What Would Non-Quote Collectors Do?

[StevoMuso]

Please post some of your best quotes that relate to religion/atheism/etc. Some of us on this forum are ardent collectors of well thought out punchy quotes.

 

I've been collecting things like this that come up in conversations. As an author I'm often invited to debate both theists and atheists alike, and often get some really cool punchy lines coming up. After I get home I type them up for future reference.

 

Cool. Perhaps you could start a thread and post a bunch of those quotes, and then others can post whatever other quotes seem befitting.

 

You may like these:

Calling atheism a kind of religion is like calling not-stamp collecting a kind of hobby. (Got this one from another forum)

 

I have heard a similar quote that compared it to calling not playing baseball a sport. Speaking on not collecting stamps, one of my favorite YouTube videos is by user NonStampCollector (the video is called "What would Jesus NOT do?").

 

Science seeks to draw a conclusion from the evidence at hand, while religion seeks to find evidence for a conclusion at hand.

[StevoMuso]

Please note: these do not necessarily have to be "quotes" in the sense of quoting someone famous. They can be simple one-liners you've heard, or thought of yourself in a moment of brilliance.

 

Here are some more of my favourites (British spelling, blimey!):

 

"Stupidity is forever, but there is a cure for ignorance."

 

"There is a humble question mark at the end of science, and an arrogant exclamation mark at the end of religion."

 

"Skeptical inquiry and critical thought seek the humble acquisition of knowledge, while religion seeks the arrogant proclamation of dogma."

 

And the one I use in my signature: "Atheism is not anti-religion or counter-religion; it is the absence of religion."

[Shyone]

Please note: these do not necessarily have to be "quotes" in the sense of quoting someone famous. They can be simple one-liners you've heard, or thought of yourself in a moment of brilliance.

 

Here are some more of my favourites (British spelling, blimey!):

 

"Stupidity is forever, but there is a cure for ignorance."

 

"There is a humble question mark at the end of science, and an arrogant exclamation mark at the end of religion."

 

"Skeptical inquiry and critical thought seek the humble acquisition of knowledge, while religion seeks the arrogant proclamation of dogma."

 

And the one I use in my signature: "Atheism is not anti-religion or counter-religion; it is the absence of religion."

It might be painstaking, but going through the posts here, starting with the earliest ones, you will see quotes from members that are astute, concise, brilliant and appreciated by others here.

[YellowJacket]

[godlessgrrl]

My signature contains two quotes I love to see juxtaposed next to one another.

 

Another favorite is: "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and even more flies with bullshit than with honey."

 

I made that one up.

[Skepticaldude541]

One of my favorite quotes of all time:

"No, God's Penis is not a biological organ. I never said God's Penis was the same as man's penis. Obviously it wouldn't be. That is why I pointed out God has a Holy, Righteous Penis. That is to say, it's not the same as man's corrupted, fleshy one.

 

As I said when this subject first came up, once again: Penises are not just for sex & peeing. It is only because man is evil that he thinks of penises exclusively in those terms.

 

You cannot insert your evil prejudicial ideas of man's penis onto God - which is exactly what you are doing. God's Penis is not equal to man's penis. It's really not hard to understand."

- Fundamentalist Christian

 

 

Other quotes:

 

"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing."

-Isaac Newton

 

"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

 

"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."

-Isaac Asimov

 

"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

-Carl Sagan

[Shyone]

ChefRanden wrote this:

 

You do not like the way God is, thus you pretend he is otherwise.

 

I think it sums up the way apologists defend the God of the Old Testament.

[nightflight]

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting. -epictetus

[Loren]

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true,

by the wise as false,

and by rulers as useful."

~ Seneca the Younger (4? B.C. - 65 A.D.)

 

"The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it."

~ George Santayana

 

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

~ Philip K. Dick

 

"Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other. They slander each other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse and cannot come to any sort of agreement in their teaching. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own with deceitful nonsense, and makes perfect little pigs of those it wins over to its side."

~ Celsus (2nd Century C.E.)

 

"Faith is believing in something you know just ain't true."

~ Samuel Clemens

 

"Cain was an innovator!"

~ Me

[StevoMuso]

"Integrity will not allow me to invent an afterlife, and knowledge will not allow me the luxury of not fearing death." ~ Me

 

This is a great thread - and plenty of fun. We all have a few favourite quotes. I LOVE the one above, "Faith is believing in something you know just ain't true."

[DanH44]

Great thread! Here's my favorites:

 

"Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies." -Thomas Jefferson

 

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." -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

 

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies." -Benjamin Franklin

 

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." - Mark Twain

 

"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

 

However, re the last one, I think it's flawed. Where is the evidence that believers are happier? I find it hard to believe that anyone is happier than I am and certainly not Christians!

[DanH44]

Skepticaldude541: Thank you for the priceless information about god's penis. Now I don't have to lie awake at night wondering.

[Thackerie]

My signature in another godless forum:

 

"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all." — Douglas Adams

[DanH44]

"Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree." -- paraphrased Tyler Oakley

[StevoMuso]

Quotes Ian McEwan's book Saturday:

 

Saturday p126

It isn't rationalism that will overcome the religious zealots, but ordinary shopping and all that it entails - jobs for a start, and peace, and some commitment to realisable pleasures, the promise of appetites sated in this world, not the next. Rather shop than pray.

 

Saturday p128

The random ordering of the world, the unimaginable odds against any particular condition, still please him. Even as a child ... he never believed in fate or providence, or the future being made by someone in the sky. Instead, at every instant, a trillion trillion possible futures; the pickiness of pure chance and physical laws seemed like freedom from the scheming of a gloomy god.

[StevoMuso]

Terry Pratchett Quotes

 

From the book: Hogfather

P40 "The previous governess had taught them a prayer which included the hope that some god or other would take their soul if they died while they were asleep and, if Susan was any judge, had the underlying message that that this would be a good thing. One day, Susan averred, she’d hunt that woman down."

 

P41 ‘Look at it this way, then,’ she said, and took a deep mental breath. ‘Wherever people are obtuse and absurd … and wherever they have by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach … and wherever people are inanely credulous, pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering … yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.’

 

P241 There are those who believe knowledge is something that is acquired – a precious ore hacked, as it were, from the grey strata of ignorance. There are those who believe that knowledge can only be recalled, that there was some Golden Age in the distant past when everything was known and the stones fitted together so you could hardly put a knife between them, you know, and it’s obvious that they had flying machines, right, because of the way the earthworks can only be seen from above, yeah? and there’s this museum I read about where they found a pocket calculator under the altar of this ancient temple, you know what I’m saying? but the government hushed it up …

 

From the book: Carpe Jugulum (This is my most favourite TP quote of all)

 

P73 The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.

[lulukan]

One of my Twitter friends posted this yesterday on Twitter and I liked it so much I had to add it to my blog about prayer.

 

"Consistency is severely lacking in religion. If you believe God saved the survivors, you MUST therefore also believe he killed the victims."

KT Trebor

 

 

I thought it was brilliant!

 

Lulu (AKA Lori AKA Treehugster)