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May 31, 2014 - July 11, 2020
Thoughts of God
It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow, which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin, then? If He is the Source of Morals He does—certainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit.
Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch—the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything.
There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed.
Author’s Note to The Shadow Line
JOSEPH CONRAD
God’s Funeral
THOMAS HARDY
The Philosophy of Atheism
EMMA GOLDMAN
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was a Russian-born anarchist who became a great champion of civil liberties and the rights of labor in the United States.
The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity.
Thus the God idea revived, readjusted, and enlarged or narrowed, according to the necessity of the time, has dominated humanity and will continue to do so until man will raise his head to the sunlit day, unafraid and with an awakened will to himself.
Perhaps they sense the fact that humanity is growing weary of the hundred and one brands of God.
Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment. The truth is that theism would have lost its footing long before this but for the combined support of Mammon and power. How thoroughly bankrupt it really is, is being demonstrated in the trenches and battle-fields of Europe today.
MAN must rise in his mighty wrath. He, deceived by all the deities, betrayed by their emissaries, he, himself, must undertake to usher in justice upon the earth.
Atheism in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest affirmation of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose, and beauty.
A Letter on Religion H. P. LOVECRAFT
Here, he is writing to a friend named Maurice W. Moe in 1918.
My morality can be traced to two distinct sources, scientific and aesthetic.
Why I Am an Unbeliever CARL VAN DOREN
Here, he confronts the tired, old argument that without faith there can be no foundation for ethics.
What I have referred to as the gift of faith I do not, to be exact, regard as a gift. I regard it, rather, as a survival from an earlier stage of thinking and feeling: in short, as a form of superstition.
It denies the reason. It denies the evidences in the case, in the sense that it insists upon introducing elements that come not from the facts as shown but from the imaginations and wishes of mortals. Unbelief does not deny the reason and it sticks as closely as it can to the evidences.
And whoever argues, as men often do, that life would be meaningless without immortality because it alone brings justice into human fate, must first argue, as no man has ever quite convincingly done, that life has an unmistakable meaning and that it is just.
An honest unbeliever can no more make himself believe against his reason than he can make himself free of the pull of gravitation.
There is no moral obligation to believe what is unbelievable any more than there is a moral obligation to do what is undoable.
Belief is still in the plight of those ancient races who out of a lack of knowledge peopled the forest with satyrs and the sea with ominous monsters and the ends of the earth with misshapen anthropophagi. So the pessimists among believers have peopled the void with witches and devils, and the optimists among them have peopled it with angels and gods. Both alike have been afraid to furnish the house of life simply. They have cluttered it with the furniture of faith. Much of this furniture, the most reasonable unbeliever would never think of denying, is very beautiful. There are breathing myths,
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Does the unbeliever lack certain of the gentler virtues of the believer, the quiet confidence, the unquestioning obedience? He may, yet it must always be remembered that the greatest believers are the greatest tyrants. If the freedom rather than the tyranny of faith is to better the world, then the betterment lies in the hands, I think, of the unbelievers. At any rate, I take my stand with them.
Memorial Service H. L. MENCKEN
What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile valley? What has become of: Resheph Baal Anath Astarte Ashtoreth Hadad El Addu Nergal Shalem Nebo Dagon Ninib Sharrab Melek Yau Ahijah Amon-Re Isis Osiris Ptah Sebek Anubis Molech?
Yet they have all gone down the chute, and with them the following: Bilé Gwydion Lêr Manawyddan Arianrod Nuada Argetlam Morrigu Tagd Govannon Goibniu Gunfled Odin Sokk-mimi Llaw Gyffes Memetona Lleu Dagda Ogma Kerridwen Mider Pwyll Rigantona Ogyrvan Marzin Dea Dia Mars Ceros Jupiter Vaticanus Cunina Edulia Potina Adeona Statilinus Iuno Lucina Diana of Ephesus Saturn Robigus Furrina Pluto Vediovis Ops Consus Meditrina Cronos Vesta Enki Tilmun Engurra Zer-panitu Belus Merodach Dimmer U-ki Mu-ul-lil Dauke Ubargisi Gasan-abzu Ubilulu Elum Gasan-lil U-Tin-dir ki U-dimmer-an-kia Marduk Enurestu
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All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient, and immortal. And all are dead.
From The Future of an Illusion Translated and edited by James Strachey SIGMUND FREUD
For instance, a middle-class girl may have the illusion that a prince will come and marry her. This is possible; and a few such cases have occurred. That the Messiah will come and found a golden age is much less likely.
The riddles of the universe reveal themselves only slowly to our investigation; there are many questions to which science today can give no answer. But scientific work is the only road which can lead us to a knowledge of reality outside ourselves.
Let us consider the unmistakable situation as it is today. We have heard the admission that religion no longer has the same influence on people that it used to. (We are here concerned with European Christian civilization.) And this is not because its promises have grown less but because people find them less credible.
Selected Writings on Religion ALBERT EINSTEIN Compiled by Miguel Chavez
Einstein always insisted that the miraculous thing about the natural order was that there were no miracles, and that it operated according to astonishing regularities.
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” —Albert Einstein, in a letter March 24, 1954; from Albert Einstein, the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 43.
“My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a lawgiver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.” —Albert Einstein in a letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215; from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 216.
I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves.
An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
—Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel Press, 1999, p. 5.
“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.” —Albert Einstein in a letter to Beatrice Frohlich, December 17, 1952; Einstein Archive 59-797; from The Expanded Quotable Einstein, p. 217.
I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the
—Albert Einstein, 1947; from Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel, New York: New American Library, 1972, p. 95.
“Why do you write to me ‘God should punish the English’? I have no close connection to either one or the other. I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.” —Albert Einstein, letter to Edgar Meyer, a Swiss colleague, January 2, 1915; from The Expanded Quotable Einstein, p.
“The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously.” —Albert Einstein, letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946; from Albert Einstein, the Human Side.
From A Clergyman’s Daughter
