Home > Topic > an atheist
21 " You are an atheist if you do not believe in yourself "
22 " You don’t so much as become an atheist as find out that’s what you are. There’s no moment of conversion. You don’t suddenly think ‘I don’t believe this anymore.’ You essentially find you don’t believe it. "
― Christopher Hitchens
23 " You are an atheist if you do not believe in yourself. "
24 " I am an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people. "
― Katharine Hepburn
25 " Logically, this kind of atheism did not prove that there was no God.... On the contrary, Southwell was typical in placing the onus probandi on those who affirmed the existence of God and Holyoake regarded himself as an atheist only in his inability to believe what the churches would have him believe. They were content to show that the Christian concept of the supernatural was meaningless, that the arguments in its favor were illogical, and that the mysteries of the universe, insofar as they were explicable, could be accounted for in material terms. "
― Edward Royle
26 " ...properly a theory about knowledge, not about religion. A theist and a Christian may be an agnostic; an atheist may not be an agnostic. An atheist may deny that there is God, and in this case his atheism is dogmatic and not agnostic. Or he may refuse to acknowledge that there is a God simply on the ground that he perceives no evidence for his existence and finds the arguments which have been advanced in proof of it invalid. In this case his atheism is critical, not agnostic. The atheist may be, and not infrequently is, an agnostic. "
27 " In classrooms and living rooms across the globe, an agnostic or an atheist may be heard to strenuously argue, 'But the Bible is just a book.' Similar arguments may be raised against other holy books. But they all are too ironic, by half. A book is the Bible. "
― Gerald Weaver , Gospel Prism
28 " Many an atheist is a believer without knowing it juast as many a believer is an atheist without knowing it. You can sincerely believe there is no God and live as though there is. You can sincerely believe there is a God and live as though there isn't. "
― Frederick Buechner , Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith
29 " Being an atheist means you have to realise that when you die, that really is it. You've got to make the most of what you've got here and spread as much influence as you can. I believe that you only live through the influence that you spread, whether that means having a kid or making music....I don't believe in heaven or hell, I don't really believe in that version. "
― Matthew Bellamy
30 " It is not easy to explain why God permits evil; but it is impossible for an atheist to explain the existence of goodness. How could a spiritless, soul-less, cross-less, Godless universe become the center of faith, purity, sacrifice, and martyrdom? How can decency be the decent thing if there is no God? Since God is love, why should we be surprised that want of it should end in pain, hate, broken hearts, and war? "
― Fulton J. Sheen , Fulton Sheen's Wartime Prayer Book
31 " To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his non-existence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof. "
― Ursula K. Le Guin , The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4)
32 " The long and the short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality. I call the premise of this argument ‘hard atheism’ because it is analogous to a thesis in philosophy known as ‘hard determinism.’ The latter holds that if metaphysical determinism is true, then there is no such thing as free will. Thus, a ‘soft determinist’ believes that, even if your reading of this column right now has followed by causal necessity from the Big Bang fourteen billion years ago, you can still meaningfully be said to have freely chosen to read it. Analogously, a ‘soft atheist’ would hold that one could be an atheist and still believe in morality. And indeed, the whole crop of ‘New Atheists’ are softies of this kind. So was I, until I experienced my shocking epiphany that the religious fundamentalists are correct: without God, there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality. "
33 " You'll be pleased to hear, Christopher, that I am no longer a Muslim liberal but an atheist [....] I find that it obviates the necessity for any cognitive dissonance. "
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali
34 " The difference between an atheist and a person of faith? One additional religion in the crazy column. You believe that all religions except yours are crazy. I believe that all religions including yours are crazy. "
― Quentin R. Bufogle , Horse Latitudes
35 " If Aliosha had come to the conclusion that neither God nor immortality existed, he would immediately have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not only a question of the working classes; it is above all, in its contemporary incarnation, a question of atheism, a question of the tower of Babel, which is constructed without God's help, not to reach to the heavens, but to bring the heavens down to earth. "
― Albert Camus , The Rebel
36 " When an atheist is born, a kitten kills a god. "
37 " You call yourself an Atheist because you don’t believe in the supernatural. But one thing you do not realize is that your unbelief in the supernatural is a belief in its own nature. "
― King Samuel Benson
38 " The surname of an atheist is compound unfortunate plus being, therefore unfortunate-beings, making all atheists unfortunate beings because human beings are created by God and not products of big bang atoms undergoing evolution. "
― S. E. Entsua-Mensah
39 " To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom. "
― Michel de Montaigne , The Complete Essays
40 " The difference between a theist and an atheist is the degree to which God has revealed himself to them. "
― Eli Of Kittim , The Little Book of Revelation: The First Coming of Jesus at the End of Days