Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 30
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said, when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars, with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence, on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very exceptional man.
“Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god - from Ra to Shiva - in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.”
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Richard Dawkins 322
English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941Related quotes
“He is an atheist who does not believe in himself.”
The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself.
Call to the Nation
A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists, NPR, 19th October 2009 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889251
God's Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion, 7, 9780787994662, Consolmagno, Guy, 2008 https://books.google.com/books?id=s276jyAQ5hcC&pg=PA7,
"Who Are The Blasphemers?" http://www.ftarchives.net/foote/flowers/112blasphemers.htm (June, 1882), p. 112
Flowers of Freethought (1893)