Interesting quotes
“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
“I call him free, who is led solely by reason.”
Baruch Spinoza
“If there were proof that god exists, you wouldn’t believe in it, you’d have knowledge of it. You wouldn’t need faith, because you’d have facts. What you have is a story that you want to believe. That’s it.”
Unknown
“Learning about the nature of space or the structure of atoms fills me with awe and wonder; It makes me want to know more, I see a beauty in the laws of nature that can be explained by science.”
Jim Al-Khalili
“The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.”
Christopher Hitchens
“Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, Truth, Beauty and Wisdom will come to you that way.”
Christopher Hitchens
“If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, that person is a piece of shit.”
Unknown
“If you need the threat of hell to be a good person, then you’re just a bad person on a leash.”
Unknown
“If your all powerful god controls satan, he is an accomplice, if he does not, he’s not an all powerful god.” Unknown
“I believe in Evidence. I believe in observation, measurement and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is however, the firmer, and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
Isaac Asimov
“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”
Bertrand Russell
“When did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.”
Salman Rushdie, [as Joseph Anton - Salman Rushdie used the name Joseph Anton to publish his writing during the fatwa against him].
“Jesus promised the end of all wicked people. Odin promised the end of all frost giants.
I don’t see any frost giants around.”
Unknown
“If your religion contains any of the following:
Human sacrifices.
Moral values that reflect the needs and wants of a specific primitive culture.
Instructions to hurt, kill or look down on other people.
Reasons to look down on yourself.
A pyramid shaped authority structure.
Scientifically inaccurate statements.
Magical beings, powers or events that no longer exist.
Odds are, you probably believe in mythology!”
“Why don't I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, "Why don't you believe I can fly?" You'd say, "Why would I?" I'd reply, "Because it's a matter of faith." If I then said, "Prove I can't fly. Prove I can't fly see, see, you can't prove it can you?" You'd probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ''F---ing fly then you lunatic."
Ricky Gervais
“Be kind. It’s really not complicated. Don’t do anything to others that you wouldn’t like being done to you.
We don’t need priests, monks, gurus, imams, shamans or druids to tell us that.”
Dan Snow
“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is, than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
Carl Sagan
“A Christian telling an atheist they're going to hell is as scary as a child telling an adult they're not getting any presents from Santa.”
Ricky Gervais
“As an atheist, I see nothing 'wrong' in believing in a God. I don’t think there is a God, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me.
It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a God. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different God, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral.
It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are.”
Ricky Gervais
“I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.”
Sir David Attenborough
“If your personal beliefs deny what’s objectively true about the world, then they’re more accurately called personal delusions.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!”
Douglas Adams
“If there is a god who watches everything, then he has watched every child molestation in history. Without intervening.”
Faithless Vagabond.
“If your “research” leads you to sources that tell you the experts are all mistaken or lying, you’re doing it wrong. You haven’t found trustworthy sources the experts have all missed. You’ve been misled by propaganda that appealed to your emotions or biases.”
Thinking is power
“What do you think science is? There is nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. So which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?”
Steven Novella
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” Unknown
“If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? If he has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?
If knowledge of god is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and clearest?”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.”
Bertrand Russell
“Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of God, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants the worst is a slave in power.”
Robert Green Ingersoll
“Opinions don’t affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you’re rational.”
Ricky Gervais
“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.”
Christopher Hitchens
“When your morbidly grotesque, twisted superstition preaches eternal suffering awaiting all who do not follow it. Just what the fuck makes you believe you have the right to talk about love, forgiveness, redemption, justice, mercy, grace or morality?”
Unknown
“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
“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage.”
Suppose … I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself….
“Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle—but no dragon.
“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.
“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.
“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”
Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”
You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
“Good idea, except she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.”
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.
Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it is true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.
The only thing you’ve really learned from my insistence that there’s a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You’d wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I’ve seriously underestimated human fallibility….
Now another scenario: Suppose it’s not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you’re pretty sure don’t know each other, all tell you they have dragons in their garages—but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we’re disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I’d rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren’t myths after all…
Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they’re never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself: On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon’s fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such “evidence”—no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it—is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.
Carl Sagan
Just because you believe in god, doesn’t mean he exists.
Unknown
Dear religious people, how’s about you all peacefully discuss amongst yourselves and come to an agreement about which version of religious belief is the correct one. Then you come and discuss it with atheists.
Unknown
A lie doesn’t become truth just because people believe it.
Unknown
“I can’t do that, it’s against my religion.” This is a perfectly acceptable statement. It is no doubt based on one or more imaginary god, but it’s fine to say.
“You can’t do that, it’s against my religion.” This is is totally unacceptable. It is religious persecution and should be prevented.
Unknown
“From a historical viewpoint, religion is just a kind of superstition, and from a political viewpoint it is a tool of social control.”
Mario Bunge.
Microbiology and Meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.
Carl Sagan
As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
Voltaire
Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.
Voltaire