The Atheist Who Didn't Exist Quotes

“If there is no God, then humankind is not designed, purposed, or planned: there is nothing we are intended to be. All that we hold dear, all of our dreams, ambitions, goals, and accomplishments are pure accidents of atoms. Furthermore, no matter how high we squirm up the greasy pole of existence, no matter how enlightened we become, all of it – the whole cathedral of human accomplishment – is destined to become no more than rubble, buried beneath the debris of the end of the universe: utterly ruined, pitch dark, cold as death, achingly alone.”
― Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist: Or the dreadful consequences of bad arguments

“is there something that we are meant to be, or is a life spent playing computer games and eating pizza as valid as one spent fighting poverty or serving the cause of justice?”
― Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist: Or the dreadful consequences of bad arguments

“For how could a non-belief, a non-thing, mere nothingness itself, have such drastic consequences?”
― Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist: Or the dreadful consequences of bad arguments

“You cannot deduce whether or not something is true, or whether something exists, from how you feel about it.”
― Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist: Or the dreadful consequences of bad arguments

“The human animal may yearn for peace and freedom, but it is no less fond of war and tyranny. No scientific advance can answer the contradictions of human needs. On the contrary, they can only be intensified as science increases human power.”
― Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist: Or the dreadful consequences of bad arguments

“It’s easy to sloganize lazily, to try to reduce complex arguments to something that fits on the side of a bus or sounds good on Twitter, but in so doing you usually lose nuance and depth. In fact, it’s worse than that: the temptation to sloganize can result in arguments that are not merely wrong but are utterly bizarre and have some terrible consequences when you turn them around.”
― Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist: Or the dreadful consequences of bad arguments

“So what about atheism? Well, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize that atheism causes all manner of actions. For a non-belief, it leads a pretty busy and exciting life. For example, many Internet-dwelling atheists spend hundreds of hours reading sceptical websites, editing Wikipedia articles, writing angry blogs, frequenting atheist discussion forums, and posting snarky anti-religious remarks on Twitter. These look very much like actions to me. Actions, I presume, caused by their atheism. The same applies offline too. I know many atheists who attend conferences, buy T-shirts with atheist slogans, or fasten amusing atheist bumper stickers to their Hondas. Some, like Richard Dawkins, write books. Now, there’s a puzzler. Why did Richard Dawkins write The God Delusion? We’ve asked that question before, but now we can come at it from a different angle. What was it that drove him to pour endless hours into typing, drafting, editing, and refining? Presumably, it was his atheism. Likewise, it was atheism that led many enthusiastic young sceptics to rush out and buy it, causing, if not much rejoicing in heaven, certainly much celebration in the North Oxford branch of whomever Dawkins banks with. For a non-belief, a non-thing, atheism looks extraordinarily lively, and thus we need to be a little suspicious of anybody who tells us that atheism is nothing at all.”
― Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist: Or the dreadful consequences of bad arguments