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I ended up reading three atheist non-fiction books these past few days, though one of them could technically be considered a short novella.
Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation.
Sam Harris' The End of Faith.
Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great.
I was going to read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, but I became bored a few pages into it, mainly because it contained the same material that the other books contained.
From reading the books I did, I did not glean any new atheistic material from its contents as I had expected. I suppose all I read and already knew I had learned from internet forums in relation to atheism. What I did learn, however, was some interesting history that I had not previously known.
My main purpose of this thread, though, is to share some of the atheist related quotes that stood out for me amidst the other material.
6 quotes; Harris' Letters to a Christian Nation:
Anyone who believes that the Bible offers the best guidance we have on questions of morality has some very strange ideas about either guidance or morality.
...religion allows people to imagine their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral...This explains why Christians [like yourself] expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide.
If you are concerned about suffering in this universe, killing a fly should present you with greater moral difficulty than killing a human blastocyst.
At this very moment, millions of sentient people are suffering unimaginable physical and mental afflictions, in circumstances where the compassion of God is nowhere to be seen, and the compassion of human beings is often hobbled by preposterous ideas about sin and salvation.
I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.
It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
9 quotes; Harris' The End of Faith:
...most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.
If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us.
...The fact that unjustified beliefs can have a consoling influence on the human mind is no argument in their favor. If every physician told his terminally ill patients that they were destined for a complete recovery, this might also set many of their minds at ease, but at the expense of the truth.
The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.
[in reference to religious texts] A close study of these books, and of history, demonstrates that there is no act of cruelty so appalling that it cannot be justified or even mandated, by resource to their pages.
The fact that religious faith has left its mark on every aspect of our civilization is not an argument in its favor, nor can any particular faith be exonerated simply because certain of its adherents made fundamental contributions to human culture.
Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time.
In the best case, faith leaves otherwise well-intentioned people incapable of thinking rationally about many of their deepest concerns; at worst, it is a continuous source of human violence.
It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil.
8 quotes; Hitchens' God is not Great:
Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason.
...religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.
Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody...had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge.
Why do people keep saying, "God is in the details"? He isn't in ours, unless his yokel creationist fans wish to take credit for his clumsiness, failure, and incompetence.
...to believe in a god is one way to express a willingness to believe anything. Whereas to reject the belief is by no means to profess belief in nothing.
Humanism has many crimes for which to apologize. But it can apologize for them, and also corrects them, in its own terms and without having to shake or challenge the basis of any unalterable system of belief.
To "choose" dogma and faith over doubt and experiment is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
Yet again it is demonstrated that monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents.
Feel free to share your favorite atheist quotes.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
"A ship-owner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not
overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs.
Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed
upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly
overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him at great expense. Before the ship sailed,
however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had
gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she
would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could
hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better
times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of
builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his
vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and
benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and
he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.
What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is
admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction
can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He
had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts."
William K. Clifford
The Ethics of Belief
(Sourced from Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World)
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
Quote:From reading the books I did, I did not glean any new atheistic material from its contents as I had expected. I suppose all I read and already knew I had learned from internet forums in relation to atheism. What I did learn, however, was some interesting history that I had not previously known.
Well I imagine the reason you didn't learn anything new is that we have all stolen the best bits of those books, and more, to come to the conclusions and arguments we make.
Speaking personally the nearest I get to an original argument is combining the sources in a slightly different way.
Kuusi palaa, ja on viimeinen kerta kun annan vaimoni laittaa jouluvalot!
March 16, 2014 at 1:00 pm (This post was last modified: March 16, 2014 at 1:01 pm by Kayenneh.)
Drazi pilgrim: You don't understand. This is my ceremonial blade and I'm a pilgrim, here for the sacred day of Chu'dag!
Garibaldi: I don't care if you're the Easter Bunny, you're not bringing this on the station.
Drazi pilgrim: The maker of all things will not permit this! He will allow nothing to stand between me and the blade!
Garibaldi: Oh yeah? Tell you what I'll tie this to a magnetic grapple, stick this on the station's hull and point you to the nearest airlock. If you go after it without a breathing unit, you can have it.
Drazi pilgrim: You test my faith!
Garibaldi: And you're testing my patience. Now move on before I decide to flunk out.
Morishi: Oh man, I can't believe we've got five more days of this to live through.
Garibaldi: Don't blame me, blame Earth Central. " Say, we've got an idea. How about an entire week where every alien species on Babylon 5 demonstrates their religious beliefs? It'll advance the cause of interplanetary peace and understanding." As ideas go, this one's right up there with having my gums extracted.
-Babylon 5, "The Parliament of Dreams"
When I was young, there was a god with infinite power protecting me. Is there anyone else who felt that way? And was sure about it? but the first time I fell in love, I was thrown down - or maybe I broke free - and I bade farewell to God and became human. Now I don't have God's protection, and I walk on the ground without wings, but I don't regret this hardship. I want to live as a person. -Arina Tanemura
Drazi pilgrim: You don't understand. This is my ceremonial blade and I'm a pilgrim, here for the sacred day of Chu'dag!
Garibaldi: I don't care if you're the Easter Bunny, you're not bringing this on the station.
Drazi pilgrim: The maker of all things will not permit this! He will allow nothing to stand between me and the blade!
Garibaldi: Oh yeah? Tell you what I'll tie this to a magnetic grapple, stick this on the station's hull and point you to the nearest airlock. If you go after it without a breathing unit, you can have it.
Drazi pilgrim: You test my faith!
Garibaldi: And you're testing my patience. Now move on before I decide to flunk out.
Morishi: Oh man, I can't believe we've got five more days of this to live through.
Garibaldi: Don't blame me, blame Earth Central. " Say, we've got an idea. How about an entire week where every alien species on Babylon 5 demonstrates their religious beliefs? It'll advance the cause of interplanetary peace and understanding." As ideas go, this one's right up there with having my gums extracted.
-Babylon 5, "The Parliament of Dreams"
I miss that show. Definitely up there on my list of top science fiction shows.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
March 16, 2014 at 1:09 pm (This post was last modified: March 16, 2014 at 1:09 pm by Kayenneh.)
(March 16, 2014 at 1:04 pm)Kitanetos Wrote: I miss that show. Definitely up there on my list of top science fiction shows.
It's fucking awesome! I just started to watch through the whole shebang again
The bible, that’s God's book. As far as I know the Devil hasn't brought out a book yet, haven’t heard his side of the argument. God’s just writing shit about him, and the Devil’s being the bigger man and saying: "I’m not even going to comment, talking shit about me like that!"
-Jim Jefferies
When I was young, there was a god with infinite power protecting me. Is there anyone else who felt that way? And was sure about it? but the first time I fell in love, I was thrown down - or maybe I broke free - and I bade farewell to God and became human. Now I don't have God's protection, and I walk on the ground without wings, but I don't regret this hardship. I want to live as a person. -Arina Tanemura
(March 16, 2014 at 6:12 am)DarkHorse Wrote: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."
- Unknown
Quote: The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter II
