#atheism

We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning “punctuated evolution” and the unfilled gaps in post- Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#religion

If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of man serve its own interests. ↗

— Baron D. Holbach

#fear #ignorance #religion #religion

If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again. ↗

— Penn Jillette

#religion #science #religion

The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#religion #science #religion

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#atheism #philosophy #religion #religion

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest. ↗

— Émile Zola

#civilization #organized-religion #religion #religion

If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t. And if that’s what God’s like, I wouldn’t worry about it. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#god #religion #religion

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#religion

Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheist #god #noremorse #religion #religion

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it. ↗

— Thomas Carlyle

#atheist #religion #religion