My favorite atheist quotes

Just to show that I can listen to and appreciate a good quip even if I disagree with the sentiment, here are my favorite atheist (or "agnosticish") quotes from Quotes of the Day.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

Bill Gates

Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.

Sir Julian Huxley

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.

Georges Duhamel

I'm the world's least happy atheist. I miss having religious faith, but trying to have it seems like trying to be in love with someone that you're not in love with.

Lisa Williams

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.

Jules Renard

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Richard Dawkins

If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

Woody Allen

ADDED BY SEEKER:

The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe with our conscious selves arose through chance seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God.”

Charles Darwin

[S]cience has itself become a kind of religion.

Carl Sagan

The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth.

I'm not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I'm contending is that we don't know that there is.

I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.

Bertrand Russell

Comments

[Lisa Williams]

Thanks for the link! I forgot I even said that.
Have a great day!

[Lisa Williams]

Thanks for the link! I forgot I even said that.
Have a great day!

[Cineaste]

Predictably, Seeker's quotes are mined to match his beliefs. Aaron's quotes aren't.

Hi Lisa, I'll remember your words!

[seeker]

Perhaps you could explain how my bertrand russel quotes support my own contentions, and even if they do, so what?

[Cineaste]

Just keeping you honest, Seeker. Kudos to Aaron for this post.

[Benjamin9]

My fav: F@#%in' a$$hole! - louis

[Aaron]

Cin - I'm not done yet. ;)

Ben - I had forgotten about that one, I may need to add it.

[Louis]

I like the Huxley quote.

btw: It may surprise you all but I'm not an atheist.

[Aaron]

I know Louis. You have long said that you subscribe to some form of Buddhism and you can tell much like Lisa that you long for some sense of supernatural, some Other, you just don't find the Christian God to be that Other you are looking for.

[Benjamin9]

I also know ... just havin' fun like a nazi pharisee do ...

[Benjamin9]

"I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty." ------->

Cannibalism is immoral or un-Christian?

[seeker]

I guess so. Looks like in some important human culture, it was a duty. Probably one of those cultures like the Canaanites whom God had to destroy.

[Cineaste]

For Catholic Christians, cannibalism is a central aspect of Christian values. They ritually eat the body of Christ and drink his blood through transubstantiation. Bread is LITERALLY the body of Christ and wine is LITERALLY the blood of Christ. Baptists and Protestants are no better. Some sects speak in tongues, also known as gibberish. "There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."

[Benjamin9]

"I guess so. Looks like in some important human culture, it was a duty. Probably one of those cultures like the Canaanites whom God had to destroy." ------->

I understand that the Jews desert God required them to destroy those who would, if allowed to exist, interfere with the birth of the messiah. I get that and understand. And if the Canaanites ate people, ok, nothing new in human nature. But I was thinking of the soccer team who crashed in the Andes in the 70's and the Donner party. Both parties faced the worse, both groups fed on human flesh. I do not find this to be un-Christian. Chasing your buddy through the bush lopping off bits of him to eat while he is running for his life, to me, would be not Christian. Murder is immoral.

Blood, to me, is different. While highly valued as a source of nutrition by many cultures, I believe would not be for a Christian's consumption, since there is scriptural evidence against this practice. Human blood or otherwise.

[seeker]

Ahh, the foolishness of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:20-25).