Favorite Atheism Quotes?

[ApeNotKillApe]

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" -- in nothingness -- then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct -- henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life. . . . Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? . . . Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path." -- "One thing only is necessary". . . That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf -- it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph -- it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side.
- Neetch

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This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to re-assume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

P.B Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
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[wiploc]

Cogito ergo sum.

Umm...Descartes wasn't an atheist.

Boru

Really?  Do we know that? 

I know that he didn't take his public skepticism far enough to get himself burned at the stake, but I don't know what that proves.

[Cyberman]

Well, he started with "I think"; so obviously he wasn't a xtian.

[abaris]

Really?  Do we know that? 

He probably was a deist, but he was part on enlightenment and argued for rationalism, which is good enough for me. You have to always keep in mind that these people had nothing to compare their skepticism against. Science wasn't ready to provide the answers. So most of the deists of old would probably be atheists by now. But that's speculation.

[vorlon13]

There's never a blanket statement to be made on any issue involving humans. Catholicism preserved classical knowledge. But on the other hand only what they considered worthy of preserving. What didn't go against their dogma. I would be hard pressed to say what Catholicism actually contributed to education. They never were big on education and there even was a time when laymen were actually forbidden to read the entirety of the bible. They preserved. Some things. Some things they didn't.

It was the order of the Jesuits moving the church out of the dark ages. But even they did so at a price. The image catholicism presents always was one of fear. Fear of people questioning the dogmas they had set up. Up until the 16th and 17th century they were enemies of education. Forbidding to question the geocentric view of the world, forbidding autopsies even. If it hadn't been for people like Leonardo or Michelangelo, we would still follow the teachings of the roman surgeon Galen, who was the utmost and unquestioned authority all through the middle ages.

I never did understand the rebuttal of taking something that happened almost half a millennia ago to try to make a statement about how the Church is now. It's like making the statement "Americans support slavery" on the basis that many of us owned slaves hundreds of years ago.... despite the fact that it is illegal in the US now.

Maybe this can help flesh that out a bit:

The US Constitution contains a provision allowing for itself to be amended.  It isn't easy, certain # of states must concur, and despite that, there is the case of liquor prohibition where a subsequent amendment voided out a prior one. Egad!

However


As for Bible based faiths, granted there are Bible passages that are subject to interpretation, other passages that are ignored, and some are just flat out 'wished' hard enough to say something other than what they actually plainly state.  But, it comes down to an eternal and unchanging arbiter and author, God Almighty,  and that, as they say, is that.

So, from some perspectives, religions are both culpable for 'crimes' they may have countenanced then as well as now, and additionally, in view of the eternal and unchanging nature of God, a specific faith that deigns to re-interpreting, rewriting, revamping Holy Scripture will be, or should be, viewed as correcting God.

For folks that worship, revere, respect and love God, being asked to tolerate men leading their faith who feel they know better than God about any issue covered by His Word, would seem to me to be not only asking a lot, but in fact, asking for too much.

[Whateverist]

Oh goody, I get to props Boru's signature again:

"There are people who long for immortality in the afterlife who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.' - Isaac Asimov