Best 2951 quotes in «atheism quotes» category

Menyerang gadis pakai kerudung tidak terus berarti modern, membela atheism tidak terus berarti modern, dan sebaliknya

Me, when it comes to religion, I have no God. When I'm cool, I don't need anyone, and when I'm feeling shitty and this big empty hole opens up inside me, I just know there's never been a god that could fill it and there never will be.

Most Christian holidays were Pagan holidays first. Christmas trees and Easter eggs have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. They are Pagan symbols. Christianity is thinly disguised Paganism.

Most people don't think for themselves. They just regurgitate someone else's opinion and pass it off as their own.

Most people have extremely high tolerance levels for intolerance.

Most priests wish they were as righteous as they seem to most members of their congregations.

Most reject the more repugnant or indefensible dogmas while still holding onto some core belief. Many believers will proudly describe themselves as "reasonable" or "rational" based on how little of their religion they still embrace versus how much they now reject. I think it's funny when people realize that the less you believe the more reasonable you are, but they stop before they reach the logical conclusion.

Much terror in religion is not the will of god, it is created by power hungry clerics who thirst for absolute power and claim it for god. God does not seek power, he is already powerful.

My gut instinct is that these heavens and hells exist nowhere else except in our hearts and minds

My lack of faith in God is not a dilapidated house. It does not need to be razed to the ground or burned down to cinders. I refuse to be the wounded woman on a cross that you crucify with your disapproval like nails; I will only be the woman who believes in thunderstorms the same way lightning loves the tops of trees it strikes every time it gets tired of being pent up in an unforgiving sky, the only difference is that I believe these are natural weather phenomenons, not God’s belly rumbling or synapses firing. When my doorway is filled with groups of people wielding religious conversion pamphlets like crossbows, I will be the martyr who steps aside to let the arrows crack through the plaster in my wall instead of piercing my chest. This is not a eulogy to the believer I could have been. This is a battle cry to the believer I always have been, believer in sunsets like splashes of paint, handholding like willow branches brushing one another, new mornings after old nights spent drowning in despair, believer in love as an entire language instead of a single word. Just because my beliefs align themselves on a different spectrum does not mean they are the wrong wavelength or color. And even though I think the universe was created by the Big Bang instead of a God with magic dust shooting from his fingertips, my universe does not contain fewer stars.

My name is Matt Besser, and I'm an Arkansas Razorback. My father is a Jew from Little Rock, Ark., my mother was a Christian from Harrison, Ark., and somehow I'm an atheist now living in L.A. I am a Razorback living in the Razorback diaspora.

[My parents] deeply identified themselves as Jews for historical, genealogical, social reasons, and family reasons and community reasons. They powerfully identified as Jews. But theologically, I wonder. I wonder, really. I don't know.

-Nadajduiesc la o lume viitoare fara religii, o lume cu o religie universala, in care toata lumea isi foloseste ratiunea pentru a-l cunoaste si a-l slavi pe Dumnezeu. -Asta inseamna ca doresti disparitia iudaismului? -Sfarsitul tuturor traditiilor care se opun dreptului omului de a gandi singur. Franco tacu cateva momente. -Bento, esti atat de categoric, ca ma inspaimanti. Aceasta perspectiva imi taie respiratia, ca traditia noastra ar putea sa piara dupa mii de ani de supravietuire. -Ar trebui sa pretuim lucrurile pentru ca sunt adevarate, nu pentru ca sunt vechi. Vechile religii ne intind o cursa, insistand asipra faptului ca, daca abandonam traditia, ii dezonoram pe toti inaintasii nostri credinciosi. Iar daca vreunul dintre stramosii nostri a fost martirizat, atunci suntem prinsi in capcana si mai tare pentru ca onoarea ne obliga sa perpetuam credintele martirilor, chiar daca stim ca sunt pline de erori si superstitii. N-ai spus tu ca ai simtit asta ca urmare a martiriului tatalui tau? -Da... ca mi-as bate joc de viata lui daca as renega lucrurile pentru care a murit. -Dar nu ar fi, de asemenea, lipsit de sens sa-ti dedici singura viata pe care o ai unui sistem fals si plin de superstitii, un sistem care alege un singur popor si exclude toate celelalte fiinte?

My uncle Ernie didn't believe in God. At least that's what he said. But he always Went to church on Christmas. Which I thought Seriously compromised his atheism.

Naturalistic atheism debunks itself. It has no power to explain even some of the most basic principles of the universe and existence. It cannot even explain how its own claims can be reasonably believed.

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions. [October 2, 1910, interview in the NY Times Magazine]

Nenhum homem, nenhum deus, nenhuma autoridade tem o direito de dizer ao homem sozinho quem ele é, ou a que grupo pertence. O homem sozinho é o deus de seu próprio mundo.

My question to the atheist is, do you want an atheist world or a peaceful world? And to the believer, do you want a religious world or a peaceful world? Religious orientation doesn't define peace, but the answer here may define one's true nature.

My religious friends - and my friends were almost all Catholics or Protestants or occasionally something more exotic like Jewish or Greek Orthodox - were convinced that God had a "plan" for us, and since God was good, it was a good plan, which we were required to endorse even without having any idea what it was. Just sign the paperwork; in other words, don't overintellectualize.

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.

Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most in the world, when you see how much stainless steel and money it takes to fight off the fact that god wants both those people dead, no one, no one can look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say there's a god, because I'll tell ya, if we were squatting in the woods, the two people I love most would be dead. There's just no way around that. If I were in charge, no way. We need technology to fight against nature; nature so wants us dead. Nature is trying to kill us.

New Atheism simplicity is the byproduct of collective groupthink, and the internalization of self-congratulatory jingoistic clichés and generalizations. They know because they know, and there's no reasoning with someone who knows." - The New Atheist Threat: The Dangerous Rise of Secular Extremists

No idea is above scrutiny and no people are beneath dignity.

No matter how hard I tried, I was incapable of giving more importance to a hypothetical, post-mortem existence than to this very life here and now. Moreover, the Buddhist teachings and practices that had the most impact upon me did so precisely because they heightened my sense of being fully alive in and responsive to this world.

New struggles. -- After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries -- a colossal, horrible shadow. God is dead, but given the way people are, there may still be caves for millennia in which his shadow is displayed. -- And we -- we must still defeat his shadow as well!

No one knows what god thinks of anything. He only knows and no one can claim to penetrate into his mysteries. Those who do that are liars and must be avoided at all costs

No, not at all. I’m an atheist. You could say that I’m agnostic, but that’s just a certain kind of atheist (laughs). An atheist is someone who lacks a belief in a supernatural, and that’s me. I can’t say with absolute certainty that there is nothing beyond the material world, but there’s no reason for me to think there is. If I were a gambling man I would put all my money on there not being anything other than this universe.

No text, being human creation, is free from flaws – it is the human mind that should be conscientious enough to accept their good elements and discard the bad ones.

Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached.

Nothing in any religious teachings goes beyond Humanism, unless you add the supernatural...Make believe is the only difference between being human and being religious.

No the first day, man crea tee God

Not only had I got rid of the theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution.

Now he haunts me seldom: some fierce umbilical is broken, I live with my own fragile hopes and sudden rising despair. Now I do not weep for my sins; I have learned to love them And to know that they are the wounds that make love real. His face illudes me; his voice, with its pity, does not ring in my ear. His maxims memorized in boyhood do not make fruitless and pointless my experience. I walk alone, but not so terrified as when he held my hand. I do not splash in the blood of his son nor hear the crunch of nails or thorns piercing protesting flesh. I am a boy again--I whose boyhood was turned to manhood in a brutal myth. Now wine is only wine with drops that do not taste of blood. The bread I eat has too much pride for transubstantiation, I, too--and together the bread and I embrace, Each grateful to be what we are, each loving from our own reality.

Nous avons pénétré dans cette communauté toute pleine de ces vieilles pratiques qui semblent si nouvelles aujourd'hui. C'est le jardin fermé. Hortus conclusus. Nous avons parlé de ce lieu singulier avec détail, mais avec respect, autant du moins que le respect et le détail sont conciliables. Nous ne comprenons pas tout, mais nous n'insultons rien. Nous sommes à égale distance de l'hosanna de Joseph de Maistre qui aboutit à sacrer le bourreau et du ricanement de Voltaire qui va jusqu'à railler le crucifix. Illogisme de Voltaire, soit dit en passant; car Voltaire eût défendu Jésus comme il défendait Calas; et, pour ceux-là mêmes qui nient les incarnations surhumaines, que représente le crucifix? Le sage assassiné.

Not knowing the answer to a question is not a valid excuse for making up a fairytale to explain it.

Number three: Stay away from the church. In the battle over science vs. religion, science offers credible evidence for all the serious claims it makes. The church says, 'Oh, it’s right here in this book, see? The one written by people who thought the sun was magic?' I for one would like to see some proof that there is a God. And if you say 'a baby’s smile' I’m going to kick you right in the stomach. -Stewie

Now, I don't believe that a god exists. I think that gods are creation of men, by men, and for men. What has happened over the many centuries now, the better part of two thousand in fact, is that God has been slowly and steadily accruing power. His church has been accruing power, and the men who run that church, and they are all men, are not about to give it up. If they give it up, they give up luxury, they give up comfort.

Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!

Obsoletes and absolutes are the stock in trade of religions that place their faith in an 'unchanging' god while faced with the reality of an ever-changing world.

Obviously, if theism is a belief in a God and atheism is a lack of a belief in a God, no third position or middle ground is possible. A person can either believe or not believe in a God. Therefore, our previous definition of atheism has made an impossibility out of the common usage of agnosticism to mean 'neither affirming nor denying a belief in God.' Actually, this is no great loss, because the dictionary definition of agnostic is still again different from Huxley’s definition. The literal meaning of agnostic is one who holds that some aspect of reality is unknowable. Therefore, an agnostic is not simply someone who suspends judgment on an issue, but rather one who suspends judgment because he feels that the subject is unknowable and therefore no judgment can be made. It is possible, therefore, for someone not to believe in a God (as Huxley did not) and yet still suspend judgment (ie, be an agnostic) about whether it is possible to obtain knowledge of a God. Such a person would be an atheistic agnostic. It is also possible to believe in the existence of a force behind the universe, but to hold (as did Herbert Spencer) that any knowledge of that force was unobtainable. Such a person would be a theistic agnostic.

Observations in cosmology look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.

Of course, I reject atheism because I believe Christianity to be true. But I also reject it because I am a scientist. How could I be impressed with a worldview that undermines the very rationality we need to do science? Science and God mix very well. It is science and atheism that do not mix.

Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but... Friends, somebody said, are "god's apology for relations." (p. 129)

Often times when I meet atheists and we talked about the god they don't believe in, we quickly discover that I don't believe in that god either.

Oh, you knew that your deed would be preserved in books, would reach tghe depths of the ages and the utmost limits of the earth, and you hoped that, following you, man, too, would remain with God, having no need of miracles. But you did not know that as soon as man rejects miracles, he will at once reject God as well, for man seeks not so much God as miracles. And since man cannot bear to be left without miracles, he will go and create new miracles for himself... Oh, there will be centuries of free reason, of their science and anthropophagy... Freedom, free reason, and science willl lead them into such a maze, and confront them with such miracles and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, unruly and ferocious, will exterminate themselves.

O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie, gimme a break before I die: grant me wisdom, will, & wit, purity, probity, pluck, & grit. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind, and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice— these little blessings would suffice to beget an earthly paradise: make the bad people good— and the good people nice; and before our world goes over the brink, teach the believers how to think.

On Atheism – One man’s religion is another man’s superstition and, when you’re an atheist, they’re all superstitions.

Once a friend asked me if God appeared in front of you and asked what you want? Think he (god) can make it happen anything, anything humans can’t even image off. Let me know what you will ask? First, you must know my belief. Second, by this time now you must know me; that I won’t ask anything to anyone. To answer your hypothetical question, I won’t ask him (God) anything. Instead, I would love to say from the bottom of my heart, Fuck You.

Once again, it is difficult to start from the premise of mindless evolution and end with the idea that humans are anything more than organisms bent on preserving and passing on their DNA. The fact that humans not only pursue art, philosophy, and science, but also exult in those things more than reproduction cannot easily be explained through materialism.

Once the wounded child awakens to its human self, a primal scream emerges from the depths of denial like the Kraken released from its underwater prison.