#atheism

Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#love

Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked. With your own voice,' he said. ↗

— Erica Jong

#inspirational #inspirational

Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought. ↗

— Mark Twain

#inspirational #inspirational

I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#freedom

[W]e conceive the Devil as a necessary part of a respectable view of cosmology. Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer. It is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without 'sky'. Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas. ↗

— Arthur Miller

#christianity #morality #religion #change

I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#intelligence #intelligence

But after he was pleased to reveal himself to me I did presently, like Abraham, run to Hagar. And after that he did let me see the atheism of my own heart, for which I begged of the Lord that it might not remain in my heart. ↗

— Anne Hutchinson

#after #atheism #begged #did #heart

When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite. ↗

— Yann Martel

#experience #experience

We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#evolution #inspirational #life #nature #science

Many people are calling Manti Te’o “dumb” or “naïve” because he fell for the “invisible girlfriend” hoax or catfishing but when you think about it. Religion MIGHT be doing the same thing when it tells you that there is a “God” that you cannot see, or meet, that loves you, & “communicates” with you thru a book (bible).Does that make sense? ↗

— Pablo

#bible #catfish #catfishing #god #hoax