Quote from Epicurus

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Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith.

—Thomas Jefferson
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

—Blaise Pascal
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.

—Steven Weinberg
It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have. I merely give robust expression to views about the cosmos and morality with which you happen to disagree. You interpret that as ‘intolerance’ because of the weirdly privileged status of religion, which expects to get a free ride and not have to defend itself. If I wrote a book called The Socialist Delusion or The Monetarist Delusion, you would never use a word like intolerance. But The God Delusion sounds automatically intolerant. Why? What’s the difference? I have a (you might say fanatical) desire for people to use their own minds and make their own choices, based upon publicly available evidence. Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private ‘revelation’. There is a huge difference.

—Richard Dawkins
I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.

—Mahatma Gandhi
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

—Richard Dawkins
Without "The Law of Moses" would we all be wandering around like little gods, stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended?

—Dan Barker
Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?

—Arthur C. Clarke
With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice... On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.

—Charles Darwin
Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!' If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.

—Dan Barker
How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost?

—Dan Barker
Happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion and love the only priest.

—Robert G. Ingersoll
Some humans have always noticed the improbability of god, the evil done in his name, the likelihood that he is man-made, and the availability of less harmful beliefs and explanations. We cannot know the names of all these men and women, because they have in all places been subject to ruthless suppression.

—Christopher Hitchens
Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future; but faith is having the courage to dance to it today!

—Unknown
The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is they are denying. This misuse give rise to absurd beliefs, assertions and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzche's famous statement, "God is dead".

—Eckhart Tolle
Morality doesn't come from God, it comes from social convention and customs.

—Friedrich Nietzsche
In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views.

—Albert Einstein
Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source ... They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres.

—Albert Einstein
It is misleading to bring (...) background metaphysical uncertainty into the foreground by speaking of probabilities. When we actually assert probabilities – "it will probably rain this week" – we base our claim on real-world observations. We might, for example, cite the observed frequency with which weather conditions like these produce rain. Probability assertions, in other words, are themselves based on evidence. They are not neurotically cautious moves to guard against outcomes which no observation gives us any reason to expect. We don't say: "we probably don't have tentacles". We just say that we don't. We don't feel some need to cover our ass in case we've been hallucinating all these decades. So it should be with God's existence. If we omit the "probably" from "we probably don't have tentacles", we should omit it from "there probably is no God".

—Michael Neumann (2009)
It is God's will that we seek wisdom and receive understanding, that we accept our worthiness of love, health, and prosperity, and that we manifest those qualities in our lives.

—Jonathan Van Voorhees (01/09/2009)

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