More or less in harmony with my beliefs.
Quotable Quotes of Reason
I have a bible. Its letters are stars and its punctuation, planets. It’s written across the night sky in a language
that anyone can decipher if they take the time to look up. It’s printed on leaves and in the pattern of stones on a river
bottom. All the creatures of the Universe murmur its words in unending chant, keeping the hours holy. It fills me with
recognition that what is within me and what is without me are the same. When everything is exquisite abundance there is no void
to be filled.
~ Janet Snowhill
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
~ W. K. Clifford
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no reason whatsoever for supposing it to be true.
~ Bertrand Russell
The Web of Life - Man did not weave the web of life; He is merely a strand within it. Whatever he does to the web, he does
to himself.
~ Ted Perry script (c 1970), as spoken by ficticious character Chief Seattle
The Web of Life - Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do
to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
~ anonymous redaction of the ficticious Chief Seattle
The Web of Life - We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse,
the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man --
all belong to the same family. ... This we know; the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.
All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.
~ Chief Seattle (the real one, in 1854)
qv [Chief Seattle’s 1854 Oration]
qv [Chief Seattle’s 1854 Reply] (same thing, different source)
[Editorial point: it does not matter who wrote the oft quoted Web of Life quote. The source is really unimportant and misses the point. Read the quote for the meaning in the quote. I do not care if it was written by Adolf Hitler, Judas Iscariot, or Joseph Stalin.]
To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.
~ Bertrand Russell, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization
(Rather a disingenuous equivocation regarding the use of the term faith as a synonym for confidence.
~ Eljay)
I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human
being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some
other mind. You are not inherently evil--you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this
a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself.
~ Dan Barker, [1]
It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of
falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.
~ Abraham Lincoln, chiding the editor of a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper (from Antony Flew: How to Think Straight
p17)
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong
figures, will the right answers come out?” I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could
provoke such a question.
~ Charles Babbage
Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God. Loyalty to
petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
~ Mark Twain
Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make
others so. This creed is somewhat short, but is long enough for this life; long enough for this world. If there is another
world, when we get there, we can make another creed. But this creed certainly will do for this life.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll
It makes no difference whether we go back to the teachings of Jesus and make them our own again, or whether we seek new
forms. Where they strike the eternal core of humanity, the teachings of Jesus and of Laotzu, of the Vedas and of Goethe are the
same. There is only one doctrine. There is only one religion. There is only one happiness. There are a thousand forms, a
thousand heralds, but only one call, one voice. The voice of God does not come from Mount Sinai, it does not come from the
Bible. The essence of love, beauty, and holiness does not reside in Christianity or in antiquity or in Goethe or Tolstoy-it
resides in you, in you and me, in each one of us. This is the one eternal and forever identical doctrine, our one eternal
truth. It is the doctrine of the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ that we bear within ourselves. ...Love and joy and the
mysterious thing we call ‘happiness’ are not over here or over there, they are only ‘within
ourselves.’
~ Herman Hesse
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get
hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe
that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good,
nothing but pitiless indifference.
~ Richard Dawkins, God’s Utility Function, Scientific American, November 1995, p. 85.
This universe is sold by weight, not by volume. Some expansion of the contents may have occurred during shipment.
~ anonymous
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
~ Blake
The true contrast between science and myth is more nearly touched when we say that science alone is capable of
verification.
~ George Santayana (1863-1952), The Life of Reason (1905-1906)
Theists have good reasons for not believing in every god but their own. Atheists make no exception for the last one.
~ Brett Lemoine
...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 F. Roberts
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not
understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.
~ Hippocrates
There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling--absolutely essential to
mental health and happiness.
~ Dan Barker, [1]
Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
~ Sir Karl Popper
It’s not easy to change world views. Faith has its own momentum and belief is comfortable. To restructure reality is
traumatic and scary. That is why many intelligent people continue to believe: unbelief is an unknown.
~ Dan Barker, [1]
The truths which God revealed have been overthrown by the truths which man has discovered.
~ Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911
I believe in God, only I spell it N-A-T-U-R-E.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright
The United States is not a Christian nation. It is a great nation with Christians, among others, in it. But our greatness is
based on the fact that there is no official religion.
~ Sen. Lowell Weicker
The [Catholic] Church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I
have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.
~ Ferdinand Megallan, Portuguese navigator and explorer.
Intelligence is the only moral guide.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll
For my money, I’ll bet on reason and humanistic kindness. Even if I am wrong I will have enjoyed my life, the
existence of which is under little dispute.
~ Dan Barker, [1]
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions
is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
~ Bertrand Russell
And generally let every student of nature take this as a rule: that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar
satisfaction is to be held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken dealing with such questions to keep the
understanding even and clear.
~ Francis Bacon
I am in earnest. I will not excuse; I will not equivocate; I will not retreat a single inch. And I will be heard.
~ William Lloyd Garrison
Truth never damages a cause that is just.
~ Gandhi
Faith... Must be enforced by reason...When faith becomes blind it dies.
~ Gandhi
Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever
so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.
~ Gandhi
An atheist doesn’t have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can’t be a god. He only has to be
someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question.
~ John McCarthy
The first step, then, in understanding Atheism is to disregard all the lies and propaganda that religion has spread against
it. 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. It could be said that Atheism has a doctrine to question and a dogma to doubt. It is the human mind in its
natural environment, nothing is too holy to be investigated, nor too sacred to be questioned. The Atheist Bible, it could be
said, has but one word: “THINK.” Atheism is the complete emancipation of the human mind from the chains and fears
of superstition.
~ Emmet F. Fields
(Personally, I disagree with Emmet on what atheism means. What he describes is skepticism. Atheism, in my
opinion, means only to disbelieve in theism. The disbelief isn’t held to be true based on opinion or untenable blind
faith, but rather on the untenable blind faith required to hold theism as true.
~ Eljay)
Atheism has one doctrine: To Question
Atheism has one dogma: To Doubt
The Atheist Bible has but one word: THINK.
~ Emmet F. Fields (paraphrased)
Faith is deciding to allow yourself to believe something your intellect would otherwise cause you to reject—otherwise there’s no need for faith.
For any significant discrepancy between your theories and reality, reality always trumps theory.
~ Antony Van der Mude
One of the greatest tragedies of mankind is that morality had been hijacked by religion.
~ Arthur C. Clarke
Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.
~ Aristophanes
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
~ Albert Einstein
Reason gives us knowledge; while faith only gives us belief, which is part of knowledge, and is, therefore, inferior to
it.... it is by reason alone that we can distinguish truth from falsehood.
~ Chillingsworth, Religion of Protestants
But I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us
to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny
sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary
demonstrations.
~ Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany (1615)
Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing “Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen!” If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.
Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are
conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.
~ Dan Barker, [1]
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
~ Voltaire
The way to get a lie believed is to continue to REPEAT it.
~ George Orwell
Science makes godlike - it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as
such - it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the original sin. This alone is morality. “Thou shall not
know” - the rest follows.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth losing a job for; it is worth
going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions
than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
This above all: to thine own self be true.
~ William Shakespeare
We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve
freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.
Self government does not guarantee the maximization of human freedom. The majority of the people may, indeed often do, by
the full exercise of their political privileges, opt to curtail freedom.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.
My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm-as in abortion,
sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a
representative democracy.
~ Camille Paglia
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed
ourselves.
~ Abraham Lincoln
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for evil to
triumph is for good men to do nothing.
~ Edmund Burke
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I should do and, with the help
others, I will do!
~ Eljay, redacting Everett Hale
Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have .... The course of history
shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human liberty; it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
~ William Pitt
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither safety nor liberty.
~ Benjamin Franklin
Artists may pour out their angst; philosophers and theologians may fume, lament, and obfuscate; but only science can
know.
~ Stephen Jay Gould
He is a person of faith, and faith has that effect. It is, as James’ schoolboy said, “believing what you know
ain’t true”. This means lying to yourself, to tell yourself you are justified in believing it. And of course, you
have to keep adding to the lies to bolster the story you believe. The result of this continual lying is the loss of your
intellectual integrity. Once intellectual integrity is lost, so is moral integrity. The believer will then lie in God’s
name, cheat in God’s name, exploit in God’s name, and persecute in God’s name.
~ RH3
Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must
bear the consequences of his actions... Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.
~ Friedrich von Hayek
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression, for if he violates this duty, he
establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
~ Patrick Henry
Beware of ‘God of the Gaps’, the Incredible Shrinking Deity who fills the gaps in our understanding until
understanding shrinks both gaps and God down to nothing.
~ George A. Staffa
The very purpose of a bill of rights is to withdraw certain subjects from...political controversy, to place them beyond the
reach of majorities.
~ Justice Robert Jackson (1943)
You can not bring about prosperity, by discouraging theft.
You can not strengthen the weak, by weakening the strong.
You can not help the wage earner, by pulling down the wage payer.
You can not further the brotherhood of man, by encouraging class hatred.
You can not help the poor, by destroying the rich.
You can not establish sound security, on borrowed money.
You can not keep out of trouble, by spending more than you earn.
You can not build character and courage, by taking away initiative and independence.
You can not help men permanently, by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
~ Abraham Lincoln
First they came for the Jews
But I did not speak out, Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists,
And I did not speak out, Because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade-unionists,
And I did not speak out, Because I was not a trade-unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
And I did not speak out, Because I was not a Catholic.
Then they came for me,
And there was no one left to speak out for me.
~ Pastor Niemoller (Anti-Nazi Resistance Movement, Berlin, 1939(?))
Life is insecure - whether under liberty or enslavement. The only choice is between liberty and insecurity, on the one hand,
and insecurity and enslavement on the other.
~ Jacob G. Hornsbarger
Believe nothing because a wise man said it.
Believe nothing because it is generally held.
Believe nothing because it is written.
Believe nothing because it is said to be divine.
Believe nothing because someone else believes it.
But believe only what you yourself judge to be true.
~ Buddha
I want no heaven for which I must give my reason, no happiness in exchange for liberty, and no immortality that demands
surrender of my morality.
~ Robert Ingersoll
I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it—I don’t need to believe
it.
~ Carl Jung
I am an atheist [of Christianity] because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be
said about it: no evidence, no belief.
~ Dan Barker, [1]
We may define “faith” as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence,
no one speaks of “faith.” We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only
speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to
strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions.
~ Bertrand Russell
I count religion but a childish toy. And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
~ Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta
Freethinkers reject faith as a valid tool of knowledge. Faith is the opposite of reason because reason imposes very strict
limits on what can be true, and faith has no limits at all. A Great Escape into faith is no retreat to safety. It is nothing
less than surrender.
~ Dan Barker, [1]
There is no sadder sight in the world than to see a beautiful theory killed by a brutal fact.
~ Thomas Huxley
Life can be beautiful, profound and awe-inspiring, even without an irate god threatening us with eternal torment.
~ Judith Hayes, In God We Trust, But Which One?
It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their
minds, they would remain so.
~ Ernestine Rose
‘God’, ‘immortality of the soul’, ‘redemption’, ‘beyond’. Without exception,
concepts to which I have never devoted any attention, or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough
for them? I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: It is a matter of course with me, from
instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an
indelicacy against us thinkers—at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900, Ecce Homo
Even if it is true that all cultures share a common morality, why does this prove a supreme intelligence? After all,
don’t we humanists sometimes claim that there is a common thread of humanistic values running through history across
cultural and religious lines?
~ Dan Barker, [1]
Theism tells men that they are the slaves of a God. Atheism assures men that they are the investigators and users of
nature.
~ E. Haldeman-Julius, The Meaning Of Atheism
“Faith,” said St. Paul, “is the evidence of things not seen.” We should elaborate this definition by
adding that faith is the assertion of things for which there is not a particle of evidence and of things which are
incredible.
~ E. Haldeman-Julius, The Meaning Of Atheism
Consider the idea of God. We do not know how it arose in the meme pool. Probably it originated many times by independent
‘mutation.’ In any case, it is very old indeed. How does it replicate itself? By the spoken and written word, aided
by great music and great art. Why does it have such high survival value? Remember that ‘survival value’ here does
not mean value for a gene in a gene pool, but value for a meme in a meme pool. The question really means: What is it about the
idea of a god that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment? The survival value of the god meme in the
meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling
questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The ‘everlasting
arms’ hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor’s placebo, is none the less effective
for being imaginary. There are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of
individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment
provided by human culture.
~ Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are
obliged to call for the help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
~ Ben Franklin
In the search for wisdom, you must act like a detective solving a murder. Reason is the victim. Everyone is suspect; their
contradictory answers and actions are your clues. Reality is the supreme judge--impartial, consistent and swift. Keep your
resolve! Happiness can only be achieved with the truth.
~ anonymous
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think
differently.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900, The Dawn (1881)
You will find men like him in all of the world’s religions. They know that we represent reason and science, and,
however confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not necessarily through any
deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy a religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No
one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistance of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.
~ Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End
The religious right has many people crippled and blinded...They’re cowering when there’s no need to cower. The
government’s job is not to suggest, promote or choose religious thoughts to be recommended to the people.
~ Tennessee State Sen. Steve Cohn, in response to a Tennessee Senate resolution urging people to post and observe the
Ten Commandments
You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.
~ Jonathan Swift
There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be
free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.
~ J. Robert Oppenheimer, Life, 10 October 1949
Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind
trained from infancy to believe in error.
~ Robert Owen, 19th century reformer
“God” as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle. The
point is wider than just the Judeo-Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world.
No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a
“super-existence”.
~ Leonard Peikoff, The Philosophy of Objectivism
The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how
false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can’t stand discussion, let it
crack.
~ Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), American abolitionist, speech, 1863
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own
image to be servants of their human interests.
~ George Santayana 1863-1952
One might be asked “How can you prove that a god does not exist?” One can only reply that it is scarcely
necessary to disprove what has never been proved.
~ David A. Spitz
It’s a little complicated, but that’s the way nature works sometimes.
~ Prof. Silverman (Physics)
Did you learn how to think or how to believe?
~ Ralph Nader (to his son, inquiring about what he learned in school that day)
I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly
taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths.
~ Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, The Friends of Voltaire, 1907, French philosopher and writer (1694-1778)
(often quoted as “I disapprove of what he says, but I will defend to the death his right to say
it.”)
I disapprove of what he says, but I will defend to the death his right to say it.
~ Beatrice Hall (under pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre), The Friends of Voltaire, 1907
It does me no injury, for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my
leg.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
~ John Milton, Areopagitica, English poet (1608-1674)
Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it:
because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false.
What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage
-- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?
~ Stephen Jay Gould, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, page 186
Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights,
is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions,
principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason… There can
be on right of speech where any man…[is] compelled to suppress his honest sentiments. Equally clear is the right to hear.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
~ Frederick Douglass, in famous plea for free speech in Boston 1860, American abolitionist, author, orator
(1817-1895)
Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of
free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the
hope of the race.
~ Charles Bradlaugh (British social reformer, 1833-1891)
Happy FRACCKNYS (Festivus, Ramadan, Advent, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Years & Solstice).
~ Eljay
I find it much more appropriate to explain pantheism as the third way. An alternative to both theism and atheism. It is a
way of relating to the only tangible ‘god’ that we can observe and consider eternal. The ‘Cosmic Totality of
All Existence’, without anthropomorphizing it.
~ Libertarius , Natural/Scientific Pantheist (re pantheism & religion)
My personal preference is not to use the word God at all, except when I think this is the best way to quickly explain
Pantheism to someone coming from a more traditional religion. If they ask do we believe in God, I reply: For us, there is no
difference between God and the universe itself, the universe has the attributes you attribute to God - omnipotence, eternity,
inexorable laws, grandeur, power, beauty, creation of worlds, creation of life etc. We do not believe in a personal God that
answers prayers, nor in any God other than the universe itself. For many of us God is not a word we use, for others it is. This
is a personal preference in terminology.
~ Walt, a Natural/Scientific Pantheist
PANTHEISM
n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
~ Ambrose Bierce
WWSPD? (What Would Snake Plissken Do?)
~ bumper sticker
I worship nothing. Not a good lie nor a dark one. If nature is proof of God’s amazing creation then I have truly seen the light, and the light is black. Nature is genius at it’s most cruel and savage. No benevolent God could have come up with such an outrage.
~ Gary Numan
Science is inquiry. Religion is presupposition. Reasoning people do not accept religious dogma without evidence. We may never know all the answers, but science has solved a great deal of the most important questions. Religion has an answer for everything, but solutions to nothing.
~ Agnosticator (of the Agnostics/Atheists Forum)
Man is ... related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable ... plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.
~ John Steinbeck, The Log of the Sea of Cortez
[1] Losing Faith in Faith by Dan Barker
[W3C Validation] of this webpage.