Quotes About Belief

Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

Imagine members of an art appreciation society pleading in court that they 'believe' they need a hallucinogenic drug in order to enhance their understanding of Impressionist or Surrealist paintings. Yet, when a church claims an equivalent need, it is backed by the highest court in the land. Such is the power of religion as a talisman.

Individual atheists may do evil things but they don't do evil things in the name of atheism.

Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.

Even if it were true that we need God to be moral, it would of course not make God's existence more likely, merely more desirable (many people cannot tell the difference).

it is only because of the weird convention, almost universally accepted (see the quotation from Douglas Adams here), that religious faith is uniquely privileged: above and beyond criticism. Insulting a restaurant might seem trivial compared to insulting God. But restaurateurs and chefs really exist and they have feelings to be hurt, whereas blasphemy, as the witty bumper sticker puts it, is a victimless crime.

Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles.

The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.

frequently recommend Miller's book, Finding Darwin's God

Anthropologically informed works, from Sir James Frazer's Golden Bough to Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained or Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust, fascinatingly document the bizarre phenomenology of superstition and ritual. Read such books and marvel at the richness of human gullibility. But that is not

A. N. Wilson in Jesus and Robin Lane Fox in The Unauthorized Version (among

Le fait qu'un croyant est plus heureux qu'un sceptique n'est pas plus pertinent que le fait qu'un homme ivre est plus heureux qu'un homme sobre ».

Bir yan?lg?dan bir kiÅŸi ac? çekiyorsa, buna delilik denir. Bir yan?lg?dan birçok insan ac? çektiÄŸinde ise buna Din denir.

Richard Dawkins

Ä°ÅŸte bu gerçek, yani ak?ll? tasar?m?n kendisine ait bir kan?t?n?n olmamas? ve kendi kan?t? yerine bilimsel bilginin b?rakt??? boÅŸluklarda bir yabani ot gibi geliÅŸmesi, bilim bir boÅŸluk bulduÄŸunda bunun araÅŸt?r?lmas? için çaÄŸr? yapma ihtiyac? aç?s?ndan s?k?nt? yaratan bir ÅŸeydir.

With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.' Blaise Pascal (he of the wager) said something similar: 'Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

EÄŸer bilim tarihi bize tek bir ÅŸey gösteriyorsa, o da cehaletimize 'Tanr?' etiketini yap??t?rarak bir yere ulaÅŸamad???m?zd?r.

Faith cannot move mountains (though generations of children are solemnly told the contrary and believe it). But it is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness. It leads people to believe in whatever it is so strongly that in extreme cases they are prepared to kill and to die for it without the need for further justification.

When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn't happen with holy books.

Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows—but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe . . . no, that's holy? . . . We

There are so many different faiths. How do you know the holy book you have been brought up with is the true one? And if all the others are wrong, what makes you think your holy book isn't wrong too?

45 per cent of the population of the United States firmly believes, to the contrary, an elementary falsehood: that all species separately owe their existence to 'intelligent design' less than ten thousand years ago.