Quotations About Atheism,
Religion, and Other Matters
[Page 2]
All over the world, science is the same. All over the world, religions are different.
Scientology: "Sure, we're batshit crazy, but at least we're not fucking your children."
Faith is not the same as trust.
Faith is a complete, irrevocable belief that is not based on good evidence.
Trust is something that is earned.
The plot holes in the Bible are worse than a Netflix series.
All we need for you to give us is evidence of God. "If you can't show it, you don't know it."
|
A man dies and goes to Heaven.
He finishes inprocessing and, while he's visiting with a few of his old friends, he tells a joke about the Holocaust — one of those tasteless, horrific, offensive jokes. Just then, God walks up behind him and says, "I don't think that's funny at all." The man replies, "Well, I guess you had to be there." |
An atheist is not a "know-it-all;" he's the opposite of that. He's a person who's willing to admit it when he doesn't know.
The typical "Christian movie" is nothing more than a Sunday sermon masquerading as entertainment. They seem to be made by preachers rather than filmmakers.
"If I ever met God, I would say: 'Bone cancer in children? What's that
all about? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery!' It's utterly,
utterly evil. Why should I respect the capricious mean-minded stupid God who
creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain? I wouldn't want to get to
heaven on his terms. They are wrong.
"The God who created this universe is quite
clearly a psycho, an utter psycho. Utterly selfish — we have to spend our lives on
our knees thanking him — what kind of God wants that?
"He created insects whose
whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and eat outward from their
eyes. Why? Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a world in
which that did not exist. It is simply not acceptable."
— Stephen Fry
Atheism stands for not believing in unsupported assertions of impossible nonsense for no good reason.
"The public image of the leaders of the religious right I met with so many times also contrasted with who they really were. In public, they maintained an image that was usually quite smooth. In private, they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I had ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement."
----Frank Schaeffer in Crazy for God
If Christians could be reasoned with, there would be no Christians.
*****************************
Adam and Eve ... God's whole plan for the human race depends on whether or not the first two humans can resist a piece of fruit.
And who created the serpent that seduced Eve into eating it
(John 1:3)?
It didn't occur to Eve that a reptile might give her bad life advice?
And because of this incident there is "original sin." Meaning that I came into the world already carrying a cosmic parking ticket.
*****************************
Do you ever suspect that the ridiculous Catholic ideas about god and religion are just a setup so that comedians can write jokes?
I'm so lucky that I was born into a family that followed the correct religion! All the other religions — Hindu, Moslem, Jew — are going to hell.
During his long reign as Pope, John Paul II apologized for the following things that the church had done:
---the Inquisition.
---the murder of Jews.
---inflicting suffering on Africans.
---missionary abuses against aborigines in Oceania.
---being involved in the slave trade.
---"relegating women to the margins of society."
---the inactivity and silence of the Church during the Holocaust.
After this, the church went back to being infallible.
Religious beliefs are lazy jokes with bad punchlines.
Long ago, people believed that there were many gods ... then later on, they believed there was only one god ... fewer and fewer ... at least they were moving in the right direction.
"Religion is the ultimate hustle. Why can't God just defeat the devil? It's the same reason a comic book character can't defeat his nemesis: then there's no story. If God gets rid of the devil — and he could, because he's all-powerful — there's no fear, and no reason to come to church."
— Bill Maher
We're all born Atheists until someone starts lying to us.
Organized religion reminds me of professional wrestling:
---All the fans know it's fake.
---They watch the "wrestling matches" for entertainment.
---They go to the arenas to be with like-minded people.
---They can't admit that they know it's fake.
There are about 2,700 gods that people believe in, and I don't believe in any of them.
You don't believe in 2,699 of those 2,700 gods. You're actually an atheist; I'm just slightly more atheist (by about .0004%) than you are.
Each religion will tell you why all the other religions are wrong. Atheists are simply agreeing with ... all of them.
"And do you think that unto such as you -
"A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew -
"God gave a secret, and denied it me?
"Well, well - what matters it? Believe that, too!"
---- Omar Khayyam
"God" was our first and worst attempt to explain things.
"The Rapture:" When you get rescued by a levitating Sky Hippie.
"The totalitarian concept of the afterlife [hell], this hideous idea, doesn't
even occur even in the violent rape- and genocide-filled books of the old Jewish
Bible. There's no punishment of the dead. When God has destroyed your tribe
and killed your virgins and your children in front of you and your flocks are
scattered, and you yourself have fallen to a bronze sword, he's finished with you —
the earth can close over you — that's it. You've tangled with the wrong tribe, the
one he favored. Not until "gentle Jesus meek and mild" are you told that if you
don't make the right propitiations, you can depart into everlasting fire
[Matt. 25:41]
— one of the most wicked ideas ever preached, one that's ruined the peace of mind of millions of
children, preached by vicious child-hating old men and women in the name of this
ghastly cult [i.e., Christianity]. Was this plan made by someone who LIKES us?"
— Christopher Hitchens [somewhat paraphrased]
Faith is not a pathway to truth.
It's very comforting to say, "I know the answer." But admitting that you don't know the answer is the beginning of finding the actual explanation.
My lack of an answer doesn't make your answer correct.
Religion has designed God so that he can't be verified (or falsified).
Someone may ask me: If there is no God, what stops you from raping and killing every person you want to?
The answer is: I have already raped and killed all the people I want to [which is zero people].
If prayer worked, ambulances would stop at churches instead of hospitals.
Religion is not a dance. It's a sidestep.
One of the Christian-type phenomena that could actually be measured and tested is "speaking in tongues." I wonder what would happen if we recorded someone speaking in tongues and then gave that recording to some actual linguists?
I care about whether my beliefs are true, not whether they feel good. For Christians, emotion is always a more powerful force than logic. That's why, at the altar call, the preacher says, "Look in your heart ... look in your heart ..." He never says, "Now let me explain to you again how all of this is logically sound ..."
If an omnipotent omniscient God exists, either (1) he sends rapists to rape children or (2) he sits and watches it and does nothing.
"You cannot refuse to think. To do that is to die intellectually. You cannot disobey Christ's great commandment to love God 'with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind!' Not to think is to deny God's creativity. It is to sin against your Creator. You can't stop thinking. That's intellectual suicide."
--- Charles Templeton
"In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have
proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very
inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from
dunghills."
— Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams dated January 24, 1814
"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the book of Revelation] and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."
— Thomas Jefferson
Results like these do not belong on the resumé of a supreme being.
In a discussion of morality, we should take the "faith" card off the table.
It would be as if I said, "Lucille said [x]. Lucille is never wrong. Trust me."
That would be rude.
"Could you explain to the rest of us — who don't know Lucille — why your version of morality is right?"
The best thing that can happen to you is that you find out you were wrong. That's how you learn.
Why, if God is real, do we have to dance through philosophical arguments and become experts in ancient languages — why isn't his existence clear and obvious? Why doesn't God just show up here today, in front of all of us, set the record straight, and be done with it? Then we wouldn't have to keep having the same debates for thousands of years. It wouldn't be a matter of faith. It would be a matter of knowledge.
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
If God could see into the future, he would have started with Noah, not Adam.
The important thing about science is that science works. Science has replaced the gods of wind and of thunder and of rain. In the process, the human condition has improved immensely.
Is there anything — any weird belief or religion — that couldn't be believed based on faith? Is faith a mechanism that gets you closer to the truth?
Do you care about what's actually true, or do you just believe what makes you feel good? Isn't it a fact that faith can lead you to something that's true or to something that is not true? Faith can lead you to Yahweh and me to Zeus.
You say that you prayed for your grandmother's cancer to be cured, and
it went into remission, and therefore you believe in God. What if it hadn't? Would
you then stop believing in God? I suggest to you that you're going to give a
"thumbs up" to God regardless of what happens.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data." A batch of unexplained occurrences does not equal an explanation.
"I have several things that I cannot explain; and because of them, I'm going to accept explanation 'X.'" Zero plus zero plus zero plus zero never equals one.
How is it that Saul gets a "Damascus road" experience, but the rest of us have to take it on faith?
Religion puts a lock on the brain.
I want to believe as many true things as possible and disbelieve as many false things as possible.
The lyrics to some of the modern praise songs sound like my six-year-old fell in love with a Care Bear and they wrote their own wedding vows.
God tells us that we have to forgive people. But he holds a 6000-year-old grudge against us because somebody ate fruit from the wrong tree.
I am an atheist. When I speak the plain truth, I will offend 90% of the population.
If your "personal beliefs" deny what is objectively true about the world you live in, they would more accurately be called personal delusions.
God won't feed a hungry child today, but he promises heaven tomorrow.
Biblegod: "I love you so much that I'm going to hide my existence to the point that I'll be indistinguishable from other gods, and if you follow the wrong god, you will suffer for all eternity."
If you try to solve a mystery by appealing to a bigger mystery, you have solved nothing ("I saw an apparition of my dead grandfather; therefore, God and afterlife"). You have taken an experience and provided an explanation for it without providing any evidence for that explanation.
Believing the Bible is what makes you a Christian. Understanding the Bible is what makes you an atheist.
"About noontime, Elijah began mocking them. 'You'll have to shout louder than that,' he scoffed, 'to catch the attention of your god! Perhaps he is talking to someone, or is out sitting on the toilet, or maybe he is away on a trip, or is asleep and needs to be wakened!'"
-- I Kings 18:27, The Living Bible
"WARNING: This book contains descriptions of mass murder, human sacrifice, and torture, which some readers may find distressing."
--- proposed trigger warning for the Bible.
If I believe your claim about your religion — based on faith — why shouldn't I believe every faith-based claim from every religion?
"The supernatural" has no explanatory power. Saying "God did it" is the same as saying "It's magic."
It is impossible for all the religions of the world to be right, but it is entirely possible that they are all wrong.
"Revelation is always first-person to you. To everybody else, it's hearsay."
- David Hume
We don't have any evidence about heaven and hell. Or god.
There could be a god, and no afterlife.
There could be an afterlife, and no god. Why not?
There could be many gods, and no afterlife.
There could be a god with a sense of humor -- good people would go to hell and bad people would go to heaven. Evil people would carry on (as in his original creation) ruling the roost in the afterlife.
We don't know. Nobody knows.
But lots of people pretend to know.
If Thor never existed to defeat the Frost Giants, why are there no more Frost Giants?
Checkmate, atheists!
The universe can't always have existed, so there has to be a Creator ... that has always existed.
"The Jews say that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say that their word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the others of unbelief, and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
--- Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
By definition, "miracle" is always the least probable explanation for something.
Faith is the glorification of voluntary ignorance.
"God, you have set up my reality in a way that seems wrong. Here's how to fix it. Amen."
—
every prayer ever prayed.
Faith is assumed without reason and defended against all reason.
How probable or improbable is the supernatural, and how did you arrive at that conclusion? Can you show me the math?
"You assert that you believe that my cat is really an alien spy — I don't
believe that my cat is an alien spy — there's no evidence that she is — so why do I
need to answer 30 more questions (explaining to you how my life works) to help
you understand why I don't believe the unsubstantiated proposition that my cat is
an alien spy?"
-
Aron Ra
(who told someone that he isn't a Christian, and was then asked multiple questions about his relationship with his parents)
“In those dark moments when it seems that I have abandoned you, remember: I was never there in the first place.”
-- God
"Them every-lutionists say we revolved from a monkey!"
Being wrong feels exactly the same as being right.
"Which is more likely: that the laws of nature should be suspended, or that a
Jewish girl should tell a fib?"
- Thomas Paine
Isn't it strange that the Creator of human intelligence demands that we have blind faith?
Have you ever heard anybody say, "I started reading the Bible, and I just couldn't put it down"?
"That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ is the strangest system of religion ever set up."
--- Thomas Paine
The story of the Passover:
"God kills a bunch of babies, but not the Jewish ones. The end."
The principle of monotheistic religion is totalitarian to begin with. It says that you must submit to an authority that cannot be challenged, that owns you body and soul, that watches you while you sleep. After you're dead, it can convict you of thought crime. It forces you to love a dictator whom you also fear.
I can go into a Barnes & Noble bookstore blindfolded and pull any book off the shelf, and it will have more wisdom and relevance than the Bible or the Quran.
If everything that we cannot explain — everything that is mysterious to us — must therefore be credited to a God, in terms of a God, then there's nothing left to explain. There are no more problems to be solved.
I have a pretty high-level definition of prophecy. The prophecy should refer to a specifically-defined event that's going to happen at a specifically-predicted time. If I order a rare steak and the waiter brings me a steak cooked rare, that doesn't make me a prophet. If I say that rain will fall, do I become a prophet the next time it rains?
The only thing you're saying when you talk about the unlikeliness of abiogenesis (organic life arising from inorganic material) is that something improbable happened. "Improbable" does not mean "impossible." On this one speck of dust in this vast universe, something unlikely happened [life began/arose].
Let's suppose that (a) the prophecies in Daniel were fulfilled, and (b) they could only be fulfilled by God. That doesn't prove that the rest of this book — the Bible — this collection of disparate writings — is true. It doesn't mean that John 3:16 is true.
They're not following the evidence — they are leading the evidence to a place where they've previously decided it should go.
|
Supposedly we will go to hell for all eternity (after we die) if we don't have the right relationship with God.
I imagine that my 8-year-old son is trapped on the second floor of a burning building. He doesn't know how to escape. If he takes the wrong hallway, opens the wrong door, he'll burn to death. God writes a letter describing how to escape the burning building — in a language that my son can't read — and gives it to a man who gives it to another man who copies it by hand (using a quill and an ink pot). Then another man copies that copy ... by hand ... and that copy isn't completely accurate. Then another man translates that copy (of a copy) into Elizabethan English. That translation is delivered to my son (who is trapped upstairs in the burning building). Wouldn't you think that a personal god would want to make a personal connection that is irrefutable? |
People argue that if God revealed himself to us in a way that is indisputable, then it would be impossible for us to reject God (and that's why he doesn't directly reveal himself to humans). However, God did reveal himself directly to Satan — Satan has absolutely no doubt about the existence of God — and yet he rejects God (Job 1:6-12). So it seems that, if God did reveal himself directly to me, it's still possible for me to reject him — so that's not a real problem ("God doesn't want to interfere with your free will").
The truth or falsity of a claim has nothing to do with how many people believe it, or how strongly they believe it, or for how long they have believed it. It depends on evidence. It depends on truth.
People spend a week investigating cars that they want to buy, but they don't investigate their religion at all.
If you release your rational brain and let it roam freely, it will attack your faith as if it were cancer.
"I don't understand evolution, and I need to protect my kids from understanding it too!"
The watchmaker argument: "There's no design without a designer.
Question: How do you know that it was designed? What are you comparing it to?
We already know that watches are designed because we know the process by which
they are designed.
We don't recognize design by the complexity of something; we
recognize designed things by comparing them against things that are not designed,
i.e., things that occur naturally (in nature).
We know that watches are designed because we already know the process by which they are designed. You have to be
able to contrast it; something designed vs. something that is undesigned.
You believe that a watch (and Mount Rushmore) were designed because you have
tremendous amounts of evidence about how they were designed.
As for human beings — you would need to come up with some kind of special evidence to make
the case that they were "designed," because all of the evidence we have about them
leads us to conclude that they are naturally occurring (perhaps as a result of
evolution?).
Simplicity is the hallmark of design, not complexity.
Who designed our planet so that most of it is uninhabitable by humans because it's either too hot or too cold or is covered by ocean? Who designed our solar system so that every planet except one is too hot or too cold for us to live on it?
If God created man in his own image, shouldn't I be invisible?
How much time do you spend worrying about the hells of other religions that you weren't brought up in?
God created me with a sinful nature. Why does he get upset when I do exactly what he programmed me to do?
A person's religion is referred to as his "faith." It's not called his evidence. If there were good evidence for it, he wouldn't need faith.
Religion has usurped the idea of morality. All you have to do is say, "I believe," and you become righteous. It makes people think that if they don't believe, they are immoral. Religion wants to have a monopoly on morals and ethics. Religion makes people feel guilty for thinking for themselves.
If you say, "I have faith," everything is supposed to stop. Someone says "faith" and everybody backs off. "Faith" gets to go to the head of the class. But faith just means, "That's my opinion, fuck you, this debate is over." Faith is nothing more than the purposeful suspension of critical thinking.
What if the constants of the universe were slightly different so that we couldn't possibly exist? How do we know that there wouldn't be some other sentient being in existence (in that slightly different universe) who would be asking himself, "How can such a perfect universe exist, that is so perfect for my existence? It's preposterous that this universe could have happened just by accident."
"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking,
'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in —
fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been
made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky
and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller,
frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because
this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment
he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we
need to be on the watch for."
- Douglas Adams
If there is a god who created the universe
And he had options about what kind of universe he would create
And he knew how the universe would turn out, depending on which options he
exercised,
Then didn't god specifically choose the universe in which I would lose my faith and
become an atheist?
Didn't he choose the universe in which we couldn't rationally and reasonably
confirm his existence?
Didn't he choose the universe in which the single most important facet of his
message (i.e., his existence) is not evident?
Science is not the only pathway to knowledge. But it is the most consistently reliable pathway to knowledge.
Religion is man-made, and it shows. Religion was invented by a creature that is half a chromosome away from being a chimpanzee.
Nothing fails like prayer (except abstinence-only education).
• Evolution is a scientific theory.
• It is not speculation or hypothesis.
• A scientific theory is something that has taken its final exam and gotten its diploma (like the
theory of gravity).
• Creationism is getting ready to go to preschool and can't find its "Moana" lunch box.
5,000 years from now, archaeologists may excavate New York City, but they won't be able to prove that Spiderman existed ... no matter how many old books they find.
We are programmed to seek the easiest pathways, mentally and physically. What could be more simple than answering questions with "God did it," "God made it," or "because the Good Book says so?" Religion provides an easy way out of hard thinking.
[Re burden of proof] I can't prove that my wife isn't a professional assassin hired by the government of Russia to kill me. But until I have a reason to believe that, I won't believe it, and the burden of proof would be on the person who makes this claim.
The other day, a Christian said: "Even if things only get worse... God will still be God, and He will remain in control."
Wait ... how in the HELL is that supposed to be comforting?
"He will remain in control." FUCK HIM. He was "in control" while things were steadily getting worse!
It's like saying, "God is a useless fuckup ... but don't worry ... he will continue to be a useless fuckup."
The argument from ignorance: Anything you don't understand you attribute to
God. For you, God is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world and all
the challenges to your intelligence. You simply turn off your brain and say, "God
did it."
"My description of the all-powerful Invisible Superfriend is correct. Your description of the all-powerful Invisible Superfriend is wrong."
--- the gist of every argument about god.
I've just discovered praying. This is going to save me millions in charitable donations.
Christian morality doesn't exist. They're just following orders.
Religion is not the opiate of the masses. Religion is the placebo of the masses.
The problem with reality is that it always wins. IT ALWAYS WINS.
If your faith can move mountains, then it ought to be able to withstand criticism.
You have a right to your own beliefs. You do not have a right to your own facts.
In Numbers 22:21ff we read the story of a talking donkey. And BOOM, 4000 years later, Donkey is talking to Shrek. Don't tell me there's no prophecy in the Bible!
An atheist isn't trying to sell something. He's refusing to buy something (i.e., your religion).
"I couldn't write a book [the Bible] with so many contradictions if I tried. It's like a bunch of con men over a couple of thousand years pieced together and mistranslated the most bullshit possible to try to separate people from their money and control their every action."
--- an atheist
Disbelief in the God of Abraham does not require that one search the entire cosmos and find him absent; it only requires that one understand that the evidence put forward by believers is insufficient.
The idea behind religion is that God has a very important message for every human being on earth. So what he does is this: He gives the message to one person, thousands of years ago, who writes it in a book ... in a language that I don't speak.
Every religion started when somebody thought of a fun idea and wrote it down, and then everybody decided to say it.
God? We should laugh him off the stage. This is what we do with astrology and tarot cards and Elvis sightings. This is what we do with anything else besides the God of the Bible.
Religion is a "suitcase term." It's like the term "sports." Thai boxing is a sport — people hit each other with elbows and knees, and sometimes kill each other. Badminton is also a sport. Not all religions are the same and in fact it seems that some of them don't really have much of a similarity to the others.
Why are atheists always talking about religion? For the same reason that oncologists are always talking about cancer, and police detectives are always talking about shoplifting.
Most Christians aren't Christians because of some particular piece of theology. Most of them just don't ever think deeply about their "beliefs."
Faith is a way of protecting the idea of "God" from being disproven.
I remember being 8 years old and sitting in church. The pastor's sermon was on
Malachi 3:10 (English Standard Version):
"Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need."
I remember a feeling of embarassment.
That afternoon, I simply prayed, "God, I don't ask for a miracle. Just let me talk to you. Say something. Say anything."
And nothing happened.
Absolutely nothing.
God failed a very simple test. I decided not to bother him anymore.
"Mr. Jefferson, build that wall."
"The logical problems that I have are solved because God (or
Gleepglorp) exists."
- A religious person
[your magical being lets you dodge every philosophical question]
If it could be proven to you that Jesus was a myth; that Moses never lived; that Mohammed did not write the Quran; in other words, if you could be shown that your religion is false — would you really look at your neighbor differently? How many of you would instantly become rapists or murderers or thieves or pedophiles?
Having a doctorate degree in theology is like having Ph.D. in Mother Goose.
If the homosexuals had a book that said that Christians should be killed (Lev. 20:13), how long would it be before that book was labeled as hate speech?
Rational people are at a disadvantage. We don't have soft, comforting fairytales and we cannot prey on credulous people.
We really don't need the word "atheist." Just like we don't need a word for people who reject astrology. Atheism is not a philosophical position — it is not a "worldview." It is the answer to one question, and one question only. There are no "atheist beliefs" or "atheist claims."
We are all atheists (or antitheists) with regard to the thousands of dead gods that are in the graveyard that we call mythology. These were once gods in good standing with our ancestors.
I have one tube that I breathe through, but I also eat through it ... so I can easily choke to death. Intelligent design?
Q. What is "sufficient evidence?"
A: It's the kind of evidence that anyone demands on any subject other than religion.
|
Let's assume that a theist's definition of "God" is the definition used by mainstream apologists. Apologists will usually say that God is
a timeless and spaceless being,
or a disembodied mind.
Since being a being means to have extension and/or location in space/time, a timeless spaceless being is a contradiction in terms. And a mind, as far as we know, is a process that is always carried out by some form of a physical body. A "disembodied mind" is a contradiction in terms. Assuming that I'm correct in my understanding of what a mind is and what being is, this is proof that "God" does not exist (and cannot exist). |
Until God gives me five minutes of his time, I don't have any time at all for him.
If a child (one who had just watched Disney's "Hercules") asked me if the Greek gods are real, I'd say "No" rather than hedge my bets by saying "I lack a belief in them." Is there any good reason to treat other gods any differently?
"All religions make the same mistake: They take the only real faculty we have that distinguishes us from other primates and from other animals — the faculty of reason — and the willingness to take any risk that reason demands of us — and they replace that with the idea that faith is a virtue.
"If I could change just one thing, it would be to dissociate the idea of faith from virtue, now and for good, and to expose it for what it is — a servile weakness, a refuge in cowardice, and a willingness to follow, with credulity, people who are, in the highest degree, unscrupulous."
--- Christopher Hitchens
Somebody asked me: If the existence of God could be proven, would I worship him?
Number one, I don't believe that any God who demands worship is actually worthy of worship.
The next question is: If the existence of God could be proven, would you do what he told you to do?
And my answer is: If I lived under a king, I would not necessarily do everything that the king ordered me to do. I answer to a higher authority, which is my principles. The king might order me to do something that is morally wrong or is otherwise against my principles. In that case, I would refuse to obey him.
Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli (1796):
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any
sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity
against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said
States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan
(Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from
religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing
between the two countries."
When you say, "God is good," what does that mean? What is the
"goodness" standard that applies to God, the standard that we use to "measure" him, and
where did that standard come from?
Next question: What would you do if God stopped being good? Please give me a list of some things that God could do that would convince you that he was no longer "good."
Usually, when you say something stupid, there are consequences. If you state that you believe that Elvis is still alive — at a job interview, or on a first date — you immediately pay a price: ill-concealed laughter. That is a
good thing; that is an appropriate response.
But if you say that a cracker in a church magically changes into human flesh (right before you eat it), you're just another Catholic.
People will argue that it's reasonable to believe in religion because it
makes people happy and it makes them better people.
Imagine you're walking
down the street and you run into an old friend, and he looks radiantly happy. You
ask him what's going on in his life, and he tells you that his life took on a new
meaning the day he realized that he was married to Angelina Jolie. You would
ask him why he believes this, because after all, Angelina Jolie is one of the most
beautiful women in the world, and she's very rich, and incidentally, she's married
to Brad Pitt and has 27 children. Your friend says "You don't understand — this
belief gives my life meaning; I now know my purpose in life. This new belief has made me incredibly kind to children. You can believe whatever you want, but I don't want to live in a universe where I'm not married to
Angelina Jolie."
It should be quite clear to you that your friend has lost his mind.
Christians are not easily argued out of their religion because they were not argued into it in the first place.
Prayer is like masturbation:
1. It benefits only you.
2. It should be done only at home.
"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor,
it is
impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for
the real thing."
- Nathan Poe
You say that Jesus is real, based on your "personal revelation." What if I told you that
Jesus is NOT real
— based on MY "personal revelation?"
How can we determine which one of us is right?
If god rewards beliefs over deeds, he's immoral.
If god gives infinite punishment for finite misdeeds, he's immoral.
If god created Satan, and Satan causes problems for humanity, and god doesn't get rid of him, he's immoral.
"I'm not a real Christian, but I play one in church."
"Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to
the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine
Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."
- Martin Luther
As "fire and brimstone" preaching became less and less popular, obsession with "the rapture" increased because Christianity needed the fear factor to control people.
Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings.
Gods don't kill people. People with gods kill people.
Arguing with a Christian is like playing chess with a pigeon:
No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon will knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and then strut around as if he won.
Nothing is more destructive to one's religion than other religions. It is
like meeting one's own anti-matter twin.
Other religions represent alternatives to
your own religion. Other people believe in them just as fervently as we believe in
our own religion, and they live their lives just as successfully as we do.
The diversity of religions forces us to see religion as a culturally relative phenomenon.
Different groups have different religions that appear adapted to their unique social
and even environmental conditions.
If their religion is relative, then why is ours
not?
Once you admit that something can exist without being created (i.e., God), then the universe itself can be that thing. You don't need God.
It's hard to be honest with yourself about the Bible when you believe that a mind-reading God is listening to your thoughts.
The Bible tells us, in
the second chapter of Luke,
that when Jesus and his parents traveled to Jerusalem, he got lost, and they spent three days looking for him.
Archaeologists have recently found an old milk carton with a picture of a Jewish boy
on it, and the caption reads (in choice Aramaic), "Have you seen me? Contact
Mary and Joseph of Nazareth, (225) 877-1143."
How has God ever expressed his love to me during my lifetime? I'm not talking about somebody dying on a cross 2000 years ago. I can tell when one person loves another person by what he says and what he does.
I am told that God sent his son to die for me. Anybody who knows me at all would know that I would never ask for that (or expect it). It's like telling me that God cut off a kitten's head because he loves me. That's not an expression of love; that's a horrendous atrocity.
You tortured somebody to death ... because you love me? Bullshit!
You don't have to be brave, or a saint, or a martyr, or even very smart, to be an atheist. You just have to be honest enough to say, "I don't know."
We are both godless. I'm just the one who knows it.
|
Where your relationship with God is always stressed. |
Mosquitoes ... why would a loving god create blood-sucking disease-spreading needles with wings?
What dooms Christianity is that it pretends to be devoted to the truth (John 8:32).
What I learned from the Bible: When your wife gets pregnant and you know it wasn't you, the only alternative explanation is the Holy Spirit.
There are people who don't believe that we landed on the moon. If you and I were to have that conversation, I would show you the evidence ... the evidence that we actually landed on the moon.
You would either accept the evidence or you wouldn't.
What I would not do is tell you that I was raised to believe in the moon landing; I have a feeling that we landed on the moon; I was inspired to believe that we landed on the moon; or "search your heart and see if you can believe that we landed on the moon."
"The paradox is that sometimes the less it makes sense, the better it works. And the less one knows about the 'holy' people we follow, the better. One of the mysteries of human need is that religious leaders must become more than the sum of their fallible, sometimes awful, parts, because other people need them to be more. This does not make the religious leader a hypocrite; it just shows that the rest of us are desperate."
— Frank Schaeffer in Crazy for God
"I have referred to Fundamentalists as religious medievalists, but that's not fair to the medieval people who literally had no access to knowledge. The Fundamentalists of the 21st Century have at their fingertips all of the knowledge that humanity has amassed, yet they deliberately strive to build themselves a wall of Bibles to keep it at bay."
---Lyn Gerry
In II Tim. 1:10, we read that Jesus "abolished death."
But he abolished death only for himself.
People are still dying every day.
The only resurrection was for him. Not for my grandmother.
This is like the situation where a kid brings candy to school and the teacher asks, "Did you bring enough candy for everybody?"
Jesus brought just enough resurrection for himself.
I'm a polyatheist. There are many gods I don't believe in.
If religion equals morality, then why aren't our prisons overflowing with atheists?
Faith doesn't give you any answers. In fact, it prohibits you from asking the questions.
"You can throw this Tract away and try to laugh it off, but already you have read too much. You have heard the truth and you will never be able to shake off what you have just read. Conviction has gripped your soul and you are beginning to feel different. You know you have been putting on a big front. You know the end is coming, and you know you are not ready to meet God. You have to admit to yourself that down deep in your heart you are wondering what is going to happen when the end comes. Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God? Read the next paragraph carefully — your life is at stake."
---- from a Christian tract entitled "Chicken"
When they asked me what my religion is, I said, "I'm Non-Delusional."
"The Pope traditionally prays for peace every Easter, and the fact that it has never had any effect whatsoever in preventing or ending war never deters him. What goes through the Pope's mind about being rejected all the time? Does God have it in for him?"
--- Andy Rooney
[Exodus 4:24-26] God overlooked everything Moses had done for him (and the faith he had put in him) and decided to kill him just because his son had extra skin on the end of his dick? Why did God make humans with that extra skin in the first place if it was so bad to have it? This God is a REAL asshole.
"Attacks on atheism are usually personal, moralistic, and atrociously argued (not surprisingly)."
---- Steven Pinker
"Any person who needs religion to be moral is a douchebag at heart."
--- Tony Quark
Intelligent Design: Life is too complex to have developed naturally ... so we're going to invent an even more complex "creator" to explain it.
I'm not "militant" with my atheism. I haven't burned even one believer at the stake. I simply ask questions your religion can't answer.
I'm still waiting for the day when somebody burning a woman's face with acid generates 1/100th of the outrage generated when somebody burns the Quran or draws a cartoon about Muhammad.
Hey Christian: Are you using your religion, or is it using you?
What good is it to have a divine plan if some schmuck with a $2 prayer book can come along and fuck it up?
"Announcing that you're an atheist is like dipping yourself in jet fuel and showing up for a candlelight church service. The crowd is convinced you're going up in flames, and they're terrified that you'll take others with you. Some scatter. Some attempt to cleanse you. Some just stand there and scream, 'Save the children!'"
--- Seth Andrews
Nothing the Bible says is ever wrong. When it's proven false by science, it just becomes a metaphor.
"You don't get to put your unreason on the same shelf with my reason."
--- Bill Maher
An atheist isn't someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He is someone who believes that the evidence on "the God question" is on a similar level with the evidence on "the werewolf question."
"It's in the Ten Commandments to not take the Lord's name in vain. Rape is not up there, by the way. Rape is not a Ten Commandment. But don't say the dude's name with a shitty attitude."
--- Louis C.K.
"Please stop with the philosophical snoozefest, and bring back the miracles. Show us documented proof where the amputee has his limb instantaneously restored and we'll at least have a decent conversation starter."
---Randall Hogan
Whether or not there is a god or any kind of supernatural element to the universe is a matter of fact, not opinion.
If your faith can move mountains, then it ought to be able to withstand criticism.
Why would I ask for forgiveness from an invisible mass murderer?
"Dear God: Please hand that 'omnipotence' over to me for a few millennia. I want to see if I can fuck things up as badly as you did."
I trust my senses to confirm reality based on their continued reliability in producing effective results. If you want to know whether or not a cigarette lighter works, you pick it up and use it. Using my reasoning to confirm my reasoning is not circular; it is a practical necessity. I have no reason to believe that I am wrong, but I cannot say that it is impossible for me to be wrong. We live our lives by inference and induction (and DEMONSTRATIONS and EVIDENCE).
[Re: hard solipsism/"The Matrix"] I am stuck with the reality that I'm currently experiencing (apparently along with everybody else), and until somebody offers me a way out, and I will not arrogantly assert that all of you people are figments of my imagination.
I admit that I cannot be absolutely certain about anything. I cannot even be absolutely certain that I cannot be absolutely certain. We have to begin with certain presuppositions which appear to be true, namely that existence exists, even though it may not be the ultimate existence; that reason is reliable; and that our experience of reality is reliable — since we can't tell when it's not, as in the experience of optical illusions, magic tricks, hallucinations, and waking up from vivid dreams.
Christian: "I care about you, and I don't want you to burn in hell forever."
Me: "Really? You care about me? Then why do you worship the prick bastard who wants to send me to hell?"
Truth is that which comports with reality.
Certainty is not a measure of the truth of a claim. It is a measure of a person's belief in that claim.
If people didn't invent ridiculous imaginary gods, it would not be necessary for rational people to deny them.
What would it take to convince you that God does NOT exist?
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin,
more even than death ... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and
terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable
habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and
swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."
- Bertrand Russell
When there were only four people on earth, God could not stop a murder.
"God doesn't exist ... because I said so!" Does that bother you? This is the same reason that pastors and parents give for the existence of God.
"God works in mysterious ways" is something that is usually said right after a horrible event.
You were made in God's image ... except for your foreskin. You have to cut that off.
The good thing about finding out that you're wrong is that you're not wrong anymore.
|
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl's parents believe — as you believe — that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?
No. The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. An atheist is simply a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87 percent of the population) claiming to "never doubt the existence of God" should be obliged to present evidence for his existence — and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. An atheist is a person who believes that the murder of a single little girl — even once in a million years — casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God. — from Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris |
"Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason that, if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you."
— Robert G. Ingersoll, "Individuality" (1873)
"The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it; let it loose, and it will defend itself."
--- Augustine of Hippo
"What does God need with a starship?"
---- CPT James T. Kirk
"God is a perfect example of the kind of aberration that can result from an untrained intellect combining with an unrestrained imagination."
"Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday singing, 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!' If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it."
— Ex-minister Dan Barker
Here's what God said in
I Samuel 15:3:
"Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."
In the entire Bible, Satan never orders people to do ANYTHING as horrible and despicable as this.
Ray Comfort is a Christian who tells a story that's a kind of a parable. He wants to explain Jesus and Christianity and salvation.
He says that an evangelist is somebody who cares about you. He's like the guy who comes and knocks on your door and tells you that your house is on fire, and helps you escape the fire.
I think I understand this analogy.
The problem is, my house is not on fire. I would invite the evangelist into my house and ask him to show me where the fire is.
If there's no fire in my house, then the evangelist is just a nuisance.
But what happens next is that a different evangelist comes to my house and tells me that it's flooded, and I need to put on waders and wade out of the house. Quick! There's no time left!
I look around my house and there's no water coming in.
Then a third evangelist knocks on my door and tells me that there's carbon monoxide in my house ...
Get the picture?
"Sin" is an invented "disease" that was created so that a scam artist could sell me a cure.
"It is an incredible con job, when you think of it, to believe
something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations
with all their phony reward systems don't try to make it posthumous."
— Gloria Steinem
|
"It used to be the girls had to learn how to say no. Not today! Women's lib changed all that. Nowadays, it's the boys who have to fight off the girls. Aggressive, hard-drinking girls go after boys today, more so than in any past generation. No wonder one of every two marriages ends in divorce. Easy girls become easy wives."
— from Sipping Saints by David Wilkerson (1978), p. 78 |
"The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations; that he can be persuaded by their prayers; and
becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest, and least productive industries in history."
—
Lazarus Long in Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein
Men rarely manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
"When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible? This, for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God's son? The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed — whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions — is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross — how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?"
— Friedrich Nietzsche
If you pray hard enough, you can make water run uphill. How hard do you have to pray? Why, hard enough to make water run uphill, of course!
Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is monotheistic can believe anything. Just give him time to rationalize it.
|
God does not exist or, if he does, he isn't worth much. Take any natural disaster ... say, the tsunami that killed about 250,000 people on December 26, 2004.
The possibilities are: 1. God made it happen. Therefore God is a violent, irrational, hateful bastard ... certainly not worthy of praise or worship. 2. It was an act of nature, and God decided not to stop it. God is a violent, irrational, hateful bastard ... certainly not worthy of praise or worship. 3. It was an act of nature, but God couldn't prevent it. Therefore, he is irrelevant and not worthy of praise or worship. 4. It was a simple act of nature, and God does not exist. |
It's the inconsistency of the Bible-kissers I can't stand. If you're going to quote what Leviticus says about homosexuals, then don't eat shellfish or wear mixed fabrics. Poke your eye out if you look at women other than your wife (Matt. 5:27-29) — then come talk to me.
"If you believe, for instance, that the American Civil War was a hoax, or you believe it happened in 1920, you have to have a good reason or you're going to be thought a lunatic. We change the rules of the game once we talk about the divine origin of certain books. We have a fundamental double standard here. We never respect stupidity in our society unless it is religious stupidity."
— Sam Harris
The Jews were enslaved in Egypt, and then God led them out, and parted the Red Sea, and gave them the Ten Commandments.
Question: Prior to that time, did they not know that murder and perjury were wrong? Were they going around stealing and killing each other willy-nilly?
"An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated."
— Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Unitarians believe in one god maximum.
"The little faith I used to have has been completely shattered. If God existed, he would have certainly not permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with gun butts or shoved into sacks and gassed to death."
— Rutka Laskier (1943)
"All that is necessary, it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention — of barbarian invention — is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; take the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the coiled form of superstition — then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity."
-
Robert G. Ingersoll, The Gods (1872)
"With science unable to give us the answers, religion steps in and fills the gap of our ignorance with nonsense, fantasies, and pretentious lies. Prophets and priests rush in where scientists fear to tread."
— C.W. Dalton
"Mother Teresa
is often thought to have been a great force for compassion in this world, and to some significant degree, she was. There is no doubt that she alerted people to the reality of a certain kind of suffering. I remember finding her quite inspiring, in fact. But when she gave her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, she declared that abortion was the greatest instance of suffering she had ever encountered. She lost more sleep over abortion than over famine and genocide and political torture and mental illness and all other forms of human suffering she had witnessed. This doesn't make any sense."
—
Sam Harris
|
A preacher said, "Only yesterday my manhood was insulted. Across from and facing me on a streetcar sat a 'something' — a female picking her teeth. Her dress was above her knees with no effort to keep them together. Horrors! What are we coming to when a man must cover his face with a paper or turn his head the other way to keep from seeing entirely too much? It seems that many of these she animals have lost all modesty and are out for sale, offering all that is left — just legs! legs!! legs!!!"
--- from Are We Dragging Men to Hell by Our Modern Dress?, a tract published by the Pilgrim Tract Society (Randleman, NC 27317) |
"No one has the right to destroy another person's beliefs by demanding empirical evidence."
—
Ann Landers, advice columnist
"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 F. Roberts
In the fundamentalist Christian model of the parent-child relationship (the one between God and the Christian), the child must excuse everything the parent does, no matter how cruel or irrational. The child must believe that the parent's every action and claim is appropriate and justified. If the child is whipped and locked in a closet for a week, it's only because he somehow deserved it. The child believes that any kind of treatment he receives, however harsh, is justified because he's such a bad, stupid child. Any reward, however minor (like receiving a piece of candy after being locked in the closet) is seen as an undeserved gift from the parent, and the parent is praised. The parent is quick to remind the child that any good thing the child accomplishes is somehow a result of the parent's selfless actions or good qualities, but every time the child falls short of expectations, it is because of the child's innate shortcomings, which he will never be able to change. The child learns that love means pity and pain. Love is something to be won by admitting to one's own depravity and losing all sense of self. Safety and acceptance lies in carefully reading the parent's whims and moods, and sacrificing everything to please the parent.
"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media, and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."
—
Pat Robertson [in a 1993 interview with Molly Ivins]
"We who are atheists are also a-fairyists and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so."
—
Richard Dawkins
Science is not just a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. We must interrogate those who tell us that something is true.
When babies die and go to heaven, do they remain babies forever and ever? When mentally retarded people to go heaven, do they stay retarded, or do they become smart? Does everybody speak the same language in heaven, or do I have to learn German? Do the Arabs have to learn English?
Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill thousands and you are a conqueror. Kill millions and you are God.
God "tests our faith" by besetting us with tragedy, by killing the people we love. Why is God so insecure that he keeps testing the faith of those who love him? Doesn't he have any faith in us?
"For instance, in the book of Micah, chapter 5, it says that the Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem, and then — lo and behold! — in Matthew chapter 2, Jesus is born in Bethlehem. This is rather like events in the first volume of The Lord of the Rings being confirmed by events in the third volume."
—
Sam Harris
The United States Constitution mentions religion only twice, and in both cases it is tied to the word "no." Article VI says that no religious test shall be required of those holding public office. The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck."
---- Thomas Jefferson (1822)
|
• • •
"The deliverance of the saints must take place some time before 1914."
— Charles Taze Russell, founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Studies in the Scripture, Volume 3, 1910 edition • • • "The deliverance of the saints must take place some time after 1914." — Charles Taze Russell, founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Studies in the Scripture, Volume 3, 1923 edition |
"Some treat their longing for God as proof of his existence."
— Mason Cooley
"It is a peculiar habit of God's that when he wishes to reveal himself to mankind, he will communicate only with a single person. The rest of mankind must learn the truth from that person and thus purchase their knowledge of the divine at the cost of subordination to another human being, who is eventually replaced by a human institution, so that the 'divine' remains under other people's control."
— Patricia Crone
"Okay, you win. You proved that your god is the best there ever was at hide 'n' seek. Now trot him out here so that we can give him his reward."
— Dan Ceppa
"Thank God" ... this expression pisses me off. It's not the thanking of god itself that irritates me. If you believe in a god, you should probably thank him, her, or it frequently. This is a being to whom you owe your very existence. Whether the prescribed method of expression is saying grace, dancing in a circle, sacrificing a chicken, or mutilating your child's genitals, most gods seem to really, really like being thanked. A lot. In fact, it seems that after they've completed the act of creation, most gods take up getting humans to express gratitude as their primary source of amusement. This raises questions about any given god's need for validation and/or his level of emotional maturity, but who am I to question the divine will?
Let's assume that a god (or gods) exist and that he is either omnipotent or at least unimaginably powerful (frankly, any being that doesn't fit this criterion probably shouldn't be called a god). When might be an appropriate time to thank this god? For example: when one is viewing the wonders of nature seems like a good time. In practice, though, when was the last time you heard someone say "Thank god, it's a rainbow?" Contemplating the simple fact of (or aspects of) one's own life or existence seems like it should stir this sort of emotion, but one doesn't often hear "Thank god, my kidneys work beautifully." In fact, nine times out of ten, the Two Words issue forth from the lips of someone who has recently experienced tragedy or near-tragedy. Tune into any of the cable news networks the day after a natural disaster (i.e., just about any day), and you'll hear a whole lot of people thanking god. You'll hear something like "The wildfire destroyed my house, and my car exploded, but thank god I'm alive." Hospitals are also popular places for this kind of utterance, as in "My baby died of Ebola this morning but thank god I have another child."
|
10,000 years ago: Creates the universe, planet Earth, all the animals, and man and woman. 5,000 years ago: Parts the Red Sea. 2,000 years ago: Virgin birth, and resurrection. 20 years ago: Speaks to televangelists (usually to tell them to ask for money). Last week: Appears on a piece of toast. |
Why do these people choose to sing the praises of the lord right after they've been shat on by life?
"Thank god most of my goats survived." Thank which god? The god who just sent a tornado through your living room?
"Thank god I'm in remission." Did you thank him when he gave you cancer?
People seem very willing to forgive the bad thing that's happened when they are graciously allowed to live or keep some of their possessions. Would they be so generous if the offender-turned-savior was a human being?
Wouldn't it sound strange if you overheard a conversation between strangers, and one person said to the other "Thank you for taking me to the emergency room after you beat me half to death in that alley, stabbed me in the eye, and stole my wallet"?
Human beings attribute blame for the infractions of other people just as quickly as they thank those who have been kind or helpful. Why doesn't god receive the same treatment?
Why is it that when a surfer is attacked by a shark and loses his leg, he's quick to thank god for letting him live, but he doesn't seem to hold a grudge about the fact that this same god created sharks and/or created that particular shark and/or didn't stop that shark from trying to eat him and/or didn't make sure a better surgeon was on call and/or didn't at least allow his very expensive surfboard to come through unscathed?
None of the bad stuff is ever god's fault.
I find it curious that a person won't attribute the same level of complexity to the motives and actions of a magical invisible being who pervades the entire universe as he will to the anonymous stranger who stole his hubcaps. Is an omnipotent being not capable of good and evil? I suppose it's uncomfortable to worship such a being and to know you have no choice in the matter.
I suppose that's what led early Christian theologians to twist a few snippets of Old Testament scripture until they yielded the modern concept of Satan.
There has to be somebody to blame for all the bad stuff ... and it can't be our god.
"Omnipotence" means that God can do, or be, whatever he wants to. He could be absolutely good or absolutely evil. Why would you worship a Supreme Being who is obviously so incompetent? Are you succumbing to cosmic blackmail? Face the facts, folks: God is an asshole.
If you could show me absolute proof of the existence of god right now, right this second, I would still choose damnation over worshiping a shithead.
"There are dozens of proofs (and disproofs) of the existence of God; why aren't there any proving the existence of the Devil? Satan is frequently offered as a possible explanation for the presence of evil in the world, but you simply don't have the same sort of rigorous, logical attempts to demonstrate that he is a 'necessary' being in the way God supposedly is. I suspect that most of the standard God arguments could be adapted to that purpose by adding a word here and there (e.g., 'every bad effect must have a bad cause; Satan is the first bad cause,' or 'the existence of evil design in the universe requires an evil designer'), but I'm not aware of any theologian who has seen fit to go through the motions."
What if President Bush declared a "National Day of Cursing God" because God failed us on September 11? Christians would say, "Mr. President, you've overstepped your authority!!!!"
That's how I feel when he sets aside a national day of prayer for his pet God.
If (as the maverick astronomer Fred Hoyle mistakenly thought) the spontaneous origin of life is as improbable as a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and having the luck to assemble a Boeing 747, then a "divine designer" is the ultimate Boeing 747.
The designer's spontaneous origin ex nihilo would have to be even more improbable than the most complex of his alleged creations. Unless, of course, he relied on natural selection to do his work for him! And in that case, one might pardonably wonder (though this is not the place to pursue the question), does God need to exist at all?
CHRISTIANITY (n.): The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie (who was his own father) can make you live forever if you (a) symbolically eat his flesh and (b) telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so that he can remove an evil force called "sin" that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magic tree.
"Where was God on September 11?"
Well, why even ask that question now? Where was God during the Holocaust? Where was God during World War I? World War II? Vietnam?
We could go on like this. God has been conspicuously absent during millions of gruesome, ghastly deaths.
Is he on a permanent coffee break? Or just AWOL?
Who am I to question God? Well, who am I to question Hitler? Who am I to question anyone, anything, or any idea that is violent and commits genocide?
God is not a good parent. He couldn't hold a candle to myself and others who love their children and teach them - without violence - to find their place in this world.
Nor am I an absentee parent. My children know me, and know what I expect of them. And if they make mistakes, I help them learn from their mistakes. I am clear and unequivocal in my teachings, and I don't leave things up to interpretation.
God is not good. He is evil, and does not deserve any praise. God makes your devil look like an angel of mercy ... that is, if your god were real.
Yes, I will question your god. Is he going to strike me dead? Even if he could, even if he did, I would still question him. If it weren't for human beings questioning and rebelling against tyranny, we would still be in the dark ages.
°
There either is a God or there is not a God.
° If there is no God, then you don't have a problem.
° If there is a God, God is either just or unjust.
° If God is just, then he will judge you fairly.
° If God is not just, then you're probably screwed, and you wouldn't want to spend eternity with him anyhow.
° Fear of a petty and vengeful God is a terrible thing to base your life on.
It is better to light a single candle than to make up myths about the darkness.
"If this [the word fuck] offends you, welcome to the world of sane and realistic critical thought. More harm has been done to the collective human psyche by religion than by all the fucking and cocksucking since the dawn of time. By the way, many religious people (including the ordained) fuck and suck each other's cocks all the time."
-
George Carlin
"In many cultures it is customary to say that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?"
-
Carl Sagan, Cosmos (page 257)
|
There's a term that comes to us from George Orwell's novel 1984: doublethink.
"Doublethink" is when a totalitarian government wants you to believe two different things that contradict each other. It helps them control the population. "War is peace." "Freedom is slavery." "Doublethink" is the kind of mentality that modern-day people have to engage in when they follow the religion of Christianity. The Bible is a mishmash of writings that were created over the span of several centuries. Naturally, there are multiple contradictions in the Bible. Naturally, it contains myths and stories of things that never actually happened. And if there's anything mysterious that ever happened, it is explained in terms of an invisible supernatural almighty all-knowing deity ... even when that explanation makes no sense at all. Even when the "activities" (or "statements") of that unknowable deity show a complete lack of compassion and a complete lack of character or integrity, and a complete lack of scientific knowledge. And the Bible is probably the "least-read-by-people-who-claim-to-believe-in-it" book of all time. I still remember when President Trump said "two Corinthians" (he was referring to the New Testament book of II Corinthians). Biblegod is just assumed. America is drenched in Christianity. The money in your pocket says "In God We Trust." Many people assume that the United States is a Christian nation. No candidate has ever been elected President who did not claim to be a Christian. In our pledge of allegiance, we are taught to acknowledge that our country is "one nation under God." The Boy Scout oath includes the words "to do my duty to God." Every town in the United States has dozens of churches. Faith is the default mindset that is expected of good citizens. If you're an atheist, you will routinely be challenged to "prove that God does not exist." Christianity is in the drinking water. American culture is saturated with God. God is common knowledge; critical thought is deemed unnecessary. The Gideons place Bibles in hotel rooms. The Bible is the best-selling book of all time, and it's also the book that has been given away the most. It is sold in special "gift editions." The last piece of the Bible was written about 2000 years ago. For most of the centuries after Jesus died, the vast majority of humans could not read and had very limited access to books because there were no printing presses. Why would an all-knowing God think that revealing himself through a book was a good idea ... back when only 3% of the people on earth could read? God's holy book was available only to priests. |
• • • The problem of Christianity is: If the Messiah has come, why is the world so evil?
• • • For Judaism, the problem is: If the world is so evil, why does the Messiah not come?
"Dear God: We paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing."
-
Bart Simpson saying grace
"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god? Every time we go to church, we're just making him madder and madder."
-
Homer Simpson
Christians are normal people in the outside world, but their brains seem to switch over to "standby mode" on Sunday morning.
"Church, cult, cult, church ... big deal! So we get bored somewhere else every Sunday!"
- Bart Simpson, on his family joining a cult
The universe is knowable. It is not "mystical and magical." Just because something happens that you can't explain, that doesn't mean that it's mystical and magical. It just means that it hasn't been explained yet.
If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.
"Philosophy is like a blind man searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there. The difference between philosophy and theology is that theology finds the cat."
— William James
"Do not let evidence fuel your appreciation of God; let your appreciation of God influence your view of the evidence."
— Carl Kerby, creationist
"If there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is he playing at? Is he a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports?"
— Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden
If the Bible proves that God exists then comic books prove the existence of Superman.
Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is not a "position;" it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious.
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded [sic] fear."
— Thomas Jefferson
"If we must play the theological game, let us never forget that it is a game. Religion, it seems to me, can survive only as a consciously accepted system of make-believe. [...] You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough."
— Aldous Huxley
"Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian."
— Diderot
"[F]amily, friends, and well-wishers from around the world assured me that prayers and my faith in God would comfort me. I tried to pray but I didn't feel any better, nor did I make any kind of connection with God."
— Christopher Reeve
"Christianity indeed has equaled Judaism in the atrocities, and exceeded it in the extent of its desolation. Eleven millions of men, women, and children have been killed in battle, butchered in their sleep, burned to death at public festivals of sacrifice, poisoned, tortured, assassinated, and pillaged in the spirit of the Religion of Peace, and for the glory of the most merciful God."
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
"The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black. The Thracians say that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair."
— Xenophanes (5th-6th Century BCE)
"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."
— Robert A. Heinlein
"The God of the Christians is a father who is a great deal more concerned about his apples than he is about his children."
— Diderot
"We [humans] are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age (our earth has had, so far, some 50 ice ages); because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a 'higher answer' — but none exists."
— Stephen J. Gould
"But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant."
— H.L. Mencken
"I never yet have seen the person who could withstand the doubt and unbelief that enter his mind when reading the Bible in a spirit of inquiry."
— Etta Semple
The world is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe.
"Gods are children's blankets that get carried over into adulthood."
—
James Randi
"You believe in a book that has talking animals, witches, demons, unicorns, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd, and primitive stories, and you say that we [atheists] are the ones that need help?"
—
Dan Barker
"We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I think religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder."
—
Bill Maher
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
—
Susan B. Anthony (1896 )
"I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature. It has made one half the world fools, the other half hypocrites."
—
Thomas Jefferson
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
—
Thomas Jefferson
"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning."
— Calvin, "Calvin & Hobbes"
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.
"People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them."
— Dave Barry
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."
— Voltaire
"When I became convinced that the universe is natural — that all the ghosts and gods are myths — there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light, and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world — not even in infinite space.
"I was free — free to think, to express my thoughts — free to live to my own ideal — free to live for myself and those I loved — free to use all my faculties, all my senses — free to spread imagination's wings — free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope — free to judge and determine for myself — free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the 'inspired' books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past — free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies — free from the fear of eternal pain--free from the winged creatures of the night — free from devils, ghosts, and gods. For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought — no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings — no chains for my limbs — no lashes for my back — no fires for my flesh — no master's frown or threat — no following in another's steps — no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously faced all words. And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain — for the freedom of labor and thought — to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound in chains — to those by fire consumed — to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still!"
— Robert Ingersoll
"The divinely guided, who will kill you, or at least wish you dead, because you belong to a different book club — this is what religion is."
— Ian Murphy
"The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own."
— Frank Zappa
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
— Seneca the Younger
Ethical people will do what is right, no matter what they are told. Religious people will do what they are told, no matter what is right.
"Those who get instructions directly from the Almighty are twice blessed. They get their orders from the highest authority, and the orders are always to do what they would have done anyway."
— Harley Sorensen
"Every fact is an enemy of the church. Every fact is a heretic. Every demonstration is an infidel. Everything that ever really happened testifies against the supernatural."
— Robert Ingersoll
"Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool."
— Voltaire
"If there's any miracle in the world, it's that so many people actually believe god exists."
— John Mackie
"We also know that fundamentalists the world over and at home consider the 'sacred texts' to be literally God's word on all matters. Inside that logic, you cannot read part of the Bible allegorically and the rest of it literally; if you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the depiction of the Great Judgment at the end times, you must also believe that God is sadistic, brutal, vengeful, callow, cruel, and savage."
— Bill Moyers
"All ideas should be open to questioning, and the merit of ideas should be assessed on the strength of the evidence that supports them and not on the credentials or affiliations of the individuals proposing them."
— Lord May
"Fear and credulity may interact to create a population vulnerable to charlatans of every stripe. The spellbinders, gurus, psychics, channelers, mediums, UFOlogists, crystal healers, fortune tellers, and miracle mongers that abound today make money off a public trained to believe improbabilities; the more colorful and imaginative, the better. Religion's war against fringe or New Age beliefs is not a battle of the rational against the irrational. It is a conflict between different fantasy systems, with a good deal of money at stake."
— Barbara G. Walker
When religionists get into nasty debates because one of them thinks he's found such-and-such evidence proving some claim about his god/savior/holy man, and all the others think he's full of shit, atheists find themselves in the curious position of watching it all from the sidelines.
It's like being a parent watching your kids arguing over topics that seem profoundly important to them, like who would win in a fight between Superman and the Incredible Hulk, but it doesn't matter a hill of beans to you because you spend most of your time in the real world.
"The churches used to win their arguments against atheism, agnosticism, and other burning issues by burning the ismists, which is fine proof that there is a devil but hardly evidence that there is a God."
Note to Scientology:
First signs that you are not a true religion:
1. You cannot take a joke.
2. You have an army of attack lawyers.
3. You are unable to handle satire.
"One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be appreciated in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while condemning scientists for their intellectual arrogance. There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer:
The creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell ... An average Christian, in an average church, listening to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse — and there have been some extraordinarily arrogant scientists."
— Sam Harris in Letter to a Christian Nation
"If there is a god, he has an inordinate fondness for beetles."
— J.B.S. Haldane
If Christianity was meant to be the universal religion of all mankind,
why was it revealed in the Middle East
to one man
at a time when there was no global communication — not even long-distance telephone service?
If man's sole purpose in life is to live by the Bible, what was man's purpose before the Bible was written? If God can communicate with man, why was he silent for most of human history?
|
|
