“I am not an atheist but an earthiest.”

— Edward Abbey, book Desert Solitaire

"Down the River", p. 163
Desert Solitaire (1968)

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Edward Abbey146

American author and essayist 1927–1989

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Context: I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.