“I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do”

— Penn Jillette

2000s, There Is No God (2005)

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Penn Jillette 49

American magician 1955

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“Very often atheists themselves admit that they have no evidence of God's absence, but they try to put a different spin on it. They'll tell you, “No one can prove a universal negative” (like “There is no God”). They think this somehow excuses them from needing evidence against God's existence. But not only is it false that you can't prove a universal negative (all you have to do is show something is self-contradictory), but more importantly, this claim is really an admission that it's impossible to prove atheism! Atheism involves a universal negative, you can't prove a universal negative, therefore, atheism is unprovable. It turns out that it is the atheist who is believing a view for which there is and can be no evidence.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (2010), p. 149

“As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
Context: As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.

“Do you believe in God?
I, I believe in nothing but God!”

Frederick Franck (1909–2006) Dutch painter

Source: Echoes from the Bottomless Well (1985), p. 65

“The most dangerous type of atheism is not theoretical atheism, but practical atheism —that's the most dangerous type. And the world, even the church, is filled up with people who pay lip service to God and not life service. And there is always a danger that we will make it appear externally that we believe in God when internally we don't. We say with our mouths that we believe in him, but we live with our lives like he never existed. That is the ever-present danger confronting religion. That's a dangerous type of atheism.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Rediscovering Lost Values http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/rediscovering_lost_values/, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954)
1950s

“That's why I can dream dreams that God Himself never dreamed. I'm that kind of person. I can believe the things even God can't believe. I can do things even God can't. That's why God hated me more than Satan hated me.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Father's Words in Washington D.C. http://www.unification.net/2003/20030517_1.html (2003-05-17)

“I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

2000s, There Is No God (2005)
Context: I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."
Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

“Such craziness [in not believing in God] makes me want to throw up my hands in despair, and then wash them of anything to do with atheism. But I can't. Compassion won't let me. I thank God for the love and concern that He places in those who trust Him. Without it, I'm not sure I would even care about the salvation of anyone but myself and my immediate family and friends.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

“I’m an atheist in the sense that I do not believe in God, I do not believe in the afterlife. I believe that the soul is our brain. It’s impossible to scientifically prove either that God exists, or that God does not exist. The idea of God does not convince me. I prefer to believe that there is matter and that matter has the properties we observe. … When I pass away, if I meet God, I will tell him I was wrong.”

Margherita Hack (1922–2013) Italian astrophysicist and popular science writer

Quoted in " Goodbye Margherita Hack, “The Lady of the Stars.”", iitaly.org (1 July 2013) http://www.iitaly.org/magazine/focus/facts-stories/article/goodbye-margherita-hack-lady-stars?mode=colorbox.

“I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“If you say you believe in God, but you don’t really believe in God, then how you could you possibly be trying to fool God? Wouldn’t you have to believe there is a god if you’re going to try and deceive him? And what is the deception? Are you trying to trick God into thinking you believe in him? If you don’t believe in God then that’s not even possible. So already the Qur’an reveals sufficient absurdity to prove that it cannot have been authored by any god. Seriously, could this be any less ridiculous if it were written in Arabic?”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, The Cow http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/01/22/the-cow/ (January 22, 2016)

“I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do”

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Penn Jillette 49

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