Meaning of Life interview (2008)
Context: Well, God answers of course come in every flavor imaginable these days so God can be process-God can be mind-God … so there are all of these ways that God is now configured as well as the ones that come to us from traditional religions where God has much more power — then there's the whole personal God part which I do talk about in there at some point. So I don't think that even that there is a God framework out there at this point that I am either accepting or rejecting. My response is that I call myself a non-theist as opposed to an atheist because as I see an atheist as having a belief about God, i. e. that there isn't one. And my I've never been actually very interested in the question I guess is one way to put it. I see it as a question That can be summarized in the aphorism "Why is there anything at all rather than nothing." And science doesn't have any answer to That so what I articulated in the book and continued to do is what I call a covenant with mystery where mystery is itself a … noun but I am using it as literally in absence of category. It's not like I have a mystery then I put attributions onto it it just … I don't know the answers.
“The atheist has got completely different views from the theist, but each one of them is regarding their opponent as the foolish one.”
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Mwanandeke Kindembo 1044
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“The fact is, when we are born, we are neither theists nor atheists, but ignoro-theists.”
page 157
Truth and Tension in Science and Religion
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: p>Where, then,— in what mysterious cave outside of creation — could Man, and his free-will, and his private world of responsibilities and duties, lie hidden? Unless Man was a free agent in a world of his own beyond constraint, the Church was a fraud, and it helped little to add that the State was another. If God was the sole and immediate cause and support of everything in his creation, God was also the cause of its defects, and could not,— being Justice and Goodness in essence,—hold Man responsible for his own omissions. Still less could the State or Church do it in his name.Whatever truth lies in the charge that the schools discussed futile questions by faulty methods, one cannot decently deny that in this case the question was practical and the method vital. Theist or atheist, monist or anarchist must all admit that society and science are equally interested with theology in deciding whether the Universe is one or many, a harmony or a discord. The Church and State asserted that it was a harmony, and that they were its representatives. They say so still. Their claim led to singular but unavoidable conclusions, with which society has struggled for seven hundred years, and is still struggling.</p
“I’ve always felt that theists were more ruthless than atheists.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 15 (p. 235)
How much substantial truth there is in these gloomy confessions of this man of painful sincerity.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana
Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 21
Context: "Tell me," said the atheist, "Is there a God — really?"
Said the master, "If you want me to be perfectly honest with you, I will not answer."
Later the disciples demanded to know why he had not answered.
"Because the question is unanswerable," said the Master.
"So you are an atheist?"
"Certainly not. The atheist makes the mistake of denying that of which nothing may be said... and the theist makes the mistake of affirming it.
Attributed by atheist activist Robert I. Sherman, reporting on remarks at a public press conference Bush held at O'Hare Airport on 27 August 1987 just after announcing his candidacy for president. Initially reported soon after the incident, years afterward disputes on the accuracy of the reports arose, as indicated at "Documents at Bush Presidential Library Prove VP Bush Questioned Citizenship and Patriotism of Atheists" (1 April 2006) at RobSherman.com https://web.archive.org/web/20150102092456/http://www.robsherman.com:80/advocacy/060401a.htm. Other journalists present have neither confirmed nor contradicted Sherman's account of the exchange. Sherman cites official correspondence about the incident between Jon Garth Murra, President of American Atheists, and White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray in December 1988, as clearly documenting that this was publicly reported prior to that time, and the accuracy of the remarks not contested, though implications of them in regard to actual stances on civil rights were.
Frequently misquoted as "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots."
[1988, Fall, On the Barricades: Bush on Atheism, GALA Interim, Free Inquiry, 8, 4, 0272-0701, 16]
[1990-10-22, Do We Want Atheist Army?, Tom, Tiede, Waycross Journal-Herald, 73, 250, 3, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=KltaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yUwNAAAAIBAJ&pg=4651,702629]
Disputed