Top 15 Quotes By Famous Atheists

Can't respond to my comments here Kenny, so you vote me down instead? You accuse others of doing what you do yourself. Is it really about discussing the topic or do you just post these tidbits to get votes because you know you can here? Do you know how many people listed above in the link you posted are/were really atheists?

Good post... great thoughts.... notable people!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_atheists

This seems to be a pretty comprehensive listing of well known atheists... though, I don't see the following names from above on this list:

Gloria Steinem; Edward Gibbon; Sigmund Freud; Samuel Clemens; Denis Diderot; Frank Lloyd Wright; Ernest Hemingway; Andrew Carnegie; Ferdinand Magellan.

Of course, just because the name isn't on this list doesn't mean they aren't ( as wiki points out it is an incomplete list) but then just posting one link with an unsourced quote doesn't mean they are either, especially since some quotes are actually more just anti_Christian or church which again doesn't mean you don't believe in God. Samuel Clemens's quote above actually fits that as does Denis Diderot's and Ferdinand Magellan's. They connotate a dislike for churches (the church) and priests but do not indicate they were atheists. Even Edward Gibbon's supposed quote regarding religion does not mean he was an atheist based on that one quote. I'm not exactly enamored of organized religion and the church hierarchy regarding what it is either, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in a higher power or divine influence in the universe be it nature or in ourselves.

And Frank Lloyd Wright shouldn't even be included in this. He claimed his God was nature which I agree with as well. Doesn't make him an atheist. I also suppose some names on this wiki list could be wrong as well (?). Jeffrey Dahmer is listed there as an atheist and of course, Ayn Rand. However, it would be nice to see some other sources as fact checking regarding these other names. Then perhaps Wikipedia should be alerted that they missed some big names.

"11. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud"

And actually after reading this quote without any other source or information to go by, it could have been referring to anything. Point being, whether atheist or not all of these names shared a passion for life. Would that we today would care more for the similarties than the differences. The constant list taking and quoting as if that makes one group better than any other is just more of the same distractions polticians use to keep people divided.

I've read Hemingway's books and never gave a damn or thought that he may be an atheist. I love Carl Sagan and miss his brilliance. I read Huck Finn when I was but a child and it was one of my favorites.Trying to intimate through these types of posts that because I may believe in a higher power that it makes me less smart or less of a person is well, downright meanspirited. Oh yes, and I also believe anything is possible in the cosmos including life on other planets. It doesn't mean I have to close my mind as well to the power of the divine.

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies." "Lighthouses are more helpful then churches."

Franklyn, B. Franklyn's Autobiography. New York: Rinehart and Co., Inc., 1959, 292.

Correction: Ben Franklin was not an Atheist, He was a Deist. The difference being that an Atheist would deny the existence of a God or Gods. A Deist would not deny the existence but would believe something more like the clockwork principle, believing that there was a God that likely began the universe, set it into motion and then left it to play out on it's own. Franklin vehemently denied the principles of Christianity, however, as is a common mistake, being a NONChristian does not make one an Atheist.

I do not like Ayn Rand, but find it amusing that all the tea tards think she is the cat's pajamas, but don't know or ignore the fact that she was a rabid atheist.

"For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket - by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners. [Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual]"

God dosen't believe in athiests and He's not so sure about agnostics.

I'd like to add a couple:

"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

"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

Yes yes. I remember also nothing to die for but they did. Possibly schedule these on a leap year. On secon thought keep going. You may miss a few.

Number 15 is my favorite!

A few of those were new to me. Thanks so much.

"8. I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."

This is what I believe. That would make me a witch or a druid or a shaman or a pagan or a panthiest, but not an athiest.
BTW, do athiests believe in UFOs?

A mind is a damn terrible thing to waste!

Me.

I use to believe in god, santa, easter bunny. tooth fairy,boogie man and then i turned 6

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

Great list! Loved them all!

Bravo! All are worthy of my wall! :)

Very relevant post+^d. Great fun as well.

16-If god can only speak through others, when can we expect him to speak through himself.
17-If god did speak.... We would be asking if everything we did was ok?

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. — Frank Lloyd Wright"

Amen!

Quick add your comments, the story is dropping in the polls. The Religious intolerant can't stand being exposed.......

It's gotten so cliquey here at current, that a group got together and tried to destroy a very funny piece about Liberty College and posted in the wee hours of last night a counter piece of religious superstition as It's Sunday piece. I believe I started that line over a month ago. You can look it up, and see who the Religious sensors are.....