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Yes, I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as atheist some people will say, Don't you mean agnostic? I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one...etc., etc. It's easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal and that it's an opinion I hold seriously.
Douglas AdamsRefer me to one atheist who denies the existence of God.... Etymologically, as well as philosophically, an atheist is one without God. That is all the 'A' before 'Theist' really means.
George William FooteEverybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god - from Ra to Shiva - in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.
Richard DawkinsI feel most spiritual when I'm out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it's all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God.
Pete SeegerAll human beings are moral beings. So, certainly there are alliances. We are in the countries, that are secular states, and we obey its laws. I think we must recognize that common moral base. But in alliances we must always be careful just of what level the alliance is perceived. I will go and lecture to an atheist society, for example, but I will not lecture for them, because I am not an atheist. You see the difference.
John LennoxI was born a Christian, but I became an atheist back in high school because I just started losing faith. I'd lost my brother and best friend, Nadarius. I couldn't get a job. But I do feel like there is a higher power now, and it's inside of me.
SpaceGhostPurrpI am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer.
Roger EbertGod is in the mountains. Impassive, immovable, jagged giants, separating the celestial from the terrestrial with eternal diagonal certainty. As if silently monitoring the beating heart of the creator from the universe's perfect birth. Stood in the thin air and the awe, one inhales God, involuntarily acknowledging that we are but fragments of a whole, a higher thing. The mountains remind me of my place, as a servant to truth and wonder. Yes, God is in the mountains. Perhaps the pulpit too and even in the piety of an atheist's sigh. I don't know; but I feel him in the mountains.
Russell BrandThe believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for everything else.
Milton SteinbergThe atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.
Baron d'HolbachDwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!
Terry PratchettI am what you call a non-believer. I don't even want to say I'm an atheist because frankly I don't want to join their club either. But the point is, I am a fallen catholic, I'm not religious, and that's all well and good.
Kathy GriffinIt's not so much that I'm an atheist so much as the sneaking suspicion that I myself may be god
Thom YorkeI dislike The Exorcist, and I found it a warning sign of the dangers in a furious cinematic talent putting the audience through it (a Hitchcock phrase) without purpose, or without the nagging moral anxiety that activated Hitch. You see, I don't think William Friedkin believes in the Devil, or cares about him. I think he found exorcism a pretext for a gross-out and he calculated there was an audience for it, or a crowd ready to be challenged. Maybe I'm too much of an atheist to stand religion being so thrashed.
Edward Jay EpsteinNow I have to say I'm a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it's a natural fact of life.
David ChalmersNow that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.
C. S. LewisWhether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
Reinhold NiebuhrFor years [H.P] Lovecraft was defined as an atheist. Well, he wasn't saying anything about what he really was at all. He wasn't even an agnostic. That's exactly what the situation is, in other words, when you enter an eternal realm. You've got to know there is no religion.
Paul LaffoleyI have received many touching letters and emails from people who live in the most religious parts of the country, in places like rural Texas, saying it is so good to see someone be able to say I am an atheist without shame.
Susan JacobyMr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that the Ten Commandments are a historical document that contains moral, ethical, and legal truisms that any person of any religion or even an atheist can recognize and appreciate.
Cliff StearnsI'm an atheist, but I'm very relaxed about it. I don't preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do.
Daniel RadcliffeIf you believe in God, that's a belief. If you are an atheist, it's a belief too, because you cannot prove that God does not exist.
Rodrigo CortesI am not an atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.
Albert EinsteinI met somebody once who said, "I'm a lapsed-atheist" by what he meant was, "I don't believe in God but the older I get the more I realise there is a spirituality in everybody that has to be cherished and nourished." That made a lot of sense to me.
Tony BennUs atheist people, we believe we have to act properly and honestly for a moral principle and not because we expect an award in Paradise.
Margherita HackThe atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should insist on the need to engage in a meaningful debate on the entire issue of the truth or falsity (or probability or improbability) of religious tenets, without being subject to accusations of impiety, immorality, impoliteness, or any of the other smokescreens used by the pious to deflect attention from the central issues at hand.
S. T. JoshiI am like all other atheists only in that I do not believe there are any gods. Beyond that, I may differ dramatically in my values and beliefs from any other atheist. On both sides of the political spectrum, one can find the neo-conservative Objectivists and the ultra-liberal Communists, both of whom hate each other. These two factions take up nearly opposite sets of values, yet both are comprised of unabashed atheists.
Richard CarrierAn atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
Richard DawkinsThe footprint of the savage traced in the sand is sufficient to attest the presence of man to the atheist who will not recognize God, whose hand is impressed upon the entire universe.
Hugh MillerWhen it comes to God's existence, I'm not an atheist and I'm not agnostic. I'm an acrostic. The whole thing puzzles me.
George CarlinThere is an immediate payoff to intelligent design: it destroys the atheistic legacy of Darwinian evolution. Intelligent design makes it impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
William A. DembskiI am an atheist. I have a very different take on who God is. Man invented God because he needed him. God is us.
Carl ReinerI can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
Abraham LincolnI do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification.
Gilbert K. ChestertonWhat is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?
Herman MelvilleThe great philosophers of the past who wrote so beautifully - Rousseau, John Stuart Mill - had to write beautifully because they had to sell their work to journals. They had to sell books to the general public because they could not hold positions in universities. Mill was an atheist, and, therefore, could not hold a position in a university.
Martha C. NussbaumAs far as specific bands from the 90s death metal era, I love Death, Carcass, Possessed, Morbid Angel, Gorguts, Autopsy, Atheist, etc.
David PajoFor emotional reasons, connected with my affection for my parents, I was a reluctant atheist, but giving up religion brought peace of mind because intellectual conflict was resolved.
J. J. C. SmartAtheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises 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... We attack not a person but a belief, not a binge but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.
George William Foote