Famous people on atheism

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

Thomas Jefferson

"But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed."

John Adams

"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."

Abraham Lincoln

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, & the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

Karl Marx

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast"

Mark Twain

"Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?"

Friedrich Nietzsche

"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."

G B Shaw

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."

Isaac Asimov

"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?"

Arthur C Clarke

"To you, I'm an atheist. To God, I'm the loyal opposition."

Woody Allen

"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world."

Voltaire

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

Epicurus

The religion gambit

The French writer Edmond de Goncourt, once said: "If there is a God, atheism must seem to him as less of an insult than religion."

The greatest myth of fundamentalist atheism is that the movement is against god...it isn’t, its biliousness is targeted at organised religion.

In the soil from whence sprung Christianity, Islam, and Judaism there is a virus, and it has killed all rationality and generosity these modes of thought ever possessed — if indeed they did at all.

Hinduism and Buddhism are different sorts of animals from the Big 3. Hinduism in its polytheism is a potpourri of myth and fairy tale that has evolved from a way-of-life into a religion. Buddhism is a knee-jerk reaction to the rigors of Hinduism: its philosophy is flawed and weak and its followers have descended into idealists more resembling court jesters led by the increasingly redundant Dalai Lama.

Both Hinduism and Buddhism have been bolstered over the last half-century by a spurt in celebrity converts, but their lack of adaptation to the evolving social climate, signal them as endangered (Hinduism enjoys strong support in India, but it is swiftly being replaced with Islam and Christianity in other parts of Asia, and Buddhism is more chic than viable).

The Big 3 continue to barrel on with their power-bases relatively intact at the Vatican, Mecca and Jerusalem. Each of them also has at its vanguard a globe-spanning commodity, that will see them survive — if not flourish — will into the future.

Christianity focuses on conversion (baited by the promise of education), Islam on its persecution complex, and Judaism on the wealth of its patrons.

Atheism will find it difficult to bring down the houses of the holy by reason alone, for at the bedrock of religion is fantasy and blind belief. If there is one thing history has taught us is that the only way to destroy a religion is with religion. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians will attest to this fact.

Hence atheism must now function on doctrine and it must promote militancy and fundamentalism. It must also lie and do so with great vigour...in other words atheism must become a religion.

With the writings and prodding of the likes of Dawkins and Gould, atheists can take their nascent movement to its eventual conclusion...spurring a new Age of Reason and Enlightenment, devoid of the idiosyncrasies, follies and dogma of organised religion.

When, however, this has been achieved the neo-Atheistic movement must disband or suffer the same fate of that which it vanquished.