#atheism

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

— Mark Twain

#agnosticism #atheism #atheist #freedom #god

I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: "But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primogenial chaos? Isn't affirming God's absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist? ↗

— Umberto Eco

#chaos #creation #divine-will #omnipotence #theology

A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth! ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#biology #god-delusion #science #intelligence

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? ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#evidence #infallibility #change

If I replace the word God with the word nature, I am far more at ease with the whole religious enterprise. ↗

— Alan S. Kesselheim

#god #nature #religion #age

I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#arrogance #atheism #modesty #religion #solipsism

But after he was pleased to reveal himself to me I did presently, like Abraham, run to Hagar. And after that he did let me see the atheism of my own heart, for which I begged of the Lord that it might not remain in my heart. ↗

— Anne Hutchinson

#after #atheism #begged #did #heart

When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite. ↗

— Yann Martel

#experience #experience

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so,it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that gaurds the door,and this dragon is religion ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#age

There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message? ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#metaphors #mythology #religion #theism #art