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1 " Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot. "
― E.A. Bucchianeri , Brushstrokes of a Gadfly, (Gadfly Saga, #1)
2 " About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough. "
― Christopher Hitchens , Hitch 22: A Memoir
3 " We'd spent maybe ten minutes together, during which time I'd accidentally swung a sword at her, she'd saved my life, and I'd run away chased by a band of supernatural killing machines. You know, your typical chance meeting. "
― Rick Riordan , The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #4)
4 " I believe that the universe was formed around 15 billion years ago and that humans have evolved from their apelike ancestors over the past few million years. I believe we are more likely to live a good life if all humans try to work together in a world community, preserving planet earth. When decisions for groups are made in this world, I believe that the democratic process should be used. To protect the individual, I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from religion, freedom of inquiry, and a wall of separation between church and state. When making decisions about what is right or wrong, I believe I should use my intelligence to reason about the likely consequences of my actions. I believe that I should try to increase the happiness of everyone by caring for other people and finding ways to cooperate. Never should my actions discriminate against people simply because of their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, or national origin. I believe that ideas about what is right and wrong will change with education, so I am prepared to continually question ideas using evidence from experience and science. I believe there is no valid evidence to support claims for the existence of supernatural entities and deities. I will use these beliefs to guide my thinking and my actions until I find good reasons for revising them or replacing them with other beliefs that are more valid. "
5 " Of course, supernatural acts are what miracles are all about. They are, after all, precisely those things that circumvent the laws of nature. A god who can create the laws of nature can presumably also circumvent them at will. Although why they would have been circumvented so liberally thousands of years ago, before the invention of modern communication instruments that could have recorded them, and not today, is still something to wonder about. "
― Lawrence M. Krauss , A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing
6 " War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out. "
― Joseph de Maistre
7 " I sit and ponder my existence: how I'm here, what put me here in these thoughts, these feelings, birthed from a timeless sleep, what it felt like, or rather the lack thereof, to not have been and now to 'be', and suddenly, I realize how absurd I am to exist, the fragility in my understanding of existence; I then wonder why the supernatural, the thought of other beings, of God or of gods, must be distinctly absurd - by which I am no longer sure. 'If I exist and I have made myself absurd to me, then why not they exist while merely believed absurd by me?' Perhaps it is true that in a wandering head, one full of wonders, the natural becomes supernatural and the supernatural becomes preternatural (or rational within the sights of discovery and explanation), just as the return home after a life-long journey feels, for a moment, foreign after the many experiences. "
― Criss Jami , Healology
8 " I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths. "
― Alain de Botton , Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
9 " God is A.W.E.S.O.M.E! HE is Always Working Extraordinary Supernatural On-time Miracles Everyday "
10 " Do I have YOUR permission to be a Supernatural God? If I want to open heaven, and in a moment in time, touch the heart of a daughter and supernaturally break all the darkness, shame, and torment in her life, MAY I DO THAT? "
― , Unmasked
11 " God first appeared on the scene of human history in the role of a matchmaker. What a profound and exciting revelation!Is it too much to suggest that Eve came to Adam on the arm of the Lord Himself in the same way that a bride today walks down the aisle of the church on her father’s arm? What human mind can fathom the depth of love and joy that filled the heart of the great Creator as He united the man and woman in this first marriage ceremony?Surely this account is one among countless indications that the Bible is not a work of merely human authorship. Moses is generally accepted as the author of the creation record. But apart from supernatural inspiration, he would never have dared to open human history with a scene of such amazing intimacy—first between God and man, and then between man and woman. "
― Derek Prince , God Is a Matchmaker
12 " God is but a supernatural spirit. He resides dormant in you, until you awaken to liberate yourself from this ignorance that you are body and mind. "
― Gian Kumar
13 " We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise. "
― Abraham H. Maslow
14 " Stored personal memories along with handed down collective memories of stories, legends, and history allows us to collate our interactions with a physical and social world and develop a personal code of survival. In essence, we all become self-styled sages, creating our own book of wisdom based upon our studied observations and practical knowledge gleaned from living and learning. What we quickly discover is that no textbook exist how to conduct our life, because the world has yet to produce a perfect person – an ideal observer – whom is capable of handing down a concrete exemplar of epistemic virtues. We each draw upon the guiding knowledge, theories, and advice available for us in order to explore the paradoxes, ironies, inconsistencies, and the absurdities encountered while living in a supernatural world. We mold our personal collection of information into a practical practicum how to live and die. Each day we define and redefine who we are, determine how we will react today, and chart our quest into an uncertain future. "
― , Dead Toad Scrolls
15 " From Les Miserables:All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accent of children, -- voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom.Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel.These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment. "
16 " Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and handand asshole holy!Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere isholy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's anangel!The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman isholy as you my soul are holy!The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice isholy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holyKerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-sady holy the unknown buggered and sufferingbeggars holy the hideous human angels!Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocksof the grandfathers of Kansas!Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bopapocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuanahipsters peace & junk & drums!Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holythe cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy themysterious rivers of tears under the streets!Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of themiddle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy MoscowHoly Istanbul!Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy theclocks in space holy the fourth dimension holythe fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy thelocomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy theabyss!Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!bodies! suffering! magnanimity!Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligentkindness of the soul! "
― Allen Ginsberg , Howl and Other Poems
17 " Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable. "
― G.K. Chesterton
18 " Surprisingly, the Christian faith today is perceived as disconnected from the supernatural world – a dimension that the vast majority of outsiders believe can be accessed and influenced. "
― David Kinnaman , Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why It Matters
19 " I saw that, although they were at the mercy of the sweltering heat, or the pains of aging or poverty, they could tolerate these because their faith gave them the hope of being united in spirit with a supernatural presence. I still denied that presence. My denial, I was realizing, was my armor; it allowed me to deflect a barrage of difficult questions. But it didn't answer those questions. It protected me from charlatans, yes, but it didn't fill my emptiness or give me direction. Doubt served a purpose, but it also prevented me from trusting anyone or anything. Without trust, how could I ever be happy? "
20 " You are a hater of activity in life; quite right, for before there can be any meaning in activity, life must have continuity, and this your life lacks. You occupy yourself with your studies, that is true, you are even industrious. But it is only for your own sake and is done with as little teleology as possible. Otherwise you are unoccupied; like those workers in the Gospel, you stand idle in the marketplace (Matthew 20:3). You stick your hands in your pockets and observe life. Then you rest in despair, nothing occupies you, you don’t step aside for anything: “if someone were to throw a tile down from the roof I wouldn’t get out of the way.” You are like someone dying, you die daily, not in the profound, serious sense in which one usually takes that word, but life has lost its reality and “you always reckon your lifetime from one day’s notice to quit to the next”. You let everything pass you by, it makes no impression, but then suddenly something comes which grips you, an idea, a situation, a smile from a young girl, and then you are “in touch”; for just as on some occasions you are not in touch, so at others you are in touch and of service in every way. Wherever something is going on you are “in touch”. You conduct your life as it is your custom to behave in a crowd, you “work your way into the thickest of it, trying if possible to be forced up above the others so as to be able to lie on top of them”; if you manage to get up there you “make yourself as comfortable as possible”, and this is also the way you let yourself be carried along through life. But when the crowd disperses, when the event is over, you stand once more at the street corner and look at the world. A dying person possesses, as you know, a supernatural energy, and so too with you. If there is an idea to be thought through, a work to be read through, a plan to be carried out, a little adventure to be experienced - yes, a hat to be bought, you take hold of the matter with an immense energy. According to circumstance, you work on untiringly for a day, for a month; you are happy in the assurance that you still have the same abundance of strength as before, you take no rest, “no Satan can keep up with you”. If you work together with others, you work them into the ground. But then when the month or, what you always consider the maximum, the six months have gone, you break off and say, “and that’s the end of the story”. You retire and leave it all to the other party, or if you have been working alone you talk to no one about what you were doing. You then pretend to yourself and others that you have lost the desire and flatter yourself with the vain thought that you could have kept working with the same intensity if that is what you desired. But that is an immense deception. You would have succeeded in finishing it, as most others, if you had patiently willed it so, but you would have found out at the same time that it needs a kind of perseverance quite different from yours. "
