With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
For good people to do evil things, it takes religion.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.
Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
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.
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.
If 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.
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
or simply:
