Best 165 quotes in «agnostic quotes» category

For wicked people to do evil requires money, and good people superstition. Combining these elements gives us organized religion, but to achieve the worst of all evil conflate politics to the compound and the tragedies are endless.

For wicked people to do evil requires money, and good people superstition. Combining these elements and we get organized religion, but to achieve the worst of all evil conflate politics to the compound and the tragedies are endless.

From the club of what atheist call false hope and false god (which offer solace to weak minds), atheist are calling you to their club of no god and no hope (which offers nothing in return. Join the club only if you are a strong minded individual capable of handling your life alone without the help of gods. )

Give me something to worship; whatever.” Cries the human soul

God did not create evolution--evolution created God. The evolution of religion is as follows: animism--polytheism--monotheism--agnosticism--atheism. As history progresses, people worship fewer and fewer gods, and the one God becomes the incredible shrinking god. He shrinks and shrinks until he becomes insignificant. More and more theists go about their business as if God isn't there. Some even become agnostics or atheists.

God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him; on that level they are all equal

I don't know what I believe. I guess that makes me a Christmas Tree Agnostic.

I am, perhaps, too intellectual, too modern, for my own comfort! How lovely it would be to sink into the warm comfort of established religion.

I don't know what I believe. I guess that makes me a Christmas tree agnostic." He smiles. "I like it and you're a Yom Kippur atheist.

In any modern society encouraging your child to cut himself is an unthinkable act, but only with religious belief becomes part of the culture, and demands respect.

I was brought up Christian, then I was agnostic and then I realized I was atheist... This movie [Agora] is about fundamentalism and hate.

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.

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.

Once you believe that god is not a private property of anybody, you are on your way to becoming a new messiah. Maybe your own if not the world's

Science cannot disprove god. Science studies the things that are. The eternal question is who or what made them to be

God is powerful. Even those who claim not to believe in him fear him. Though their mouths may confess to disbelieve in him, their hearts yearn for him.

God was seldom discussed in our family except in a very distant sort of way, rather like our cousins in Canada.

Good gods are scarce because the majority of gods are created by evil men

I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated." (Notebooks)

If history has shown anything, it is that where there is a God, there is an institution trying to lock up that God in its lifeless structure of orthodoxy, in order to have authority over people and sell tickets to the Kingdom of that God. Thus emerged all the pompous lies about the extraterrestrial Kingdom of God or Heaven.

If God's love encompasses the whole world and if everyone who does not believe in him will perish, then surely this question needs to be asked: When, after two thousand years, does God's plan kick in for the billion people he 'so loves' in China? Or for the 840 million in India? Or the millions in Japan, Afghanistan, Siberia, Egypt, Burma ·.. and on and on? Why would a God who 'so loved the world' reveal his message only to a tiny minority of the people on earth, leaving the majority in ignorance? Is it possible to believe that the Father of all Mankind would select as his Chosen People a small Middle Eastern nation, Israel, reveal His will exclusively to them, fight alongside them in their battles to survive, and only after their failure to reach out to any other group, update His plan for the world's salvation by sending His 'only begotten son,' not to the world but, once again, exclusively to Israel?

If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.

If you believe that God is good and that He loves you without regard to whom you are or what you do, you will worship Him wholeheartedly. You will praise him with thanksgiving. If you believe He is angry against you, you will come to him with fear and trying to appease his anger. And you don't know when His anger will be over. Such a god keeps you in a perpetual psychological anguish. That is the typical kind of god we usually worship. That is the typical god approved by authority.

I know what is going on in the heart of an atheist. Deep anguish that there is nothing beyond, nothing to live for, nothing to give him hope. I know because I endured the same predicament.

I'm agnostic," I told him. "I'd be an atheist, except I believe in hedging my bets.

It's utter arrogance to think that we can know what god ought to be or do. If we don't understand we must continue our search or recognize our ignorance

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.

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 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.

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.

...properly a theory about knowledge, not about religion. A theist and a Christian may be an agnostic; an atheist may not be an agnostic. An atheist may deny that there is God, and in this case his atheism is dogmatic and not agnostic. Or he may refuse to acknowledge that there is a God simply on the ground that he perceives no evidence for his existence and finds the arguments which have been advanced in proof of it invalid. In this case his atheism is critical, not agnostic. The atheist may be, and not infrequently is, an agnostic.

Religion is a theory about everything that needs to be proved only after death; those who prove or disprove it never come back to us to tell the story

Spiritual leaders, priests and prophets are lamps burning in the dark, seeking meaning for humanity.

Stuey was in heaven, but he wished that he were in hell.

The Agnostic is one who asserts 'what no one denies' that there are limits to the sphere of human intelligence.

The argument against faith is all based upon the rigorous analysis of the scriptures, and not upon the objective observation of the actual individual sensation of faith. Historical experiences of the Kingdom of God gave rise to all the scriptures in the world, but the scriptures themselves don’t account for the actual globally prevalent psychological element of faith or divinity in the human mind. Faith is a natural evolutionary trait of the human mind, selected by Mother Nature as an internal coping-mechanism.

The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should not be cowed by exaggerated sensitivity to people's religious beliefs and fail to speak vigorously and pointedly when the devout put forth arguments manifestly contrary to all the acquired knowledge of the past two or three millennia. Those who advocate a piece of folly like the theory of an 'intelligent creator' should be held accountable for their folly; they have no right to be offended for being called fools until they establish that they are not in fact fools. Religiously inclined writers like Stephen L Carter may plead that 'respect' should be accorded to religious views in public discourse, but he neglects to demonstrate that those views are worthy of respect. All secularists -- scientists, literary figures, even politicians (if there are any such with the requisite courage) -- should speak out on the issue when the opportunity presents itself.

The eyes of god are upon you, I mean the eyes of society. We are prisoners of societies in which we live

The point is, being a Christian does not mean hating or belittling the non-Christians. Being a Muslim does not mean hating or belittling the non-Muslims. Being an Atheist does not mean hating or belittling the religious people. In a civilized society, diversity in religious orientation should be the reason for celebration, not the cause for hatred and differentiation.

Some people are so stiff and inhumane as the dogma's they believe in

The more I learn, the less I know.

The more time you invest into studying religion, the more likely you are to disbelieve in the gods

Theology is like assuming that there is a black cat in a dark room where in fact there is no black cat, and endeavoring to study the cat's properties and how it may have evolved from its ancestors.

There is nothing behind the curtains of religions, people put there whatever their imaginations can fathom

To be secure in one’s convictions is thus to be absurdly oxymoronic, since conviction is really a state of insecurity. If you know something for a fact, you have no need to believe it or to be convinced of it. You need belief only when you are not sure. Belief is thus the product not of knowledge, but of uncertainty. It contains within itself the possibility of disbelief. "Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto

When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain 'gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ... So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes.

We are ultimately unknowable to ourselves and others. Our past and future are mostly unknowable. God is unknowable. For the present the universe - its origins and its destiny - is unknowable, as is whether there are many universes. Infinity is unknowable. These are some of the fundamental reasons why I call myself an agnostic.

We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc.