God Delusion Quotes

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong. ~ Richard Dawkins

Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born ~ Richard Dawkins

Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument. ~ Richard Dawkins

Religion is scarcely distinguishable from childhood delusions like the "imaginary friend" and the bogeyman under the bed. Unfortunately the God delusion possesses adults. A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence and such delusions ask for trouble because disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasonable argument. Most religious people are very decent and nice But in a sense they have brought religious extremism on the world by teaching people the virtues of unquestioned faith. ~ Richard Dawkins

I need to learn not to bend over backwards to be nice to faith-heads. Give these people an inch and they take a league. I think, as I did when I wrote The God Delusion, that the Roman Catholic Church is a disgusting institution, the second most evil religion in the world. ~ Richard Dawkins

The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something. ~ Richard Dawkins

Their [the new atheists] treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing. ~ Michael Ruse

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred? ~ Richard Dawkins

Wanda: But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape? Otto: Apes don't read philosophy. Wanda: Yes, they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. A Fish Called Wanda (1988) One cannot help but think of A Fish Called Wanda when one reads Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion; or at least I can't. ~ Edward Feser

God was created by evolution, inside the imagination of a primate. ~ Steve Fowler

So, if someone like Richard Dawkins indignantly protests that his passion about these sorts of things -- the passion that drives the "God Delusion" -- should not be taken as a religious passion, I am happy to accept that. I do nevertheless think that often Dawkins and company show the sociological characteristics of the religious. This comes across particularly in what Freud calls the narcissism of small differences, the hatred of those who are close to them but not quite close enough. Just as evangelicals can differ bitterly over the true meaning of the host, so the New Atheists loathe people like me who (like them) have no religious belief but who think that science as such does not refute religion.
[Is Darwinism a Religion? - Michael Ruse] ~ Michael Ruse

Addressing the conclusions of The God Delusion point by point with the devastating insight of a molecular biologist turned theologian, Alister McGrath dismantles the argument that science should lead to atheism, and demonstrates instead that Dawkins has abandoned his much-cherished rationality to embrace an embittered manifesto of dogmatic atheist fundamentalism. ~ Francis Collins

I think that when you consider the beauty of the world and you wonder how it came to be what it is, you are naturally overwhelmed with a feeling of awe, a feeling of admiration and you almost feel a desire to worship something. I feel this, I recognise that other scientists such as Carl Sagan feel this, Einstein felt it. We, all of us, share a kind of religious reverence for the beauties of the universe, for the complexity of life. For the sheer magnitude of the cosmos, the sheer magnitude of geological time. And it's tempting to translate that feeling of awe and worship into a desire to worship some particular thing, a person, an agent. You want to attribute it to a maker, to a creator. What science has now achieved is an emancipation from that impulse to attribute these things to a creator.
God Delusion debate Professor Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox ~ Richard Dawkins

I like to think 'The God Delusion' is a humorous book. I think, actually, it's full of laughs. And people who describe it as a polarizing book or as an aggressive book, it's just that very often they haven't read it. ~ Richard Dawkins

Contrary to what the West seems to think, it is not poverty that brings people like us so close to God. It's the fact that no one is more curious than we are to learn why we are here on earth and what will happen to us in the next world. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Washed and waiting. That is my life – my identity as one who is forgiven and spiritually cleansed and my struggle as one who perseveres with a frustrating thorn in the flesh, looking forward to what God has promised to do. That is what this book is all about. ~ Wesley Hill

There never has been a great and beautiful character, which has not become so by filling well the ordinary and smaller offices appointed of God. ~ Horace Bushnell

You have to be near Him to hear Him. ~ Jared Brock

Normal Seven went to Heaven where he immediately
tripped and fell! God said, 'Gee you're too Normal for me' and sent him straight to
hell! ~ T.J. Klune

It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading my life like a divine and golden track. But nearly always it was blurred in dirt and dust. Then again it gleamed out in golden sparks as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more. ~ Hermann Hesse

Believers can search the Scriptures on their own,
and allow the Word of God, coinciding with the Holy Spirit, to enlighten their understanding, and open their spiritual eyes. ~ Henry Hon

The denouement is perhaps the most moving scene of her show Letting Go of God. ~ Richard Dawkins

Oh God. What did you say?"
"I don't even remember exactly. But I'm pretty sure I called you my woman and pissed on someone's leg. ~ Aly Martinez

You were loved because God loves, period. God loved you, and everyone, not because you believed in certain things, but because you were a mess, and lonely, and His or Her child. God loved you no matter how crazy you felt on the inside, no matter what a fake you were; always, even in your current condition, even before coffee. God loves you crazily, like I love you ... like a slightly overweight auntie, who sees only your marvelousness and need. ~ Anne Lamott

Alternative False Life-Styles

Once saved always saved; Just a sinner saved by grace; Once an addict, always an addict; No sin can separate us from the love of God; God understands sin

All alternatives leading away from our responsibility of tuning away from sin! ~ John M Sheehan

Life with God at its core is about giving your life up to something bigger and more powerful. It's about saying at every turn that God knows better than we know, and that his Spirit will lead us in ways that we couldn't have predicted. I have known that, but I haven't really lived that. ~ Shauna Niequist

The petty man wants to use God for himself; the ambitious man wants God to use him for God. ~ Criss Jami

These children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not, - that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

To be respected is not my concern. So long as I seek to live in obedience to my Lord, respect will come accordingly from the people He deems it necessary. ~ Criss Jami

I've been in situations where forgiveness has been withheld from me. And I've come to understand it's their choice. But just because they choose to live in a prison of unforgiveness doesn't mean I have to sit in there with them. Another perspective comes from R.T. Kendall in his book, Total Forgiveness, "Forgiving yourself may bring about the breakthrough you have been looking for. It could set you free in ways you have never experienced before." The things we've been through, even if they are shameful or destructive, could very well be things God wants to use in our lives to help others. And if we're standing in the way of our forgiveness, healing, and freedom, how can God do His work in our lives? ~ Tracie Stier-Johnson

A human being has close kinship with the whole human race -- not a bond of blood or seed, but a community of mind. And you have forgotten this too, that every man's mind is a god and has flowed from that source; that nothing is our own property, but even our child, our body, our very soul have come from that source; that all is as thinking makes it so; that each of us lives only the present moment, and the present moment is all we lose. ~ Marcus Aurelius

This last year ... I learned something about family. Like it's not about blood alone. It's being connected ... it's growing up together and loving each other. It's believing in the same God and knowing you'd do anything for the person across from you at dinner. ~ Karen Kingsbury

Fear is the mother of all gods ... Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods. ~ Lucretius

The path of least resistance never gets us where we want to go. Shortcuts always end up being cul-de-sacs. The key to spiritual growth is the willingness to go out of your way for God. You will find God in uncomfortable places at inconvenient times. But if you go out of your way for God, God will go out of His way for you. Crash the party! ~ Mark Batterson

I wish that Christmas may be happy and heavenly, and the holidays glow with the gifts of the inner life that God will give to each one. ~ Janet Erskine Stuart

Life loses its meaning without God. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Ah little recks the laborer,
How near his work is holding him to God,
The loving Laborer through space and time ~ Walt Whitman

If it were up to me ... " and then the words pound, desperate and hard, "I'd write this story differently." ...
"Just that maybe ... maybe you don't want to change the story, because you don't know what a different ending holds."
The words I choked out that dying, ending day, echo. Pierce. There's a reason I am not writing the story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means.
I don't. ~ Ann Voskamp

Trying to go faster than the Lord's timing is like trying to cross a bridge before the entire structure is built. Trust God. Trust his timetable. He will help you traverse stormy waters safely. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

What kind of Christian are you? Did you ever lose a job, or lose a night's sleep, or lose a friend for God? If your Christianity never costs you a dollar, never cost you a friend, never cost any tears or broken heart, then can you really say that you love the Lord very much? To be a really good Christian is going to cost you. ~ John R. Rice

No one like the Incomplete Stories, so does the God :-) ~ Raj Vanjara

It is not enough to have a prophecy from God. We need to make efforts to see them fulfilled in real life. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Every time I go look for God amidst sorrow, I always find Jesus at the cross, in death and resurrection. This is our God. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

And if, to live for another is sweet, if it is lovely for a woman to live for a paralyzed husband, and if there is a song forever on her lips because she is all in all to him, what must it be when you are all in all for Jesus? Wherefore I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice
not a dead, but a living sacrifice-holy, acceptable unto God; and be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may know what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. How ~ F.B. Meyer

In Christ, and because of Christ, we are invited to participate in the Kingdom of God through redemptive movement - for both men and women - toward equality and freedom. ~ Sarah Bessey

The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be ... It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own. ~ C.S. Lewis

I'll always be your friend," he said. "Your best friend, if you let me. But I want to be your lover, too." He groaned and shifted in his chair. "Soon. I want to be that soon." Then a look came over him. "Oh Gina ... I didn't even court you! God, I should date you first before I beg you to take off your clothes! ~ Robyn Carr

Christians tend simply to align themselves with secular and idolatrous ideologies, and they do this without integrating fully into their thinking the ways in which kingdom priorities ought to arrange a Christian's perspective on the society by holding love, human dignity, and solidarity in healthy tension.

Anthony Bradley in Morgan, Christopher W.; Peterson, Robert A. (2012-11-30). The Kingdom of God (Theology in Community) (Kindle Locations 4636-4638). Crossway. Kindle Edition. ~ Anthony Bradley

He claimed that no act or thought that did not have love as its purpose was of God. Love was the secret of God's perfection. Man was imperfect only because of his inability to live life as a continuous act of love. ~ Michael Puttonen

Ah, what a beautiful illustration of the completely open mind - utterly undiscriminating, lacking any criteria for acceptance, blissfully and uncritically according every idea its full respect. But, of course, it's a lie: they don't regard every idea as equally deserving. They clearly consider the atheist idea that the sacraments of their faith are empty foolishness to be an outrage. Rather, what they love is the idea that everyone else must respect their beliefs, no matter what they are, and that any disagreement is an insult. This is exactly the kind of uncritical, unskeptical, nonjudgmental idiocy that all religions seek to promulgate, because they all know that if we tore off the blinders of tradition and artificiality and mindless etiquette, we'd see right through their lies. Respect every idea! Especially mine! And if you find stupid the idea that this cracker is a god, why, you must be disrespectful and no gentleman! My ~ P.Z. Myers

I Know you are asking: What if I am wrong?
What if RAGNAROK does not come? What if it does not happen the way I say it is going to happen?
I suppose that is a possibility.
Perhaps the Mayans WERE wrong.
Maybe we WILL enter a new era of consciousness.
Maybe we will NOT destroy ourselves with technology.
Perhaps it will be that some new old god comes. Say his name is DOZGOTH, the 701st, and say he takes pity on us. And a thousand years after all the suffering of RAGNOROK, he will retcon us back to the very day this book was pusblished.
You will remember nothing of what happened or what you did to survive. The only evidence that any of this ever happened will be this book, and the fact that ou now have a tentacle instead of an arm. But you will explain that away simply by saying you are wearing an octopus sleeve. The mind can explain so many things when it wants to close its eyes and sleep.
Perhaps only one person will remember what really happened, and he will be named Jonathan Coulton. But he cannot tell anyone, for he is but an animal. ~ John Hodgman

God, he just wanted to push her up against the car, rip off her panties and bury his bare cock so far inside her that he could lick his own tip with his tongue in her mouth. ~ Shara Azod

It is only when we "rejoice with trembling" that we fully grasp who the God of Scripture is. ~ Anonymous

God simply is," Bick said. "Humanity embraced It. They gave It color and gender, shape and form. They put words in Its mouth. They always have, and they still do, perhaps they always will. I always experience God as a 'He,' but God is too vast to be held prisoner by language of biology. ~ R.S. Belcher

If God is going to write your loves story, He's going to first need your pen. ~ Eric Ludy

We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen left. ~ Guy De Maupassant

The Word of God is like a lamp to guide us. ~ Origen

Regeneration took place in our spirit, not in our physical body or in our mind. This means the Triune God is now in our spirit (Eph. 4:6; 2 Cor. 13:5; Rom. 8:9). What a treasure we have within (2 Cor. 4:7)! The Triune God has come into our spirit to stay (John 4:24; 2 Tim. 4:22; Rom. 8:16). Here in our spirit is where the unsearchable riches of Christ are. ~ Witness Lee

Everything in the service needs to preach - architecture, lighting, songs, prayers, fellowship, the smell - it all preaches. All five senses must be engaged to experience God. ~ Mark Driscoll

The mathematical likelihood that God exists is astronomical. But the idea that our limited human mentality can understand the true nature of God borders on the ridiculous. For this reason the religionist and the ahteist are equally naive. ~ Keith David Henry

I live now for my work. I live for my work. I live only for my work. One day I will do work deserving of my talent & desire. One day. This I pledge. This I vow. I want you to love me for my work. But if you don't love me I can't continue my work. So please love me! - so I can continue my work. I am trapped here! I am trapped in this blond mannequin with the face. I can only breathe through that face! Those nostrils! That mouth! Help me to be perfect. If God was in us, we would be perfect. God is not in us, we know this for we are not perfect. I don't want money & fame. I want only to be perfect. The blond mannequin Monroe is me & is not me. She is not me. She is what I was born. Yes I want you to love her. So you will love me. Oh I want to love you! Where are you? I look, I look & there is no one there. ~ Joyce Carol Oates