Atheist Quotes / Atheism Quotes

True Freethinker now presents various famous atheist quotes, not so famous atheist quotes and infamous atheist quotes and, for good measure, a few quotes about atheists and atheism by non-atheists (aatheists?)

American Atheist's webmaster,

Atheists are NOT "secular humanists", "freethinkers", "rationalists" or "ethical culturalists"…Often, people who are Atheists find it useful to masquerade behind such labels.1

Vox Day,

the following pair of definitions have proven to be useful in distinguishing between the High Church atheist and the agnostic.

Agnostic: I don't believe there is a God. Because I haven't seen the evidence.
Atheist: There is no God. Because I'm an ***hole.2 [expletive removed]

Wired Magazine's Gary Wolf; who included himself in the following description:

we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth.

Gary Wolf wrote:

At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. "Who here is an atheist?" I ask.
Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, "I am!"
But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: "You would be."
"Why?"
"Because you enjoy pissing people off."
"Well, that's true."
This type of conversation takes place not in central Ohio, where I was born, or in Utah, where I was a teenager, but on the West Coast, among technical and scientific people, possibly the social group that is least likely among all Americans to be religious.3

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Mariano,

Atheism is a consoling delusion for people who cannot handle the reality of God's existence.

Evilbible.com
From History of Atheism:

The lack of public acceptance for a "lack of belief" definition of "atheism" is reflected in the fact that no reputable dictionary has a "lack of belief" definition for either "atheism" or "atheist".
However, this has not kept a few morons from incorrectly claiming that various dictionary definitions have a "lack of belief" definition…I have posted some of the arguments these people have used, and I explained why why [sic] they are so damn stupid.

From Atheism, the Bible, Rape and EvilBible.com, part 4 of 6

What kind of lunatic would make a rape victim marry her attacker? Answer: God...it is clear that God doesn't give a damn about the rape victim.

From Atheism, the Bible, Rape and EvilBible.com, part 3 of 6:

Clearly Moses and God approves of rape of virgins

From Atheism, the Bible, Rape and EvilBible.com, part 5 of 6:

God Assists Rape and Plunder

From Atheism, the Bible, Rape and EvilBible.com, part 2 of 6:

These sick bastards killed and raped an entire town

From Atheism, Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Bible, and EvilBible.com, part 1 of 5:

Abraham takes his own son up on a mountain and builds an altar upon which to burn him_If Abraham did that today he would be in jail serving a long sentence as someone's prison-b***. [expletive censored]

From Atheism, Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Bible, and EvilBible.com, part 2 of 5:

These priests are guilty of theft and kidnapping…What do we call a scum-bag that threatens to kill your kids unless you pay a ransom? A kidnapper! If these priests were alive today they would be in prison with Abraham.

From Atheism, Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Bible, and EvilBible.com, part 4 of 5:

God Commands Burning Humans.

From Atheism, Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Bible, and EvilBible.com, part 5 of 5:

Burn Nonbelievers

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, "Theists Suck" and Christians are Hypocrites, part 1 of 6

[Christians'] willful ignorance of the Bible combined with their two faced idealism to preach it, has made us sick, hasn't it?...We are all aware that the church is simply a business which employs tactics similar to that of tobacco industries in recruiting consumers.

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, "Theists Suck" and Christians are Hypocrites, part 3 of 6

Ever watch these Christians on television and notice how their bowed heads uniformly shake amen while some evangelist goes on and on in prayer for a ******* hour?...
Christians are not supposed to take their disputes before non-Christian courts or judges…Does this stop Christians from tying up the supreme court with law suits concerning school prayer, abortion, or numerous other absurdities? Hell no it doesn't, and my taxes are paying the ******* bill for their hypocrisy! [expletives censored]

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, "Theists Suck" and Christians are Hypocrites, part 4 of 6

shoot down these idiots and bar them from getting away with their hypocrisy.

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, "Theists Suck" and Christians are Hypocrites, part 5 of 6

How many times have you heard some lame ass Christian say "the Old testament doesn't matter, Jesus was the lamb and abolished it"? Don't let them get away with this ****. [expletive removed]

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, "Theists Suck" and Christians are Hypocrites, part 6 of 6

A raped, unengaged virgin must marry her rapist and they can never divorce (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). What justice the "moral majority" advocates!

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Mariano,

An atheist walk into a bar and the bartender ask, "How did you get here?"
The atheist responds, "I'm just here and that's all!"

Dan Barker:

there are no action in and of themselves are always absolutely right or wrong. It depends on the context. You cannot name an action that is always, absolutely right or wrong, I can think of an exception in any case.4

And if he [God] wants to prove to him [sic] what a big daddy in the sky he is, if he wants to prove what a big macho man he is and send someone to me [sic] to hell for having the audacity to think for myself and challenge his moral actions then let him do it. I would rather suffer an eternity in hell, burning in flames with some dignity, than pretending to bow down and worship at the feet of this, this brutal blood thirsty dictator of the Bible.5

Dan Barker offering reasons for doing "good":

1. "if you wish to be…a healthy person" (meaning mentally healthy).
2. "if you wish to be labeled 'ethical' by other people."
3. "if you wish to be viewed by your society as 'a good person.'"
4. "if that's something you wish." 6

Darwin has bequeathed what is good….abortion is a blessing.7

There is no moral interpreter in the cosmos, nothing cares and nobody cares…what happens to me or a piece of broccoli, it won't [matter] the Sun is going to explode, we're all gonna be gone. No one's gonna care.8

Jesus was,

a moral monster.

the real drive behind the antiabortionists: misogyny. I don't believe that any one of them cares a hoot for a fetus.9

I support a women's right to choose an abortion…I think for most women an abortion is a blessing in her life, it is a wonderful thing. Obviously, there is a difference between a fetus that's the size of a thumb that has, what, what would you put it in a little locket and hang it around your neck?10

From Dan Barker's anti-theism, pro positive affirmation of God’s non-existence poster:

There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world.

Kyle Butt on Dan Barker-What "We All Know" about a Lie,

Putting Mr. Barker's statements together in logical form: (1) he considers it moral to lie in order to 'protect someone from harm;' (2) he considers religion to be harmful; (3) then it must follow that Mr. Barker would lie in order to dissuade a person from believing in God or religion.

Read a review of the Kyle Butt vs. Dan Barker debate here.

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Mariano explaining atheism's cognitive dissonance:

It is ignorant and superstitious to believe that God made everything out of nothing.
It is rational and scientific to believe that nothing made everything out of nothing.

It is ignorant and superstitious to believe that God is eternal.
It is rational and scientific to believe that matter is eternal.

God is an effect and must have had a cause.
Matter is the uncaused first cause.

If God made everything, then who made God?
Matter made everything and nothing made matter.

Ex-atheist C. S. Lewis:

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake.
If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.
When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view.11

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African-American atheist rapper Greydon Square,

I do shows in front of senior citizen white people_

Niggers believe in God; black people don't_A nigger blames white people for slavery, a black knows it was Africans who sold black people into slavery.12

Mariano,

My view on the atheist movement? If you can't join them, beat them.

Bill Maher,

A "purity ball" is like a prom for a dad and his daughter, where dad gets in a tuxedo and the daughter gets in a gown, and they go to this ball, and he puts a ring on her finger and feeds her wedding cake, and she pledges to stay a virgin until she gets married. And then dad has sex with her in the car. [laughter] [applause]…

[referring to t-shirt that he had made up] I'm not going to lie; these are the bull[expletive removed] ones we made up that are even funnier. [laughter] "World's Greatest [expletive removed] tease!" [laughter] [applause]…"I'm With Horny!" [laughter] Oh, I love this one. [laughter]…"My Father Went to Third Base and All I Got was this Lousy T-Shirt." [laughter] [applause] And my favorite.[laughter] [he holds up t-shirt which reads, "My (picture of 'pussy'cat) Belongs to Daddy." [laughter] [groans] [applause]…If you're slipping a ring on your daughter's finger and eating wedding cake, trust me, you're plotting to [expletive removed] the babysitter. [laughter]

Mariano,

Atheism discredits condemnation and condemnation discredits atheism.

Giles Fraser,

Philosophers of the caliber of Nietzsche made the effort to understand what animates genuine religious belief…These days, philosophical acumen has been replaced by cheap jokes about the sexuality of nuns.13

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G. K. Chesterton:

But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it.

Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it.

As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself.

A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble [mock scepter of office], and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble.

The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts.

In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men.

Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer

evolutionary theory applies to rape, as it does to other areas of human affairs, on both logical and evidentiary grounds. There is no legitimate scientific reason not to apply evolutionary or ultimate hypotheses to rape_.Human rape arises from men's evolved machinery for obtaining a high number of mates in an environment where females choose mates.14

Joann Ellison Rodgers,

Rape or at least rape-like acts clearly exist in many species, giving additional weight to both rape's "natural" roots and its "value" in our biological and psychological legacy_
Even rape, fetishes, bondage, and other so-called aberrant sexual behaviors are almost certainly biologically predisposed, if not adaptive, and may therefore be what biologists call 'conserved' traits, attributes or properties useful or essential to life across all cultures and genomes.15From Billions and Billions of Demons, Prof. Lewontin's review of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. This entire, very sobering, article is posted and reviewed here.

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Richard Lewontin:

What seems absurd depends on one's prejudice. Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity "in deep trouble." Two's company, but three's a crowd.16

Daniel Dennett,

We're just the beginning of a new wave of explicit attempts to shake peoples' faith.

Christopher Hitchens:

I didn't expect, when I started off on my book tour, to be as lucky as I was and I, Jerry Falwell died my first week on the road, that was amazing.

Sam Harris, very enthusiastically and laughingly,

Yes, that was amazing luck!

David Limbaugh from, The Paradoxical Hatred of Christopher Hitchens:

Hitchens refused to back down from his excoriation of Falwell on the very day of his death, saying, "I don't care whether his family's feelings are hurt or not. But if they are, they can take comfort from the extraordinary piety and stupidity, and generally speaking, uniformity of the coverage of the man's death." Hitchens' response to CNN's Anderson Cooper's question of whether he believed in heaven and whether 'you think Jerry Falwell is in it.' Hitchens said he did not believe in it, but "I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to."

Christopher Hitchens:

I'll take things you and Richard say on the human and natural sciences, not without wanting to check, but I'm often unable to but knowing that you are the sort of gentlemen who would have checked. If you say, "the bishop told me it so I believe it" you make a fool of yourself it seems to me, and one is entitled to say so.

Sam Harris poses the following question,

Is there any argument for faith, any challenge to your atheism that has given you pause, that has set you back on your heels where you felt you didn't have a ready answer, etc?

Daniel Dennett responds,

Actually I can't think of anything.

Daniel Dennett:

I think, what I would love to do is to invent a memorable catchphrase or term that would rise unbidden in their minds when they caught themselves doing it, and then they would think oh, this is one of those cosmic shifts that Dennett and Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens are talking about. Oh! right! and they think this is somehow illicit, just to create a little more awareness in them of what a strange thing it is that they're doing.

Christopher Hitchens,

they're all equally rotten, false, dishonest, corrupt, humourless and dangerous.

Responding to the question of whether "all faith claims are in some sense equivalent."

Dinesh D'Souza, "Richard Dawkins Compares Me to Hitler," AOL, July 7, 2008

I suspect that Dawkins has come up with this pathetic reductio ad Hitlerum in order to justify his cowardice in not debating me…Isn't the real problem that Dawkins has used his zoologist's credentials in order to wander into fields (physics, astronomy, history, philosophy, anthropology, theology) where his knowledge is embarrassingly limited? I suspect he's worried that in a debate I will exposure his ignorance and make him an international object of ridicule. Why not prove me wrong, Richard? Come out from under your desk and take me up on my invitation to debate.

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Mariano,

Atheism is the Valium of the people.

1. 1. THE WEBMASTER, Atheism - What It Is, and What It Isn't, American Atheists
2. 2. Vox Day, The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, Inc., 2008), p. 17
3. 3. Gary Wolf, "The Church of the Non-Believers," Wired Magazine, (found hereand here)
4. 4. During his debate with Peter Payne
5. 5. During his debate with Peter Payne
6. 6. During his debate with Peter Payne
7. 7. During his debate with John Rankin
8. 8. During his debate with Paul Manata
9. 9. Dan Barker, Losing Faith In Faith-From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: Freedom from Religion Foundation, 1992), p. 213
10. 10. During his debate with Dinesh D'Souza
11. 11. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1960), p. 29
12. 12. Martin Cizmar, Rapper Greydon Square Is an Atheist Icon, Phoenix New Times, April 28, 2009
13. 13. Giles Fraser, "Face to faith - Secularists who dismiss Christianity as the choice of the stupid should turn their critical gaze a little closer to home," The Guardian, Sat. Oct. 22, 2005
14. 14. Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, A Natural History of Rape (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), p. 53, 55, 190
15. 15. Joann Ellison Rodgers, Sex: A Natural History (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), p. 412
16. 16. Read his entire fascinating article
    here and see here for some commentary upon it.