God Insights
Albert Einstein:
I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his [sic] creatures, or has
a will of the type of which we are conscious ourselves. [Inventor]
Albert Einstein:
Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly
religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.
[Inventor]
Bertrand Russell:
In conclusion, there is a marvelous anecdote from the occasion of Russell's
ninetieth birthday that best serves to summarize his attitude toward God and
religion. A London lady sat next to him at this party, and over the soup she
suggested to him that he was not only the world's most famous atheist but, by
this time, very probably the world's oldest atheist. "What will you do, Bertie,
if it turns out you're wrong?" she asked. "I mean, what if -- uh -- when the
time comes, you should meet Him? What will you say?" Russell was delighted with
the question. His bright, birdlike eyes grew even brighter as he contemplated
this possible future dialogue, and then he pointed a finger upward and cried,
"Why, I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence.'" [Al Seckel, in
Preface to Bertrand Russell on God and Religion]
Clarence Darrow:
I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother Goose.
Clarence Darrow:
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an
agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is
all that agnosticism means. [Scopes trial, Dayton, Tennessee, July 13, 1925]
Dennis McKinsey:
If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner
that puts the Mafia to shame, that's okay, he's God. He can do whatever he
wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality,
decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that
is supposedly preaching the opposite. [newsletter Biblical Errancy ]
Don Hirschberg:
Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
Emma Goldman:
The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical
Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its
liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world,
which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in
helpless degradation.
Francis Bacon:
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to
reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if
religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an
absolute monarchy in the minds of men.
G.K. Chesterton:
I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.
George Bernard Shaw:
We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical
profession.
George Santayana:
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.
Gore Vidal:
I'm a born-again atheist.
Henny Youngman:
I once wanted to become an atheist but I gave up . . . they have no holidays.
Izaak Walton:
Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good
conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a
blessing that money cannot buy.
Jane Wagner:
One thing I have no worry about is whether God exists. But it has occurred to me
that God has Alzheimer's and has forgotten we exist. [ The Search for
Intelligent Life in the Universe, performed by Lily Tomlin, 1986]
John Dietrich:
The President of the United States summons the nation to church on Thanksgiving
Day to give thanks to "Almighty God" for the abundant harvest and all other
blessings. But what has Almighty God -- I have no desire to appear irreverent --
what has Almighty God as a personal being to do with the harvests? If it is he
who produces our crops, then being Almighty there should never be a failure of
crops. But since crops frequently fail, it follows that there is no Almighty
person in charge of them -- unless he brings failure purposely. Therefore, if
God is to be thanked for large crops, he must be blamed when the crops are a
failure. . . . If God sends the rain and the sunshine which develops and ripens
our wheat, who sends the storms and the insects which destroy much of it? And if
he sends both, then why not thank him for one and blame him for the other?
Med Yones:
God created land, politicians created
boundaries [President of International Institute of Management]
Noam Chomsky:
How do I define God? I don't.... People who find such conceptions important for
themselves have every right to frame them as they like. Personally, I don't.
That's why you haven't found my "thoughts on this [for you] criticaI question."
I have none, because I see no need for them (apart from the -- often extremely
interesting and revealing -- inquiry into human culture an history). [American
Author]
Pearl S. Buck:
When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.
Pearl S. Buck:
Believing in gods always causes confusion.
Protagoras:
As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not
exist.
Robert F. Kennedy:
But suppose God is black? What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have
treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not
white? What then is our response?
Robert Ingersoll:
Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily,
and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly
glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.
Sir Julian Huxley:
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable ... and its
abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. Many people assert that this
abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all
moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at
jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must
construct some thing to take its place. [The New Divinity]
Susan B. Anthony:
I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough for
Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight the next
40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox religionist to
speak or pray and count her beads upon. [on the Women's Suffrage platform]
Thomas Jefferson:
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he
must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
[American President]
Thomas Jefferson:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and
his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that
the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I
contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which
declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of
separation between Church and State. [letter to Connecticut Baptists]
Wendy Kaminer:
I don't spend much time thinking about whether God exists. I don't consider that
a relevant question. It's unanswerable and irrelevant to my life, so I put it in
the category of things I can't worry about.
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