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Athiest quotes

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? – Epicurus

Religious explanation is an oxymoron. Religion is what people draw upon if they don’t want to admit that they have no explanation - Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder

Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist - S T Coleridge

“If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia” - Thomas Szasz

"William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.' ... What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite." [Bertrand Russell, _Skeptical_Essays_, 1928]
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish. - Anonymous
"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense." - Chapman Cohen
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. - George Bernard Shaw
An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. - Justin Brown
“Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man ... living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.” ― George Carlin
Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer. - Anonymous
Fear is the mother of all gods ... Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods. - attr. Lucretius (c. 60 BC)
The most henious and the must cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. - Mohandas K Gandhi
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. - Albert Einstein
"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?" -- Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith
How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter? - Woody Allen

Image result for Dawkins quotes on reality

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

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time. - Dawkins

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 objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature. ― Emmett F. Fields
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. – Anonymous
It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. – Mark Twain
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. - Stephen Roberts
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. - Dalai Lama
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism. - Isaac Asimov
'And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways,' Yossarian continued. 'There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?' - Joseph Heller, Catch22

Faith means not wanting to know what is true. Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s? - Friedrich Nietzsche

Ralph Waldo Emerson : The religious stories of one generation become the literary entertainment of the next.

The biblical story suggests that the world is 6000 years old while our best science tells us that it's 4.5 billion years old, which means the biblical account has to somehow explain how the Japanese were making pottery 4000 years before the earth existed.- Anonymous

One society will condemn those who believe in God, and another society will condemn those who do not. They are both the same so, religion becomes a matter of belief -- the mind then can never be free.

J Krishnamurti

Do people trust scientists who are atheists? Because they can use reason and can critically think about anything and therefore can be good human beings?

Being a good human being is a matter of ceaselessly practicing good behavior. It matters little which path one took to get there.

There is no need to distrust people just because they are atheists and don't belong to your religious group. Atheists can be good human beings too. Any belief system that says or gives the idea that one should not trust people for choosing other alternate paths is not weighing things in a proper manner - Krishna

Many who may not believe in the existence of God still lead a righteous life and are happy and at peace. God is beyond the complete comprehension of anyone.

Swami Nikhilananda Saraswati

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.

Isaac Asimov

I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.

George B Shaw

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

G K Chesterton

■ Work Is Worship

■ There is logic and analytical reasoning in what you say. It is true that a majority of believers pray only when they are in trouble. There are more agnostics in the world than all the theists and atheists put together. Ultimately, work is worship.That is what most hardworking atheists believe and that is exactly what the Gita too says. Devi Prasad

Always Do Your Duty

■What you term atheism is described as karma yoga in our scriptures. So if you are immersed in your work, you are following the true path.You have the right data, but have come to the wrong conclusion.Your actions, are right though.There are many theists and like you,they have the right data but the wrong conclusion and wrong action. Once you progress more spiritually,you will be happier. Krishna Hare

Follow Your Instincts

■ Do whatever your soul tells you is right. That will ensure you do right and are happy. Sunita Gupta

The Right Conclusion

■ This is a great analysis. Keep exploring the path as you traverse through life. Ravi Kiran

God Is Not Man’s Creator

■You are on the right track. God is not man’s creator.Man has created God to serve his own selfish ends. D P Sharma

Q asked: Will atheists start believing in God if God's existence is proven?

And after God proves His existence, and further more proves that He knows everything there is to know (as it were), and even proves His ownership of the known and unknown universe (unknown to us) and all that's in it/them, would you at least give the respect due Him, or just shrug him off?

Answer given by an atheist: This question shows very well the backwards thinking process that many theists must use. You shouldn't reason backward from belief to evidence. That is, you shouldn't start by saying, "I believe in God so now let me find the evidence" because that will subject you to numerous cognitive biases and you risk fooling yourself about the nature of reality.

Generally speaking, I believe most atheists think the other way around, starting with the evidence and then developing an hypothesis that explains the evidence, rejecting hypotheses or theories that fail to meet the burden of evidence. This approach generally creates a superior model of reality because it explicitly attempts to continuously evolve our understanding rather than keeping a fixed religion, and that model is more predictive and explanatory of the reality we observe around us.

Just because we have no evidence of another realm of reality beyond the physical world, how can we conclude it doesn’t exist?
It’s not a matter of certainty, ever. I would make the argument that if there were a supernatural element that played a role in our everyday life in some noticeable way, it’s very, very likely we would have noticed it. It just seems weird that this kind of thing would be so crucial and yet so difficult to notice in any controlled scientific way. I would make the case that it is sufficiently unlikely in a fair Bayesian accounting that we don’t need to spend any time thinking about it anymore. Five hundred years ago it would have been a possibility. I think these days we’re ready to move on.

All I can say at the end of the day is we should all be trying as hard as we can to guard against our individual cognitive biases, the things we want to be true. The existence of life after death, for example, I would love that to be true. My cognitive bias is in favor of that. And yet I don’t think it is true. The best we can do is try to be honest.

As long as there is unsubstantiated belief, and as long as there are people interested in truth, and as long as there are people willing to use their intelligence to think, atheism will not die. Atheism is not a belief system; it does not say there is a God or that there is no God; it says “I do not believe”—usually because the individual sees no empirical-rational reason to believe.

“When one person suffers from delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from delusion, it is called religion.”- Richard Dawkins
“Tell people the paint is wet, they have to touch it to be sure. Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, the vast majority will believe you.”- George Carlin
“We’re all atheists about most of the gods that have ever existed. I just go one god further.” - Richard Dawkins
“I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”- Douglas Adams
“Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a universe would have to be even more improbable than a universe.”- Richard Dawkins
“If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labelling our ignorance ‘God’”- Jerry Coyne
“Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.”- Oscar Wilde

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 21, 2015 at 6:21am

After a long time I have seen someone talking some sensible things here.
And here are a few more quotes:
Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist - S T Coleridge
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish. - Anonymous
An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes that deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. - Justin Brown
Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer. - Anonymous
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 objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature. ― Emmett F. Fields
There is no need to distrust people just because they are atheists and don't belong to your religious group. Atheists can be good human beings too. Any belief system that says or gives the idea that one should not trust people for choosing other alternate paths is not weighing things in a proper manner - Krishna

It’s good to be an atheist
I t’s actually good to be an atheist and not a believer.Atheism has shown me things I would have never thought of as a devout person. I often wonder why people pray to God. I don’t mean people like saints or seers,but just normal people like you and me. Is it for material gain, for someone else or for your own self? Or is it just to vent out your frustrations? Actually,none of them, to be exact. People pray:

1. So God won’t crush them like bugs on plywood.

2.To escape and for psychological relief from problems in their daily life. This all might sound surprising, but this is the truth.And my change from a believer to an atheist showed me this with stunning clarity: that people pray to get relief, and to escape from the burgeoning problems of their daily, humdrum lives.They desperately want to believe that their problems will be cured by an invisible entity,almost like magic! They look to seek release from the pain and frustration they face through communion with God.To put it very simply: people are cowardly by nature.They can’t face problems on their own and want to depend on an omnipresent entity to solve problems and give them the happy ending of a fairy tale like Snow White and Prince Charming.To complete the metaphor,they liken problems to the evil stepmother who is the queen;the pain caused by problems is the poisoned apple.

I mean,come on.When you can’t respect the person who is washing your dishes and cleaning your floors, how can you actually expect a ‘higher power’ to respect you?

There’s another kick to atheism.Atheism develops your belief in yourself, which is good for people with low self-esteem.You can feel the power you have; the realisation that you don’t have to depend on someone to fix your problems is a powerful one; you are the one who’s in control. Also, atheism lends unbelievable clarity to the mind — it has actually made me better in math than ever before.You can think clearly, abstractly and reason logically, without blaming it all on ‘divine happenings’.

A bit of logical reasoning can take you eons ahead of others; for this is the thing — people want to believe in something, depend on something, which makes them weak.When you don’t depend on anyone or anything for yourself, you are powerful in a unique way. Yes, atheism is empowering.
http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-articles/faith-and-rituals/it-...

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 12, 2015 at 7:10am

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 12, 2015 at 7:24am

Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 8, 2015 at 6:17am

If you assume that "something" had to create the universe, you end up in an infinite regress. Let's examine this more closely.

What created the something? If you answer "something else", then you can make the same argument again and again, infinitely regressing. Most theists find this idea incompatible with (say) monotheism.

If you answer "nothing", then you've admitted that the "something" you mentioned (let's call it "God" for instance) doesn't have a creator. But if your God didn't need a creator, then why do you believe the universe needed one? This is a form of special pleading, and as such, not very convincing.
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Not knowing something does not give you the license to say not only that an unproven god did it but also it could only be your unproven god and not one of the 3999 other unproven gods (or even an unknown god who hates publicity) because, well, they aren't really real, obviously your unproven god can be the only god.

Goddidit is just a fundamentalist way of saying I don't know. So just say I don't know, atleast you cannot ever be wrong.

Not a single scrap of credible evidence exists to support any religion and much of their scriptures are so demonstrably proven false that the believers were forced unwillingly to claim they were never meant to be considered literal. A lie easily discredited by the fact the religions spent centuries murdering anyone that dared question them and claiming moral superiority while murdering them and while attempting to force people to be ignorant of actual facts.
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Answering unknown questions with "godditit" is the oldest habit of men. Men have been doing so with every unknown since the dawn of times. Why did it rain or there was drought, why my mother or my child died so early, why my woman is sterile, why does the earth vomit lava, why did lightning hit my barn and burnt it, why do celestial bodies move and shine... long ago nearly every question regarding the universe and mankind's life adventure was answered by invoking some god.

If we were happy with this answer to all our unknowns, we would still be in the stone age, or at least in the age before the Greeks. Would you like that perhaps?

It has been basically the realization that we could find more satisfactory answers by questioning nature in a proper way and using our brains that has fueled the development of our modern societies and has enabled us individuals to progress intellectually.

By accepting the "goddidit" answer we were unable to advance in anything, that answer was not usable for us. Many believed it was, and expected that by praying or making sacrifices and offerings of different kinds we could use the answer "goddidit" for our benefit. Unfortunately it proved to be wishful thinking, that answer could not provide anything useful for us.

On the other hand by rejecting the "goddidit" answer and finding the real ones to the many questions we have had, we could turn that knowledge into usable forms for our benefit and progress.

The "goddidit" answer has proven to be wrong for every question we have had so far which could be answered by science. The actual answers have never turned out to be or resemble in any way "some god must be behind this, there's no other way to explain what we observe in the experiments".

We are now getting to questions which are harder and harder to answer by doable science, that's true, but it would be irresponsible and frankly stupid to resort back to the old and wrong-proven "god must have done it" just now, simply because it's hard to find the real answer. If such an answer has been proven wrong in every previous question so far, it should be the least plausible option to consider for the remaining unknowns. And even more when we know that by adopting it we would not gain anything at all, we would simply close all doors to further understanding.

Remaining ignorant and curious is a much better option than becoming content with a "god must have done it" answer.
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You're quite happy to believe that a god created 200 billion galaxies filled with untold trillions of stars and an uncountable number of planets.

You're quite happy to believe that He/She/It created this Universe just so that your soul could be saved.

You're quite happy to ignore the question of the possible origins of this god and the question of where H/She/It came from.

Who created your god? Was that another god? Are there gods all the way down?

And yet you are unable to consider the vastly more logical and likely suggestion that it might just came from nothing?

You must live in a very strange intellectual world.
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"If scientists don't believe in a higher power then where do earthquakes come from? Am I expected to believe they simply just happen?"

You - if you were alive a few hundred years ago.

All sorts of stuff used to be attributed to a higher power. Disease for example. It used to be that your only option was to pray to God that you or your family don't get sick.

Now you vaccinate yourself against it.

You also used to have to pray that a volcano wouldn't erupt, now science can tell you if it will or not.

Ask yourself - if all those things that used to be attributed to God, have now been explained by scientists, why would this particular example be any different?

It may well be that God created the universe, and in fact some Scientists do believe in the idea of God. However, it is ludicrous to suggest it must be the only possible option, because we don't yet have an explanation.

I understand where you're coming from, the concept of time itself having a 'beginning' is mind bending. But to me disease is just as mind blowing - microscopic germs that I can't see making me ill?

Or the hard drive in my computer - it spins at 7200 rpm. That's 120 times a second. My brain can't comprehend something moving that fast.

Yet it doesn't mean it's not possible (or that it could only be caused by God).

This is the whole point, our brains are very limited in terms of comprehending certain things. We have serious trouble wrapping our tiny minds around the idea of things like Quantum Mechanics, even scientists do.

Scientists say, that in addition to our 3 spatial dimensions, and 1 time dimension, there are potentially a further 7 or more 'dimensions' out there.

Can you picture that?

No, but it doesn't mean it's not true.

They also say that a universe doesn't necessarily even have to feature 'time' as we know it. Again - we're very used to thinking in a very 'time centric' way, so it's easy to reject this idea as being silly. But the equations beg to differ.

In terms of where our universe 'came from', it's hypothesised that it may be one of many in a cosmic foam of universes (the multiverse), that are constantly popping into and out of existence.

Okay you say, but where did that come from?

The point is though that just like we have trouble wrapping our minds around the idea of a universe without time. The concept of things either 'existing' or 'not existing' may be a product of the limitations of our human minds. The question of where did it come from, may be entirely irrelavant.
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If "something" had to create the Big Bang, what created that "something"? And then, what created that? And so on. You will always have to go back to some first thing that was uncreated.

We have no idea where the Big Bang came from. At the moment, we have no evidence, so we just say that we do not know. Someday we may get more evidence, and be able to know more than we do now.

"I do not know, therefore God" is not logic, it is wishful thinking.
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s it so much harder to believe that we are 'simply here' than to believe that we are here as a result of being created by a diety who is 'simply here'?
The problem with the 'creator hypothesis' is that it simply moves the original problem back one step - it provides an answer to 'why are we here?' at the expense of creating an equally intractable new question - 'why is god there?', ie who created the creator?
If you answer that with either 'god is self creating' or 'god is eternal and has always been there' then you yourself are stepping inro rhe territory that you ctiticise atheists for holding - a self-creating god is no more plausible than a self-creating universe (big bang), and an eternal god no less complicated than an eternal universe.
Theist or atheisy, either way it all has to come from *somewhere* - postulating a creator diety simply doesnt resolve the issue, merely forces one to speclate on the origins of God rather than the origins of the universe.
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First of all, you are confusing scientists with atheists. Not all scientists lack a belief in a higher power. They just don't let their personal belief affect their work which is based on evidence.

We know the Big Bang happened because of measurements that have been repeated and verified, but we have yet to discover why it started. Scientists simply are not afraid to admit they don't know yet what caused this observable event.
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Stephen Hawking re-asked this question with a question: "What is on the North of North Pole?"

Out of nothing, and fields affecting fields, can create energy. There need not be a prime mover.

More importantly, where did the "higher power" come from? What is it made of? It must have complex patterns of molecules like us. How did it evolve to be? Did it just suddenly "appear" with all the intelligence?

Chicken cannot suddenly exist.

There will be no rightful answers because, to put it simply, logic is the flaw in this world. Using logic, we need to deduce an origin. There won't be any origins because an origin has got to have another origin!

Orrrrrrrr we could use the idea of a higher power. Religion has always been the easiest way to explain things. Fight the flaw in this world with irrationality, am i right?

It's a paradox we can't get out of. Pick a side and move on

If there is an equal amount of antimatter as there is matter in the universe, mathematically the universe was created from nothing.

Image result for Dawkins quotes on reality

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. - Stephen Roberts

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