Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 17

• We place no reliance On virgin or pigeon; Our Method is Science, Our Aim is Religion.

  Aleister Crowley

  Atheism, Pigeons, Method

  Aleister Crowley (2014). “Eight Lectures on Yoga”, p.37, Lulu Press, Inc

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• If there is a soul, what is it, and where did it come from, and where does it go? Can anyone who is guided by his reason possibly imagine a soul independent of a body, or the place of its residence, or the character of it, or anything concerning it? If man is justified in any belief or disbelief on any subject, he is warranted in the disbelief in a soul. Not one scrap of evidence exists to prove any such impossible thing.

  Clarence Darrow

  Character, Independent, Men

  Clarence Darrow (1995). “Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays”

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• When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul. As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature.

  Clarence Darrow

  Book, Teaching, Men

  "Why I Am an Agnostic: Including Expressions of Faith from a Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew". Book by Clarence Darrow, 1929.

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• A prison is confining to the body, but whether it affects the mind, depends entirely upon the mind.

  Clarence Darrow

  Mind, Atheism, Body

  Clarence Darrow (1995). “Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays”

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• Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven.

  Richard Dawkins

  Powerful, Believe, People

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• Not a single one of your ancestors died young. They all copulated at least once.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheism, Young, Ancestor

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• The state authorities have no place in the church of God, no right to control and persecute the conscience.

  Hans Denck

  Atheism, Church, Authority

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• Has it ever occurred to you how lucky you are to be alive? More than 99 percent of all the creatures that have ever lived have died without progeny, but not a single one of your ancestors falls into that group! ... Not a single one of your ancestors, all the way back to the bacteria, succumbed to predation before reproducing, or lost out in the competition for a mate.

  Daniel Dennett

  Fall, Competition, Atheism

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• It has been petrified into a slavery of thought and sentiment, as intolerant superiority on the part of the few and an intolerable burden on the part of the many.

  John Dewey

  Atheism, Slavery, Burden

  John Dewey (2012). “Human Nature and Conduct”, p.331, Courier Corporation

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• There is nothing left worth preserving in the notions of unseen powers, controlling human destiny, to which obedience and worship are due.

  John Dewey

  Destiny, Atheism, Unseen

  John Dewey (1960). “A Common Faith”, p.7, Yale University Press

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• Religions have been universal in the sense that all the people we know anything about have had a religion. But the differences among them are so great and so shocking that any common element that can be extracted is meaningless.... The older apologists for Christianity seem to have been better advised than some modern ones in condemning every religion but one as an impostor, as at bottom some kind of demon worship or at any rate a superstitious figment.

  John Dewey

  Differences, People, Atheism

  John Dewey, Larry Hickman, Thomas M. Alexander (1998). “The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, education, democracy”, p.403, Indiana University Press

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• When we think of his lone effort to live and its bleak reward, the mind turns to the myth "for His mercy endureth forever," with confiding revulsion.

  Emily Dickinson

  Thinking, Forever, Effort

  Emily Dickinson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)”, p.2349, Delphi Classics

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• At least to pray is left - is left Oh Jesus - in the Air - I know not which thy chamber is - I'm knocking everywhere.

  Emily Dickinson

  Jesus, Air, Atheism

  Emily Dickinson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)”, p.136, Delphi Classics

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• By dipping us children in the Bible so often, they hoped, I think, to give our lives a serious tint, and to provide us with quaintly magnificent snatches of prayer to produce as charms while, say, being mugged for our cash or jewels.

  Annie Dillard

  Prayer, Children, Thinking

  Annie Dillard (2016). “An American Childhood”, p.126, Canongate Books

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• Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert. Except for the garments, their deep religious trances might just as well be happening at a revival meeting or in the congregation of a fundamentalist TV preacher.... As we move further from the life of ignorance and superstition in which religion has its roots, we seem to need it more and more.... Why has religion become a force just when we'd have thought it would be losing ground to secularism?

  Phil Donahue

  Religious, Cousin, Moving

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• We in the United States are pluralistic respecting ultimate beliefs. Profound values exist apart from a devotion to a god. Indeed, those who discriminate against nonbelievers flout the principle of religious tolerance that they often profess.

  Norman Dorsen

  Religious, Profound, Tolerance

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• The Golden Age is the most implausible of all dreams. But for it men have given up their life and strength; for the sake of it prophets have died and been slain; without it the people will not live and cannot die.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Dream, Men, People

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• The Free Exercise Clause protects the individual from any coercive measure that encourages him toward one faith or creed, discourages him from another, or makes it prudent or desirable for him to select one and embrace it.

  William O. Douglas

  Exercise, Atheism, Prudent

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• It isn't true that the laws of nature have been capriciously disturbed; that snakes have talked; that women have been turned into salt; that rods have brought water out of rocks.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Rocks, Law, Snakes

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Delphi Classics)”, p.4043, Delphi Classics

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• Dogmas of every kind put assertion in the place of reason and give rise to more contention, bitterness, and want of charity than any other influence in human affairs.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Giving, Atheism, Charity

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1986). “Letters to the press: the unknown Conan Doyle”, Harvill Secker

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• How is it that the Church produced no geometer in her autocratic reign of twelve hundred years?

  John William Draper

  Years, Atheism, Church

  John William Draper (1875). “History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science: By John William Draper ...”, p.307, New York, D. Appleton

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• In England Giordano Bruno had given lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity, the impostures, of his persecutors - that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor faith.

  John William Draper

  Country, Struggle, Fighting

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• The kind of sermon which is preached in most colored churches is not today attractive to even fairly intelligent men.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Intelligent, Men, Atheism

  W. E. B. Du Bois (1988). “Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887-1961”, p.84, Univ of Massachusetts Press

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• I can't believe it. Maybe there is a God after all. Herbal supplement sales only grew 1 percent last year. The years before, it was 17 percent, 12 percent, 18 percent.

  Dean Edell

  Believe, Years, Atheism

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• Roman Catholicism: a hundred million people bowing down before a flesh-hating, elderly celibate.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Hate, Elderly, People

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