‘A’ is for Atheist?
Top 15 Quotes By Famous Atheists – listverse.com:
1. Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night — Isaac Asimov2. I don’t believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life. — Andrew Carnegie
3. All thinking men are atheists. — Ernest Hemingway
4. Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. — Benjamin Franklin
5. Faith means not wanting to know what is true. — Friedrich Nietzsche
6. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. — George Bernard Shaw
7. Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile. — Kurt Vonnegut
8. I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. — Frank Lloyd Wright
9. Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. — Denis Diderot
10. A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. — Samuel Clemens
11. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud
12. Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. — Edward Gibbon
13. The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. — Ferdinand Magellan
14. Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. — Woody Allen
15. It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous. — Gloria Steinem
From what I know about the universe, it is much more complicated that we can imagine. The last few decades of physical theory and research have shown that.
I am confident that in spiritual terms that it is much more complex than either simple faith or simple denial would indicate, or that we can imagine.
I’ve understood the quote attributed here to Edward Gibbon to usually be attributed to Seneca the Younger. What’s the truth?
Murky origins perhaps but still a strong statement…
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
Seems to me Mr.Mustard should stop paying attention to the speck in his neighbors eye, and start to remove the two by four in his own.
“Heh heh. I should just sit back and let you sink your own ship.” #31
Another problem with the response posts of the obviously dogmatic fundamental christians here is that they often forget the some of the self evident wisdom it teaches (which btw is not inspired by god, but by rational common sense).
Matt the Knife #199 seems to quote other christian fundies in an attempt to rationalize xtian views opposed to atheist ones, a jury of his own hand ultra peers as it were. Thankfully the jury selection process is not so biased(or is it?)
In any case, when i debate a dogmatic i tend to do the opposite. My last post paraphrased matthew 7:3 using bible logic which will surely be acknowledged for its wisdom by the dogmatic christian. When do we as atheists or freethinkers ever see them effectively use an atheist quote to support their own stance.
# 9 is not from D. iderot; but from tha catholic Abbot Jean Meslier
Faith is a willingness to accept something as being true for which there is no rational evidence.
That is a quote from Ayn Rand who wrote Atlas Shrugged which dramatizes the clash between the prevailing wisdom and a more rational philosophy.
http://objectivistliving.com
http://aynrand.org
http://atlassociety.com
http://fff.org
http://mises.org
http://campaignforliberty.com
http://YALiberty.org