Gerald Kelleher wrote:
The poets saw the worse stages of civilization like this even when the
first signs of recovery and light appear.

'The Second Coming'
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats

The genuine Christian would understand that the descriptive elements
found in the Johannine works of the Bible for the future are much the
same as for anyone who exercises their intelligence rather than the
common view that terrible events will happen come what may. Convictions
driven by intellectual pretense can be more harmful that those driven by
physical force and watching the explosive development of Christianity
must have conditioned the Johannine group to write as they did when they
seen so many variants of Christianity emerge.

Denominational Christianity doesn't have anywhere to go until it rejoins
with the physical sciences it jettisoned centuries ago around the time of
stretching from Copernicus to Galileo thereby easing the overheated
convictions which seemingly divide science from religion. In truth all
creation is inspiring/ spiritual as Christ himself acknowledged so
outside individual adversity we can discover a heaven within ourselves.

It is not about being ultra technical or ultra spiritual that wins out
but a combination of both for who can participate in the necessary
adjustments and modifications to the works of the original heliocentric
astronomers with all the visual tools at our disposal ?.






God's only excuse is that He does not exist. – Stendhal
There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is
the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and at the same time,
all-powerful being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and
secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a
burlesque of what he should be. – Arthur Schopenhauer
There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God. – Primo Levi, Auschwitz
survivor
God, equally with gods, angels, demons, spirits, and other small spiritual
fry, is a human product, arising inevitably from a certain kind of
ignorance and a certain degree of helplessness with respect to man's
external environment. – Julian Huxley
The death of a child is the greatest reason to doubt the existence of God.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There can be no Creator, simply because his grief at the fate of his
creation would be inconceivable and unendurable. – Elias Canetti
It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a
creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world. – Simone de
Beauvoir
If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. – Mikhail
Bakunin
If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually
wrong. – Francis Crick
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. – William Shakespeare
Most sermons sound to me like commercials-but I can’t make out whether god
is the sponser or the product. – Mignon McLaughlin
All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the
politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. – Lucretius
Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest
affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and
beauty. – Emma Goldman
There was a time when religion ruled the world. It was known as the Dark
Ages. – Ruth Hurmence Green
If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could
never stay there five minutes. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams. –
Umberto Eco
Religion, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort to deny the most
obvious realities. – H. L. Mencken
Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage. – H. L. Mencken
Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of
insanity? – Arthur C. Clarke
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history. – Noam Chomsky
Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious
and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world. – John Burroughs
Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them. – Peter Ustinov
I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its
churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in
the world. – Bertrand Russell
And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such
an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence. –
Bertrand Russell
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of
intelligence. – Bertrand Russell
Who needs Satan when you have a God like this? – Robert M. Price
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant
Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. –
Thomas Paine
…the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing
which part to believe or whether any. – Thomas Paine
The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give
assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma. – Abraham
Lincoln
Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A
non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing. – Maynard
James Keenan
I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have
expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious
then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far
as our science can reveal it. – Albert Einstein
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only
very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of
“humility.” This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do
with mysticism. – Albert Einstein
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological
concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or
goal outside the human sphere. … Science has been charged with undermining
morality, but the charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behavior should be
based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no
religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had
to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. –
Albert Einstein
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed. – Albert Einstein
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and
evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of,
the lack of evidence. – Richard Dawkins
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not
understanding the world. – Richard Dawkins
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever
believed in. Some of us just go one god further. – Richard Dawkins
Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous
desire for a second one. – Richard Dawkins
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in
all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving
control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic,
homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential,
megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. – Richard
Dawkins
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. – Napoleon
Bonaparte
Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don’t need. –
Bill Maher
I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think
religion is a neurological disorder. – Bill Maher
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the
gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. – Eric Hoffer
If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its
glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use,
as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle. – Dave Barry
Where knowledge ends, religion begins. – Benjamin Disraeli
The foolish reject what they see and not what they think; the wise reject
what they think and not what they see. – Huang Po
You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary
friend. – Richard Jeni
Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for
religious convictions. – Blaise Pascal
Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.
– Jiddu Krishnamurti
The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. – Jiddu
Krishnamurti
We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God.
There’s not much personal about the laws of physics. – Stephen Hawking
Black holes would seem to suggest that God not only plays dice, but also
sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. – Stephen Hawking
If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor. – Voltaire
Of all religions the Christian is without doubt the one which should
inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the
most intolerant of all men. – Voltaire
Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities. – Voltaire
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. – Benjamin Franklin
The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason. – Benjamin Franklin
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: The Morning Daylight
appears plainer when you put out your Candle. – Benjamin Franklin
Shake off all fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are
servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal
for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of
a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of
reason than that of blindfolded fear. – Thomas Jefferson
We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily
life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy,
every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual
reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars,
revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to
change the basic nature of man and therefore of society. – Thomas Jefferson
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus…will be classed
with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. –
Thomas Jefferson
The most henious and the must cruel crimes of which history has record have
been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. –
Mohandas Gandhi
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so
unlike your Christ. – Mohandas Gandhi
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. The happiness
of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. – George Bernard Shaw
If there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god? Therefore there are
no gods. – Friedrich Nietzsche
Faith means not wanting to know what is true. – Friedrich Nietzsche
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. – Friedrich
Nietzsche
Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s? –
Friedrich Nietzsche
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with
reality at any point. – Friedrich Nietzsche
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. – Frank Lloyd Wright
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God,
who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. –
Gene Roddenberry
To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it
remains premature today. – Isaac Asimov
Properly read, the bible is the most potent force for Atheism ever
conceived. – Isaac Asimov
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save
people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of
their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a
TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is
foul, foul, foul. – Isaac Asimov
A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out
for what he knows. – Mark Twain
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
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years
before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from
it. – Mark Twain
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false,
and by the rulers as useful. – Seneca the Younger
How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the
roller of an electric typewriter? – Woody Allen
Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. – Woody
Allen
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
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination. – Edward
Abbey
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and
evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that
takes religion. – Steven Weinberg
They felt that science would be corrosive to religious belief and they were
worried about it. Damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive to
religious belief and it’s a good thing. – Steven Weinberg
I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of
confidence. – Doug McLeod
The world holds two classes of men – intelligent men without religion, and
religious men without intelligence. – Abu’l-Ala al Ma'arri
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because
I notice it always coincides with their own desires. – Susan B. Anthony
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. – Delos B. McKown
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to
reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if
religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and
erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. – Francis Bacon
A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered
with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a
world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from
its effect. he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent,
all-knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make
everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An
atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified. – Karen Armstrong
It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his own image. But, on
the contrary, man created God in his own image. – Ludwig Feuerbach
If I thought the Jews killed God, I’d worship the Jews. – Bill Hicks
People ask me what I think about that woman priest thing. What, a woman
priest? Women priests. Great, great. Now there’s priests of both sexes I
don’t listen to. – Bill Hicks
All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of
science. – Matthew Arnold
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. –
Christopher Hitchens
It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line
to the Bible. – George W. Foote
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 Roberts
You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been
invented to justify hate. – Richard A. Weatherwax
What’s “God”? Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you
close your eyes and you wish for it? God’s the guy that ignores you. –
Steve Buscemi (From the movie “The Island”)
As far as I can tell from studying the scriptures, all you do in heaven is
pretty much just sit around all day and praise the Lord. I don’t know about
you, but I think that after the first, oh, I don’t know, 50,000,000 years
of that I’d start to get a little bored. – Rick Reynolds
Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color. – Don
Hirschberg
God should be executed for crimes against humanity. – Bryan Emmanuel
Gutierrez
To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that
disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself
told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I
wouldn’t be wrong to ask. – Geoff Mather
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
I’m a polyatheist – there are many gods I don’t believe in. – Dan Fouts
A lie is a lie even if everyone believes it. The truth is the truth even
if nobody believes it. – David Stevens
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most
Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. – Robert A Heinlein
I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and
without faith I am nothing. – Douglas Adams
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe
that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? – Douglas Adams
People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic
just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle
that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it.
(If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a
god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic,
cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed
him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.) – Douglas
Adams

Read more about 153 Atheist Quotes by Famous Persons by
www.poemofquotes.com