Posts tagged James Baldwin

Below is my continuing list of favorite quotes from The Atheist’s Bible: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Thoughts. As I said before, many of these are old familiar friends but quite a few are sparkling new jewels. I’ll post more as the treasure hunt progresses:-) Peace, Love & All That Other Good Stuff…TPO

• Without cultural sanction, most or all of our religious beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance. —John F. Schumaker
• If this is your God, he’s not very impressive. He has so many psychological problems; he’s so insecure. He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes. He’s a pretty poor excuse for a Supreme Being. —Gene Roddenberry
• I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously. —Douglas Adams
• Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, fl ags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. —James Baldwin
• The idea that He would take his attention away from the universe in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds is just so unlikely that I can’t go along with it. —Quentin Crisp
• In the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which religion offers to both is all too palpable. —Sigmund Freud
• I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian. The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher being like a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat—which wasn’t there. “That may be,” said the philosopher; “but a theologian would have found it.” —Julian Huxley
• The difference between religions and cults is determined by how much real estate is owned. —Frank Zappa
• The Way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason. —Benjamin Franklin
• My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it. —Thomas Edison
• Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization. —Steven Weinberg
• In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that has happened in politics or religion. —Carl Sagan
• Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. —Bertrand Russell
• I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe. —Simone De Beauvoir
• If there were not God, there would be no atheists. —G. K. Chesterton
• I’m a born-again atheist. —Gore Vidal
• 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? —Douglas Adams
• Somewhere, and I can’t find where, I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?” —Annie Dillard
• I’m not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I’m going to Hell? —Homer Simpson
• From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end. —G. K. Chesterton
• I turned to speak to God/About the world’s despair; But to make bad matters worse/I found God wasn’t there. —Robert Frost
• Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. —Isaac Asimov
• As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book. —Thomas Paine

Last quote found on page 69. Related Links: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Thoughts: Part 1

Note: Originally posted on my old blogspot site on 12/11/09