It’s an insidious idea, this notion that there is life after death. The promise of a reward in the afterlife has been used as an excuse to deny help to the poor, helpless and oppressed;...

I mean, whatWhat if no one’s watchingWhat if when we’re deadWe are just deadI mean, whatWhat if it’s just us down hereWhat if God is just an ideaSomeone put in your head

I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly...

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have...

punctuated evolution” and the unfilled gaps in post-Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shallresolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication.

copied” idea.

As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness...

Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teaching, and most of these teaching have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas and...

Science is agnostic when it comes to God – not atheistic, as some people prefer to read that laden word wrongly – just agnostic.

The Church being what she is cannot have the instincts of a gentleman.

Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism to reason for its existence.

[…] intelligent people only have a certain amount of time (measured in subjective time spent thinking about religion) to become atheists. After a certain point, if you’re smart, have spent time thinking about and defending...

It was a feeling which he had seen before in his mother; but no chord within vibrated to it.

Coincidentally, the words RELIGION and BULLSHIT both have eight letters.

When Alex left for Alaska,” Franz remembers, “I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So...

There are no atheists in the foxhole.

Us atheist people, we believe we have to act properly and honestly for a moral principle and not because we expect an award in Paradise.

I’ll tell you what you did with Atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any...

I’m about to diefor my own.

Atheism is a lack of belief…what about the powers of darkness, and that of light, will you trace both to nothing? Then you must have created yourself.

The Big Book’s chapter We Agnostics draws a line in the sand: God either is or He isn’t. What was our choice to be (Alcoholics Anonymous, 53)? Nature abhors a vacuum and a state of...

The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we’ll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of...

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or...

I don’t think it is a good mental health practice to fantasize that you know the infinite thoughts of imaginary entities.

There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.

I want an avowed atheist in the White House. When time comes to push that button, I want whoever’s making the decision to understand that once it’s pushed, it’s over. Finito. They’re not gonna have...

One need not believe in Pallas Athena, the virgin goddess, to be overwhelmed by the Parthenon. Similarly, a man who rejects all dogmas, all theologies and all religious formulations of beliefs may still find Genesis...

I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it’s as if they can’t get past their emotions, and...

…the priests of all these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any other man’s....

It is not possible to be intellectually honest and believe in gods. And it is not possible to believe in gods and be a true scientist.

Materialism sets us free from sin-by proving that there is no such thing as sin. There’s just antisocial behavior, which we can control with measures like laws and educational programs.

Robert Ingersoll came to [a small Midwest town] to speak . . . , and after he had gone the question of the divinity of Christ for months occupied the minds of the citizens.

You may only get this one life – but lived free of submissive reverence – that is still a thing of rampant beauty.

Scriptures may have grains of historical truth within them, but there is also ample hyperbole, speculation and mythology.

To say that atheism is not a religion is the equivalent of saying anarchy is not really a political creed

I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mad redeemer, and write over his thorn-torn brow: The true prince of evil- the king of the slaves!

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new...

The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little goodevidence.

Mankind’s most dangerous enemy is the human imagination. What their minds can imagine is far more malicious than the deepest furnaces of their chimerical Hell. They imagined an invisible god to corrupt their thoughts with...

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts...

A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don’t believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina...

The more I think about myself, the more I’m persuaded that, as a person, I really don’t exist. That is one of the reasons why I can’t believe in any orthodox religion: I cannot believe...

The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention.

His friends told him that nobody was interested in his goddam soul unless it was the priest and he managed to answer that no priest taking orders from no pope was going to tamper with...

Some people are ignorant of the world but educated in Scripture, and are therefore prone to missing the relevance of Scripture – these sometimes, later, amidst life’s challenges and doubts, turn from the faith; other...

I am an atheist, but as far as blowing up the world in a nuclear war goes, I tell them not to worry.

I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.

With reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue...

An educated man believing in a this-that vile sky-god rewarding him-her, but punishing your enemies with hell and fire, is uneducated.

And fragile is thy tenure of this worldStill haunted by the monstrous ghost of God.(“To Science”)