Quotes About Atheism

Philosophy for me is essentially atheistic. Now that's an anxious atheism. It's an atheism that is anxious because it inhabits questions that were resolved religiously in the pre-modern period.

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.

What do you conceive God to be like? Some would say to believe at all in a personal God requires a giant leap of faith - but I am convinced that belief in God is a far more reasonable position than atheism. Nature, the personal experience of literally billions of people, and something innate in the heart of man all testify to the existence of God.

All theory of modernity in sociology suggests that the more modernity there is, the less religion. In my theory we can realize that this is wrong: atheism is only one belief system among many.

That's true that I'm "not religious as that term is conventionally understood," though I've never been an atheist. Atheism is an active faith; it says, "I believe there is no God." But I don't know what I believe. I was brought up a Lutheran in Jamestown, North Dakota. I have trouble with faith. I'm not proud of this. I don't think it makes me an intellectual. I would believe if I could, and I may be able to before it's over. I would welcome that.

I believe the fast track to atheism is reading the Bible. I've read it three times all the way through. It's a big part of our culture, a big part of our history. I don't just read things I agree with.

I think that if anyone bothered to take a survey, they would find a sharp decline in atheism during the winters in Cleveland, Ohio.

Saying atheism is a belief system is like saying not going skiing is a hobby.

Atheism is a way of humility. It's to think oneself to be an animal, as we are actually and to allow oneself to become human.

Despair is the only genuine atheism.

Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.

If atheism solved all human woe, then the Soviet Union would have been an empire of joy and dancing bunnies, instead of the land of corpses.

There must be much more going on behind the scenes. The pivotal question is this: What is behind the deep-seated hatred that these atheists nurse against religion and against God? Let's face it, there is only one force that hates God's creation more than anything else - and that is Satan. Satan knows that God exists but wants no part of Him. It is Satan's ultimate goal to demolish all Christian elements in society and to damage the human image that was made in God's image. Could Satan be the real instigator of this aggressive form of atheism?

The opposite of theism is not atheism, it’s idolatry

I don't know whether God exists or not. ... Some forms of atheism are arrogant and ignorant and should be rejected, but agnosticism—to admit that we don't know and to search—is all right. ... When I look at what I call the gift of life, I feel a gratitude which is in tune with some religious ideas of God. However, the moment I even speak of it, I am embarrassed that I may do something wrong to God in talking about God.

Atheism, nine times out of ten, is born from the womb of a bad conscience. Disbelief is born of sin, not of reason.

If God does not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the majority of men cannot live without ... let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let then a handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves. Men are then divided into the wise and the foolish, the philosophers and the common men, and atheism becomes a guarded, esoteric doctrine - for if the illusions of religion were to be discredited, there is no telling with what madness men would be seized, with what uncontrollable anguish.

Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion.

He talks about the Scylla of Atheism and the Charybdis of Christianity - a state of mind which, by the way, is not conducive to bold navigation.

The only thing particularly new about the "new atheism" is its nastiness.

Doing things in secret that you are ashamed for others to know is practical atheism. God's knowing doesn't count?

I don't think atheism means one does not believe in a spiritual life. I think it means one does not follow the tenets of the established religions.

Atheism: the religion devoted to the worship of one's own smug sense of superiority.

My atheism doesn't define my day-to-day life at all. But I realize - and maybe it is because, unlike people who sort of stay comfortably in a religion, I had to do a lot of thinking and reading before I realized that I was an atheist.

I think the neoatheists have set atheism back a few decades. And I'm a self-described atheist.

Atheism is cheap on people, because it snobbishly says nine out of ten people through history have been wrong about God and have had a lie at the core of their hearts.

Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding.

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

Denial of our pattern of failure seems to be a kind of practical atheism or chosen ignorance among many believers and clergy.

In Philadelphia, I inadvertently came upon an edition of Robert Ingersoll's Essays and Lectures. This was an exciting discovery; his atheism confirmed my own belief that the horrific cruelty of the Old Testament was degrading to the human spirit.

It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!

Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism to reason for its existence

The opposite of Christianity is not atheism, but idolatry.

Atheism is not just about not believing there is a God, but on the assumption that there is one, what kind of God is he?

There are no infidels anywhere but on earth: there are none in heaven, and there are none in hell. Atheism is a strange thing. Even the devils never fell into that vice, for the devils believe and tremble. And there are some of the devil's children that have gone beyond their father in sin, but how will it look when they are for ever lost?