For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. ― Charles Bukowski Religion has 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 list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money. ― George Carlin 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, The God Delusion 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, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods. ― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever All thinking men are atheists. -- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?― Friedrich Nietzsche Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead. ― Kurt Vonnegut I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.― Emmett F. Fields Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. ― Voltaire, Questions sur les Miracles à M. Claparede, Professeur de Théologie à Genève, par un Proposant: Ou Extrait de Diverses Lettres de M. de Voltaire Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. ― Napoleon Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. ― Isaac Asimov Atheism is a non-prophet organization. ― George Carlin If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever. ― Woody Allen The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. ― Mark Twain To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creationis that good for the world? ― Christopher Hitchens belief is the death of intelligence. ― Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me 'Well, you haven't been there, have you? You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid' - then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.― Douglas Adams Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.― David Foster Wallace I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, DHolbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God."---[Letter to Thomas Law, 13 June 1814] ---― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson And now.....the Rebuttal- "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good."---Psalm 14:1
