Quotes by Atheism I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives. Annie Dillard crush atheism growth Then why did you tell me? Annie Dillard atheism atheist religion All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else. Anthony Burgess atheism somewhere-else life Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare. Anthony Burgess rome atheism cities Apologys for self-evident Truths can never have any effect on those who have so little Sense as to deny them. They are the Foundation of all Reasoning, and the only just Bottom on which Men can proceed in convincing one another of the Truth: and by consequence whoever is capable of denying them, is not in a condition to be informed. Anthony Collins atheism self men We have a right to know or may lawfully know any truth. And a right to know any truth whatsoever implies a right to think freely. Anthony Collins atheism may thinking A proponent of the big bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the matter of the universe came from nothing and by nothing. Anthony John Patrick Kenny atheism atheist believe Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity. Antoine de Saint-Exupery atheism principles identity Beware of the community in which blasphemy does not exist: underneath, atheism runs rampant. Antonio Machado atheism community running Someone tells us that God loves us as a father loves his children. We are reassured. But then something awful happens. Some qualification is made.... We are reassured again. But then perhaps we ask: what is this assurance of God's (appropriately qualified) love worth, what is this apparent guarantee really a guarantee against? Just what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) to entitle us to say "God does not love us" or even "God does not exist"? Antony Flew atheism father children If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic. So the onus of proof has to rest on the proposition of theism. Antony Flew atheism atheist believe You cannot ... transmute some incoherent mixture of words into sense merely by introducing the three-letter word "God" to be its grammatical subject. Antony Flew mixtures atheism three Now, if anything at all can be known to be wrong, it seems to me to be unshakably certain that it would be wrong to make any sentient being suffer eternally for any offence whatever. Antony Flew atheism suffering fear Pascal makes no attempt in this most famous argument to show that his Roman Catholicism is true or probably true. The reasons which he suggests for making the recommended bet on his particular faith are reasons in the sense of motives rather than reasons in the sense of grounds. Conceding, if only for the sake of the present argument, that we can have no knowledge here, Pascal tries to justify as prudent a policy of systematic self-persuasion, rather than to provide grounds for thinking that the beliefs recommended are actually true. Antony Flew atheism self thinking However far back we may be able to trace the - so to speak - internal history of the Universe, there can be no question of arguing that this or that external origin is either probable or improbable. We do not have, and we necessarily could not have, experience of other Universes to tell us that Universes, or Universes with these particular features, are the work of Gods, or of Gods of this or that particular sort. Antony Flew atheism able may That peculiar disease of intellectuals, that infatuation with ideas at the expense of experience, that compels experience to conform to bookish expectations. Archibald MacLeish atheism expectations ideas If God is God He is not good, if God is good He is not God; take the even, take the odd. Archibald MacLeish positive-atheism atheism odd Piety's hard enough to take among the poor who have to practice it. A rich man's piety stinks. It's insufferable. Archibald MacLeish atheism practice men We are as great as our belief in human liberty - no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves. Archibald MacLeish atheism liberty belief The infantile cowardice of our time which demands an external pattern, a nonhuman authority. Archibald MacLeish patterns demand atheism «23456789101112»