnation
of sexual “deviants” and the eating of certain foods, the opposition to
innovations in science and medicine, the mad doctrine of predestination,
the deranged accusation against all Jews of the crime of “deicide,” the
absurdity of “Limbo,” the horror of suicide-bombing and jihad, and the
ethically dubious notion of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice.
There [are] four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it
wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of
this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with
the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous
sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.
...monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a
hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the
way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents. ~ God Is Not Great
Religion does not, and in the long run cannot, be content with
its own marvelous claims and sublime assurances. It must seek to interfere
with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths.
It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this
one.
[If religion were true] you would be permanently supervised from the
moment you were born until forever after you were dead. You'd always be
someone else's creature. And the only duty you would owe him, he having
done nothing but casually create you, would be constant adoration that
would lead to eventual bliss and the dissolution of the personality. Well,
I can't imagine anything more horrible. It's a really ghastly idea. It's
worse than hell.
I think it's an expression of terrible weakness of character on
their part, but if they must become groveling, abandoned serfs, let them
do it. But don't let them tell me that I must teach it to my children.
Because then it stops being a disagreement and it becomes a quarrel. A
fight. I'm not going to let them do that. They may not influence my government.
They may not have their nonsense taught in the schools my children go to.
They may not raise my taxes to spend on their places of worship. None of
this. Surely they've got a direct line to the supernatural. What the hell
more do they want? I keep asking, "Why aren't they happy?" They're in possession
of the most wonderful secret that must make them hug themselves with delight.
Isn't that enough for them? No, it isn't! I think for good reason.
Twentieth-century Germany was not, in the main, an atheist state.
Hitler never renounced the Catholic Church. He was happy to receive the
prayers of the Catholic bishops in every town in Germany on his birthday,
as ordered by the pope—the concordat with whom pretty much allowed him
to consolidate power in the first place. He undoubtedly had the hope
of replacing Christianity with a state religion based partly on paganism
and partly on worship of himself. But to say that he was an atheist is
utterly false. Fascism and communism—the roots of the totalitarian impulse
are in faith, not in skepticism. Because [the totalitarian impulse]
claims to be a total solution. And to make essentially no difference between
the civic and the private life, and to arbitrate on everything from sex
to diet.
The impulse to worship, the impulse to take things on faith, the
impulse to believe in miracles, the impulse to adore and to believe in
incarnate good and evil. All these things have dire consequences.
The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant.
Religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism
and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous
of women and coercive toward children.
Gullibility and credulity are considered undesirable qualities in every
department of human life -- except religion.... Why are we praised by godly
men for surrendering our "godly gift" of reason when we cross their mental
thresholds? ... Atheism strikes me as morally superior, as well as intellectually
superior, to religion. Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions
can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.
Does this leave us shorn of hope? Not a bit of it. Atheism. and the related
conviction that we have just one life to live, is the only sure way to
regard all our fellow creatures as brothers and sisters.... Even the compromise
of agnosticism is better than faith. It minimizes the totalitarian temptation,
the witless worship of the absolute and the surrender of reason.
Just consider for a moment what their heaven looks like. Endless praise
and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial
North Korea.
Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are
morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of
the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare
and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies.
Love your enemy?! No philosophy is more suicidal than this. We must
destroy our enemy! Love your own enemies, don't go loving mine.
If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained
the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.
William Ernest
Hocking
Man is the only animal that contemplates death,
and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality.
John
B. Hodges
One does not become an atheist to gain emotional
comfort or popularity. One becomes an atheist because honesty compels.
Eric
Hofer
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not
the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there
is a god or not.
Dr. Bruce Hoffman ~ Director of the Center
for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University,
Scotland
Whenever religion is involved, terrorists kill
more people.
In some sects members are told to commit violent acts because the only
way they can hasten redemption or achieve salvation is to eliminate the
nonbelievers.
Oliver Wendell
Holmes
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for
a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul would be damned
generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.
You never need think you can turn over any old falsehoods without a
terrible squirming of the horrid little population that dwells under it.
George Jacob Holyoake
Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism
to reason for its existence.
Huang Po
The foolish reject what they see and not what
they think; the wise reject what they think and not what they see.
Elbert Hubbard (1857-1915)
Theology: An attempt to explain a subject by
men who do not understand it. The intent is not to tell the truth but to
satisfy the questioner.
Victor Hugo
Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you
tell me that your Deity made you in his own image, I reply that he
must have been very ugly.
Humanism
Humanism is the view that we can make sense of the world using reason,
experience and shared human values and that we can live good lives without
religious or superstitious beliefs. Humanists seek to make the best of
the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves. We
choose to take responsibility for our actions and work with others for
the common good.
David Hume
(1711-1776) Scottish philosopher
If there is a designer he must take credit for the flaws in his creation.
Flaws in the creation directly reflect flaws in the creator. If there is
a flaw in the creator then he cannot be all powerful.
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
Dave Hunt
Almost their [the Crusaders'] first act upon taking Jerusalem "for
Holy Mother Church" was to herd all of the Jews into the synagogue and
set it ablaze. The Secretary to the Inquisition in Madrid from 1790-1792
estimated that in Spain alone the number of condemned exceeded 3 million,
with about 300,000 burned at the stake. Nor have the descendants of Aztecs,
Incas, and Mayas forgotten that Roman Catholic priests, backed by the secular
sword, gave their ancestors the choice of conversion (which often meant
slavery) or death.
Aldous Huxley
Facts do not cease to exist because they are
ignored.
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries
of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of
persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray
a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's
meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves
with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent
but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without
evidence.
Maybe this world is another planet's hell. - Point Counter Point
If we must play the theological game, let us never forget that it is
a game. Religion, it seems to me, can survive only as a consciously
accepted system of make believe.
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley ~ English
biologist and author (1887-1975)
"We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no evidence.
We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our desires for
afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc." From Religion without Revelation
by Julian Huxley
Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last
fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat
The sense of spiritual relief which comes from
rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous. - Sir Julian
Huxley, Religion Without Revelation
How unfortunate for mankind that the Lord is reported by Holy Writ as
having said "Vengeance is mine!"
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable ...
and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. Many people assert
that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all
religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does
mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture
is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place.
Thomas Henry Huxley ~ English biologist
(1825-1895)
The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident
than is that of the infallibility of the popes.
The Bible account of the creation of Eve is a preposterous fable.
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes
that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
The foundation of morality is to... give up pretending to believe that
for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions
about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
The only question which a wise man can ask himself is whether a doctrine
is true or false. Consequences will take care of themselves.
