#atheism

I don't want to believe. I want to know. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#education #religion #science #education

We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We no longer have to be brought into line by the threat of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely have to be reminded that it is we ourselves -- that is, the most mature and reasonable parts of us (seldom present in the midst of our crises and obsessions) -- who want to lead the sort of life which we once imagined supernatural beings demanded of us. An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#commandments #god #life #morality #morals

Prayer… panacea for some, placebo to others. I thought of it as an epidural administered through the soul to anesthetize the mind. ↗

— Clyde Dsouza

#atheism #augmented-reality #inspirational-life #posthumanism #transcendentalism

I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#honesty #integrity #secularism #life

Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#christianity #end-time #fundamentalism #politics #sarah-palin

You'll be pleased to hear, Christopher, that I am no longer a Muslim liberal but an atheist [....] I find that it obviates the necessity for any cognitive dissonance. ↗

— Ayaan Hirsi Ali

#christopher-hitchens #islam #religious-liberalism #islam

That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#reason #science #skeptic #science

Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning... ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#religion #religion

I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator - that's beyond my conceit. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #pride #religion #religious-leadership #the-sin-of-pride

In fact, the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived. ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#reason #truth #communication