Quotes & More Quotes by Atheists (sig fodder inside)

Mark Hamill · 03-09-2012 9:36pm

Sulla Felix wrote: »

Actually said by Dr Arroway in Contact, but whatevs.

Carl Sagan wrote Contact.

Sulla Felix · 03-09-2012 11:12pm

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Carl Sagan wrote Contact.

I know, I've read it several times. It's been a while since I've needed to use the APA or similar but isn't the convention to cite the character rather than the scriptwriter or author when dealing with fiction?

Mark Hamill · 04-09-2012 2:32pm

Sulla Felix wrote: »

I know, I've read it several times. It's been a while since I've needed to use the APA or similar but isn't the convention to cite the character rather than the scriptwriter or author when dealing with fiction?

Oh, I thought you didn't realise

. I don't know what the convention is, but I imagine the quote carries more weight with Sagans' name after it rather than a fictional scientists name.

Dades · 04-09-2012 5:46pm

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I imagine the quote carries more weight with Sagans' name after it rather than a fictional scientists name.

That's an interesting point. I'd imagine an scientific assertion certainly would carry more weight if the person was an "expert", but a quote in the form of a philosophical opinion should stand on it own I'd have thought.

Like those occasional great quotes you read attributed to -unknown.

sephir0th · 05-09-2012 12:20am

Kivaro · 05-09-2012 1:38am

Faith-is-a-cop-out ......

I wish Faith was an opt-in system.

mikhail · 05-09-2012 2:31pm

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Oh, I thought you didn't realise . I don't know what the convention is, but I imagine the quote carries more weight with Sagans' name after it rather than a fictional scientists name.

Sulla Felix is right. After all, if you wrote a novel in which one character was a bigot, you wouldn't want to hear his dialogue attributed to you as if you had said it yourself.

Sulla Felix · 05-09-2012 4:32pm

mikhail wrote: »

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Oh, I thought you didn't realise . I don't know what the convention is, but I imagine the quote carries more weight with Sagans' name after it rather than a fictional scientists name.

Sulla Felix is right. After all, if you wrote a novel in which one character was a bigot, you wouldn't want to hear his dialogue attributed to you as if you had said it yourself.

I just couldn't in good conscience vote for a person who doesn't believe in God. Someone who honestly thinks the other ninety five percent of us suffer from some form of mass delusion. - Carl sagan.

I'm gonnaw troll reddit with that.

Delirium · 14-09-2012 11:12am

Turtwig · 17-09-2012 11:55pm

Finally Dawkins has been given the Zen treatment.

2012-09-18-dawkins.jpg?9d7bd4

fitz0 · 20-09-2012 12:41pm

How stridently arrogant of him.

:pac:

CerebralCortex · 20-09-2012 1:47pm

Jernal wrote: »

Finally Dawkins has been given the Zen treatment.

Of all the things Dawkins says this has to be has worst and most philosophically shallow. I hate it. I don't at all feel lucky that I get the opportunity to die and I would rather a smarter better designed/evolve entity existed in my place. I don't feel sorry for those better people because they don't exist. If I didn't exist I wouldn't feel unlucky because there is no a priori me. It's also sanctimonious and paints a picture of life I personally find ugly.

Turtwig · 21-09-2012 2:38am

CerebralCortex wrote: »

Of all the things Dawkins says this has to be has worst and most philosophically shallow. I hate it. I don't at all feel lucky that I get the opportunity to die and I would rather a smarter better designed/evolve entity existed in my place. I don't feel sorry for those better people because they don't exist. If I didn't exist I wouldn't feel unlucky because there is no a priori me. It's also sanctimonious and paints a picture of life I personally find ugly.

I see where you're coming from and can't really disagree with it.

CerebralCortex · 21-09-2012 4:11pm

Jernal wrote: »

I see where you're coming from and can't really disagree with it.

I would class that outlook as humanist conservatism. The idea that you should love what you're given and not complain. It's the exact opposite thinking that brought me to atheism in the first place.

Gbear · 03-10-2012 8:02pm

I ****ing love Louis CK.

Gbear · 08-10-2012 12:58am

ShooterSF · 11-10-2012 1:38am

I heard it first from Hitchens and it wouldn't surprise me if it originated with him, "don't swallow your moral code in tablet form"

The Mad Hatter · 11-10-2012 10:48am

Gbear wrote: »

Didn't think that sounded like Wilde, so I did a bit of Googling and it's turned up some interesting results. Wilde isn't the first person that quote has been misattributed to: there are earlier examples attributed to Charles Darwin, but referring to mathematicians, not religion. Even earlier than that it's been used by Lord Bowen to describe metaphysics and by William James on philosophy. H. L. Mencken put it neatly when he said "A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it."

It seems likely to me that it was just a phrase in common use in the nineteenth century to describe anyone with a futile or pointless task. And, like a lot of phrases that come from the nineteenth century without a source attached, it's been attributed to Wilde, in the same way that any piece of anonymous British comedy winds up attributed to John Cleese.

(I took most of that information from Wikiquote on Charles Darwin.)

Mardy Bum · 11-10-2012 11:09am

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Didn't think that sounded like Wilde, so I did a bit of Googling and it's turned up some interesting results. Wilde isn't the first person that quote has been misattributed to: there are earlier examples attributed to Charles Darwin, but referring to mathematicians, not religion. Even earlier than that it's been used to describe metaphysicians and the job of a judge. It seems likely to me that it was just a phrase in common use in the nineteenth century to describe anyone with a futile or pointless task.

I was thinking that myself Wilde actually said

Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what I can touch and look at.

Gbear · 11-10-2012 5:52pm

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Didn't think that sounded like Wilde, so I did a bit of Googling and it's turned up some interesting results. Wilde isn't the first person that quote has been misattributed to: there are earlier examples attributed to Charles Darwin, but referring to mathematicians, not religion. Even earlier than that it's been used by Lord Bowen to describe metaphysics and by William James on philosophy. H. L. Mencken put it neatly when he said "A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it."

It seems likely to me that it was just a phrase in common use in the nineteenth century to describe anyone with a futile or pointless task. And, like a lot of phrases that come from the nineteenth century without a source attached, it's been attributed to Wilde, in the same way that any piece of anonymous British comedy winds up attributed to John Cleese.

(I took most of that information from Wikiquote on Charles Darwin.)

Yeah, I was a bit suspicious but I googled it and it was attributed to him on several pages so I just went with it.

Soz:o

Delirium · 13-10-2012 1:16pm

"The basis of your religion is injustice. The Son of God the pure, the immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed for the guilty. This proves his heroism, but no more does away with man's sin that a boy's volunteering to be flogged for another would exculpate a dunce from negligence." - Lord Byron.

Delirium · 16-10-2012 10:46pm

"Most Christian theologians have retreated from all things that their religion supposedly asserts; they take a much more 'modern' view than the average belivever. But by the time you've 'modernised' something like Christianity- starting off with 'Genesis was all just poetry' and ending up with 'Well, of course there's no such thing as a personal God' - there's not much point pretending that there's anything religious left. You might as well come clean and admit that you're an atheist with certain values, which are historical, cultural, biological and personal in origin, and have nothing to do with anything called God."

-Greg Egan

magicbastarder · 31-10-2012 4:44pm

There's really nothing an agnostic can't do if he really doesn't know whether he believes in anything or not.

-- Graham Chapman

robindch · 02-11-2012 1:35pm

A propos of Graham Champan:

Sulla Felix · 04-11-2012 2:55pm

You see, no one's going to help you Bubby, because there isn't anybody out there to do it. No one. We're all just complicated arrangements of atoms and subatomic particles - we don't live. But our atoms do move about in such a way as to give us identity and consciousness. We don't die; our atoms just rearrange themselves. There is no God. There can be no God; it's ridiculous to think in terms of a superior being. An inferior being, maybe, because we, we who don't even exist, we arrange our lives with more order and harmony than God ever arranged the earth. We measure; we plot; we create wonderful new things. We are the architects of our own existence. What a lunatic concept to bow down before a God who slaughters millions of innocent children, slowly and agonizingly starves them to death, beats them, tortures them, rejects them. What folly to even think that we should not insult such a God, damn him, think him out of existence. It is our duty to think God out of existence. It is our duty to insult him. **** you, God! Strike me down if you dare, you tyrant, you non-existent fraud! It is the duty of all human beings to think God out of existence. Then we have a future. Because then - and only then - do we take full responsibility for who we are. And that's what you must do, Bubby: think God out of existence; take responsibility for who you are.

ShooterSF · 05-11-2012 6:00pm

Technically a deist I believe but I'm willing to look past that for such awesomeness.

Bannasidhe · 08-11-2012 10:19pm

Ain't that the truth!

pauldla · 09-11-2012 10:09am

^^^

Oh, to be able to give mutliple thanks! Good on you, Bannasidhe.

Bannasidhe · 05-12-2012 2:56pm

sephir0th · 05-01-2013 3:09pm

Carl Sagan wrote:

“You might imagine an uncharitable extraterrestrial observer looking down on our species... - with us excitedly chattering, "The Universe is created for us! We're at the center! Everything pays homage to us!" - and concluding that our pretensions are amusing, our aspirations pathetic, that this must be the planet of the idiots.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGPUdomqS5E

robindch · 14-01-2013 3:41pm

Obliq · 14-01-2013 5:28pm

That's a pretty thought. Nice

[Jackass] · 16-01-2013 12:21am

"All thinking men are atheists — Ernest Hemingway"

Bannasidhe · 16-01-2013 12:30am

[Jackass] wrote: »

"All thinking men are atheists — Ernest Hemingway"

The sexist old coot.

:pac:

Genghiz Cohen · 16-01-2013 3:21pm

Bannasidhe wrote: »

The sexist old coot.

:pac:

OMG CHECK UR PRIVLAGE!

Delirium · 21-01-2013 10:56pm

Pale blue dot is ZenPencils #100

Turtwig · 21-01-2013 11:01pm

Was just about to post it.

Delirium · 21-01-2013 11:06pm

figured you might :pac:

Genghiz Cohen · 21-01-2013 11:08pm

Jernal wrote: »

Was just about to post it.

It's been about 10 mins, it deserves another post.

Turtwig · 21-01-2013 11:11pm

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

It's been about 10 mins, it deserves another post.

How many PBD versions have we on this thread? Tomorrow or Thursday I shall go through the thread to see if we missed any obvious one.

PBD.

The Mad Hatter · 21-01-2013 11:21pm

No matter how many times I read or hear that passage, it never gets less powerful or beautiful. I think some day I'll have to set it for choir.

Delirium · 06-02-2013 11:10pm

From "Thinking of Answers" by A.C Grayling, from the "proving a negative section".

For a simple case of proving a negative, by the way, consider how you prove the absence of pennies in a piggy-bank. You break it open and look inside: it is empty. On what grounds would you assert nevertheless that there might possibly still be pennies in there, only you cannot see or hear or feel or spend them?

Wereghost · 07-02-2013 10:21pm

I don't know if Joseph Heller was theist or not, but this quote from Catch-22 struck me as ripe for inclusion:

There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?

Source: goodreads.com quotes.

Gbear · 06-03-2013 3:14am

Kivaro · 10-03-2013 10:38pm

From James Cameron:

"I've sworn off agnosticism, which I now call cowardly atheism. I've come to the position that in the complete absence of any supporting data whatsover for the persistence of the individual in some spiritual form, it is necessary to operate under the provisional conclusion that there is no afterlife and then be ready to amend that if I find out otherwise."

Kivaro · 10-03-2013 10:41pm

I haven't heard this one before.
From Ricky Gervais:

"Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities."

"So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say 'Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?…' If they say 'Just God. I only believe in the one God,' I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869."

robindch · 16-05-2013 6:44pm

One or two quotable quotes in this piece:

http://www.alternet.org/belief/9-questions-atheists-might-find-insulting-and-answers

[-0-] · 17-05-2013 4:14am

Kivaro wrote: »

I haven't heard this one before.
From Ricky Gervais:

Really? Pretty sure he stole that.

Delirium · 21-05-2013 8:27am

CerebralCortex · 21-05-2013 9:51am

As an atheist there probably nothing I hate more than other atheists preaching to me how I should live my life. One of the big flaws with the above story board is that it presupposes that aging is always going to be the lead cause of morbidity.

Quotes & More Quotes by Atheists (sig fodder inside)

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