Favorite atheistic quote or excerpt?

[Ninjaneer]

For me, it would have to be the following (have it framed in my room! :)):

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 to 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 -- free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past -- free from popes and priests -- free from all the "called" and "set apart" -- free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies -- free from the fear of eternal pain -- free from the winged monsters of the night -- free from devils, ghosts and gods.

For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought -- no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings -- no chains for my limbs -- no lashes for my back -- no fires for my flesh -- no master's frown or threat -- no following another's steps -- no need to bow, to cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.

And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain -- for the freedom of labor and thought -- to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains -- to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs -- to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn -- to those by fire consumed -- to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men.

And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.

-- Robert Ingersoll, Ingersoll's Vow.

Gets me every time, especially the last third of it.

[onager]

1. Hard to pick just one...

But I do love this one:

The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H. Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history. - Robert Heinlein

All of the following are from H.L. Mencken. That first one always reminds me of R/T, where I often use it on the "gimme respect" crowd:

1. One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected...(This) convention protects them, and so they proceed with their blather unwhipped and almost unmolested, to the great damage of common sense and common decency. That they should have this immunity is an outrage. There is nothing in religious ideas, as a class, to lift them above other ideas. On the contrary, they are always dubious and often quite silly.

2. The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.

3. The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.

4. It is one of the Christian delusions that Christianity brought charity into the world. It did no such thing. There were plenty of agencies for taking care of the poor and helpless long before Christianity was heard of, and even before Judaism. Both Christianity and Judaism have converted charity into a sort of pious racket. The alms-giver, in return for a trifling expenditure on this earth, will be rewarded with an infinity of bliss post-mortem. This purely selfish note is struck with great clarity by Judaism, and only less clearly by Christianity. It appears also in the other religions of the East. Thus religion has not really promoted charity, but debased it.

5. Thus such a thing as a truly enlightened Christian is hard to imagine. Either he is enlightened or he is Christian, and the louder he protests that he is the former the more apparent it becomes that he is really the latter. A Catholic priest who devotes himself to seismology or some other such safe science may become a competent technician and hence a useful man, but it is ridiculous to call him a scientist so long as he still believes in the virgin birth, the atonement or transubstantiation.

[Ninjaneer]

7. I absolutely love Mencken (see my sig!).

Great choices, I especially love #4 and #5.

[Deep13]

9. +1

[laconicsax]

2. There are many, but this one is near the top.

"We're all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." -Richard Dawkins

[darkstar3]

3. Delete, wrong place

[darkstar3]

4. I always think this one is laden with irony.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

[Ninjaneer]

8. hehe...

I had never thought about it that way.

[Deep13]

10. Love it.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who had that reaction to that passage of Corinthians.

[MrModerate]

5. That's a tad . . . overwrought for my tastes.

I guess if you'd been imprisoned by belief in the supernatural and then later found reason, you might feel as liberated as Ingersoll.

But to me it affords far too much power to religion, which I consider (outside the deplorable activities of its deluded fans) totally disinteresting. I prefer to quote myself (although I'm sure the idea is not original with me):

"I am not a religious person, so I consider all religions to be equally preposterous. However, Scientology is special: it's not only preposterous, but cheezy."

[Ninjaneer]

6. Yes, I am one of those cases.

When I read Ingersoll's vow after having "broken free", it described dead on how I felt.

Consider yourself lucky! :) sucks looking back and seeing how much time you wasted praying to unicorns.

[Deep13]

11. Me too.

The world looks a lot better once the cheeze cloth is removed from the lens.

[Ninjaneer]

12. Could not agree more.

I never understand when people tell me they find comfort in the "fact" that all things are in god's hands. For me it was/is the exact opposite. Now that I know there's no one out to get me, and no one pulling the strings, hard times are so much easier to deal with.

[Deep13]

13. What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Christopher Hitchens

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"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

Origin of Species, Charles Darwin (even if he did hedge his bets by referring to a generic Creator.)

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"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved--the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!" --- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson

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"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." --- James Madison, "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785

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"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. 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 blindfolded fear." --- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787

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I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

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I guess I'm not so good at picking favorites.

[Ninjaneer]

14. Tried to go back and edit my title to plural, but it wont let me.

The last one is my favorite. I love me some Carl Sagan.

[Ninjaneer]

15. Here's one more:

"I do not pray. I do not expect God to single me out and grant me advantages over my fellow men. Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility."

-- Zora Neale Hurston

[Deep13]

16. +1

[PassingFair]

18. That one's a beauty.

I hadn't seen that one before.

Maybe I'll TRY to read ZNH again...I couldn't
make it through "Their Eyes Were Watching God".

The dialect was too much for me.

[Ninjaneer]

25. Yeah, I gave up on her writing as well...

But that quote from her is probably one of my all time favorites. I put it as a FB status once, the resulting shriek of the theistzombies was very satisfying :)

[ZombieHorde]

17. Woody Allen quotes...

Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.

Tradition is the illusion of permanence.

To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

[PassingFair]

19. Diderot.

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”*



*Too violent for me as a "catch phrase", but I always smile when I see it.

[Iggo]

22. That's the tagline on my personal emails.

Unattributed for a short while, until the squealing of the offended became too much to bear.

Now it's bearable.

[Ninjaneer]

24. Pretty brave. Personally I would be too

afraid of the consequences if my employer found out.

[Iggo]

27. My personal emails, not my business ones.

It's no problem separating the two and keeping them separate.

If I ever get sucked into Facebook, though, I'll have to reevaluate.

[Ninjaneer]

29. For better or worse, the two parts of my life are very intertwined. FB doesn't help. eom

[LeftishBrit]

20. On a slightly more frivolous note, certain verses in E.Y. Harburg's 'Rhymes for the Irreverent'

Atheist

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree;

And only God who makes the tree
Also makes the fools like me.

But only fools like me, you see,
Can make a God, who makes a tree.



Mutual Admiration

'Speaking of the Common Man', said Lincoln,
'God must love him.'
And the Common Man, he must love God -
He made so many of Him.



Name Your Beneficiary

When you are dead,
No need to moan,
No, nothing at all to moan at;
Think of yourself
As just a stone -
And whom would you like to be thrown at?

[backscatter712]

21. George Carlin's Religion Is Bullshit rant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RT6rL2UroE

In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.

Think about it.

Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you.

He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money!

He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!

Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

[Ninjaneer]

23. Brilliant. He was always damn phenomenal at pointing out the absurd aspects of everyday life. n/t

[montanto]

26. Albert Camus:

"Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it." This, I think, is a great argument for the power of secular humanism and proof that one needs no imaginary sky daddy to have a strong sense of morality and duty.

[Ninjaneer]

28. Explains the invention of religion itself I think. eom

[Ninjaneer]

30. One I read today that I really liked:

"Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!"

-- Mark Twain