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INTRODUCTION

The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments—of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue—are complete skeptics in religion.

—JOHN STUART MILL

The reason there are so many opinions is that no one knows the Truth.

—JOAN KONNER, editor

i

GENESIS

Perhaps our role on this planet is not to worship God—but to create Him.

—ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered. Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?

—DAVID HUME

Men…have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, whilst in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence.

—CAMILLE FLAMMARION

Fear was the gods’ begetter in this world.

—PETRONIUS

We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a higher answer—but none exists.

—STEPHEN JAY GOULD

As for me, I’ve long resolved not to think whether man created God or God man.

-FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species representing changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one’s eyes shut and wailing Does not!

—ANONYMOUS

If you believe that there is a God, a God that made your body, and yet you think that you can do anything with that body that’s dirty, then the fault lies with the manufacturer.

—LENNY BRUCE

From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.

—EDWARD ABBEY

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.

—MARQUIS DE SAD

Men create the gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

—ARISTOTLE

We shall tell ourselves that 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

Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor teaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.

—D. H. LAWRENCE

At the beginning there was the Word—at the end just the Cliché.

—STANISLAW JERZY LEC

ii

THE WORD

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.

—JOHN STUART MILL

Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit…. When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirizes the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being.

—G. W. FOOTE

I have too much respect for the idea of God to hold Him responsible for such an absurd world.

—GEORGES DUHAMEL

Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods.

—JOHN BURROUGHS

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a Lunatic Asylum.

—HAVELOCK ELLIS

Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.

—EDWARD ABBEY

Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.

—CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.

—GRAHAM GREENE

Faith is doubt.

—EMILY DICKINSON

It is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honour.

—JOHN STUART MILL

All thinking men are atheists.

—ERNEST HEMINGWAY

All children are atheists—they have no idea of God.

—BARON D’ HOLBACH

It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.

—SINCLAIR LEWIS

I count religion but a childish toy,

And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he’s done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world.

—DAVE MATTHEWS

THEOLOGY—An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.

—H. L. MENCKEN

The universe runs itself, and the eternal laws inherent in Nature suffice, without any first cause or prime mover.

—MARQUIS DE SADE

Martyrdom…is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

—STEPHEN HENRY ROBERTS

In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than the practitioners.

—JONATHAN MILLER

iii

THE GOSPEL

For it is with the mysteries of our Religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure, but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.

—THOMAS HOBBES

Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opiate of the people. Opium