Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer
The Dilbert Blog: Atheists: The New Gays, 2006-11-19 http://richarddawkins.net/article,326,Atheists-The-New-Gays,Scott-Adams--Dilbertblog,
Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer
The Dilbert Blog: Atheists: The New Gays, 2006-11-19 http://richarddawkins.net/article,326,Atheists-The-New-Gays,Scott-Adams--Dilbertblog,
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 185 http://archive.twoaspirinsandacomedy.com/spectator/spectator.php?line=185 (2 October 1711). <br class="br">Often misquoted as "To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny." <br class="br">The Spectator (1711–1714)
Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist
2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)
John Maynard Keynes book The Economic Consequences of the Peace
Source: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter II, Section I, pp. 14-15
“The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards.”
Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America
Nixon to Bob Haldeman (1 February 1972) as quoted in Counterpunch (12 March 2002) http://www.counterpunch.org/alexgraham.html <br class="br">1970s
Swami Narayanananda (1902–1988) Indian guru
Source: A Practical Guide to Samadhi (1957), p. 166
Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast
Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)
Abby Stein (1991) Trans activist, speaker, and educator
Interview with GLAAD, April 27, 2016. http://www.glaad.org/blog/interview-abby-stein-talks-about-being-transgender-woman-hasidic-jewish-community <br class="br">2016
Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister
2012-08-06
The 700 Club
Television
CBN, quoted in * 2012-08-06
Quoted: Pat Robertson Links 'Hate' of God to Wis. Sikh Temple Shooting
CP U.S.
The Christian Post
http://www.christianpost.com/news/pat-robertson-links-hate-of-god-to-wis-sikh-temple-shooting-79559/
Penn Jillette (1955) American magician
p. 62 http://books.google.com/books?id=OqwtBujvOmgC&pg=PA62&dq=%22atheists+are+also+morally+obligated%22 <br class="br">2010s, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011)
Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer
Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 4 (pp. 72-73)
Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist
"The Psychology Behind Morality" (12 June 2014) http://www.onbeing.org/program/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-behind-morality/transcript/6347#main_content
Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) German philosopher
... wenn der Marxismus atheistisch fix mit Status quo bleibt, um der Menschenseele nichts als einen mehr oder minder eudämonistisch eingerichteten »Himmel« auf Erden zu setzen - ohne die Musik, die aus diesem mühelos funktionierenden Mechanismus der Ökonomie und des Soziallebens zu ertönen hätte.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 38
W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist
The Naked Communist (1958)
Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author
Source: Books, What's So Great about Christianity (2007), Ch. 23
Bruce Parry (1969) British documentarian
As quoted in "Bruce almighty: What drives Tribe's presenter-explorer Bruce Parry?" by Ed Caesar in The Independent (11 August 2007) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/bruce-almighty-what-drives-tribes-presenterexplorer-bruce-parry-461007.html
Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist
An Interview with Dr. Leo Igwe — Founder, Nigerian Humanist Movement (2017)
Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist
" Karl Giberson is still fighting a rearguard battle against Adam and Eve https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/06/13/karl-giberson-is-still-fighting-a-rearguard-battle-against-adam-and-eve/" June 13, 2015
Stephen A. Smith (1967) sports journalist
Interview on Paula Zahn Now http://atheism.about.com/b/a/258728.htm (January 31, 2007).
Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist
" Believer Michael Robbins exhibits Maru’s Syndrome on The Dish http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/07/26/believer-michael-robbins-exhibits-marus-syndrome-on-the-dish/" July 26, 2014
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian
Preface, p. 15, sentence 4.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist
As quoted in Against the Faith (1985) by Jim Herrick, p. 75
Variant translation: It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast
Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist
Letter to Charles Kingsley (6 May 1863)
1860s
Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist
2013-10-13
Super Soul Sunday
TV
OWN
http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/Soul-to-Soul-with-Diana-Nyad-Im-an-Atheist-Whos-In-Awe-Video, quoted in * 2013-10-15
Why Oprah's Anti-Atheist Bias Hurts So Much
David Niose
Our Humanity, Naturally
Psychology Today
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201310/why-oprahs-anti-atheist-bias-hurts-so-much
in response to endurance swimmer Diana Nyad saying she can "weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity".
“It's easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot
Part 4, Chapter 7 http://books.google.com/books?id=WuAKAQAAMAAJ&q=&quot;It's+easier+for+a+Russian+to+become+an+atheist+than+for+anyone+else+in+the+world&quot;&pg=PA548#v=onepage <br class="br">The Idiot (1868–9)
Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist
The Ultimate Source of Meaning, Awake! magazine, october 22, 1980.
Others
Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast
"on the Israeli atheist convention" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/01/13/on-the-israeli-atheist-convention/, Patheos (January 13, 2013) <br class="br">Patheos
Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.
p. 24.
Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer
Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)
J. Michael Straczynski Passing Through Gethsemane
Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 : "Passing Through Gethsemane : jms speaks" (13 July (2004) http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/guide/048.html. <br class="br">Context: As an atheist, I believe that all life is unspeakably precious, because it’s only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it’s gone forever. No afterlives, no second chances, no backsies. So there can be nothing crueler than the abuse, destruction or wanton taking of a life. It is a crime no less than burning the Mona Lisa, for there is always just one of each. So I cannot forgive.
Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician
Responding to a question on whether he considered himself an atheist or an agnostic, in an interview at celebathiests.com (June 1996) http://web.archive.org/web/20061027073138/http://www.celebatheists.com/index.php?title=Tom_Lehrer <br class="br">Context: No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth". To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. But then again, I can get pretty arrogant.
Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist
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
Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist
"The voice of the lonely crowd" (2002)
Context: My apostasy, at the age of nine, was vehement. Clearly, I didn't want the shared words, the shared identity. I forswore chapel; those Bibles were scribbled on and otherwise desecrated, and two or three of them were taken into the back garden and quietly torched.
Later — we were now in Cambridge — I gave a school speech in which I rejected all belief as an affront to common sense. I was an atheist, and I was 12: it seemed open-and-shut. I had not pondered Kant's rather lenient remark about the crooked timber of humanity, out of which nothing straight is ever built. Nor was I aware that the soul had legitimate needs.
Much more recently I reclassified myself as an agnostic. Atheism, it turns out, is not quite rational either. The sketchiest acquaintance with cosmology will tell you that the universe is not, or is not yet, decipherable by human beings. It will also tell you that the universe is far more bizarre, prodigious and chillingly grand than any doctrine, and that spiritual needs can be met by its contemplation. Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.
Penn Jillette (1955) American magician
2010s, Why Penn Jillette is Terrified of a President Trump (2016)
Context: The problem is, I know Trump, so my optimism has been squashed like a baby bird … Everything bad I had to say about him, I said to his face. … I think he’s very good, very compelling on that show [Celebrity Apprentice] … I really like him because of his absence of filters. I really like the glimpse we get into the human heart we get when someone loses their filters … If he weren’t running for president, you’d be seeing essays from me about how much I learned from Donald Trump and how much I loved being on the show … I’m feeling so, so, so guilty, because I feel like, along with millions of other people, I played right into this. The cynicism of the Clintons, the careful, tightrope walk of all politicians, forced me, as an atheist, to get down on my knees and pray that someone would come along with some kind of authenticity … Well, someone called my bluff, goddamn it. … I’m a pure and utter peacenik. I want a president who sings the praises of people, sings the praises of peace and sings the praises of working together for a great country … Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t have laughed about waterboarding … If you told me right now I could have another eight years of Obama, I would not hesitate to grab at it. … He is unquestionably good and unquestionably smarter than I am, which is putting the bar pretty low. I want a president that is kinder, smarter and more measured than me.
Edmund Burke book A Vindication of Natural Society
A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
Context: I need not excuse myself to your Lordship, nor, I think, to any honest man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal, and in a good cause. I have defended natural religion against a confederacy of atheists and divines. I now plead for natural society against politicians, and for natural reason against all three. When the world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when I shall be more indifferent about its temper, my thoughts may become more public. In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom, and in the bosoms of such men as are fit to be initiated in the sober mysteries of truth and reason. My antagonists have already done as much as I could desire. Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them all. The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans have been jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have in their turns proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse! Observe, my Lord, I pray you, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power is founded. It was observed that men had ungovernable passions, which made it necessary to guard against the violence they might offer to each other. They appointed governors over them for this reason! But a worse and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the governors? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? In vain they change from a single person to a few. These few have the passions of the one; and they unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their lawless passions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly to the many. The case is worse; their passions are less under the government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended against all attacks by their multitude.
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
Letter to François Adriaan van der Kemp (16 February 1809)
1800s
Context: I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist
1880s, Agnosticism (1889)
Context: When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis," — had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble.
So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.
“He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not.”
Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman
The Philosophy of Paine (1925)
Context: He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity.
His Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills. He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds — or on persons devoted to them — have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life.
When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a "dirty little atheist" he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished.
Penn Jillette (1955) American magician
"The Bible: Fact or Fiction?" Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, season 2 episode 6 (6 May 2004)
2000s
Context: Take some time and put the Bible on your summer reading list. Try and stick with it cover to cover. Not because it teaches history; we've shown you it doesn't. Read it because you'll see for yourself what the Bible is all about. It sure isn't great literature. If it were published as fiction, no reviewer would give it a passing grade. There are some vivid scenes and some quotable phrases, but there's no plot, no structure, there's a tremendous amount of filler, and the characters are painfully one-dimensional. Whatever you do, don't read the Bible for a moral code: it advocates prejudice, cruelty, superstition, and murder. Read it because: we need more atheists — and nothin will get you there faster than readin' the damn Bible.
Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist
Last Notebook (1942) p. 137
First and Last Notebooks (1970)
Context: In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.
Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist
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.
Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist
"Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine" as translated in The Simone Weil Reader (1957) edited by George A. Panichas, p. 417
Context: Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 September 1949), from article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997)
1940s
Context: I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (1852), Chapter X http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20007/20007-h/20007-h.htm#link2HCH0010. Variations of the bolded portion of this quote have been incorrectly challenged as misattributions based on the seemingly anachronistic reference to communism (which was not yet an important political force at the time), the negative language toward Jews, and the use of such variations by antisemitic agitators who failed to provide an accurate citation to the work in which it appears. See Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (1990). <br class="br">1850s <br class="br">Context: But existing society has chosen to persecute this race which should furnish its choice allies, and what have been the consequences?<br>They may be traced in the last outbreak of the destructive principle in Europe. An insurrection takes place against tradition and aristocracy, against religion and property. Destruction of the Semitic principle, extirpation of the Jewish religion, whether in the Mosaic or in the Christian form, the natural equality of man and the abrogation of property, are proclaimed by the secret societies who form provisional governments, and men of Jewish race are found at the head of every one of them. The people of God co-operate with atheists; the most skilful accumulators of property ally themselves with communists; the peculiar and chosen race touch the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe! And all this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom which owes to them even its name, and whose tyranny they can no longer endure.
Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist
Last Notebook (1942) p. 308
First and Last Notebooks (1970)
Context: No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
“If there were not God, there would be no atheists.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist
Where All Roads Lead (1922); this is often misquoted as "If there were no God, there would be no atheists."
Context: Atheism is, I suppose, the supreme example of a simple faith. The man says there is no God; if he really says it in his heart, he is a certain sort of man so designated in Scripture [i. e. a fool, Ps 53:2]. But, anyhow, when he has said it, he has said it; and there seems to be no more to be said. The conversation seems likely to languish. The truth is that the atmosphere of excitement, by which the atheist lived, was an atmosphere of thrilled and shuddering theism, and not of atheism at all; it was an atmosphere of defiance and not of denial. Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence; and has starved with its starving lord. After this first fuss about the merely aesthetic effect of blasphemy, the whole thing vanishes into its own void. If there were not God, there would be no atheists.
Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector
"Eckhart, Brethren of the Free Spirit" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/communalism2.htm from Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century (1974), ch. 4 <br class="br">Context: St. Francis is not only the most attractive of all the Christian saints, he is the most attractive of Christians, admired by Buddhists, atheists, completely secular, modern people, Communists, to whom the figure of Christ himself is at best unattractive. Partly this is due to the sentimentalization of the legend of his life and that of his companions in the early days of the order. Many people today who put his statue in their gardens know nothing about him except that he preached a sermon to the birds, wrote a hymn to the sun, and called the donkey his brother. These bits of information are important because they are signs of a revolution of the sensibility — which incidentally was a metaphysical revolution of which certainly St. Francis himself was quite unaware. They stand for a mystical and emotional immediate realization of the unity of being, a notion foreign, in fact antagonistic, to the main Judeo-Christian tradition.<br>“I am that I am” — the God of Judaism is the only self-sufficient being. All the reality that we can know is contingent, created out of nothing, and hence of an inferior order of reality. Faced with the “utterly other,” the contingent soul can finally only respond with fear and trembling.
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Conversations with Carl Sagan (2006) http://books.google.ca/books?id=gJ1rDj2nR3EC&pg=PA70&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false, edited by Tom Head, p. 70 <br class="br">Context: Those who raise questions about the God hypothesis and the soul hypothesis are by no means all atheists. An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 139
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter
Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God
Context: Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God disappeared. I kept this to myself. I never discussed it with my parents. My father in any event was a nonpracticing Lutheran, until a deathbed conversion that rather disappointed me. I’m sure he agreed to it for my mother’s sake. Did I start calling myself an agnostic or an atheist? No, and I still don’t. I avoid that because I don’t want to provide a category that people can apply to me. Those who say that “believer” and “atheist” are concrete categories do violence to the mystery we must be humble enough to confess. I would not want my convictions reduced to a word.
“I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and 'agnostic'.”
Philip Pullman (1946) English author
Surefish interview (2002)
Context: I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and 'agnostic'. I've got no evidence whatever for believing in a God. But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know. So maybe there is a God out there. All I know is that if there is, he hasn't shown himself on earth.
But going further than that, I would say that those people who claim that they do know that there is a God have found this claim of theirs the most wonderful excuse for behaving extremely badly. So belief in a God does not seem to me to result automatically in behaving very well.
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994)
Context: If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
I would also want a God who would not allow a Hell. Infinite torture can only be a punishment for infinite evil, and I don't believe that infinite evil can be said to exist even in the case of Hitler. Besides, if most human governments are civilized enough to try to eliminate torture and outlaw cruel and unusual punishments, can we expect anything less of an all-merciful God?
I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.
Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2
Rolling Stone interview (2005)
Context: I was in my room listening on headphones on a tape recorder. It's very intimate. It's like talking to somebody on the phone, like talking to John Lennon on the phone. I'm not exaggerating to say that. This music changed the shape of the room. It changed the shape of the world outside the room; the way you looked out the window and what you were looking at.
I remember John singing "Oh My Love." It's like a little hymn. It's certainly a prayer of some kind — even if he was an atheist. "Oh, my love/For the first time in my life/My eyes can see/I see the wind/Oh, I see the trees/Everything is clear in our world." For me it was like he was talking about the veil lifting off, the scales falling from the eyes. Seeing out the window with a new clarity that love brings you. I remember that feeling.
Yoko came up to me when I was in my twenties, and she put her hand on me and she said, "You are John's son." What an amazing compliment!
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
General sources
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.
Free Inquiry (Spring 1982) <!-- p. 9 -->
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Free Inquiry (Spring 1982) <!-- p. 9 -->
General sources
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.
Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist
"Freedom from Religion", The Nation (19 February 2001) http://www.thenation.com/article/freedom-religion/ <br class="br">Context: A genuinely democratic society requires a secular ethos: one that does not equate morality with religion, stigmatize atheists, defer to religious interests and aims over others or make religious belief an informal qualification for public office. Of course, secularism in the latter sense is not mandated by the First Amendment. It's a matter of sensibility, not law.
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright
Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright
Hindutva
Carlos Lacámara (1958) American actor
On people choosing sides and scapegoating others (as quoted in the book Nuestras Voces: Latino Plays, Volume One https://books.google.com/books?id=FLj1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA258&lpg=PA258&dq)
Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer
1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman
France, (Still in a state of Anarchy), p. 27
Table talk
Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author
From Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, Volume VII, Number 2 (1984) http://www.missourireview.org/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=An+Interview+with+Stanislaw+Lem
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Antony Flew (1923–2010) British analytic and evidentialist philosopher
Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’
Flew's review of The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
Richard Dawkins on militant atheism http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html, (February 2002)
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world. <br class="br">End of the part 2: "The Virus of Faith" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUG6qd98wc <br class="br">The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)
Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer
Michel Henry, Marx II. Une philosophie de l’économie, éd. Gallimard, coll. « Nrf », 1976, p. 445
Books on Economy and Politics, Marx. A Philosophy of Human Being (1976)
Original: (fr) Marx certes était athée, « matérialiste », etc. Mais chez un philosophe aussi, il convient de distinguer ce qu’il est de ce qu’il croit être. Ce qui compte, ce n’est d’ailleurs pas ce que Marx pensait et que nous ignorons, c’est ce que pensent les textes qu’il a écrits. Ce qui paraît en eux, de façon aussi évidente qu’exceptionnelle dans l’histoire de la philosophie, c’est une métaphysique de l’individu. Marx est l’un des premiers penseurs chrétiens de l’Occident.
C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist
In conversation with Mahatma Gandhi and Gilbert Rahm in 1945, from [Jayaraman, A, https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/21675106, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman: A Memoir, 1989, Indian Academy of Sciences, 81-85336-24-5, Bengaluru, 143, 21675106]
John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician
Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 5 “The Gambling Argument (and Emotions from Prudence to Fear)” (p. 139)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)
John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician
Preface (p. xv; the quote is from Alice in Wonderland)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)
“I’ve always felt that theists were more ruthless than atheists.”
Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 15 (p. 235)
Andrew Collier (philosopher) (1944–2014) British philosopher
Source: "The Masters of Suspicion", p. 84
“To err is human, whether we are religious, atheist, or agnostic.”
Newton Lee American computer scientist
The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019
Richard Price (1721–1791) Welsh nonconformist preacher and radical
Source: A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789), p. 11
Guy Consolmagno (1952) American Jesuit, Catholic Priest, research astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory.
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,
“An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.”
Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter
Though Sheen is quoted as saying this in Look magazine (14 December 1955) the earliest located declaration of this witticism was by John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir on 21 February 1936: "I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support."
Misattributed
“Religiously, I consider myself an atheistic theologian.”
Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet
Religiosamente mi reputo un teologo ateo.
Elizabeth Olsen (1989) American actress
Source: Ryder, Caroline. "Elizabeth Olsen cover interview for Dazed&Confused" https://www.carolineryder.com/carolineryder/2013/09/elizabeth-olsen-cover-interview-for.html. (September 2, 2013).
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist
They nothing see,
Themselves except, and creatures like themselves,
That liv'd short-sighted, impotent to save.
So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late,
Destruction cometh 'like an armed man,'
Or like a dream of murder in the night,
Withering their mortal faculties, & breaking
The bones of all their pride.
Living Without God In The World (1798)