Why the Belief in the Existence of the Theist's God is a Delusion, Why Monotheistic Religions are Morally and Intellectually Bankrupt, and the Dangerous Liability of Religious Tolerance
There are many contradictions and inconsistencies that major organized religions have trouble coexisting with, facts that have become inconvenient to the religious apologists or otherwise uninformed adherents. Not surprisingly these things go unaddressed by the leaders of these religions, artfully omitted so that delusion can carry out its work beyond the light of scrutiny. There are many problems monotheistic faith based religions have yet to explain in order to ever be taken seriously, but a few of the key problems are outlined below:
1. Where does god come from? - The religious faithful are faced with the unavoidable problem of infinite regression.
If it’s reasoned there must be a creator agent, then by that same logic, the creator agent would need its own creator, and that creator its own, and so on and so forth. But for the sake of argument let's allow for a minute the untenable rationale this god always existed and move forward.
If it’s reasoned there must be a creator agent, then by that same logic, the creator agent would need its own creator, and that creator its own, and so on and so forth. But for the sake of argument let's allow for a minute the untenable rationale this god always existed and move forward.
2. If there is a theistic god, and he/she/it created all things, then it must have, even if indirectly, created suffering and evil, otherwise that god is not omniscient.
This contradicts claims that god is loving and impartial. As renowned secular polemicist and bestselling author Christopher Hitchens contends, “Why are we created sick, created diseased, and then comported to be good? There’s no rebellion, and if there was, why would he create us in such a form as to demand that we rebel?”
And why make us with biological impulses that would be stifled by oppressive theological doctrine? What’s that say about the motives of the monotheist’s god? Let’s take the Christian god in this example, a god indirectly responsible for creating a hell, a place of punishment (god is responsible otherwise god is not omniscient) telling people they’re damned to burn in hell if they don’t ceremoniously devote themselves and worship it.
This scenario is tantamount to a man telling a woman he will beat her if she doesn’t prepare his dinner, and then when she does, he says “I am rewarding you by not beating you for that dinner.” This is objectively true. So who would believe a creator of a universe would interest itself this way? And who would want any part of one that did?
This contradicts claims that god is loving and impartial. As renowned secular polemicist and bestselling author Christopher Hitchens contends, “Why are we created sick, created diseased, and then comported to be good? There’s no rebellion, and if there was, why would he create us in such a form as to demand that we rebel?”
And why make us with biological impulses that would be stifled by oppressive theological doctrine? What’s that say about the motives of the monotheist’s god? Let’s take the Christian god in this example, a god indirectly responsible for creating a hell, a place of punishment (god is responsible otherwise god is not omniscient) telling people they’re damned to burn in hell if they don’t ceremoniously devote themselves and worship it.
This scenario is tantamount to a man telling a woman he will beat her if she doesn’t prepare his dinner, and then when she does, he says “I am rewarding you by not beating you for that dinner.” This is objectively true. So who would believe a creator of a universe would interest itself this way? And who would want any part of one that did?
3. Would a god preference one group on the planet while excluding the rest?
For the sake of argument, let's say there was a god. Would it discriminate or favor its own creations based on the theological doctrine of man? Can the monotheist honestly, within the limit of their capacity to reason logically, conclude that an entity so seemingly omnipotent and otherworldly, could bias itself only to a certain group of people while ignoring the rest?
Does the breadth of their collective wisdom and intellect tell them, objectively, that if there was a god (as they were presumably indoctrinated into believing as a product of their upbringing, which would be a different belief altogether if they had been born in any number of countries) that said god would favor them and those who taught them of it? That holds up to careful consideration?
As philosopher Sam Harris reasons, it’s a very strange god, the one that would create the sort of situation we have today where people are born into their religions, that we are likely to find our religions by an accident of where we are born (e.g if someone is born in Pakistan they will more than likely be indoctrinated into, or choose to follow Islam, whereas if you’re born in Alabama, the odds are overwhelming that you’ll end up a Christian etc.) and according to these religions only one of them is right, and the other one leads to eternal damnation. This is a strangely provincial god that would let this happen.
For the sake of argument, let's say there was a god. Would it discriminate or favor its own creations based on the theological doctrine of man? Can the monotheist honestly, within the limit of their capacity to reason logically, conclude that an entity so seemingly omnipotent and otherworldly, could bias itself only to a certain group of people while ignoring the rest?
Does the breadth of their collective wisdom and intellect tell them, objectively, that if there was a god (as they were presumably indoctrinated into believing as a product of their upbringing, which would be a different belief altogether if they had been born in any number of countries) that said god would favor them and those who taught them of it? That holds up to careful consideration?
As philosopher Sam Harris reasons, it’s a very strange god, the one that would create the sort of situation we have today where people are born into their religions, that we are likely to find our religions by an accident of where we are born (e.g if someone is born in Pakistan they will more than likely be indoctrinated into, or choose to follow Islam, whereas if you’re born in Alabama, the odds are overwhelming that you’ll end up a Christian etc.) and according to these religions only one of them is right, and the other one leads to eternal damnation. This is a strangely provincial god that would let this happen.
4. God's supposed omnipotence conflicts with reality.
In the monotheist's world it's "god's plan" that an innocent girl scout wandering down the street gets cut down by a stray bullet, or that a baby gazelle is ravaged by a pride of lions with its mother watching helplessly, or that some boy with the disfiguring condition of Elephantiasis sits home on prom night in tears, or that hundreds of thousands of women are afflicted with a host of infertility diseases and can never bear children. In the monotheist's world that's all a part of the big cosmic plan. To believe this, they’d have found a way to square that with a god's agenda somehow.
As the famed Greek Philosopher Epicurus once reasoned so succinctly and eloquently: “Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence came evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?" (Hume)
In the monotheist's world it's "god's plan" that an innocent girl scout wandering down the street gets cut down by a stray bullet, or that a baby gazelle is ravaged by a pride of lions with its mother watching helplessly, or that some boy with the disfiguring condition of Elephantiasis sits home on prom night in tears, or that hundreds of thousands of women are afflicted with a host of infertility diseases and can never bear children. In the monotheist's world that's all a part of the big cosmic plan. To believe this, they’d have found a way to square that with a god's agenda somehow.
As the famed Greek Philosopher Epicurus once reasoned so succinctly and eloquently: “Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence came evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?" (Hume)
5. What happened to man for the first 100,000-200,000 years before there was organized religion?
Monotheists still have to account for the 100,000 years or so man was walking this planet before Yahweh, Christ, or Muhammad, before there was an organized monotheism, when life was significantly more cruel and savage, when average life expectancy was 25 years, most of it lost in birth, to infectious disease and turf wars. As prominent skeptic, and revered intellectual Christopher Hitchens muses “..and for the first 96,000 years of this experience, heaven watches with folded arms, us go through all of this, with indifference, without pity, and then around 4,000 years ago decides ‘Gee, it's time to intervene.’ And the best way of doing that would probably be around Bronze Age middle east, making appearances to stupefy illiterate peasants , which could then be passed on, the news would get to China around 1000 years after that” (Hitchens, Boteach debate) –as if the Chinese weren't as worthy as the Galileans or Canaanites. Hitchens’ hypothesis is particularly inconvenient for the monotheists.
It’s an air tight defense for secularism, and a crippling blow to the tenability of monotheism. Because this would mean if a god did exist, it never cared about intervening or availing itself/herself/himself in millions of lives for the span of a thousand centuries or more.
Monotheists still have to account for the 100,000 years or so man was walking this planet before Yahweh, Christ, or Muhammad, before there was an organized monotheism, when life was significantly more cruel and savage, when average life expectancy was 25 years, most of it lost in birth, to infectious disease and turf wars. As prominent skeptic, and revered intellectual Christopher Hitchens muses “..and for the first 96,000 years of this experience, heaven watches with folded arms, us go through all of this, with indifference, without pity, and then around 4,000 years ago decides ‘Gee, it's time to intervene.’ And the best way of doing that would probably be around Bronze Age middle east, making appearances to stupefy illiterate peasants , which could then be passed on, the news would get to China around 1000 years after that” (Hitchens, Boteach debate) –as if the Chinese weren't as worthy as the Galileans or Canaanites. Hitchens’ hypothesis is particularly inconvenient for the monotheists.
It’s an air tight defense for secularism, and a crippling blow to the tenability of monotheism. Because this would mean if a god did exist, it never cared about intervening or availing itself/herself/himself in millions of lives for the span of a thousand centuries or more.
6. The bible is derived from books and philosophies that came before it.
Monotheists often blindly accept the bible is true along with their indoctrination, forgetting the bible, after all, was authored during a time when virtually all of our books were steeped in superstition, or made reference to some mythical god of the Greeks or Egyptians. The bible's moral tenets and 10 commandments are derivative of ideas central to Confucianism and Platonism. Christopher Hitchens explains, “Christianity is a plagiarism of Hellenism,” and as Sam Harris points out, “The biblical Golden Rule is a great moral precept, but numerous teachers offered the same instruction centuries before Jesus (Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Epictetus etc) and countless scripture discuss the importance of self-transcending love more articulately than the bible does, while being unblemished by the obscene celebrations of violence and barbarism we find [throughout the bible.]” (“Letter to a Christian Nation” pg. 11) Darwinian morality, and societal law had long since been mostly universally accepted.
The King James bible is a book that has gone through some 22,000 changes since it was first published in entirety (according to the Vatican), and Christians have slowly come around to cede findings like evolution, trying to shape it to fit their own beliefs after having denied it for so long. Now Christian moderates are trying to work around the biblical intolerance of homosexuals to adapt again to a modern world that increasingly conflicts with biblical theology, which begs the question, how true could the bible really be if it needed that much change? Can we really trust a book that needed that many revisions?
How can the monotheist accept that something that is supposed to have been authored by a divine artificer lack so much anyone would expect to come from a divine artificer? The bible as it is now is replete with contradictions and moral bankruptcy. Harris explains “Anyone who believes that the bible offers the best guidance we have on questions of morality has some very strange ideas about guidance or morality.” (“Letter to a Christian Nation” pg. 14) when describing the endless supply of barbaric quotes plaguing the Christian bible with passages such as Exodus 21: 7-11 where the bible makes it clear that every man is free to sell his daughter into sexual slavery, and this is just one of a litany of appalling biblical passages Harris reveals in his book “Letter to a Christian Nation.”
Take things like in Deuteronomy 22 encouraging that if a woman engaged to be married is raped in the city, she and the rapist should be stoned to death: "If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbor's wife." It doesn't take a theologian to see that things like this are inconsistent with our most outrageous concept of what a loving god would let slide through his editing room unchanged. What’s more is there is nothing in the bible to suggest it was authored by a creator of a universe.
As Harris explains,
"There’s not a single sentence in there that could not have been written by a denizen of first century. There’s nothing about DNA or electricity or computation or anything that, I mean, if anything like that were in there, then we would have a conundrum on our hands, but there’s nothing like that in there. And what is in there is not even a serviceable morality.Slavery isn’t even criticized” and “Let’s just grant the possibility there is this [celestial dictator] who is omniscient, who occasionally authors books, and he’s going to give us this book. He’s a loving, compassionate god, and he’s going to give us a guide to life. He’s got a scribe, the scribe is going to write it down etc. What is going to be in that book? I mean just think of how good a book would be if it were authored by an omniscient deity. There is not a single line in the bible or Qur'an that could not have been authored by a first century person. There is not one reference to anything. There are pages and pages about how to sacrifice animals, and keep slaves, and who to kill and why. There’s nothing about electricity, DNA, infectious disease, or the principles of infectious disease, there’s nothing particularly useful, and there’s a lot of Bronze Age barbarism in there, and superstition. This is not a candidate book. I can go into any Barnes and Noble, blindfolded, and pull a book of a shelf which is going to have more relevance, more wisdom for the 21st century than the bible or the Qur’an. It’s really not an exaggeration. Every one of our sciences has superseded and surpassed the “wisdom” of scripture, from cosmology, to psychology, to economics, we know more about ourselves than anyone writing the bible or Qur’an did, and that is a distinctly inconvenient fact for anyone wanting to believe that this book was dictated by a creator of the universe.” (Harris - Big Think)
Monotheists often blindly accept the bible is true along with their indoctrination, forgetting the bible, after all, was authored during a time when virtually all of our books were steeped in superstition, or made reference to some mythical god of the Greeks or Egyptians. The bible's moral tenets and 10 commandments are derivative of ideas central to Confucianism and Platonism. Christopher Hitchens explains, “Christianity is a plagiarism of Hellenism,” and as Sam Harris points out, “The biblical Golden Rule is a great moral precept, but numerous teachers offered the same instruction centuries before Jesus (Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Epictetus etc) and countless scripture discuss the importance of self-transcending love more articulately than the bible does, while being unblemished by the obscene celebrations of violence and barbarism we find [throughout the bible.]” (“Letter to a Christian Nation” pg. 11) Darwinian morality, and societal law had long since been mostly universally accepted.
The King James bible is a book that has gone through some 22,000 changes since it was first published in entirety (according to the Vatican), and Christians have slowly come around to cede findings like evolution, trying to shape it to fit their own beliefs after having denied it for so long. Now Christian moderates are trying to work around the biblical intolerance of homosexuals to adapt again to a modern world that increasingly conflicts with biblical theology, which begs the question, how true could the bible really be if it needed that much change? Can we really trust a book that needed that many revisions?
How can the monotheist accept that something that is supposed to have been authored by a divine artificer lack so much anyone would expect to come from a divine artificer? The bible as it is now is replete with contradictions and moral bankruptcy. Harris explains “Anyone who believes that the bible offers the best guidance we have on questions of morality has some very strange ideas about guidance or morality.” (“Letter to a Christian Nation” pg. 14) when describing the endless supply of barbaric quotes plaguing the Christian bible with passages such as Exodus 21: 7-11 where the bible makes it clear that every man is free to sell his daughter into sexual slavery, and this is just one of a litany of appalling biblical passages Harris reveals in his book “Letter to a Christian Nation.”
Take things like in Deuteronomy 22 encouraging that if a woman engaged to be married is raped in the city, she and the rapist should be stoned to death: "If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbor's wife." It doesn't take a theologian to see that things like this are inconsistent with our most outrageous concept of what a loving god would let slide through his editing room unchanged. What’s more is there is nothing in the bible to suggest it was authored by a creator of a universe.
As Harris explains,
"There’s not a single sentence in there that could not have been written by a denizen of first century. There’s nothing about DNA or electricity or computation or anything that, I mean, if anything like that were in there, then we would have a conundrum on our hands, but there’s nothing like that in there. And what is in there is not even a serviceable morality.Slavery isn’t even criticized” and “Let’s just grant the possibility there is this [celestial dictator] who is omniscient, who occasionally authors books, and he’s going to give us this book. He’s a loving, compassionate god, and he’s going to give us a guide to life. He’s got a scribe, the scribe is going to write it down etc. What is going to be in that book? I mean just think of how good a book would be if it were authored by an omniscient deity. There is not a single line in the bible or Qur'an that could not have been authored by a first century person. There is not one reference to anything. There are pages and pages about how to sacrifice animals, and keep slaves, and who to kill and why. There’s nothing about electricity, DNA, infectious disease, or the principles of infectious disease, there’s nothing particularly useful, and there’s a lot of Bronze Age barbarism in there, and superstition. This is not a candidate book. I can go into any Barnes and Noble, blindfolded, and pull a book of a shelf which is going to have more relevance, more wisdom for the 21st century than the bible or the Qur’an. It’s really not an exaggeration. Every one of our sciences has superseded and surpassed the “wisdom” of scripture, from cosmology, to psychology, to economics, we know more about ourselves than anyone writing the bible or Qur’an did, and that is a distinctly inconvenient fact for anyone wanting to believe that this book was dictated by a creator of the universe.” (Harris - Big Think)
7. The faith claim falls flat.
It’s true that monotheism is based on faith, and so is the belief in Poseidon, werewolves, unicorns, Bigfoot, and flying dragons. Yet the monotheists wouldn’t hesitate to laugh at someone who could devoutly believe in one of those things. Why? Because they demand a measure of evidence before proceeding as if anything like that were true, and yet with their “god” monotheists fail to apply that same standard of rationale to their own beliefs. The Faith argument falls flat when the monotheist argues that the atheist cannot prove a negative, or disprove the existence of a god.
By this logic because I cannot disprove that a giant invisible elephant named "Harold" lives under the White House, it must exist. This is the point Bertrand Russell made with his Teapot theory. Perhaps the core atheistic argument if narrowed to one, would be that it isn’t particularly helpful to invoke a “god” where we don’t have answers yet. Going “native” isn’t the most productive avenue to take because you can’t explain something. It’s analogous to an assumption that it must be the work of ghosts when you don’t know how your mail got inside the house.
We now have answers to some of the deepest of life’s mysteries because Scientists dared to think beyond religious dogma, and Science hasn’t yet failed us in this regard. Famed Oxford professor of biology and prominent bestselling author Richard Dawkins asserts “Science actively seeks out gaps in our knowledge and seeks to fill them, while religion is satisfied with not understanding.” (Dawkins, Lennox debate)
It’s true that monotheism is based on faith, and so is the belief in Poseidon, werewolves, unicorns, Bigfoot, and flying dragons. Yet the monotheists wouldn’t hesitate to laugh at someone who could devoutly believe in one of those things. Why? Because they demand a measure of evidence before proceeding as if anything like that were true, and yet with their “god” monotheists fail to apply that same standard of rationale to their own beliefs. The Faith argument falls flat when the monotheist argues that the atheist cannot prove a negative, or disprove the existence of a god.
By this logic because I cannot disprove that a giant invisible elephant named "Harold" lives under the White House, it must exist. This is the point Bertrand Russell made with his Teapot theory. Perhaps the core atheistic argument if narrowed to one, would be that it isn’t particularly helpful to invoke a “god” where we don’t have answers yet. Going “native” isn’t the most productive avenue to take because you can’t explain something. It’s analogous to an assumption that it must be the work of ghosts when you don’t know how your mail got inside the house.
We now have answers to some of the deepest of life’s mysteries because Scientists dared to think beyond religious dogma, and Science hasn’t yet failed us in this regard. Famed Oxford professor of biology and prominent bestselling author Richard Dawkins asserts “Science actively seeks out gaps in our knowledge and seeks to fill them, while religion is satisfied with not understanding.” (Dawkins, Lennox debate)
8. God is an entity people have ascribed feelings of peace, tranquility, love, security to, accepted into their subconscious through indoctrination:
It’s important to note that someone needing a god to be true to give their life meaning doesn’t make the existence of one any more possible. Monotheistic religious belief is nothing more than the will of the indoctrinated to subconsciously ascribe feelings of love, tranquility, security, hope, empowerment, inner-peace etc to an entity they've been made to believe in. It's what French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called the simulacrum. It's imagined but interacted with, and even experienced as something that is real, In Harris’ words “belief is the engine for behavior.”
The same can be duplicated with an inanimate object someone is made to believe is magical. Powers, traits and characteristics can be attributed or ascribed to any item, and if the belief is strong enough, on an unconscious level, then the item is experienced as magical. That is what god is to the indoctrinated. This is illustrated perfectly when you see people flooding out of Tony Robbins and other motivational speaker’s conventions, their faces beaming with joy, streaming with tears, and a renewed sense of hope and purpose. Nothing was changed except their belief. Belief is the engine for behavior, mood, emotions, and feeling.
The truth is they didn't need a 'god' to feel those things. People don't need a god to feel tranquility, peace, happiness or security. They simply need the right education about how to better implement their own psychological tools to purge toxic thought patterns, and turn on more positive thinking and feeling whenever they like.
It’s important to note that someone needing a god to be true to give their life meaning doesn’t make the existence of one any more possible. Monotheistic religious belief is nothing more than the will of the indoctrinated to subconsciously ascribe feelings of love, tranquility, security, hope, empowerment, inner-peace etc to an entity they've been made to believe in. It's what French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called the simulacrum. It's imagined but interacted with, and even experienced as something that is real, In Harris’ words “belief is the engine for behavior.”
The same can be duplicated with an inanimate object someone is made to believe is magical. Powers, traits and characteristics can be attributed or ascribed to any item, and if the belief is strong enough, on an unconscious level, then the item is experienced as magical. That is what god is to the indoctrinated. This is illustrated perfectly when you see people flooding out of Tony Robbins and other motivational speaker’s conventions, their faces beaming with joy, streaming with tears, and a renewed sense of hope and purpose. Nothing was changed except their belief. Belief is the engine for behavior, mood, emotions, and feeling.
The truth is they didn't need a 'god' to feel those things. People don't need a god to feel tranquility, peace, happiness or security. They simply need the right education about how to better implement their own psychological tools to purge toxic thought patterns, and turn on more positive thinking and feeling whenever they like.
9. The popular question the more outspoken atheists get is “Why does this matter? Why not live and let live? Look all the good religion does.”
This is where the secularists point of contention lies, and it’s a strong one. As Harris and others assert, religion is the antithesis of "harmless." Take the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, for example. We’re facing the very real prospect of a nuclear showdown in the Middle East based on two opposing monotheistic beliefs that different gods promised each group a piece of contested real estate.
Anyone familiar with this conflict is aware of the unwavering path we are on toward this looming horror. Just how many untold millions of non-religious people would be killed or otherwise adversely affected when something like that happens is anyone’s guess, but at some point the question needs to be asked: why are we dignifying these claims based in mythology that have such profound tangible geopolitical consequences? It’s because of this taboo, this sphere of immunity that religion enjoys that this conflict is allowed to escalate.
Remember, this isn’t limited to those two groups. American protectionists, labeled “Zionist Christians” are right in the middle of this 3 way slugfest. All of us are at the mercy of these opposing ideologies, whether we’re religious or not. What could otherwise be a clean separation of land (an idea supported by most Jews in the US and many in Israel itself) is made impossible by these primitive beliefs that each religion’s god will come flying out of the clouds one day to prove the other group wrong. This palpable reality of a nuclear holocaust, and the blurring of the line between church and state in the US with regard to policy that affects us all, is why secularists are demanding some accountability.
Religion is far from harmless and the time for giving it a free ride needs to come to an end, and hard questions need to be asked about what life-changing policies we’re allowing to continue based on primitive beliefs supported by no evidence whatsoever. Harris concludes, “As we go into the 21st century, it’s not about accepting all manner of absurdity. It’s about reason and reasonableness.” (Idea city 05) “..there can be no doubt that religious faith remains a perpetual source of human conflict. Religion persuades otherwise intelligent men and women to not think, or to think badly about questions of civilizational importance.” (“The End of Faith” pg. 236-237).
This is where the secularists point of contention lies, and it’s a strong one. As Harris and others assert, religion is the antithesis of "harmless." Take the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, for example. We’re facing the very real prospect of a nuclear showdown in the Middle East based on two opposing monotheistic beliefs that different gods promised each group a piece of contested real estate.
Anyone familiar with this conflict is aware of the unwavering path we are on toward this looming horror. Just how many untold millions of non-religious people would be killed or otherwise adversely affected when something like that happens is anyone’s guess, but at some point the question needs to be asked: why are we dignifying these claims based in mythology that have such profound tangible geopolitical consequences? It’s because of this taboo, this sphere of immunity that religion enjoys that this conflict is allowed to escalate.
Remember, this isn’t limited to those two groups. American protectionists, labeled “Zionist Christians” are right in the middle of this 3 way slugfest. All of us are at the mercy of these opposing ideologies, whether we’re religious or not. What could otherwise be a clean separation of land (an idea supported by most Jews in the US and many in Israel itself) is made impossible by these primitive beliefs that each religion’s god will come flying out of the clouds one day to prove the other group wrong. This palpable reality of a nuclear holocaust, and the blurring of the line between church and state in the US with regard to policy that affects us all, is why secularists are demanding some accountability.
Religion is far from harmless and the time for giving it a free ride needs to come to an end, and hard questions need to be asked about what life-changing policies we’re allowing to continue based on primitive beliefs supported by no evidence whatsoever. Harris concludes, “As we go into the 21st century, it’s not about accepting all manner of absurdity. It’s about reason and reasonableness.” (Idea city 05) “..there can be no doubt that religious faith remains a perpetual source of human conflict. Religion persuades otherwise intelligent men and women to not think, or to think badly about questions of civilizational importance.” (“The End of Faith” pg. 236-237).
End
"I contend that we are all 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
“I think the universe was spontaneously created from the big bang, according to the laws of Science. It has no beginning and no end. ” – Stephen Hawking
"You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution." -- Richard Dawkins
"I don't try to imagine a God; it suffices to stand in awe of the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it." -- Albert Einstein
"You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution." -- Richard Dawkins
"I don't try to imagine a God; it suffices to stand in awe of the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it." -- Albert Einstein
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence" – Richard Dawkins
“The notion that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” — George Bernard Shaw
- B Soto
(DarwinsGauntlet)
