Positive Atheism Quotes - Page 12

• The World to Bacon does not only owe it's present knowledge, but its future too.

  John Dryden

  Atheism, Doe, World

  John Dryden, John Mitford (1847). “The Works of John Dryden in Verse and Prose”, p.118

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• Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.

  Walter Bagehot

  Wise, Lying, Philosophy

  Richard Holt Hutton, Walter Bagehot (1855). “The National Review”, p.46

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• Priests, kings, statesmen, soldiers, bankers and public functionaries of all sorts; policemen, jailers and hangmen; capitalists, usurers, businessmen and property-owners; lawyers, economists and politicians - all of them, down to the meanest grocer, repeat in chorus the words of Voltaire, that if there were no God it would be necessary to invent Him.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Kings, Soldier, Atheism

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• God, or rather the fiction of God, is thus the sanction and the intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery on earth, and the liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Men, Intellectual, Liberty

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• A devotion to humanity is... too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.

  James A. Baldwin

  Humanity, Atheism, Causes

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• The reasoning isn't crazy. It's technically correct. If you're being true to the idea that government must not take positions on religious questions, then the Ninth Circuit opinion is quite persuasive.

  Jack Balkin

  Religious, Crazy, Ideas

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• There is a powerful desire by majorities to assert a religious identity for the country.

  Jack Balkin

  Country, Religious, Powerful

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• Thanks to the toleration preached by the encyclopedists of the eighteenth century, the sorcerer is exempt from torture.

  Honore de Balzac

  Atheism, Thanks, Century

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• God is man idealized.

  Amiri Baraka

  Men, Atheism

  Imamu Amiri Baraka (1966). “Home: Social Essays”, New York : Morrow

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• If the Prodigal Son's a parable, and if Adam and Eve are metaphors, then maybe God is just figure of speech.

  Dan Barker

  Son, Atheism, Speech

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• Atheists are suffering from bad PR. What if Sesame Street had an atheist character?

  Dan Barker

  Atheist, Character, Suffering

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• It turns out that the word atheism means much less than I had thought. It is merely the lack of theism.

  Dan Barker

  Mean, Atheism, Turns

  Dan Barker (1992). “Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist”, Freedom from Religion Fndtn

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• Basic atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief. There is a difference between believing there is no god and not believing there is a god - both are atheistic, though popular usage has ignored the latter.

  Dan Barker

  Believe, Differences, Atheism

  Dan Barker (1992). “Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist”, Freedom from Religion Fndtn

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• It is wrong for a secular government to promote prayer. We think the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. What if the president declared a National Day of Cursing God because He failed us on September 11? Americans would say, "You've overstepped your authority." That's how we feel when he promotes prayer.

  Dan Barker

  Prayer, Thinking, Government

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• Look at the posture of prayer. It is the posture of slavery, of bowing before your master. We are a proudly rebellious country. We kicked out the master. Now here comes the government telling us to humbly bow again.

  Dan Barker

  Country, Prayer, Government

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• Prayer never changes the laws of nature.

  Dan Barker

  Prayer, Law, Atheism

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• The trouble is that neutrality is confused with hostility. We're not disrupting churches, or interrupting people's prayers. We're not fighting religion.

  Dan Barker

  Prayer, Confused, Fighting

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• I took about a year to fully adjust. Like there's a death at the family or a divorce, you don't just snap your fingers and it's over.

  Dan Barker

  Divorce, Years, Atheism

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• The orthodox faith painted God as a revengeful being, and yet people talk about loving such a being.

  P. T. Barnum

  People, Atheism, Orthodox

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• It has been asserted, that a moral Atheist would be a monster beyond the power of nature to create: I reply, that it is not more strange for an Atheist to live virtuously, than for a Christian to abandon himself to crime! If we believe the last kind of monster, why dispute the existence of the first?

  Pierre Bayle

  Christian, Atheist, Believe

  Pierre Bayle (1826). “An Historical and Critical Dictionary”, p.169

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• The movement of comets is part of the ordinary works of nature which, without regard to the happiness or misery of mankind, are transported from one part of the heavens to another by virtue of the general laws of motion.

  Pierre Bayle

  Law, Heaven, Atheism

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• Consider, I pray, whether you are not renouncing all shame and sincerity to advance such principles. Because a comet appears in a group of stars which the ancients thought fit to call the Virgin, therefore, shall our women be barren, or have frequent miscarriages, or die old maids. I know of nothing which hangs so ill together! To offer such things in seriousness, shows the greatest contempt of mankind, and the most scandalous lying impunity.

  Pierre Bayle

  Stars, Lying, Miscarriage

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• So that, were it the purpose of God to produce comets as signs of his wrath it would be true to say that he is quickening a false devotion almost all over the world, increasing the number of pilgrims to Mecca, multiplying the offerings to the most famous impostors, inducing men to build mosques for Mohammedan worship, causing the invention of new superstitions among the dervishes - in a word, stimulating many abominable things which otherwise might not have been.

  Pierre Bayle

  Men, Offering, Numbers

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• Do you doubt that the least effects of nature were not used as marks of the wrath of heaven? It was to the interest of pontiffs, priests, and augurs, as much as it is to the interest of lawyers and doctors that there should be lawsuits and sickness. No wonder they took care that the people should not grow slack in their religion.

  Pierre Bayle

  Doctors, Wrath, People

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• One must be stark mad, to believe that mankind can subsist without magistrates.

  Pierre Bayle

  Believe, Mad, Atheism

  Pierre Bayle, Pierre Des Maizeaux, Alexis Gaudin, Anthelme Tricaud (1736). “The dictionary historical and critical of Mr. Peter Bayle”, p.671

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