Quotes About Belief

Until it is clearly proved that the Universe was created, we may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. In a case where two propositions are diametrically opposite, the mind believes that which is less incomprehensible:

As an atheist, you abandon your imaginary friend, you forgo the comforting props of a celestial father figure to bail you out of trouble.

who wishes that there was a permanent, unalterable celestial despotism that subjected us to continual surveillance and could convict us of thought-crime, and who regarded us as its private property even after we died? How happy we ought to be, at the reflection that there exists not a shred of respectable evidence to support such a horrible hypothesis.

For some reason, many religions force themselves to think of the birth canal as a one-way street, and even the Koran treats the Virgin Mary with reverence.

phenomenon has reappeared in a more troubling form with the holy alliance between the believers and what they can borrow or steal from the world of science. Here is Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, a distinguished professor

Richard Dawkins may have phrased it most pungently when he argued that everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god—from Ra to Shiva—in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true—that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished.

Faith of that sort—the sort that can stand up at least for a while in a confrontation with reason—is now plainly impossible.

religion continues to pose an urgent threat to public health.

Actually, the leap of faith - to give it the memorable name that Soren Kierkegaard bestowed upon it - is an imposture. As he himself pointed out, it is not a leap that can be made once and for all. It is a leap that has to go on and on being performed, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary. This effort is actually too much for the human mind, and leads to delusions and manias.

That is not blind faith but just the opposite: faith continually tested, corrected and provisionally defended by the testimony of our senses and our common sense.

In other words, a handful of religious bullies and bigmouths could, so to speak, outvote the tradition of free expression in its Western heartland.

Abd al-Aziz bin Baz, the late grand mufti of Saudi Arabia

I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.

I have met many brave men and women, morally superior to myself, whose courage in adversity derives from their faith. But whenever they have chosen to speak or write about it, I have found myself appalled by the instant decline of their intellectual and moral standards. They want god on their side and believe they are doing his work--what is this, even at its very best, but an extreme from of solipsism?

já não temos nenhuma necessidade de um deus para explicar o que não é mais misterioso. O que os crentes farão agora que sua fé é opcional, particular e irrelevante é problema deles. Não devemos nos importar, desde que eles não façam novas tentativas de inculcar a religião por qualquer forma de coerção.

O ceticismo e as descobertas os libertaram do fardo de ter de defender seu deus como um cientista louco tolo, desajeitado e primário, e também de ter de responder a perguntas perturbadoras

Corruptio optimi pessima: no greater cruelty will be devised than by those who are sure, or are assured, that they are doing good.

Meanwhile, the hoarse proponents of "intelligent design" would be laying siege to yet another school board, demanding that tripe be taught to children.

One of the very many connections between religious belief an the sinister, spoiled, selfish childhood of our species is the repressed desire to see everything smashed up and ruined and brought to naught.

Tertuliano de que cuanto mayor es la estupidez, más fuerte es la creencia en ella, que la fe alcanza su cota máxima cuando sus enseñanzas son menos asimilables por la razón.

No creo en la inmortalidad del individuo, y considero que la ética es una preocupación exclusivamente humana que no está respaldada por ninguna autoridad sobrehumana.

And do you think that unto such as you A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew God gave a secret, and denied it me? Well, well—what matters it? Believe that, too! —THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM (RICHARD LE GALLIENNE TRANSLATION)