Atheist Epitaph Quotes

Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teaching, and most of these teaching have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas and most of these dogmas have been false.
All stories about gods and devils, of heavens and hells, as they do not conform to nature, and are not apparent to sense, should be rejected without consideration. Beyond the universe there is nothing and within the universe the supernatural does not and cannot exist.
Of all deceivers who have plagued mankind, none are so deeply ruinous to human happiness as those imposters who pretend to lead by a light above nature.
The lips of the dead are closed forever. There comes no voice from the tomb. Christianity is responsible for having cast the fable of eternal fire over almost every grave. ~ Gratis P. Spencer

You may claim to love Jesus but your life proves you are still walking in darkness - confused, befuddled and foggy! When you are truly in love with Jesus, conversing with Him, He turns up the light. There is no darkness at all in His presence. The worst possible darkness to mankind is not in the hearts of God-hating Communist leaders or Christ-hating atheists. It is, rather, the horrible darkness that blinds so-called Christians who refuse to walk in the light. ~ David Wilkerson

If you take epitaphs seriously, we ought to bury the living and resurrect the dead. ~ Mark Twain

I 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. ~ Pete Seeger

There's a lot of pride involved in my refusal to believe in god. ~ Orhan Pamuk

I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance! just doesn't cut it ... . ~ Robert Anton Wilson

My Own Epitaph
Life's a jest, and all things show it.
I thought so once, and now I know it. ~ John Gay

I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I cannot follow you Christians; for you try to crawl through your life upon your knees, while I stride through mine on my feet. ~ Charles Bradlaugh

I find myself by default an atheist but fairly unhappily so. It would be bloody marvelous if there was a god. ~ Marcus Brigstocke

Perhaps that had been one of the ineradicable faults of mankind - for even a convinced atheist had to admit there were faults - that it was never content with a thing as a thing; it had to turn things into symbols of other things. A rainbow was never only a rainbow; a storm was a sign of celestial anger; and even from the puddingy earth came forth dark chthonian gods. What did it all mean? What an agnostic believed and what the willowy parson believed were not only irreconcilable systems of thought: they were equally valid systems of thought because, somewhere along the evolutionary line, man, developing this habit of thinking of symbols, had provided himself with more alternatives than he could manage. Animals moved in no such channel of imagination - they copulated and they ate; but the the saint, bread was a symbol of life, as the phallus was to the pagan. The animals themselves were pressed into symbolic service - and not only in the medieval bestiaries, by any means.

Such a usage was a distortion, although man seemed unable to ratiocinate without it. That had been the trouble right from the beginning. Perhaps it had even been the beginning, back among the first men that man could never get clearly defined (for the early men, being also symbols, had to be either lumbering brutes, or timid noble savages, or to undergo some other interpretation). Perhaps the first fire, the first tool, the first wheel, the first carving in a limestone cave, had each possessed a ~ Brian W. Aldiss

I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place. ~ Christian B. Anfinsen

To be an atheist you have to have ten thousand times more imagination than if you are a religious fundamentalist. You must take the responsibility to acquire information, digest and use it to understand what you can. ~ Peter Greenaway

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.
(Epitaph for Joy Davidman) ~ C.S. Lewis

Darwinism's atheism prevents science from knowing why things are as they are. Without God there is no answer to the why for anything. ~ Dave Hunt

When will we see that the depravity of the human heart is not most clearly on display in the gay pride parade or at the abortion clinic? The greatest failures in human experience are not seen in the activist atheist rallying unbelief or the scorning skeptic ridiculing Jesus Christ, or the senseless wars, or baffling famines. The greatest failure in human existence is the failure of Christ-followers to love one another earnestly from a pure heart ~ James MacDonald

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl. ~ H.L. Mencken

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today ... ~ John Lennon

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

In order for a god to be all-knowing, he must know even the fact of his own omniscience. But can he do this? He may know the totality of facts constituting the world; call this Y. But in order to know that he has mastered Y, he must also know that 'There are no facts unknown to me' - and this is beyond Y.
It seems impossible that a god (or anyone) could ever be sure that nothing exists beyond his ken. It makes no sense to imagine [a god] arriving at this limit, peering beyond it (at what?), and satisfying himself no further facts exist. But without this certainty he cannot be sure of his own omniscience, and so does not know everything.
A theist might argue that his god has created all the facts in existence. But an omniscient god would have to be sure of even this - that he is the sole creator, and that there are no facts unknown to him. And how could he come to this knowledge? ~ Roland Puccetti

Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Atheists are spiritual slackers, right? We are the stoners of the cosmos. We think we're all over-intelligent, free-thinking, free-spirited, uber-cool, hippy-dippy, science-minded, leaning-to-the-left, hedonistic, children of Theodorus the Atheist. We're all like "Dude, I don't need no stinkin' deity" and if we came face-to-face with the Grim Reaper himself we'd say, "No worries, Bro, let's do this! Game over! ~ T. K. Decker

Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake. ~ H.L. Mencken

I am an atheist. I do not believe in prayers, I believe in work. And my work is that of an author. My pen is my weapon. ~ Taslima Nasrin

There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God. ~ Victor Hugo

Atheist Jews double crossers stole our [black people's] secrets ... They give us to worship a dead Jew and not ourselves ... Selling fried potatoes and people, the little arty bastards talking arithmetic they sucked from the arab's head. ~ Amiri Baraka

The religious man will constantly look for the proof of Heaven and Hell; while the atheist man will constantly look to disprove Heaven and Hell. And they go on like that, locked-head in battle, both battling for beliefs that really cannot be proven. Neither the existence nor the non-existence of Heaven and Hell can be proven. And soon they will all be dead. And nobody will know where they go to, except they themselves who die. And so the battle continues, as it always has. And why should I join either side? If there is a God Almighty, I should imagine Him not needing human beings made out of carbon to believe in Him. What use to God would our species be? If He loves us, then He will love us because He chooses to love us. Never because He needs us to believe in Him. It wouldn't make any difference whatsoever, to an Almighty God, if carbon species breathing oxygen believed in Him or not. If He wanted to love the species then He just would. Regardless of their own persuasions. And if there is not an Almighty God, then it would not matter if I joined such a battle, either. Either way, why would I join such a cursed downward spiral? The truth that we do know for sure, is that it is our responsibility and it is in our best interest, to live our lives in such a way that creates Heaven on Earth and puts Hell on Earth far away. ~ C. JoyBell C.

The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy. ~ George Washington

One of my pet peeves is the habit of labelling young children with the religion of their parents: 'Catholic child', 'Protestant child', 'Muslim child'. Such phrases can be heard used of children too young to talk, let alone hold religious opinions. It seems to me as absurd as talking about a 'Socialist child' or 'Conservative child', and nobody would ever use a phrase like that. I don't think we should talk about 'atheist children' either. ~ Richard Dawkins

Dear pious fellow! Our greatest hope for you is that one day you will understand that you have no enemy other than death, no port other than existence, no protector other than your own mind! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The problem of good as it faces the atheist is this: Nature, which is the nuts-and-bolts reality for the atheist, has no values and thus can offer no grounding for good and evil. Values on the atheist view are subjective and contingent. ~ William A. Dembski

I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist. ~ Bertrand Russell

Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

I followed him up the stairs. I was a fornicator, of unnatural appetite, in thrall to an Atheist. I repeated the words in my head and tried to feel the shock of them, but they remained strange and cruel, far removed from Ferris and me. It was simpler to say I was in love. ~ Maria McCann

Theology is a study of the series of disagreements that are the world's religions. Atheism fundamentally disagrees with these disagreements that preceded it. ~ Stewart Stafford

No! No! I refuse to believe it. I'm sure you've often wished there was an after-life.'

Of course I had, I told him. Everybody has that wish at times. But that had no more importance than wishing to be rich, or to swim very fast, or have a better-shaped mouth. ~ Albert Camus

When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics. ~ Frank J. Tipler

The natural is so awesome that we need not go beyond it. ~ Ruth Hurmence Green

You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better. ~ Daniel Dennett

Which epitaph would you choose for your grave-stone: "He made lots of money." or "He saved the Earth"? And don't think I'm being sarcastic, because for once, I'm not. We're all going to die. What will be your legacy? Smaug-loads of money? or Saving the Earth? It's your choice. ~ Steve Bivans