Famous Atheist Quotes

[Town Heretic]

You can hear distant lighting on an AM radio tuned to a staticy area.
Would you say that a person who had chosen a favorite AM channel and liked to play it loud was in a better postion than one that was slowly turning the dial and listening to the clicks?

Depends...is the favorite AM station the weather channel?

 

[Wessex Man]

There is a vulgar incredulity, which in historical matters, as well as in those of religion, finds it easier to doubt than to examine.

-Walter Scott

 

[JustinFoldsFive]

There is a vulgar incredulity, which in historical matters, as well as in those of religion, finds it easier to doubt than to examine.

-Walter Scott

Life can be vulgar. It's not a matter of ease; we must play the hand we are dealt, not the hand we wish we were dealt.

 

[Wessex Man]

Life can be vulgar.

Indeed there are athiests after all.:crackup:

 

[Punisher1984]

Some people with very high IQs have been horrendously wicked, tormenting and murdering others.

Some of them - but most of the tormenters and killers of history are people who where dumb enough to be manipulated into commiting such acts in the name of ideals they didn't have much understanding of.

Others, with lower IQs, have been loving and kind and thoughtful to those less fortunate.

And what exactly does that mean? Since when was one's quality of life measured by how "kind" or "loving" they were? When all is said and done, all that really matters is the ability to serve one's own interests.

Redstar91, intelligence is not the most valuable aspect of humanity. Just fyi.

To the contrary - the fact that there are a few intelligent individuals amongst our otherwise stupid species is the only reason we haven't plunged into the abyss of total annihilation yet.

 

[Stuu]

There is a vulgar incredulity, which in historical matters, as well as in those of religion, finds it easier to doubt than to examine.

-Walter Scott

Here's to the vulgarity that rescued us from the nasty, religiously-dominated dark ages!

Stuart

 

[Wessex Man]

Here's to the vulgarity that rescued us from the nasty, religiously-dominated dark ages!

Stuart

Jacobinism or liberalism as it is sometimes called?

Ah to the glories of that vulgarity! With its guillotines, gulags, it extreme rationalism, universalism and egalitarianism and its worship of the state above all else.

 

[Stuu]

Jacobinism or liberalism as it is sometimes called?

Ah to the glories of that vulgarity! With its guillotines, gulags, it extreme rationalism, universalism and egalitarianism and its worship of the state above all else.

I was thinking more generally of the renaissances, with the resultant science, music and ability to draw in perspective...

Stuart

 

[Wessex Man]

I was thinking more generally of the renaissances, with the resultant science, music and ability to draw in perspective...

Stuart

The renaissance was also a very bloody and despotic time. Probably far worse than the centuries proceeding it. Also its artistic and culture success has been questioned, see Burckhardt's The Civilisation of the renaissance in Italy.

Personally I think there were up and downs as there are in all historical epochs.

Even the modern era with all its successes has seen wars, enviromental damage, alienation, social dislocation, centralisation, atomism and loss of community and traditional social structures on an unprecedented level.

 

[Stuu]

The renaissance was also a very bloody and despotic time. Probably far worse than the centuries proceeding it. Also its artistic and culture success has been questioned, see Burckhardt's The Civilisation of the renaissance in Italy.

Personally I think there were up and downs as there are in all historical epochs.

Even the modern era with all its successes has seen wars, enviromental damage, alienation, social dislocation, centralisation, atomism and loss of community and traditional social structures on an unprecedented level.

Oh please. Would you rather live in the 10th Century?

Stuart

 

[Wessex Man]

Oh please. Would you rather live in the 10th Century?

Stuart

I live now, I can nothing about it.

The idea that everything has got better and nothing worse is absurd. Most of the things that have got better are due to technology and not the scheming of liberals. And even technology has often been developed in a usage that is more large scale and authoritarian than was needed and with a lot more ecological damage than was necessary.

Things move up and they move down, that is the way of things.

 

[Stuu]

I live now, I can nothing about it.

The idea that everything has got better and nothing worse is absurd. Most of the things that have got better are due to technology and not the scheming of liberals. And even technology has often been developed in a usage that is more large scale and authoritarian than was needed and with a lot more ecological damage than was necessary.

Things move up and they move down, that is the way of things.

Progress certainly has not been the result of the scheming of conservatives!

Wasn't the C13th voted by British historians the most miserable to have lived in, dominated in Europe as it was by religious superstition, wars and diseases from which we no longer suffer on an epidemic scale...thanks to technology?

Stuart

 

[AlfredTuring]

This one just really seems to get to the point:

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
- Richard Dawkins

 

[Town Heretic]

…the fact that there are a few intelligent individuals amongst our otherwise stupid species is the only reason we haven't plunged into the abyss of total annihilation yet.

You finally get your hands on something indisputably relative and what do you do? :nono:

And I agree with Turing here that the Dawkins' quote perfectly captures the "fundamental" blind spot of the modern understanding where religion is concerned. lain:

 

[PlastikBuddha]

I still disagree. I think there's a good case to be made that a newborn baby human is less intelligent than a dolphin, but there is a rather difficult problem of how to measure this, and it is a human conceit that tells us that we are better.

I might have been using a little bit of hyperbole there, but even during infancy human beings begin to display signs of self awareness that aren't really present in other species. Chimpanzees have been observed, iirc, to display rudimentary knowledge of others and even of concepts like fairness. This is from our brainiest cousins and even they don't show the kind of awareness that even a toddler has. Better doesn't really enter into the picture, however. This awareness has allowed us to conquer the globe in a way few species above a molecular level have done, so I think we are something special- but considering how much work so many put into NOT excercising their own awareness I'm really not sure "better" is the adjective I'd use to describe it.

Maybe. Or maybe the Divine wanted to see the pretty lights, and so it created a Universe, and we just happen to be one of its byproducts. There's really no way to know.

No there isn't. That's where faith comes in. There is simply no way to truly "know" anything about the Divine, at least in the same way that we know about more tangible, less transcendant things like cars and rocks. In that respect I remain somewhat agnostic. I belive, however, that the Divine does consider us something worth bothering with.

If the Divine wanted us to know it, I would think there would be better ways than what we have seen from religion.

Perhaps the Divine wishes us to seek it more than find it. Out of curiosity, what alternative paths would you suggest?

On the other hand, maybe the Divine wants us to leave it alone.

I believe that the need that human beings have to reach out to the Divine are indicative of a complex but at least in some respects two-way relationship, not a one-sided dysfunctional one.

Or, maybe the Divine doesn't have anything that can be called a want.

I wouldn't even begin to anthropmorphize the Divine by ascribing such human things as wants and needs to It if it weren't the only way to grapple with eterntiy and infinity and how we relate to it and vice-versa. I would say, however, that there is intent and purpose.

My point is that making claims about the Divine is necessarily arrogant because there is no way of knowing.

It is also very human, and the only way we have- unless you accept the possibility of revelation- of approaching the Divine.

 

[JustinFoldsFive]

Plastik, our of curiosity, what led you to Christianity? If I remember correctly, you used to be one of the more outspoken atheists (or agnostics?) at TOL.

 

[Wessex Man]

Progress certainly has not been the result of the scheming of conservatives!

Indeed, they have retarded your dreams haven't they comrade.

Wasn't the C13th voted by British historians the most miserable to have lived in, dominated in Europe as it was by religious superstition, wars and diseases from which we no longer suffer on an epidemic scale...thanks to technology?

Stuart

I don't know, I doubt it. We(the world.) suffer from disease in our century as much as they did and technology has little to do with your liberal schemes.

 

[Punisher1984]

Even the modern era with all its successes has seen wars,

What era hasn't?

enviromental damage,

Not as much as previous eras (particularly the end of the Cretaceous period).

alienation, social dislocation,

All that means is that people are becoming increasingly dependent on themselves - to me, that's a positive development.

centralisation,

Yeah, we could stand to lose some government power (a lot, actually), but at least those fools in power are no longer at the zenith of their authority.

atomism

I fail to see why this is a "bad" thing - a little knowledge of the atom may have put an end to ridiculous ideas (like transubstantiation) before they even took root in Western culture.

and loss of community and traditional social structures on an unprecedented level.

I never liked traditional social structures anyway - death to the existing social order, hail to the rising anti-order!

 

[Wessex Man]

What era hasn't?

Nothing on this scale.

Not as much as previous eras (particularly the end of the Cretaceous period).

That is one period and wasn't done by humans. I'm talking about humans.

All that means is that people are becoming increasingly dependent on themselves - to me, that's a positive development.

That is because you do not understand man or society. Man alone is not great, he is powerless and weak. Man gets a lot of what makes him man and what makes him great from society and association.

Yeah, we could stand to lose some government power (a lot, actually), but at least those fools in power are no longer at the zenith of their authority.

I think the state has rarely had so much power.

I fail to see why this is a "bad" thing - a little knowledge of the atom may have put an end to ridiculous ideas (like transubstantiation) before they even took root in Western culture.

I meant social atomisation; the breakdown of associations and society like family and community leaving only isolated, weak and powerless social atoms on one hand and the all powerful state on the other.

I never liked traditional social structures anyway - death to the existing social order, hail to the rising anti-order!

Death to Jacobism and Bolshevism!

 

[Punisher1984]

And I agree with Turing here that the Dawkins' quote perfectly captures the "fundamental" blind spot of the modern understanding where religion is concerned. lain:

Care to elaborate on the aforementioned "blind spot" for us? I fail to see what could seen as a problem with my statement: humans are (by and large, especially in groups) easy to manipulate, ambitious floks see this weakness and exploit it - causing people to kill each other en mass (sometimes by accident, other times by design). It's only when a few social non-conformists come forward and point out the absurdity of the social order does anything happen to alleviate the foolishness of society.

This is a pattern seen repeating over and over through history, so what "flaw" do you perceive in it?