"I grew up in a religious home, but I’m not religious right now. ... I saw a lot of hypocrisy. I felt like religion, in a lot of ways, was used to control and subdue people rather than to bring out the best in them sometimes."

"I do like talking with friends about big concepts, you know, the stuff that will ruin a party. To me, the party hasn't begun until we're talking about the nonexistence of God."

“So many wars and strife are borne out of opposing religious views. If people don’t have kindness, respect, tolerance, and compassion at the core of their beliefs, then their religion is pointless.”

"People on death row, the treatment of animals, women's right to choose. So much in America is based on religious fundamentalist Christianity. Grow up! This is the modern world!"

“De t’ings dat yo’ li’ble
to read in de Bible
it ain’t necessarily so.”

"The only responsibility is to ourselves. If we all found God tomorrow and wanted to do a gospel show, we would do it. I never will — I'm an atheist. But if we drive people away because of the music we're making or what we're saying, fine. Don't come in."

“I’m a total atheist, and for me it’s just about trying to find something that rises above the banal day-to-day bullshit of living.”

“If you can believe in God, then you can believe in anything. It’s a gang mentality.”

"And the flames of hell, they seemed so high
When I could barely see over the pew
I was just a boy when they told me that lie
But lord, it felt so true.

And that's a hell of a thing to do to a kid
Just to teach him right from wrong
You can burn in hell the rest of your days
Or you can choose to sing along."

INNERVIEWS: Are you an atheist?
WILSON: I guess I am in some ways your archetypal atheist. I think the whole myth of religion is absolutely absurd. I say this with the caveat that I understand it brings happiness to people who would otherwise be unhappy. There is comfort in it for people who would otherwise be tortured by their own existence and all that stuff. I appreciate those reasons and arguments, but at the end of the day, I’m afraid it’s just a silly fairy tale that mankind has dreamed up because of our fear of death. It’s as simple as that.

“A lot of people really struggle to find out what they want to do in life, but I knew as soon as I saw Elvis Presley, when I was 11. From that point, music became my religion, my nourishment.”

INTERVIEWER: "Do you believe in God?"
MONK: "I don’t know nothing. Do you?”

"Like many nineteenth-century artists, Verdi was an agnostic whose elevated sense of morality and duty bypassed divine sanction. Strepponi, replying in 1871 to a friend bent on Verdi's conversion, at first wrote that, with the highest virtues, her husband was an atheist; she then revised this to 'I won't say an atheist, but certainly very little of a believer.' "

“And yes I have all of the usual objections
To the miseducation of children who, in tax-exempt institutions,
Are taught to externalize blame
And to feel ashamed and to judge things as plain right and wrong
But I quite like the songs. ”

I've spent twenty years learning to live
In a world that takes back all that it gives
But I do not want a war
'Cause I'm not in for killing another man
Defending my holy land
As if there's a god who would understand.

“I actively disliked the Church and its institutionalized morality which I felt bedeviled Ireland.”

"[I]f ever I'm asked if I'm religious I always reply, 'Yes, I'm a devout musician.' Music puts me in touch with something beyond the intellect, something otherworldly, something sacred."

FAN BLOG (rating McDonnell's “hotness points”):
FAITH: Unknown but believed to be an atheist.
McDONNELL: I am an atheist.
FAN BLOG: Minus 50 points.
McDONNELL: Oh well, reason loses again.

"After a lot of reading, and research, I realized I didn't have any secret channel picking up secret messages from God or anyone else. That voice in my head was my own."

“I'm an atheist. ... How unfortunate it is to assign responsibility to the higher up for justice amongst people.”

"I had some pretty dark and desperate moments all those years ago. ... I didn't ever smash up a hotel room or throw a TV out a window. That was Led Zeppelin. Thank god. If there was a god, you know, which there isn't."

"A confirmed atheist, he had not been inside a church in years."

“Jesus wasn’t the messiah. Get back, I’m a heretic and I’m on fire.”

“I’m an atheist.”

"I don’t believe in God, and I’m not really a big fan of religion, any of them."

“I don’t have belief in the Holy Book. I don’t think many English people do.” 

“People use God to fill in the spaces in the gaps of their knowledge. ... As we follow the trajectory of knowledge, the need for a God just dwindles, and it approaches zero.” 

REASON: Have you put your religious training behind you, or is it something you still think about a lot?
CORNELL: No, it isn't. I feel sorry for the people who honestly swallow it. To me they're fish. I don't wanna be a fish.

"Some of the preachers that promise you hamburgers in the hereafter get on my nerves; what I'd really like to do is to give 'em a hunk of blackberry pie right in the face."

“I think there is a puritanical wind that is blowing. I have never seen such a lack of separation between church and state in America.” 

Shameful rivalries of creed
Shall not make the martyr bleed,
In the good time coming.
Religion shall be shorn of pride,
And flourish all the stronger;
And Charity shall trim her lamp;
Wait a little longer.

“What a blessing to know there’s a devil, and that I’m but a pawn in his game / that my impulse to sin doesn’t come from within, and so I’m not exactly to blame.” 

"Basically, Abrahamic religion belongs to the Middle Ages, and we’re moving beyond that now. We’re moving beyond wanting religion to do things it used to do. It used to have an explanatory role, but science has taken that place. It used to be the main source of beauty and awe, but art has taken that role. It used to be the main source of sanctions, but law has taken that role. What remains is what primitive people use it for – consolation and community-building."

Howard Stern: Are you the type of guy that believes in karma and things like that?
Billy Joel: Yes ... well, not in the religious or spiritual sense, I just, you know, that's how things seem to work out.
Stern: Are you religious, do you believe in a God?
Joel: No.
Stern: You don't.
Joel: I'm an atheist.

“I leaf through [the bible] quite often — if only to shake my head in disgust. I quote Leviticus to people who think that every word in the Bible is absolutely gospel and you need to obey every word. In Leviticus it says you must kill a bull if you’re going to really love God. And you must kill it in a certain way, or else you will be killed.”

"When I am asked what religion I am, I don't hesitate to answer. I don't believe in religion."

“From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. The reality is that organized religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.”

“I still wouldn’t define myself as an atheist — it’s too absolute. But I don’t have any faith. I think faith is an absurd thing but I’m OK with that. There are no answers because the universe never asked a question in the first place.”

"So for me, the idea I would be able to have an entertaining and enjoyable afternoon discussing with people with whom I suppose I have to say I disagree at the most fundamental level, because I don't have a particular faith, or any faith in fact – however, I think that difference of opinion and view of the world is to be celebrated and explored."

“In the theory of evolution there is no talk of God and no Bibles are used. They're not looking for higher powers, extraterrestrials, or anything else that could be found in the science fiction section, because they are not dealing with fiction.” 

THE ONION A.V. CLUB: Is there a God?
MOMUS: Uh, I'm an atheist.

"In accordance with Larry's wishes — he was an inveterate atheist who refused to recognise the supernatural in any shape or form — there were no religious observances."

“One of the interesting parts about Christianity, at least the way that I experienced it, was that you are in a sense responsible for this whole system of thought and belief that you literally don’t have a chance to investigate thoroughly. When you do come in contact with certain bits of information for the first time, it’s not like, ‘Hey, check this out. See what you think. Reject it or accept it.’ It’s always that you’re discovering this system that you’ve already signed on the dotted line affirming.”

“I’m definitely against all organized religion just because, when you really look at it, organized religion has caused most of the deaths in the history of this planet. Most of the wars were fought over organized religion.”

“We owe a faith to the world and to ourselves. We owe a grace and gratitude to things that have brought us here. But I think it’s very ignorant to say, ‘Well, for everything, God has a plan.’ That’s like an excuse. Maybe the real faithful act is to commit to something, to take action, as opposed to saying, ‘Well, everything is in the hand of God.’ ” 

"I'm actually not Buddhist. It's just that I'm bald and I have a certain demeanor and my voice is really low when I talk. ... I was raised Christian, though I'm not Christian either."