“I’m an atheist. The good news about atheists is that we have no mandate to convert anyone. So you’ll never find me on your doorstep on a Saturday morning with a big smile, saying, ‘Just stopped by to tell you there is no word. I brought along this little blank book I was hoping you could take a look at.’ ”
“Theologically speaking, Rod was what we call a naturalistic humanist, and that was the underlying philosophy of my pulpit. Racial issues, class, power — you find all of these in his writings, and he found reinforcements for his viewpoints in his congregation.”
“It is my contention that no other invention of man has brought greater chaos to humanity than the practice of religion.”
"I think we should all be doubting Thomases. I think it's good to be skeptical and question everything. Question everything!"
"There are things about organized religion which I resent. Christ is revered as the Prince of Peace, but more blood has been shed in His name than any other figure in history. You show me one step forward in the name of religion and I'll show you a hundred retrogressions. Remember, they were men of God who destroyed the educational treasures at Alexandria, who perpetrated the Inquisition in Spain, who burned the witches at Salem. Over 25,000 organized religions flourish on this planet, but the followers of each think all the others are miserably misguided and probably evil as well. In India they worship white cows, monkeys and a dip in the Ganges. The Moslems accept slavery and prepare for Allah, who promises wine and revirginated women. And witch doctors aren't just in Africa. If you look in the L.A. papers of a Sunday morning, you'll see the local variety advertising their wares like suits with two pairs of pants."
"As I see it, man is a product of his conditioning, and the social forces which mold his morality and conduct — including racial prejudice — are influenced more by material things like food and economic necessities than by the fear and awe and bigotry generated by the high priests of commercialized superstition. Now don't get me wrong. I'm for decency — period. I'm for anything and everything that bodes love and consideration for my fellow man. But when lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday — cash me out."
—Sinatra, born on this date in 1915. (Interview, Playboy magazine, February 1963)
*EDITOR'S NOTE: There is no evidence that alleged witches were burned in North America. That did happen in Europe, however. Sinatra's claims about more people being killed in Jesus' name is also unsubstantiated, although certainly millions have been. Likewise, it's not been demonstrated that Muslims supported slavery more than Christians or some other religions.
"[I]t's fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don't believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. ... The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong."
CBS INTERVIEWER: "I get a sense that gratitude is very important to you."
RAITT: "That's true. I don't think anybody's ever mentioned that before. But I think it's probably the closest thing to religion that I have, is just being grateful."
"So much of religion is like, 'Well if you were praying about it, if you were good with God, that would fix everything.' "
THE ONION: Is there a God?
PAUL BARMAN: Obviously not.
O: Why obviously not?
PB: Isn't believing in God like wearing chain mail?
O: In that it protects you from being lanced?
PB: [Laughs.] In that you just don't do it anymore.
THE ONION: Is there a God?
RICHTER: I don't think so. I don't know. ... I actually think that not having a focus on God would make life better, because there would be more of an imperative to be nice to each other. There would be no more brand-name wars over stuff, and pointless arguments over east side/west side, go-fight-win.
Cause if there is a personal God, then he’s been jerkin’ off
So why would he bother designing an albatross
Especially when natural selection does such an excellent job
Just by balancing benefits and costs?
I say banish God into the gaps
If he can’t help us understand the simplest facts
I want a relaxed God of infinite naps
We’ll be all right without him, just give us a chance.
The weak and the strong, who got it goin’ on
We lived in the dark for so long
The weak and the strong, Darwin got it goin’ on
Creationism is dead wrong.
"I'm pathetically pragmatic. ... I don't believe that there's a higher power that created human beings."
Freedom to oppress
In the name of righteousness
Religious freedom to scratch where it itches
Religious freedom to burn our own witches.
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.
"I love how when people watch I don’t know, David Attenborough or Discovery Planet type thing you know where you see the absolute phenomenal majesty and complexity and bewildering beauty of nature and you stare at it and then … somebody next to you goes, 'And how can you say there is no God? Look at that.' And then five minutes later you’re looking at the lifecycle of a parasitic worm whose job is to bury itself in the eyeball of a little lamb and eat the eyeball from inside while the lamb dies in horrible agony and then you turn to them and say, 'Yeah, where is your God now?' "
"[T]here are two sorts of atheists. One sort claims that there is no deity; the other claims that there is no evidence that proves the existence of a deity. I belong to the latter group, because if I were to claim that no god exists, I would have to produce evidence to establish that claim, and I cannot."
"I'm afraid I don't believe in God. My mother was devout and so is my wife. But I have the intellectual arrogance that makes it very hard to believe in him. I don't have the gift of faith. I remember at school I used to make up sins at confession. What we were told were sins by priests were not sins at all."
“I remember Mom not even saying ‘God bless you.’ She’d say ‘Guhbless you’ because she didn’t want us to say ‘God.’ ”
“The idea of an ordered and elegant universe is a lovely one. One worth clinging to. But you don't need religion to appreciate the ordered existence. It's not just an idea. It's reality. We're discovering the hidden orders of the universe every day. The inverse square law of gravitation is amazing. Fractals, the theory of relativity, the genome: these are magnificently beautiful constructs.”
"Linda went to Catholic school, but it didn’t take. 'I was an atheist by third grade,' she told me, though there is a Haitian goddess she prays to, for President Obama."
“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.”
"Religion should be made fun of. It's quite ridiculous, isn't it? This is how people spend their lives. They have no idea, then they go around as if this is a fact. It's so insane, you know. If I really believed that stuff I'd keep it to myself, lest somebody would think I was out of my mind."
James Lipton: Do you share House's skepticism?
Hugh Laurie: [laughing] I do. Big chunks of it, yes. I'm not a religious man. Again, I think this is connected to my father. My father was religious oddly enough, but I nonetheless I suppose was impressed by [and] enamored of his devotion to medical science. I find I am a fan of science. I believe in science."
"I'm much more like the product of a doctor than I am a Jew. I don't believe in [an afterlife]. I believe this is it, and I believe it's the best way to live."
“If you were not born into [religious] culture, it seems like the most outlandish thing in the world.”
“I think [religion] is presumptuous and I think it is silly, because it makes you believe that you are less than what you can be. As long as you can blame everything on some unseen deity, you don’t ever have to be responsible for your own behavior.”
Matt Lauer: There have been calls from some religious groups. They wanted a disclaimer at the beginning of this movie saying it is fiction because, again, one of the themes in the book really knocks Christianity right on its ear. ... How would you all have felt if there was a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie?
Ian McKellen: Well, I've often thought the bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith. And I have faith in this movie. Not that it's true, not that it's factual, but that it's a jolly good story. And I think audiences are clever enough and bright enough to separate out fact and fiction, and discuss the thing after they've seen it.
"As for hell, mocking this imaginary threat rather strikes at the heart of religious belief in a way that I suspect most believers only intuitively grasp. It’s a crucial support in their house of cards. Without hell, heaven is pointless."
"There had never been any renunciation of religion on my part, but like so many people, it was a gradual fading away."
"When one guy sees an invisible man he's a nut case. Ten people see him it's a cult. Ten million people see him it's a respected religion."
"I have made compacts with fourteen different persons that whichever of us died first would communicate with the other if it were possible, but I have never received a word."
MOMENT: Have you always been an atheist?
REINER: I became an atheist after Hitler came. I said, what is this? If there was a God, would he not be hearing 18 million people, 16 million Jews, or 20 million other people, saying,"Please God, don’t do this, make him stop?" God was so busy doing what? Striping zebras or fixing the long necks of giraffes?
"I have so much love in my life. So many people who love me and I love back makes the idea I need more from a God insane. I look at my children and I’m overwhelmed with this pure love that is not filtered through any sort of God."
"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."
"To me, faith as practiced all around me was blindly tied to religion, and religion was preachers in Harlem and Jamaica passing the hat for Jesus and driving off in fancy cars. It was nuns invoking the Christian spirit and rapping my knuckles with sticks. It was priests blessing Italian troops on the newsreels, sending them off to slaughter defenseless Ethiopians. I failed to see any good in the hypocrisy of that."
"The day he left home [to fight in World War II], he remembers his mother and two sisters putting him on the train with the words, 'Thank God you've got your religion. You're going to need it now.' From that day, he says, he never went to Mass again. 'At home, you had to. Then, when I left the family, I stopped.' "
"I said in an interview not long ago that I didn't believe in God, and people called my mother saying, 'How do you feel about Beth being an atheist?' "
“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.”
"Although never overtly religious, Newman said he chose to think of himself as Jewish because it was 'more challenging.' "