19 September 2009

Some quotes on Atheism

I saw this collection of quotes on Atheism, and decided to collect them here for future reference.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
- George Bernard Shaw

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes
- Gene Roddenberry

The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence
- Abu'l‐Ala al Ma'arri

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it
It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
- Mark Twain

Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever conceived.
- Isaac Asimov

Lighthouses are more useful than churches
- Benjamin Franklin

"The Christian God can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, evil and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed, beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. The are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites."
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man"
-- Thomas Jefferson

God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.
-- John Adams

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
What has been Christianity's fruits? Superstition, Bigotry and Persecution.
-- James Madison

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
- Abraham Lincoln

"Religion was born when the first con man met the first fool."
"If religion was based on real truth, there only would be one."
-- Mark Twain

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours
- Stephen Roberts

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
- Steven Weinberg

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

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
- Albert Einstein

"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
"Creationists don't want equal time, ... they want all the time there is."
Isaac Asimov


And in the other corner:

"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and wish to know nothing but the word of God."
-Martin Luther

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
~ Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf