Quotes Tagged "atheism"

The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power of conversation.

What I admire about the modern atheist is not at all his logic, but rather his gift of imagination. There will always be the cartoon versions of Christianity further perpetuated by the extremist atheists who do not possess the humility to ask real scholars and theologians its difficult questions. There is little doubt that the atheist has the bigger imagination: the first reason is due to his persistent caricatures of what constitutes a Christian; the second because of his belief that most of his questions are actually rhetorical. From this I can infer that, instead of laughing at one another (the Christian at modern atheist immaturity and the modern atheist at Christian stupidity), we would have a better chance at productivity laughing with one another as we all dumb down what we don't understand.

Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off.

Religion doesn't just cloud our minds. It asks us to deliberately deceive ourselves-- to replace reason with its opposite, faith. And when men operate on faith, they can no longer be reasoned with, which makes them more dangerous than any sane man, good or evil.

You know, it's a sad and unfortunate state of affairs that you have to live in a world where eight-year-olds refuse to believe in anything that they cannot touch or measure, and anyone who happens to see a thing that is invisible to most people is immediately branded a lunatic.

Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. ... Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated

The more I read arguments for atheism, the more I am convinced it takes a very strong faith to be an atheist. And atheism seems to me the least reasonable of all faiths.

Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.

I tried to convince myself once, when I was a teenager, that I felt God. Alone in the sanctuary, accompanying my mom on an evening errand to the church. I stared at the ceiling and drew deep breath as quickly as I could. I told our youth minister in his ball cap that I had felt Him. That I was blessed. But in the end, it was only the wind and the rain, making noise in the darkness.

It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!

There is no great religion without a great schism. All of them have it. And that's because you're dealing with something called faith. And faith is not something you can prove; faith is personal opinion. Uh, when you're dealing with something with certainty, like, y'know, science or logic, you don't have the--there's no wiggle room; that's why history is not filled with warring math cults, y'know, because you can settle the issue; you can prove something to be right or wrong, and that's the end of the argument: next case. Whereas, when you're dealing with faith, you can forever argue your point, or another point, because you're dealing with intangibles. Personally, I think, faith is what you ask of somebody when you don't have the goods to prove your point.

The religionist is a living fossil, embedded in that rock called faith.

There are no atheists in the foxhole.

بحكم المنطق الداخلي للأشياء يتوازى كل من التطور و الحضارةو العلم والطوبيا مع الإلحاد، بينما يتوازى الخلق والثقافة و الفن و الأخلاق مع الدين.

Love and respect all people. Hate and destroy all faith.

Why do many believers insist on repeatedly pointing to the crimes of 20th century dictators who led officially atheistic societies as some sort of evidence of their god's existence? It makes no sense. If the rivers of blood on Stalin's hands and Mao's hands, for example, are supposed to prove there is a god, then what do the oceans of blood on the hands of several thousand years' worth of religious kings, queens, presidents, popes, priests, generals, Crusadersm jihadists and tribal chiefs prove? It's not, of course, but if bodycount is somehow the measure of a god's likelihood of existence, then believers lose. It is clear that humans are quite capable of killing with or without images of gods bouncing around in their heads. If anything, however, history suggests that the concept of gods makes the idea of massacring your fellow man (and women and children, too, of course) a lot easier to act upon.

Faith needs conviction and insanity, and most people require the latter.

These beliefs contradict each other, so they can’t be all right

I believe for we are.

Nothing irks a follower of the movement more than the next word: faith. The leaders have practically diagnosed it as the worst possible thing that a sapient creature can have, and yet we all cling to it in the end. We place our trust in people, places, things, both seen and unseen, and most of the time it has served us well as a species. Faith has been a cornerstone and foundation of our species, and other of the Hominidae taxonomy for millions of years. It is the foundation of good relationships, confidence, and even discerning wisdom and truth.