Quotes

The Bible provides justification for evil, without it we would have heaven on earth. - Hannah Smith

Life and Death

I come without consciousness. I grew up from an innocent, depending baby into an adult, have a child and then I will die. When I die, my consciousness goes at the same time, like falling to sleep, but just never waking up again.

I don't believe in after life, nor rebirth, nor a possible future woken up by god and then to be judged on what I have done in this life.

I don't buy into the stupid voluntary slavery a man-made god may try to force on me. But that does not mean that I am not responsible for my life and I act anti-socially. Human are social animals. I live in a society which is based on mutual respect among its members and the trust each and everyone of us expects on others. I appreciate the millions of evolution steps before me that make me what I am today. I know I am the luck one. This is the only life I have and I appreciate being intelligent enough to communicate and enjoy the great ease of life provided by modern science. But I am just one of the many many steps in a process which goes on and on.

I hope I have leave a mark, I hope I have changed someone's life for the better and I hope I will die knowing that I have not wasted this great luck.

Since our birth, the many atoms that make up my body have been constantly changing. This cluster of atoms will just part and join another clusters on the day I die.

- reflection on the news of the death of Michael Jackson

Quotes

The principal concern of secularists must be the extent to which the actions of religious believers frustrate the needs of other human beings, rather than the extent to which religion gets something right [or wrong]. -Richard Rorty

That's exactly how I feel at times, e.g. stem cell research!

Religious age of the Universe

How can we explain the difference of the scientific age of the universe with the religious age? The famous banana man has an answer. He said "it’s very easy for me to reconcile the Scriptures with the findings of science." Yes, he has just redefined "history".

WOW, that's too easy!

People asks why atheists like to visit site like "Atheist Central". That's where we get our entertainment!

Here is a recent one.

When a friend from Minnesota visited Los Angeles for the first time, his trip didn't begin too well. It was just after 911, and because his suitcase was tightly packed when passing through security at the airport, he mumbled that it was about to "explode." They pulled him aside for questioning.

Cedric had never seen the sea, so within an hour of arriving at his hotel in L.A., he excitedly took a taxi and went to the beach. He carefully placed his credit cards, cash, driver’s license, and his social security card into a small sealed bag and hung it around his neck. Then he went swimming.

Unfortunately, a large wave knocked him under the water and he came up without the bag! He panicked and dove under to frantically search for it. That’s when he lost his contact lenses.

So now he's blind as a bat, couldn't find the bag, had no money, no credit cards, and no identification. All he had were his shoes to offer a taxi driver as collateral to get him back to his hotel.

If you are not a Christian you are a little like Cedric. You are blind, with no contact or credit with God (see Ephesians 4:18). Cedric was able to find his way because he had some collateral. You have nothing to offer God. In His eyes you are morally bankrupt. But that’s where grace comes in (see Ephesians 2:8-9). If you will simply repent of your sins, and call upon the name of Jesus Christ, God will save you from death and Hell, create a clean heart in you so that you love righteousness, and open your blind eyes so that you can see. [my emphasis]

The problem I have is which god to ask for help, the Monkey King (美猴王), Buddha, Zeus or any of the thousands of gods which have come and go out of fashion? BTW, since the christian god is supposedly all-knowing, why can't he just lend a hand when needed? Ain't all human his creation? What a jealous freak!

Quotes

If God created the world, then who created god? and who created whoever created god? So somewhere along the line something had to just be there. So why can’t we just skip the idea of god and go straight to earth? - Ryan Hanson

Worrying times

It is a no brainer. Fossil fuels are stored carbon that lived up to 300 million years ago. Burning almost half^* of these fuel in the last 50 years (releasing 21.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere each year) released all these stored carbon in a very short period (50 years is nothing compared with 300 million years) obviously will have a tremendous effect on the environment. You don't need a PhD in Climatology to figure out how bad it would be.

Unfortunately, very unfortunate indeed, one of the independent senator, Steve Fielding, was still "unconvinced* after a 2-hour meeting with our Australia's Chief Scientist that human activity is the main cause of climate change. [source]

I echo strongly with Orion77 the concern of such attitude from our politician. Here is a little background of Senator Steve Fielding (from his own website): He has 15 siblings, an engineering degree from RMIT and has worked mostly in management. Here is the interview from Lateline:
Part 1:

Part 2:


It sounds GOOD for him to say that he was trying to listen to both sides of the argument - including the skeptics. However, as a politician, he should not be so naive to ignore efforts of vested interests to discharge a large volume of mis-information and pseudo-science.

^*Everyone has a different opinion on how much of the stored fossil fuel has been burnt. The last major oil field discovered is in 2006 which would supply 2 year worth of consumption for USA alone. I may be over optimistic already!

cross posted to Sustaining Future

Quotes

I have no need for religion, I have a conscience. - Anonymous

Questions for Theistic Evolutionists

Deborah Drapper has found a number of contradictions between the bible and evolution and she is asking theistic evolutionists hard questions.

Science is verifiable and repeatable. If a scientific theory is wrong, we are happy to change. My question to Deborah is which account you should believe in, the bible's or scientific account?

I hope Deborah knows the correct answer to my question. Or at least she should start finding out which is a better solution to the problem we are facing daily.

Quotes

Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds. - Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Quotes

I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to hell if I’m ‘bad’. - Mike Fuhrman

Quotes

"Religious belief of just about any sort is intellectually lazy and that there is no more reason to believe in god or saints or angels than in ghosts, goblins, or the tooth fairy. It's all infantile magical thinking as far as I'm concerned, and any rational person should be embarrassed to believe any of it." - Andrew Potter

Hallucination

Imagine a scenario where you are suddenly presented with absolute proof that God exists. Not proof that you can reproduce in a lab or record in a scientific journal, but experiential proof that is clear and undeniable...but only to you. I can’t tell you what that proof looks like, because it’s different for just about everybody....

The correct name for this is hallucination. It occurs when you have a psychological disorder. Seek medical help immediately if it happens to you.

"Your trust is in fallible man. My trust is in infallible God."

"Your trust is in fallible man. My trust is in infallible God. - Ray Comfort"

"Your trust is in the non existent god. My trust is in the non compromising Scientific Advances. - Albert Ip"

Question: when you are ill, do you pray or do you seek modern medicine's help? The "infallible god" would not do a thing to help you recover from the illness, BUT modern science will.

Quotes

You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate. - Richard A. Weatherwax

Am I angry at god?

Am I angry at god? No.

But I am angry at those who intentionally perpetuate the existence of god. If god really existed, I would have no problem at all. As there is no credible proof of the existence of any god, those insisting that there were a god are irrational, irresponsible and against humanity. I condemn these people and I am angry at the tactics they use to spread the "god-idea".

Those who claim that atheists are angry at god should think carefully in the words they use. Atheists are those who do not believe there is a god, at least they have not seen any evidence of a god. So atheists cannot angry at god. There is no god to angry at!

I cannot speak for other atheists, but I can speak for myself. I can tell you to whom I am angry at, those who tell lie as a matter of fact.

Isaac Asimov's quotes

Isaac Asimov's quotes

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. (source unknown)

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. ("On Religiosity," Free Inquiry)

When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. ("The Relativity of Wrong" 1989)

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. (source unknown)

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly. (Canadian Atheists Newsletter, 1994)

One would suppose that the battle for religious liberty was won in the United States two hundred years ago. However, in the time since, and right now, powerful voices are always raised in favor of bigotry and thought control. It is useful, then, to have a compendium of the thoughts of great men and women of all faiths (and of none) on the subject, to convince us that we men and woman of freedom are not and never have been alone. (from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom)

[I]f I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. (I Asimov: A Memoir)

To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social establishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps, as part of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however, is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave, without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group of astronomers denounces it. (source unknown)

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time. ("Free Inquiry", Spring 1982, vol.2 no.2, p. 9)

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.(source unknown)

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.(source unknown)

Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism. ("On Religiosity," Free Inquiry)

When I die I won't go to heaven or hell, there will just be nothingness. ( interviewed in Bill Moyers' television series "A World of Ideas")

I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending. (source unknown)

The glass is half empty...

PZ Myers, commenting on young people joining atheists club and starting to think for themselves, congratulated the higher education system:

This is exactly what happens when you send your kids off to college: if it works, they start thinking for themselves, develop surprising new opinions, and aren't afraid to share them with other people. Hooray for college students, some of my favorite people!

But I see the glass half empty. Why are there still religious idiots teaching in higher education? If the system is working, such creatures should have been disqualified for holding any responsible position because of their lack of ability to think for themselves and process facts based on evidence.

OK, I am a militant atheist.

youtube video worths spreading

Quotes from Albert Einstein

Was Albert Einstein an atheist? Here are some of his words:

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. … Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.

For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions... And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people.

Thus I came... to a deep religiosity, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true... Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience... an attitude which has never left me.

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.