Best Quotes to Explain Aspects of Atheism?

liah

My favourite is;

“We atheists do not believe in gods, or angels, or demons, or souls that endure, or a meeting place after all is said and done where more can be said and done and the point of it all revealed. We don’t believe in the possibility of redemption after our lives, but the necessity of compassion in our lives. We believe in people, in their joys and pains, in their good ideas and their wit and wisdom. We believe in human rights and dignity, and we know what it is for those to be trampled on by brutes and vandals. We may believe that the universe is pitilessly indifferent but we know that friends and strangers alike most certainly are not. We despise atrocity, not because a god tells us that it is wrong, but because if not massacre then nothing could be wrong.”

I don't think anyone knows who wrote or said it, but it's a beautiful way to make people understand the humanity and compassion behind atheists, and is a good counter-argument to the whole "you need religion to be moral!!" thing that goes around a lot lately.

Any others that really get to you?

Mickeroo

"If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine- but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good- and CARES about any of it- to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working. "

-Frank Zappa

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

-Mark Twain

Goduznt Xzst

"What has your God done for you that you couldn`t have done for yourself?" - Jordan T. McQueen

Zombrex

Goduznt Xzst wrote: »

"What has your God done for you that you couldn`t have done for yourself?" - Jordan T. McQueen

i like that one

Dades

You don't need religion if you have faith in yourself.

aidan24326

There's alot of them here.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/qframe.htm

Naz_st

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
- Galileo Galilei

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg

And not directly about atheism, but maybe why it's growing:

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."
- Victor Hugo

MrPudding

"Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool" - Voltaire

MrP

Naz_st

This isn't "atheistic" per se, but I always thought Carl Sagan's Reflections on a "Mote of Dust" (a deep space image of the Earth taken by Voyager 1) was a great piece that put humanity and our "self-importance" into perspective:

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

- Carl Sagan, from a commencement address, May 11, 1996

fitz0

"Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong"
-Christopher Hitchens

"In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than its practitioners"
-Jonathon Miller

bnt

I'm on a bit of a Thomas Jefferson kick at the moment, despite various statements that indicate he was a Deist and tried to follow "pure" Christian principles while abhorring Religion. A few of his quotes:

Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object [religion]. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favour of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, & the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake off all the fears & servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
-- Letter to Peter Carr (1787)

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
-- Letter to Thomas Law (13 June 1814).

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-- Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82

Tyler MacDurden

Naz_st wrote: »

This isn't "atheistic" per se, but I always thought Carl Sagan's Reflections on a "Mote of Dust" (a deep space image of the Earth taken by Voyager 1) was a great piece that put humanity and our "self-importance" into perspective:

I don't think anyone will object to another viewing of A Pale Blue Dot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

As for one of my own favourite quotes, here's one by Robert Ingersoll. Language is a bit flowery, but I think most of us will recognise the sentiments. I thought it was magnificent when I was a newly heathen-ised teenager.

When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom.

The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space.

I was free--free to think, to express my thoughts--free to live my own ideal, free to live for myself and those I loved, free to use all my faculties, all my senses, free to spread imagination's wings, free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope, free to judge and determine for myself . . . I was free! I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously faced all worlds.

humanji

I like these two from Douglas Adams:

This one I think is a great example of logic and reason Vs faith:

“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets
himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”

And this one is a great example of what it is to be an Athiest

American Atheists: "What message would you like to send to your Atheist fans?"
Douglas Adams: "Hello! How are you?”

tech77

liah wrote: »

My favourite is;

“We atheists do not believe in gods, or angels, or demons, or souls that endure, or a meeting place after all is said and done where more can be said and done and the point of it all revealed. We don’t believe in the possibility of redemption after our lives, but the necessity of compassion in our lives. We believe in people, in their joys and pains, in their good ideas and their wit and wisdom. We believe in human rights and dignity, and we know what it is for those to be trampled on by brutes and vandals. We may believe that the universe is pitilessly indifferent but we know that friends and strangers alike most certainly are not. We despise atrocity, not because a god tells us that it is wrong, but because if not massacre then nothing could be wrong.”

I don't think anyone knows who wrote or said it, but it's a beautiful way to make people understand the humanity and compassion behind good atheists, and is a good counter-argument to the whole "you need religion to be moral!!" thing that goes around a lot lately.

Any others that really get to you?

FYP.

GirlInterrupted

''Atheism is a belief system like not collecting stamps is a hobby''

Richard Dawkins.

vinchick

"If you could reason with religious people there would be no religious people." -- Gregory House

“I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.” -- George Bernard Shaw

God loves you. And, he needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-knowing and somehow just can't handle money! - G. Carlin

When you talk to God it’s called prayer. When God talks to you it’s called schizophrenia. - unknown

Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an all powerful, all knowing God that is personally concerned about my sex life! -- ?

The prayer of the agnostic: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul." -- Ernest Renan

I love quotes