Atheism Quotes - Page 38

• There is no intercessor, angel, mediator, between man and God; for man can speak and God hear, each for himself. He requires no advocates to plead for men.

  Theodore Parker

  Angel, Men, Speak

  Theodore Parker (1842). “A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion”, p.217

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• I think I stand where that man stands.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Men, Thinking, Positive Atheism

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• All three of our major religions in Britain ~ Christianity, Islam and Judaism - have a hateful idea at the very core. That idea is Exclusion: the "othering," if you like, of the unredeemed.

  Matthew Parris

  Ideas, Islam, Exclusion

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• Of course the theory of evolution would be vacuous if it offered a glib explanation for every inexplicable act.

  Steven Pinker

  Theory Of Evolution, Would Be, Vacuous

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• I'm anticlerical, not antireligion. If somebody believes there is God, I'm not interested in trying to persuade that person there is no intelligent design to the universe. Where I become interested and wake up is about the temporal power of religion, things like prayer in schools, or Catholic-secular hospital mergers.

  Katha Pollitt

  Prayer, Believe, School

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• As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.

  Katha Pollitt

  Christian, Country, Teaching

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• Right now religion has the romantic aura of the forbidden - Christ is cool. We need to bring it into the schools, which kids already hate, and associate it firmly with boredom, regulation, condescension, makework and de facto segregation ... Prayer in the schools will rid us of the bland no-offense ecumenism that is so infuriating to us anticlericals: Oh, so now you say Jews didn't kill Christ - a little on the late side, isn't it?

  Katha Pollitt

  Prayer, Hate, School

  Katha Pollitt (2007). “Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture”, p.30, Modern Library

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• And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: "Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise." And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly.

  Marco Polo

  Men, Assassins, Deeds

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• A system is empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation... It must be possible for an empirical or scientific system to be refuted by experience.

  Karl Popper

  Taken, Consideration, Criteria

  'The Logic of Scientific Discovery' (1934) ch. 1, sect. 6

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• We have the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should tolerate even them whenever we can do so without running a great risk; but the risk may become so great that we cannot allow ourselves the luxury.

  Karl Popper

  Running, Luxury, Risk

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• The moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance.

  Karl Popper

  Long, Decision, Tolerance

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• I do not expect that the mere fact that I was once an evangelical apologist and now see things differently should itself count as evidence that I must be right. That would be the genetic fallacy. It would be just as erroneous to think that John Rankin must be right in having embraced evangelical Christianity since he had once been an agnostic Unitarian and repudiated it for the Christian faith.

  Robert M. Price

  Christian, Thinking, Would Be

  Opening Statement on Mars Hill Forum at Unitarian Church, Monclair, New Jersey, www.mars-hill-forum.com. January 11, 1997.

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• "Heresy," by the way, simply means "choice." It came to mean "thoughtcrime," implying it was blasphemy to presume to choose your own belief instead of swallowing what the bishops spoonfed you.

  Robert M. Price

  Mean, Choices, Swallowing

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• In broad outline and in detail, the life of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels corresponds to the worldwide Mythic Hero Archetype in which a divine hero's birth is supernaturally predicted and conceived, the infant hero escapes attempts to kill him, demonstrates his precocious wisdom already as a child, receives a divine commission, defeats demons, wins acclaim, is hailed as king, then betrayed, losing popular favor, executed, often on a hilltop, and is vindicated and taken up to heaven.

  Robert M. Price

  Jesus, Kings, Children

  Opening Statement on Mars Hill Forum at Unitarian Church, Monclair, New Jersey, www.mars-hill-forum.com. January 11, 1997.

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• Today's Politically Correct "historical Jesuses" are no different, being mere clones of the scholars who design them.

  Robert M. Price

  Jesus, Design, Historical

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• If, when we compare two versions of a story, the second known to be a retelling of the first, and find that the second has more of a miraculous element, we may reasonably conclude we have legendary (or midrashic or whatever) embellishment. The tale has grown in the telling. This sort of comparison is common in extrabiblical research and no one holds that it cannot properly indicate legend formation there.

  Robert M. Price

  Two, Religion, Research

  Robert M. Price (2008). “Beyond Born Again: Toward Evangelical Maturity”, p.117, Wildside Press LLC

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• "You ask me how I know he lives?" asks the revival chorus. "He lives within my heart." Exactly! A figment.

  Robert M. Price

  Heart, Revival, Figments

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• But if they did really refer to some kind of a "personal relationship," it would in effect be a case of channeling. I suspect this is why fundamentalists who condemn New Age channelers do not dismiss it as a fraud..., but instead think that Ramtha and the others are channeling demons. If they said it was sheer delusion, they know where the other four fingers would wind up pointing!

  Robert M. Price

  Thinking, Wind, Age

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• Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not.

  Protagoras

  Reality, Men, All Things

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• No man is above the law.

  William H. Pryor, Jr.

  Men, Law, Positive Atheism

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• They had rejected the soul-body dichotomy, with its two corollaries: the impotence of man's mind and the damnation of this earth; they had rejected the doctrine of suffering as man's metaphysical fate, they proclaimed man's right to the pursuit of happiness and were determined to establish on earth the conditions required for man's proper existence, by the "unaided" power of their intellect.

  Ayn Rand

  Fate, Pursuit Of Happiness, Men

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• To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage.

  James Randi

  Littles, Preference, Bias

  James Randi (1987). “The Faith Healers”

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• In a liberal scientific society, to claim that you are above error is the height of irresponsibility.

  Jonathan Rauch

  Errors, Height, Claims

  Jonathan Rauch (2013). “Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition”, p.51, University of Chicago Press

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• I am a cautious pilgrim of the night, a tentative wanderer among the stars. My awareness of my home in the universe is fleeting and incomplete. Into the homeless home of the sun-faced buddha I have stepped but briefly. My quest, such as it is, is rewarded with faint lights and scrawny cries, a trait here and trait there, a hint of the infinite and a tingle in the spine. Of "minute particulars" I will make my way.

  Chet Raymo

  Stars, Home, Night

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• One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature - a sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man.

  William Winwood Reade

  Religious, Men, Facts

  William Winwood Reade (1892). “The Martyrdom of Man”

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