source: https://tinyurl.com/y4hls8bx
Here’s a subset of quotes I’ve collected over some time in support of a non-theistic world view. I was prompted to write this after reading this post on Archon’s Den.
Sam Harris
In fact, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a “non-astrologer” or a “non-alchemist.”… Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.
To one who stands outside the Christian faith it is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.
It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane. While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about.
How can inter-faith dialogue even at the highest level recognise world views that are fundamentally incompatible and in principle, immune to revision? The truth is it really matters what billions of human beings believe and why they believe it.
One of the greatest challenges facing civilisation in the 21st century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns, about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering, in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. We desperately need a public discourse that encourages critical thinking and intellectual honesty. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith.
My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own.
Words like god and Allah must go the way of Apollo and Bal or they will unmake our world.
Christopher Hitchens
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.
Dan Barker
We have suffered enough from the divisive malignancy of belief. Our planet needs a faith-ectomy.
Charles Darwin
I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men.
Yuval Noah Harari
Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?
Carl Sagan
Once you are open to questioning rituals and time-honoured practices, you find that one question leads to another.
To prefer the hard facts over our dearest illusions, that is the core of Science.
(commenting upon Johannes Kepler)
Steven Weinberg
Science does not make it impossible to believe in God. It just makes it possible to NOT believe in God.
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