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Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before.
Some are Atheists by Neglect; others are so by Affectation; they, that think there is no God at some times; do not think so at all times.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Moral and Religious Aphorisms
- If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him?
- If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future?
- If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers?
- If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him?
- If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?
- If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them?
- If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him?
- If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable?
- If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees?
- If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him?
- If he has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?
- If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, The Necessity of Atheism
All thinking men are atheists.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A Farewell to Arms
In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard.
J. D. SALINGER, The Catcher in the Rye
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, "What I Believe"
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