Nobody can tell what is right and what is wrong; what is righteous and what is evil. Even if there is a god and I had his teachings right before me, I would think it...

I am not religious in any sense; in fact, I consider myself an atheist.

Atheist’s denial of God’s existence needs just as much substantiation as does the theist’s claim; the atheist must give plausible reasons for rejecting God’s existence.

It’s not arrogant to say that you can’t figure out the answers to the universe with your internal faith. It’s not arrogant to know that there’s no omniscient, omnipotent prime mover in the universe who...

Last-Minute Message For a Time CapsuleI have to tell you this, whoever you are:that on one summer morning here, the oceanpounded in on tumbledown breakers,a south wind, bustling along the shore,whipped the froth into little...

The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

Up to now, most atheists have simply criticized religion in various ways, but the point is to dispel it. In A Manual For Creating Atheists, Peter Boghossian fills that gap, telling the reader how to...

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves...

You couldn’t say ‘I had orders.’ You couldn’t say ‘It’s not fair.’ No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. […] Not ‘Thou Shalt Not’. Say ‘I Will Not’.

It is likely that religious beliefs have been so widespread because they tap into the psychological desires of many people, not because there is any external proof of their veracity.

It is odd that the Bible says, ‘God created man,’ whereas it is the other way round: man has created God. It is odd that the Bible says, ‘The body is mortal, the soul is...

Differ though we might with Christianity’s view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious...

There’s almost always a church youth group at the soup kitchen. I have yet to see an atheists’ youth group. Yeah, I know, religious people don’t have a monopoly on doing good. I’m sure that...

I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to...

The termination is not based on innocence or guilt, but on biology. The sociopath personality is fraudulent. They are impostors within the human species. Killing a sociopath is equivalent to killing God. Neither exists in reality. They...

If God’s love encompasses the whole world and if everyone who does not believe in him will perish, then surely this question needs to be asked: When, after two thousand years, does God’s plan kick...

So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend’s...

We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and...

We do not have bodies—we are bodies! What could possibly be wrong with that form of consciousness? It is all energy anyways.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

If god created man in his own image, how come I’m not invisible?

Atheism is not synonymous with anti-theism and not all atheists are ‘active.’ There are many non-believers who aren’t activists, who don’t oppose religion at all, or who are simply not all are interested in discussing...

Atheism tells him what he isn’t, and like all of us he yearns to know what he is.

Epicurus’s old questions are still unanswered: Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and...

Atheism is partly the result of bad theology, an unpaid bill resulting from failures in depicting God. It is not surprising that many have rejected God when there has been so little to attract them...

Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world...

Go ahead, God, you fat, filthy motherfucker, lightning-bolt my ass into oblivion if you’re so tough!

Leaving one religion for the sake of another one is like breaking with a rapist for the sake of dating a misogynist.

[Jürgen Habermas’ obituary to friend and philosopher, Richard Rorty]One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title ‘Wild Orchids and Trotsky.’ In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside...

At one time,’ Golenishchev continued, either not observing or not willing to observe that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, ‘at one time a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in...

All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with ‘winning or...

How convinced are you that man was created in the image of God when you can’t see the image of God?

Our assholes will be clean but we must never wash our hands. Our immune systems will be strengthened by our being dirty. Not filthy. Just mildly grimy. Filthy fingernails have always been a favorite fashion...

The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.

We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.

Intellect, at its best, can make you agnostic. Being theist or atheist is still a matter of choice.

Today evolution of human intelligence has advanced us to the stage where most of us are too smart to invent new gods but are reluctant to give up the old ones.

There is something distinctly odd about the argument, however. Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as...

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight,...

I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: “But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God...

The path of life on our planet and maybe many others does not need a divinity to thrive, it needs no excuse to live, owes no debt to the universe because it is a part...

Well it’s fairly straightforward: there isn’t one [a god]. And there’s no evidence for one, no reason to believe that there is one, and so I don’t believe that there is one. And I think...

Like the most of you, I was raised among people who knew – who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They had no doubts. They knew that they had the truth. In their...

In the Christian religion, though perhaps not in any other, we frequently find a conception of god that is selfcontradictory and therefore corresponds to nothing. That is the conception formed by the following three propositions...

Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.

I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of...

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense

I am so sorry to hear of Asher’s passing. I will miss his scientific insight and advice, but even more his humor and stubborn integrity. I remember when one of his colleagues complained about Asher’s...

My religious friends – and my friends were almost all Catholics or Protestants or occasionally something more exotic like Jewish or Greek Orthodox – were convinced that God had a “plan” for us, and since...

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other...