be a proud atheist

I need to keep up with Atheist Network more. The people there rock, and it’s an easy thing I can do. I just need to do it now.

• No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means. — George Bernard Shaw

• The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. — George Bernard Shaw

• So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk. — Thomas Edison

• It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be. — Sigmund Freud

• The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. — John Adams (Treaty of Tripoly, Article 11)

• Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites. — Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia)

• Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. — Thomas Jefferson (1787 letter to his nephew)

• If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever. — Woody Allen

• You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do. — from Usenet

• The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events… He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. — Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions

• The idea of a Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible. — Albert Einstein

• Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy. — Carl Sagan

• In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken’, and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. — Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address

I really need to get involved with Minnesota Atheists, and stop putting it off. I’ll work on that one.