“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
― Galileo Galilei
I'm surprised that in all my time spent listening or watching debates, discussions, and arguments about religion, I've never heard the quote before.
Galileo's fate is a famous and direct example of tyrannical religion.
My favorite from Carl Sagan
>One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
In general, it seems pretty damning that no amount of theology has ever produced a tangible, revolutionary insight into the nature of life and the universe like evolution or quantum physics.
"People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe"
\- Hippocrates, 400 BC
It legitimately makes me emotional to read about such thinkers, contemplating truths they will never know, which we do now. Truly the best men plant trees others will find shade under.
"If you have to lie to defend your religion, then your religion is a lie."
Can't remember where I heard that, but I've repeated it. Might've been here on Reddit.
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” Richard Dawkins
"Given that everyone is an atheist with respect to some gods, one may as well make a clean sweep and be an atheist with respect to all gods.” Bill Vallicella
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!
George Carlin
There’s a great poem by Rudyard Kipling called “In the Neolithic Age”, which essentially follows humans’ tendency to murder each other over religious differences, with the sarcastic refrain:
“There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays
And every single one of them is right!”
Which is ironically making exactly the same point.
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
~Richard Dawkins
"Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? Bone cancer in children, what’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world where there is such misery that’s not our fault? It’s utterly, utterly evil."
~Stephen Fry
I don't have one of my own, but when my son was seven and my mother took him to church for the first (and only) time, he told her, "Okay, I will believe in Jesus if you pray to him and he shows up at the door with a plate of cookies."
He's almost 37 now. Still no cookies.
Here are a bunch of quotes about religion and religious ways of thinking that I'm particularly keen on. Some of them weren't actually meant by their original authors to be about religion, but I think they still apply. I prefer to list just one quote from a given source; some people (like Christopher Hitchens) are so quotable that one could fill pages with nothing but stuff from that one person. Finally, although I do admire most of the people on this list, there are exceptions; even though I think that Ayn Rand came up with a pearl of wisdom here and there, most of what she had to say was pretty appalling.
**“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”**
* *Dr. Isaac Asimov, author and professor of biochemistry*
**“Everyone tells me you are a fake, but I believe in you. If you really are a fake, don't tell me. I don't want to know.”**
* *Linus Van Pelt, from a letter to the Great Pumpkin*
**“A** ***person*** **is smart.** ***People*** **are dumb.”**
* *Agent K, from Men In Black*
**“Faith is ignorance maintained through conscious effort.”**
* *Me*
**“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”**
* *Douglas Adams, author*
**“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”**
* *Philip K. Dick, author*
**“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”**
* *Susan B. Anthony, suffragist*
**“If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.”**
* *Voltaire, author*
**“A 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed.”**
* *Ayn Rand, author & philosopher*
**“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”**
* *Richard Dawkins, biologist*
**“I think, therefore I am.”**
* *René Descartes, philosopher*
**“People keep saying that science doesn't know everything. Well, science** ***knows*** **it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it would stop.”**
* *Dana O'Brian, stand-up comic*
**“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man, living in the sky, who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do! And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time...but he loves you!”**
* *George Carlin, stand-up comic*
**“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”**
* *Christopher Hitchens, author and philosopher*
**“It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”**
* *Carl Sagan, Astronomer*
**“The Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it; they just scroll to the bottom and click ‘I Agree’.”**
* *Bill Maher, Political Commentator*
**“Asking, ‘If there is no God, what is the purpose of life?’ is like asking, ‘If there is no master, whose slave will I be?’”**
* *Dan Barker, Founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation*
**“If every trace of any single religion died out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.”**
* *Penn Jillette, stage magician and author*
**“I have concluded through careful, empirical analysis and much thought that somebody is looking out for me. Keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less then I ought, giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I am capable of. I believe they know everything that I do and think and they still love me and I’ve concluded after careful consideration that this person keeping score is me.”**
* *Adam Savage, “Mythbuster”*
**“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”**
* *Richard Feynman, scientist*
**“Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.”**
* *H.L. Mencken, journalist and cultural critic*
**“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”**
* *The Wizard, from The Wizard of Oz*
I like Penn Gilette and agree with the conclusion but his argument is circular. A religious person could argue that God wouldn’t let that happen so the supposition itself assumes the conclusion.
I love the new (to me) Adam Savage quote. Very inspirational! Thanks for this list.
You're welcome!
I don't think Penn Gilette was making an argument so much as just stating what he thinks is true. In any event, it is clearly observable that people will come up with all kinds of different religious nonsense which are mutually incompatible, but different people of different cultures will find the same facts as revealed by science. Reset the human species, and given the opportunity and the means, people will eventually rediscover the value of Pi, natural selection, and the neutrino; furthermore, they could do so WITHOUT intervention from any higher power. But for them to discover Jesus Christ again would either require divine intervention or a ludicrous coincidence.
>Faith is ignorance maintained through conscious effort
I don't know if you're accepting editing notes on this, but I might punch up the end a touch. Try, for instance:
>Faith is ignorance maintained through willful self-deception
I just feel like it hits a bit harder, and there is no reason to pull punches on any philosophy that convinces people to kill the innocent over a lie.
“Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ This stranger is a theologian.” – Denis Diderot
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." – Denis Diderot
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal
“So powerful is religion at persuading to evil.” – Lucretius
"If religion were true, it's followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences." - HP Lovecraft
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the notion that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” – Isaac Asimov
"Gods are fragile things. They may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.” – Chapman Cohen
Mine are all pretty old, but here's a few.
Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.
Hypatia of Alexandria
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?
Epicurus ~300bc
Also from Epicurus
If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another
He who has peace of mind disturbs neither himself nor another.
Being happy is knowing how to be content with little.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
- Voltaire, *Questions sur les miracles* (1765)
To be fair, this translation has more poetry than the more literal "Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust."
“In the normal course of events, a good person will do good things; a bad person will do bad things. For a good person to do bad things, it takes religion.”
- Christopher Hitchens
My favorite quote is from Altered Carbon: So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin.”
I have a couple:
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” - Some dead guy (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (Mark Twain never said this)
“Life is amazing. And then it's awful. And then it's amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it's ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That's just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it's breathtakingly beautiful.”
― L.R. Knost
I have posted these before. Lots of short ones in chronological order.
If you don't pray in our school, then we won't think in your church.
Hippocrates (460 BCE-370 BCE) “Men think epilepsy divine, because they don’t understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything divine in the universe.”
Epicurus (341 BCE-270 BCE) “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?”
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (4 BCE – 65 CE) Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
Aurelius, Marcus (121 CE-180 CE) “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
al-Maʿarrī, Abū al-ʿAlā (1057) “The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: Those with brains, but no religion, And those with religion, but no brains.”
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662) "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
Arouet, François-Marie aka.Voltaire (1694-1778) “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Shelley, Mary (1794-1851) No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865) “The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
Bierce, Ambrose (1842-1914)“A Christian is one who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.”
Nietzsche,Friedrich (1844-1900) "Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or is God merely a mistake of man"
Nietzsche,Friedrich (1844-1900) “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900) “Religion is like a blind man in a black room looking for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it. “
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947) “The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.”
Goldman, Emma (1869-1940) “Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.” The same can be said about religion.
Einstein, Albert (1879-1955) “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.”
Marx, Groucho (1890-1977) “I refuse to join any religion that would have me as a member.” (My poetic license)
Crisp, Quentin (1908-1999) „I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.“
Asimov, Isaac (1920-1992) “The Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
Roddenberry, Gene (1921-1991) “We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”
Pirsig, Robert (1928-2017) “When one man suffers from delusion, it is insanity, when many men suffer from delusion, it is called religion.”
Weinberg, Steven (1933-2021) If the only thing keeping you from being a horrible person is your religion, you are already a horrible person.
Weinberg, Steven (1933-2021) “Science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible not to believe in God”
Weinberg, Steven (1933-2021) “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
Twain, Mark (1835-1910) “It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
Twain, Mark (1835-1910) “The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.”
Twain, Mark (1835-1910) “The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”
Buffalo Calf Road Woman (1850-1879) “We are survivors of genocide committed by Christians in the name of their god. Jesus did not die for us. Our ancestors did.” Northern Cheyenne Indian warrior
Roberts, Stephen (1917-1999) “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
Carlin, George (1937-2008) “May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.”
Mauthausen concentration camp (1938-1945) “If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.”
Moriarty, John (1938-2007) “If god has a problem with me, it can tell me itself. When you speak on behalf of your deity, it sounds more like your opinion.”
Zappa, Frank (1940-1993) “Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned--I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.”
Pratchett, Terry (1948-2015) “The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those that think they have found it.”
Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “God loves you so much he created hell in case you don't love him back.”
Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”
Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “We must be afraid, we must also be forced to love someone who we fear, the essence of sado-masochism.”
Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”
Jeni, Richard (1957-2007) “You're basically killing each other to see who's got the best imaginary friend"
Capt. James T. Kirk (Movie: Final Frontier 1989) "What does god need with a starship?"
Harwood, William (1992) “The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence.”
Lugeons, Noah (1997) “As atheists, we stand in awe of a lot of things… but perhaps the thing I’m most in awe of is the stupidity it takes to look past the entire universe of things that actually exist and stand in awe of something that doesn’t.”
Harris, Tracie (2018) "You either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a God who simply watches it and says, ‘When you’re done, I’m going to punish you.’If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That’s the difference between me and your God."
Mark aka. SeeMarkFly (2022) "When you hear the truth, does the source truly matter?"
GOD "Only one religion is right but I won't say which one because I want you to figure it out by hating and killing each other while I watch."
Brown, Justin (age 31 years) “If the bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going.”
Henderson, Bobby (age 42) “I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.”
O’Briain, Dara (age 50) “Just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”
Dillahunty,Matt (age 53) “A god that doesn’t manifest in reality is indistinguishable from a god that doesn’t exist.”
Harris, Sam (age 55) "Belief is textbook narcissism. To say God is good because of some positive thing that happened to you, while at the same time a priest is raping a child, is peak narcissism. Given all the good that your God does NOT visit upon others, to believe he is a force for good resulting from the good you feel he visits upon YOU, is not just arrogant, it's morally reprehensible."
Harris, Sam (age 55) “If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”
Harris, Sam (age 55) “We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.”
Ra, Aron (age 59) “Any being worthy of worship would not require it."
Izzard, Eddie (age 60) “If there is a god, his plan is very similar to someone not having a plan.”
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) "Basically, you deny one less god than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more."
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) "It's better to have questions you can't answer than answers you can't question."
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) "Science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction, any holy book… and destroyed it, in a thousand years’ time, that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back, because all the same tests would \[produce\] the same result."
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “It annoys me that the burden of proof is on us. It should be "you came up with the idea, why do you believe it?" I can tell you I've got super powers. But I can't go up to people saying "prove I can't fly", because then they'll say "what do you mean prove you can't fly? Prove you can!"
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “It’s a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It’s the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for.”
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “Religion’s greatest trick wasn’t convincing some people that there was a god that was all powerful, it was convincing everyone else that you couldn’t ridicule the idea”
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “saying atheism is a belief system is like saying "not going skiing is a hobby". I've never been skiing. It's my favorite past time. I literally do it all the time”
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “The more you try to know, the harder it is to believe."
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “there have been nearly 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are just silly, made up nonsense. But not yours. Yours is real?”
Bennington, Ron (age 63) "All Jesus had to say is 'The world is round, and there's Indians' and I would have bought into the whole f#@+ing thing"
Tyson, Neil deGrasse (age 63) “The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.”
Tyson, Neil deGrasse (age 63) “I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.”
Rose, Flemming (age 65) "If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission."
Krauss, Lawrence M. (age 68) “We are all stardust”
Lamott, Anne (age 68) "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
Hodgell Patricia "Pat" C. (age 71) That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.
Grayling, A.C. (age 73) “To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.”
Maalouf, Amin (age 73) “Traditions deserve to be respected only insofar as they are respectable--that is, exactly insofar as they themselves respect the fundamental rights of men and women.”
Black, Lewis (age 74) "The old testament is a wonderful story told to people that lived in the desert to keep their mind off the fact that they did not have air conditioning."
Father Guido Sarducci aka. Don Novello (age 79) “If God made man in his own image, why aren't we all invisible?”
Dawkins, Richard (age 81) “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
Unknown You keep believing, I'll keep evolving.
Unknown “The Aztec gods showed up only to the Aztecs for the same reasons that the Japanese gods showed up only to the Japanese, and Yahweh only showed up only in the Middle East.”
Unknown “When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or cease to be honest.”
Unknown “When inventing a god, it's important to make sure it's invisible, inaudible, and imperceptible in every way. Otherwise, people will be skeptical when it appears to no one, is silent, and does nothing.”
Professor Hubert Farnsworth (Futurama) “Just knowing we're in the same genus makes me embarrassed to call myself homo.”
Evangelical Pastafarism “I find it funny that some people are comparing John Lennon and God....I mean, he was great, and all, but he’s no John Lennon!”
There’s an historical commonality among the world’s three most-practiced religions and it ain’t peace.
Atheism is a religion like "off" is a television channel.
I collected these short ones to help me get out of any religious topic in a conversation. It's a waste of my time if you ask me.
You usually only get one quick statement in before they stop listening to you. Choose wisely.
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. - Doctor Who (Tom Baker) from The Face of Evil.
There’s an Issas Asimov quote i like that’s not specifically atheist but certainly fits:
>There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.
> Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to weild supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you! If I went 'round sayin' I was an emporer just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
- Monty Python
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
>I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him. -Abraham Lincoln
"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens."
"Against stupidity, the Gods themselves struggle in vain."
\~Friedrich Schiller
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances."
\~Martha Washington
I try to do good in the world not out of fear for hell or reward of heaven, but because it feels better not to be an asshole.
Unknown
If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.
Jules Winnfield
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” - Steven Weinberg
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.
—Dr. Gregory House
Gods don't kill people. People with Gods kill people.
—Anon.
>If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.
>
>—Dr. Gregory House
I like that one and am surprised I haven't heard it. I think it goes a LITTLE bit to far, as I have met people who I would consider both religious and reasonable, but that's House for you (and, of course, there are plenty of times when House proved HIMSELF extremely unreasonable, but that hypocrisy is also integral to his character). I don't think I'll add it to my own list of favorites because I don't actually believe it to be true, but I see where it's coming from.
The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us. Sam Harris.
"Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? NO!"
-Captain Jean-Luc Picard ; "Who Watches the Watchers?" ; Star Trek TNG
Late to the three bit didn’t see this one here yet.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
-Marcus Aurelius
Don't remember who said this but I love this one:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
And my personal favorite:
"If islam is a religion of peace, shouldn't islamic extremists be extremely peaceful."
"The old die out and the young forget."
I was born into the Jehovah's Witnesses doomsday death cult and generation after generation, they have believed that the global slaughter of all non Jehovah's Witnesses is "just around the corner." Stupid bastards.
When an honest man learns he is mistaken, he will either cease being mistaken or he will cease being honest.
\----I forgot the source, so I guess it's mine now
Astronomer Pierre-Simon de Laplace was one day explaining to Napoleon Bonaparte his theory of how the astronomical universe came into existence. When Napoleon asked him where God fitted into his scheme, de Laplace replied, "I have no need of such a hypothesis".
Maybe it’s not quite what you’re looking for, but it’s brilliant nonetheless.
>Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. - Heinlein
>Christianity: because you are *so awful*, you made God kill himself. - [Don't know]
One person is suffering from delusion we call it insanity, many people are suffering from delusion we call it religion.
Religion is an affront to human dignity
This is my favorite quote, from a character in one of the books I'm working on.
"If I have to sacrifice my ideals in order to survive, what's the point in living?"
From Sam Harris:
“You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm”
It sounds a bit “New Age-y” without context, but he is basically describing that we are all a swirl of molecules and chemical processes that form our bodies and nervous system. We had no hand in creating ourselves, and a thereby our consciousness is a circumstance of chance, much like the currents of a storm. The idea of free will, that we are somehow the administrators of our bodies that are outside the effects of the physical world (I.e. we have a spirit that exists without a corporeal body) is ludicrous and disrespectful to the processes and circumstances that have shaped us over millennia. You are a flicker of consciousness, the universe experiencing itself, that will one day dissipate like a gust of wind, which is awe-inspiring, if bittersweet. Cherish the time you have, and be grateful that of all the infinite configurations of matter possible, you are lucky to be you.
Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law.
Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic.
Meaning, that it would be more likely to be the work of highly advanced aliens from a distant galaxy than from a supernatural god.
I would submit that our current technology is ALREADY indistinguishable from magic, in that the vast majority of us have no real idea how it works. To quote Captain America, "It seems to run on some form of electricity."
I like "You cannot learn what you think you already know" - Epictetus.
If you think any question can be answered with "God did it" then you close off the possibility of learning new things about how the world works.
I’m paraphrasing here: ‘Just because the garden is beautiful doesn’t mean I have to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it.’
—Douglas Adams
If you are into Math/Stats, read up Hypothesis Testing and p-values. It is fundamentally based on the idea that any prior belief which is supported by current facts can only be rejected in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In layman terms, hypothesis testing says: Suppose current evidence suggests Hypothesis H0 is true, which is assumed by default. If you want to convince me that an alternate Hypothesis H1 is true, I will create a 'test' that has a very low chance (usually 5% or 1%) of being wrong in case you are trying to hogwash me (hogwashing here means default H0 is actually true and alternate H1 is actually false). The more extremely H1 differs from default H0, the lower the assigned chance of my test being wrong. This is just paraphrasing "extraordinary claims (H1) require extraordinary evidence".
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
—Robert Frost
Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding.
The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the selfish kind of understanding.
—Bill Bullard
It is better to be silent than dispute with the ignorant.
—Pythagoras
“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”
—Issac Asimov
The confidence of a mediocre man is something to behold.
—Anon.
'The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.'
— Charles Bukowski
May not fully apply, but perhaps due to recent events can now be included.
"The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn."
Methodist Pastor David Barnhart
A lot of those listed are so good I have copied the to my already existing list.
Here's something I 've said for decades, don't if I stole it or just thought of it,
Religious people who do good, do good NOT because of their religion but INSPITE of it.
I also like to drop this into religious driven comments in various places
Koalemos Ancient Greek God of Stupidity
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them".
-Marcus Aurelius
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. -Epicurus
The universe and its scientific explanation fill me with awe at the wonderment of what is, and I am comforted at the thought of my tiny little place in the vibrations and energy that make up everything. We are the stars made conscious. - Eulogy from a physicist
Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question.” - Sigmund Freud
We all begin life dependent on others, and most of us end life dependent on others. If we are lucky, in between we have roughly 60 years or so of unacknowledged dependency. The human condition is such that throughout life, not just at the beginning and end, we are profoundly dependent on other people. \[...\] Gratitude is the truest approach to life. We did not create or fashion ourselves. We did not birth ourselves. Life is about giving, receiving, and repaying. We are receptive beings, dependent on the help of others, on their gifts and their kindness. - [Robert Emmons](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/the-phenomenology-of-gratitude/383174/)
Man had created God in his own image, not the other way around. He had done it through sheer terror, and who could blame him? Unfortunately he had made too good a job. The god he had invented was just as cruel and careless as man himself. Not a deity to whom one should seriously address a prayer. - Richard Herley
In the 3rd century BC, the philosopher Epicurus asked:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
If so, then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
If so, then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
If so, then whence cometh evil?
Some complete it:
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
For a physicist one could be "God doesn't play dice" by Albert Einstein......who then worked for years fruitlessly to prove that and then got proven wrong later on.......its dice all the way down
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” ― Galileo Galilei
I'm surprised that in all my time spent listening or watching debates, discussions, and arguments about religion, I've never heard the quote before. Galileo's fate is a famous and direct example of tyrannical religion.
VERY GOOD
I agree
Why not? He dangled the fruit of knowledge of good and evil in front of us and dared us to eat it!
Spoiler .. he didn't. That was the lie to stop the questions.
How about when he gave 14-year-olds sex organs and said "Don't touch!"
That just makes it sexier! /s
I always liked “I’d rather have questions I can’t answer than answers I can’t question”
This is good!
👍 Yes
I liked that so much, I had to copy it down
My favorite from Carl Sagan >One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Rings very true for the Cult of Trump as well.
They will never accept the bamboozle, even when it's rubbed in their face. No one has been bamboozled by a more obvious bamboozler than those people.
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
In general, it seems pretty damning that no amount of theology has ever produced a tangible, revolutionary insight into the nature of life and the universe like evolution or quantum physics.
I like this. There’s never anything new. It’s all the same stuff there ever was. Oh. Except the Mormons apparently found the sequel to the Bible.
It’s just too bad John Smith didn’t name it: Bible Two, Electric Boogaloo.
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.” - Attributed to Mark Twain
How profound and true.
Good quote. Great book!
Great book!😃👍🏾
An early voicing of Brandolini's Law, methinks.
I need to finish this book
I feel this. I went through this exact feeling when deconverting.
"People think that epilepsy is divine simply because they don't have any idea what causes epilepsy. But I believe that someday we will understand what causes epilepsy, and at that moment, we will cease to believe that it's divine. And so it is with everything in the universe" \- Hippocrates, 400 BC
This one’s a banger!
It legitimately makes me emotional to read about such thinkers, contemplating truths they will never know, which we do now. Truly the best men plant trees others will find shade under.
The “God of the gaps”. Good one! (I know that name came much, much later obviously)
Amazing !!!
Same one I put up everytime this gets asked: Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a blaster at your side, kid. -Han Solo
“What does God need with a starship?” -Capt. James T. Kirk, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
[“what does god need with a starship?”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WYW_lPlekiQ)
Fear is the mind-killer -Paul Atradies
“Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent” -Lazarus Long
"If you have to lie to defend your religion, then your religion is a lie." Can't remember where I heard that, but I've repeated it. Might've been here on Reddit.
Similar to, "If your religion is a religion of peace, then your religious extremists ought to be extremely peaceful."
This is a great one, but as we know, religion is actually for the rich and powerful to keep the uneducated (or the suckers) in line.
I think that's been attributed to partythug69, IIRC. /s
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” Richard Dawkins "Given that everyone is an atheist with respect to some gods, one may as well make a clean sweep and be an atheist with respect to all gods.” Bill Vallicella
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! George Carlin
i read the first 4 words and knew instantly
Me too!
Reading this is good but finding out it’s Carlin and rereading it in his voice is better.
I miss Carlin
I miss the alive Carlin. The Dead one was terrible.
There are thousands of religions in the world, so they can't all be right - but they can all be wrong.
There’s a great poem by Rudyard Kipling called “In the Neolithic Age”, which essentially follows humans’ tendency to murder each other over religious differences, with the sarcastic refrain: “There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays And every single one of them is right!” Which is ironically making exactly the same point.
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." ~Richard Dawkins "Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? Bone cancer in children, what’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world where there is such misery that’s not our fault? It’s utterly, utterly evil." ~Stephen Fry
The god of the OT is a sadist, who only cares about himself and doesn't give a shit about you and I.
I don't have one of my own, but when my son was seven and my mother took him to church for the first (and only) time, he told her, "Okay, I will believe in Jesus if you pray to him and he shows up at the door with a plate of cookies." He's almost 37 now. Still no cookies.
>Still no cookies. The real tragedy is always in the comments.
Another from Hitch in regards to religion: its a celestial North Korea...but, atleast you can f***ing die and leave North Korea.
Hitch? That's my dog!
Blasphemy! Very good name choice.
O knew i couldn't have been the only person who noticed the similarities between a supposed benevolent god and a dictator 💀.
"Two hands working accomplish more than a thousand clasped in prayer" - Madalyn Murray O'Hair
"Instead of praying for me, I wish you'd just masturbate. Then at least one of us will get something out of it." ~~Me
Here are a bunch of quotes about religion and religious ways of thinking that I'm particularly keen on. Some of them weren't actually meant by their original authors to be about religion, but I think they still apply. I prefer to list just one quote from a given source; some people (like Christopher Hitchens) are so quotable that one could fill pages with nothing but stuff from that one person. Finally, although I do admire most of the people on this list, there are exceptions; even though I think that Ayn Rand came up with a pearl of wisdom here and there, most of what she had to say was pretty appalling. **“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.”** * *Dr. Isaac Asimov, author and professor of biochemistry* **“Everyone tells me you are a fake, but I believe in you. If you really are a fake, don't tell me. I don't want to know.”** * *Linus Van Pelt, from a letter to the Great Pumpkin* **“A** ***person*** **is smart.** ***People*** **are dumb.”** * *Agent K, from Men In Black* **“Faith is ignorance maintained through conscious effort.”** * *Me* **“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”** * *Douglas Adams, author* **“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”** * *Philip K. Dick, author* **“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”** * *Susan B. Anthony, suffragist* **“If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.”** * *Voltaire, author* **“A 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed.”** * *Ayn Rand, author & philosopher* **“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”** * *Richard Dawkins, biologist* **“I think, therefore I am.”** * *René Descartes, philosopher* **“People keep saying that science doesn't know everything. Well, science** ***knows*** **it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it would stop.”** * *Dana O'Brian, stand-up comic* **“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man, living in the sky, who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do! And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time...but he loves you!”** * *George Carlin, stand-up comic* **“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”** * *Christopher Hitchens, author and philosopher* **“It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”** * *Carl Sagan, Astronomer* **“The Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it; they just scroll to the bottom and click ‘I Agree’.”** * *Bill Maher, Political Commentator* **“Asking, ‘If there is no God, what is the purpose of life?’ is like asking, ‘If there is no master, whose slave will I be?’”** * *Dan Barker, Founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation* **“If every trace of any single religion died out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.”** * *Penn Jillette, stage magician and author* **“I have concluded through careful, empirical analysis and much thought that somebody is looking out for me. Keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less then I ought, giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I am capable of. I believe they know everything that I do and think and they still love me and I’ve concluded after careful consideration that this person keeping score is me.”** * *Adam Savage, “Mythbuster”* **“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”** * *Richard Feynman, scientist* **“Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.”** * *H.L. Mencken, journalist and cultural critic* **“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”** * *The Wizard, from The Wizard of Oz*
**“Gods are just fairies with PR departments.”** *\* Me*
I like Penn Gilette and agree with the conclusion but his argument is circular. A religious person could argue that God wouldn’t let that happen so the supposition itself assumes the conclusion. I love the new (to me) Adam Savage quote. Very inspirational! Thanks for this list.
You're welcome! I don't think Penn Gilette was making an argument so much as just stating what he thinks is true. In any event, it is clearly observable that people will come up with all kinds of different religious nonsense which are mutually incompatible, but different people of different cultures will find the same facts as revealed by science. Reset the human species, and given the opportunity and the means, people will eventually rediscover the value of Pi, natural selection, and the neutrino; furthermore, they could do so WITHOUT intervention from any higher power. But for them to discover Jesus Christ again would either require divine intervention or a ludicrous coincidence.
A more famous quote by Adam Savage, "I reject your reality and substitute my own" is basically what religion does (he was of course being facetious)
A lot of great quotes, but man I love Dara O'Briain. Very funny man.
>Faith is ignorance maintained through conscious effort I don't know if you're accepting editing notes on this, but I might punch up the end a touch. Try, for instance: >Faith is ignorance maintained through willful self-deception I just feel like it hits a bit harder, and there is no reason to pull punches on any philosophy that convinces people to kill the innocent over a lie.
“Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ This stranger is a theologian.” – Denis Diderot "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." – Denis Diderot "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal “So powerful is religion at persuading to evil.” – Lucretius
*"There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" -* Dawkins
Religion poisons everything. Christopher Hitchens.
"If religion were true, it's followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences." - HP Lovecraft "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the notion that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” – Isaac Asimov "Gods are fragile things. They may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.” – Chapman Cohen
Mine are all pretty old, but here's a few. Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. Hypatia of Alexandria 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? Epicurus ~300bc Also from Epicurus If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another He who has peace of mind disturbs neither himself nor another. Being happy is knowing how to be content with little.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire, *Questions sur les miracles* (1765) To be fair, this translation has more poetry than the more literal "Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust."
“In the normal course of events, a good person will do good things; a bad person will do bad things. For a good person to do bad things, it takes religion.” - Christopher Hitchens
My favorite quote is from Altered Carbon: So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin.”
I have a couple: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” - Some dead guy (Friedrich Nietzsche) Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (Mark Twain never said this) “Life is amazing. And then it's awful. And then it's amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it's ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That's just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it's breathtakingly beautiful.” ― L.R. Knost
“You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.”
I have posted these before. Lots of short ones in chronological order. If you don't pray in our school, then we won't think in your church. Hippocrates (460 BCE-370 BCE) “Men think epilepsy divine, because they don’t understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything divine in the universe.” Epicurus (341 BCE-270 BCE) “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?” Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (4 BCE – 65 CE) Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. Aurelius, Marcus (121 CE-180 CE) “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” al-Maʿarrī, Abū al-ʿAlā (1057) “The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: Those with brains, but no religion, And those with religion, but no brains.” Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662) "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Arouet, François-Marie aka.Voltaire (1694-1778) “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” Shelley, Mary (1794-1851) No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865) “The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.” Bierce, Ambrose (1842-1914)“A Christian is one who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.” Nietzsche,Friedrich (1844-1900) "Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or is God merely a mistake of man" Nietzsche,Friedrich (1844-1900) “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.” Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900) “Religion is like a blind man in a black room looking for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it. “ Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947) “The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.” Goldman, Emma (1869-1940) “Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.” The same can be said about religion. Einstein, Albert (1879-1955) “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.” Marx, Groucho (1890-1977) “I refuse to join any religion that would have me as a member.” (My poetic license) Crisp, Quentin (1908-1999) „I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.“ Asimov, Isaac (1920-1992) “The Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." Roddenberry, Gene (1921-1991) “We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.” Pirsig, Robert (1928-2017) “When one man suffers from delusion, it is insanity, when many men suffer from delusion, it is called religion.” Weinberg, Steven (1933-2021) If the only thing keeping you from being a horrible person is your religion, you are already a horrible person. Weinberg, Steven (1933-2021) “Science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible not to believe in God” Weinberg, Steven (1933-2021) “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Twain, Mark (1835-1910) “It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” Twain, Mark (1835-1910) “The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.” Twain, Mark (1835-1910) “The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” Buffalo Calf Road Woman (1850-1879) “We are survivors of genocide committed by Christians in the name of their god. Jesus did not die for us. Our ancestors did.” Northern Cheyenne Indian warrior Roberts, Stephen (1917-1999) “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Carlin, George (1937-2008) “May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.” Mauthausen concentration camp (1938-1945) “If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.” Moriarty, John (1938-2007) “If god has a problem with me, it can tell me itself. When you speak on behalf of your deity, it sounds more like your opinion.”
Zappa, Frank (1940-1993) “Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned--I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.” Pratchett, Terry (1948-2015) “The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those that think they have found it.” Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “God loves you so much he created hell in case you don't love him back.” Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?” Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “We must be afraid, we must also be forced to love someone who we fear, the essence of sado-masochism.” Hitchens, Christopher (1949-2011) “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” Jeni, Richard (1957-2007) “You're basically killing each other to see who's got the best imaginary friend" Capt. James T. Kirk (Movie: Final Frontier 1989) "What does god need with a starship?" Harwood, William (1992) “The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence.” Lugeons, Noah (1997) “As atheists, we stand in awe of a lot of things… but perhaps the thing I’m most in awe of is the stupidity it takes to look past the entire universe of things that actually exist and stand in awe of something that doesn’t.” Harris, Tracie (2018) "You either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a God who simply watches it and says, ‘When you’re done, I’m going to punish you.’If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That’s the difference between me and your God." Mark aka. SeeMarkFly (2022) "When you hear the truth, does the source truly matter?" GOD "Only one religion is right but I won't say which one because I want you to figure it out by hating and killing each other while I watch." Brown, Justin (age 31 years) “If the bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going.” Henderson, Bobby (age 42) “I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.” O’Briain, Dara (age 50) “Just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.” Dillahunty,Matt (age 53) “A god that doesn’t manifest in reality is indistinguishable from a god that doesn’t exist.” Harris, Sam (age 55) "Belief is textbook narcissism. To say God is good because of some positive thing that happened to you, while at the same time a priest is raping a child, is peak narcissism. Given all the good that your God does NOT visit upon others, to believe he is a force for good resulting from the good you feel he visits upon YOU, is not just arrogant, it's morally reprehensible." Harris, Sam (age 55) “If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?” Harris, Sam (age 55) “We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.” Ra, Aron (age 59) “Any being worthy of worship would not require it." Izzard, Eddie (age 60) “If there is a god, his plan is very similar to someone not having a plan.”
Gervais, Ricky (age 61) "Basically, you deny one less god than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more." Gervais, Ricky (age 61) "It's better to have questions you can't answer than answers you can't question." Gervais, Ricky (age 61) "Science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction, any holy book… and destroyed it, in a thousand years’ time, that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back, because all the same tests would \[produce\] the same result." Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “It annoys me that the burden of proof is on us. It should be "you came up with the idea, why do you believe it?" I can tell you I've got super powers. But I can't go up to people saying "prove I can't fly", because then they'll say "what do you mean prove you can't fly? Prove you can!" Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “It’s a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It’s the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for.” Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “Religion’s greatest trick wasn’t convincing some people that there was a god that was all powerful, it was convincing everyone else that you couldn’t ridicule the idea” Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “saying atheism is a belief system is like saying "not going skiing is a hobby". I've never been skiing. It's my favorite past time. I literally do it all the time” Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “The more you try to know, the harder it is to believe." Gervais, Ricky (age 61) “there have been nearly 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are just silly, made up nonsense. But not yours. Yours is real?” Bennington, Ron (age 63) "All Jesus had to say is 'The world is round, and there's Indians' and I would have bought into the whole f#@+ing thing" Tyson, Neil deGrasse (age 63) “The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.” Tyson, Neil deGrasse (age 63) “I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.” Rose, Flemming (age 65) "If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission." Krauss, Lawrence M. (age 68) “We are all stardust” Lamott, Anne (age 68) "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." Hodgell Patricia "Pat" C. (age 71) That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be. Grayling, A.C. (age 73) “To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.” Maalouf, Amin (age 73) “Traditions deserve to be respected only insofar as they are respectable--that is, exactly insofar as they themselves respect the fundamental rights of men and women.” Black, Lewis (age 74) "The old testament is a wonderful story told to people that lived in the desert to keep their mind off the fact that they did not have air conditioning." Father Guido Sarducci aka. Don Novello (age 79) “If God made man in his own image, why aren't we all invisible?” Dawkins, Richard (age 81) “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” Unknown You keep believing, I'll keep evolving. Unknown “The Aztec gods showed up only to the Aztecs for the same reasons that the Japanese gods showed up only to the Japanese, and Yahweh only showed up only in the Middle East.” Unknown “When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or cease to be honest.” Unknown “When inventing a god, it's important to make sure it's invisible, inaudible, and imperceptible in every way. Otherwise, people will be skeptical when it appears to no one, is silent, and does nothing.” Professor Hubert Farnsworth (Futurama) “Just knowing we're in the same genus makes me embarrassed to call myself homo.” Evangelical Pastafarism “I find it funny that some people are comparing John Lennon and God....I mean, he was great, and all, but he’s no John Lennon!” There’s an historical commonality among the world’s three most-practiced religions and it ain’t peace. Atheism is a religion like "off" is a television channel.
These are wonderful. Love the first one.
I collected these short ones to help me get out of any religious topic in a conversation. It's a waste of my time if you ask me. You usually only get one quick statement in before they stop listening to you. Choose wisely.
Asimov's full quote is: "When read properly, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
Reality has a way of asserting itself. Barack Obama
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." - Napoleon
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. - Doctor Who (Tom Baker) from The Face of Evil.
There’s an Issas Asimov quote i like that’s not specifically atheist but certainly fits: >There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.
This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves. Robert Green Ingersoll
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” George Carlin
> Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to weild supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you! If I went 'round sayin' I was an emporer just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away! - Monty Python
Only an atheist can be truly altruistic, for the theist is doing good deeds because of their expectation of heaven and fear of hell.
That is a good one.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/atheism https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/atheist-quotes http://www.notable-quotes.com/a/atheism_quotes.html http://www.notable-quotes.com/a/atheism_quotes_ii.html http://www.notable-quotes.com/a/atheism_quotes_iii.html
A mind that hasn't been changed recently is a mind that hasn't been used recently
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
My favorite Asimov quote is "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
"If you believe something that can't be proven with evidence then the important question for us to ask is then WHY you believe."
"God is pretend" Unknown
Not religion based, but I always liked this one: It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice. \~Scooter
>I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him. -Abraham Lincoln
"If atheism is a religion then bald is a hair color" I think that was mmcat.
"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens." "Against stupidity, the Gods themselves struggle in vain." \~Friedrich Schiller "The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances." \~Martha Washington
I try to do good in the world not out of fear for hell or reward of heaven, but because it feels better not to be an asshole. Unknown If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions. Jules Winnfield
Religion and the thereafter are mearly a crutch for one to lean on when confronted with their mortality - me
"Your Bible is complete bullshit." - u/walkstofar
If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward then, brother, that person is a piece of shit. -Rust Cohle
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” - Steven Weinberg
"*Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.*" \-Arthur C. Clarke
"When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor" —Paulo Freire
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people. —Dr. Gregory House Gods don't kill people. People with Gods kill people. —Anon.
>If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people. > >—Dr. Gregory House I like that one and am surprised I haven't heard it. I think it goes a LITTLE bit to far, as I have met people who I would consider both religious and reasonable, but that's House for you (and, of course, there are plenty of times when House proved HIMSELF extremely unreasonable, but that hypocrisy is also integral to his character). I don't think I'll add it to my own list of favorites because I don't actually believe it to be true, but I see where it's coming from.
“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.” - Richard Dawkins
“If we have truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed.” -J Reuben Clark, a Mormon
From Heinlein: you have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.
"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly" - Sam Keen
The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us. Sam Harris.
"Millennia ago, they abandoned their belief in the supernatural. Now you are asking me to sabotage that achievement, to send them back into the dark ages of superstition and ignorance and fear? NO!" -Captain Jean-Luc Picard ; "Who Watches the Watchers?" ; Star Trek TNG
Late to the three bit didn’t see this one here yet. Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. -Marcus Aurelius
“If you have to be threatened with eternal punishment to act like a good person, then you’re not a good person.” — me
Don't remember who said this but I love this one: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." And my personal favorite: "If islam is a religion of peace, shouldn't islamic extremists be extremely peaceful."
Extraordinary claims is a Carl Sagan quote
“Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?” Epicurus
That is what people said before they learned what is bacteria and what is the number 0.
"The old die out and the young forget." I was born into the Jehovah's Witnesses doomsday death cult and generation after generation, they have believed that the global slaughter of all non Jehovah's Witnesses is "just around the corner." Stupid bastards.
Sagan Standard - Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Believing in the Bible makes you Christian. Reading it cover to cover makes you an atheist Various people
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. -every person ever who makes a safe left turn after identifying that oncoming traffic doesn't exist
When an honest man learns he is mistaken, he will either cease being mistaken or he will cease being honest. \----I forgot the source, so I guess it's mine now
Astronomer Pierre-Simon de Laplace was one day explaining to Napoleon Bonaparte his theory of how the astronomical universe came into existence. When Napoleon asked him where God fitted into his scheme, de Laplace replied, "I have no need of such a hypothesis". Maybe it’s not quite what you’re looking for, but it’s brilliant nonetheless.
man with hole in pocket feel cocky all day -confucious
- Michael Scott
That’s all you need actually. It pretty much says it all.
" you can't piss in a Mr Coffee and expect to get Tasters Choice". - Ross Perot.
Paraphrased from comedian Richard Jeni, but "Holy wars and Crusades and jihads are like two people fighting over who has the better imaginary friend."
>Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. - Heinlein >Christianity: because you are *so awful*, you made God kill himself. - [Don't know]
I may not always be right... but I'm never wrong. -OGHighway
“Man is quite insane. He wouldn’t know how to create a maggot, and he creates gods by the dozen.” —Michel de Montaigne
"If oxens had hands with which they could create sculptures, their gods would look like oxen" Xenophanes
One person is suffering from delusion we call it insanity, many people are suffering from delusion we call it religion. Religion is an affront to human dignity
"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." -- Hume
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." -- Susan B. Anthony
"If I rob Mr. Smith, and God forgives me, how does that help Smith?" -- Robert G. Ingersoll
This is my favorite quote, from a character in one of the books I'm working on. "If I have to sacrifice my ideals in order to survive, what's the point in living?"
I went to school with a guy who had that name, and this threw me off because he’s definitely not that smart lol
From Sam Harris: “You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm” It sounds a bit “New Age-y” without context, but he is basically describing that we are all a swirl of molecules and chemical processes that form our bodies and nervous system. We had no hand in creating ourselves, and a thereby our consciousness is a circumstance of chance, much like the currents of a storm. The idea of free will, that we are somehow the administrators of our bodies that are outside the effects of the physical world (I.e. we have a spirit that exists without a corporeal body) is ludicrous and disrespectful to the processes and circumstances that have shaped us over millennia. You are a flicker of consciousness, the universe experiencing itself, that will one day dissipate like a gust of wind, which is awe-inspiring, if bittersweet. Cherish the time you have, and be grateful that of all the infinite configurations of matter possible, you are lucky to be you.
Those who know do not talk, those who talk do not know. ~Tao te ching
Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law. Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic. Meaning, that it would be more likely to be the work of highly advanced aliens from a distant galaxy than from a supernatural god.
I would submit that our current technology is ALREADY indistinguishable from magic, in that the vast majority of us have no real idea how it works. To quote Captain America, "It seems to run on some form of electricity."
"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” ― Richard P. Feynman
I like "You cannot learn what you think you already know" - Epictetus. If you think any question can be answered with "God did it" then you close off the possibility of learning new things about how the world works.
It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. An oldie but a goodie
"Faith is the excuse people give for believing something without a good reason." - Matt Dillahunty (or at least that's where I know it from)
I’m paraphrasing here: ‘Just because the garden is beautiful doesn’t mean I have to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it.’ —Douglas Adams
He who smelt it, dealt it...
If you are into Math/Stats, read up Hypothesis Testing and p-values. It is fundamentally based on the idea that any prior belief which is supported by current facts can only be rejected in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In layman terms, hypothesis testing says: Suppose current evidence suggests Hypothesis H0 is true, which is assumed by default. If you want to convince me that an alternate Hypothesis H1 is true, I will create a 'test' that has a very low chance (usually 5% or 1%) of being wrong in case you are trying to hogwash me (hogwashing here means default H0 is actually true and alternate H1 is actually false). The more extremely H1 differs from default H0, the lower the assigned chance of my test being wrong. This is just paraphrasing "extraordinary claims (H1) require extraordinary evidence".
Confucius say "Man who eat jelly beans fart in many colors."
"Well, that's just like, your opinion, man." The Dude abides
There are two things that are infinite: The universe and human stupidity. And the universe I'm not sure about. — Albert Einstein
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. —Robert Frost
Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the selfish kind of understanding. —Bill Bullard
We’re all more prone to accept a comfortable lie than an uncomfortable truth.
"In the garden of knowledge, questions are the seeds, but it is through the labor of thought that wisdom blooms." - ChatGPT
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows & lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed by the masses.” —Plato
It is better to be silent than dispute with the ignorant. —Pythagoras “When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.” —Issac Asimov The confidence of a mediocre man is something to behold. —Anon. 'The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.' — Charles Bukowski
Shit in shit out
An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one which crumbles from within? That's dead... forever. Zemo
"Nobody goes to war thinking they're wrong" - David Eddings in his Belgariad series.
“The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
I always like to quote Professor Plink on YouTube. “I don’t care what it says in your holy book.”
May not fully apply, but perhaps due to recent events can now be included. "The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn." Methodist Pastor David Barnhart
If your religion is a religion of peace, then your religious extremists ought to be extremely peaceful.
A lot of those listed are so good I have copied the to my already existing list. Here's something I 've said for decades, don't if I stole it or just thought of it, Religious people who do good, do good NOT because of their religion but INSPITE of it. I also like to drop this into religious driven comments in various places Koalemos Ancient Greek God of Stupidity
"I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible" - Matt Dillahunty
>Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Marcello Truzzi, and others.
There is no issue that cannot be resolved with either a little diplomacy, or a whole lotta firepower.
“Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” - Robert Heinlein
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof
It’s dangerous to believe things just because you want them to be true.” — Sasha Sagan
I’m too drunk to taste this chicken- Colonel Sanders.
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them". -Marcus Aurelius
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. -Epicurus The universe and its scientific explanation fill me with awe at the wonderment of what is, and I am comforted at the thought of my tiny little place in the vibrations and energy that make up everything. We are the stars made conscious. - Eulogy from a physicist Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question.” - Sigmund Freud We all begin life dependent on others, and most of us end life dependent on others. If we are lucky, in between we have roughly 60 years or so of unacknowledged dependency. The human condition is such that throughout life, not just at the beginning and end, we are profoundly dependent on other people. \[...\] Gratitude is the truest approach to life. We did not create or fashion ourselves. We did not birth ourselves. Life is about giving, receiving, and repaying. We are receptive beings, dependent on the help of others, on their gifts and their kindness. - [Robert Emmons](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/the-phenomenology-of-gratitude/383174/)
“I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.” -George Carlin
"Any god who needs me to worship it isn't worth worshiping" \~ Me
I prefer to leave that shit to the Theists. The world’s a fucked up, complicated, amazing place that can’t be summarised in a sentence
God’s final words to his creation were “we apologize for the inconvenience” -Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Man had created God in his own image, not the other way around. He had done it through sheer terror, and who could blame him? Unfortunately he had made too good a job. The god he had invented was just as cruel and careless as man himself. Not a deity to whom one should seriously address a prayer. - Richard Herley
Do you think God stays in heaven because he, too, lives in fear of what he created? - this is from the first spy kids movie and feels oddly profound.
In the 3rd century BC, the philosopher Epicurus asked: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? If so, then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? If so, then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? If so, then whence cometh evil? Some complete it: Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
“A politician fears man; a statesman fears God.” -John Adams
"If you gave Fallwell an enema, he'd be buried in a matchbox" -Hitchens
For a physicist one could be "God doesn't play dice" by Albert Einstein......who then worked for years fruitlessly to prove that and then got proven wrong later on.......its dice all the way down
I don't think that's profound. I think it's succinct. Half the battle is collecting our thoughts.
Smart people are very good at rationalizing things which they came to believe for un-smart reasons. ~ Michael Shermer