"As an atheist, I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a god. I don’t think there is a god, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a god. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different god, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are."

Ricky Gervais (via femme-de-chat)

atheismfuckyeah:

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson: How Liberal Women Are Building a Shameless Society

Wow, dude. Way to be slut shaming, degrading, bigoted, sex shaming misogynist. To the goddamned extreme. 

Fuck you and the religion you rode in on.

~Mooglets

"I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish."

Stephen Fry (via the-aesthetic-raven)

(via tarnished-silver-linings-deacti)

So I got into a long debate this afternoon with someone who denies dinosaurs ever existed and believes evolution is a hoax. My initial assumption was that the cause for his severe ignorance would be belief in “intelligent design”, but as it turned out, he doesn’t believe in that either.

WTF I DON’T EVEN KNOW

"

Joseph Ratzinger (The Pope) is an enemy of humanity. He’s an enemy of children whose bodies he’s allowed to be raped and whose minds he’s encouraged to be infected with guilt. It’s embarrassingly clear that the Church is less concerned with saving child bodies from rapists than with saving priestly souls from hell, and most concerned with saving the long-term reputation of the Church itself.

He’s an enemy of gay people, bestowing on them the kind of bigotry that his Church used to reserve for Jews before 1962. He’s an enemy of women, barring them from the priesthood as if a penis was an essential tool for pastoral duties. He’s an enemy of truth, promoting bare-faced lies about condoms not protecting against AIDS, especially in Africa. He’s an enemy of the poorest people on the planet, condemning them to inflated families they cannot feed and so keeping them in the bondage of perpetual poverty. A poverty which sits ill beside the obscene wealth of the Vatican. He’s an enemy of science, obstructing vital stem-cell research on grounds not of true morality, but of pre-scientific superstition.

Ratzinger is even an enemy of the Queen’s own church, arrogantly dissing Anglican orders as quote, “Absolutely null and utterly void,” while, at the same time, shamelessly trying to poach Anglican vicars to shore up his own pitifully declining priesthood. Finally, and possibly of most personal concern to me, Ratzinger is an enemy of education. Quite apart from the life-long psychological damage caused by the guilt and fear that have made Catholic education infamous throughout the world, he and his Church foster the educationally pernicious doctrine that evidence is a less reliable basis for belief than faith, tradition, revelation, and authority. His authority.

"

Richard Dawkins (via theianomnibus)

(Source: burdenedwgloriouspurpose)

"It’s difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words “Thou shalt not.” But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form."

Christopher Hitchens (via fuckyeahchristopherhitchens)

(Source: )

constellationoftheheart asked: LMFAO at that anon. I'm pissing myself.

I’m so filthy, Brendan.

Now, excuse me while I recite satanic chants, abort fetuses, and attend a homosexual orgy party simultaneously. 

Anonymous asked: You just lost a follower...your closed eyes and filthy life is sending you to hell and I hope you and your kind feel the pain of the flames the most for such crude disrespect.

LOL. Haven’t received one of these in a while.

You didn’t have to be anonymous; I’m pretty sure I know who you are. I’ve only gained a few followers recently, and any of my old followers wouldn’t out of the blue write something like this.

I find it hilarious that you’re basing your cruel judgment of me solely on the fact that I don’t believe in anything. You, on the other hand, have shown me that you’re a sick and bigoted person by telling me you hope I experience great pain the most. More than rapists? Murderers? What? And again, this is based entirely on the fact that I’m non religious, instead of what kind of person I am. Now, who has the higher morals here? Hint: it’s not you.

Good riddance to you. :)  

"‘Because it’s so beautiful - it’s such a magnificent thing to live in the universe and to understand the universe in which you live, to be a part of life and to understand the life of which you are a part, to understand why you were born before you have to die… And it’s so sad that people go to their grave without understanding why they were born in the first place.’"

Richard Dawkins,  (via neverthechild)

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything - anything - be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in."

Sam Harris, The End of Faith p. 35-36 (via kylekage)

(via friendlyatheist)

atheismfuckyeah:

[Don’t you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don’t you believe in telepathy? - in ancient astronauts? - in the Bermuda triangle? - in life after death?

No, I reply. No, no, no, no and again no.

One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out “Don’t you believe in anything?”

“Yes”, I said.

“I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers.

I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”

Isaac Asimov, 1920-1992]

(Source: we-are-star-stuff)

Anonymous asked: When and why did you convert to atheism? I'm not one of the douchebags you usually get in your ask box, I'm actually curious and would like to read about it.

Hi Anonymous! Thanks for not being rude. :) Sorry that it took a while to get back to you; I’ve just started university, so I’ve been pretty busy and I wanted to give you a thought out response.

“Convert to” isn’t terminology that one would use to describe a lack of faith since Atheism is the absence of a belief system. “Deconversion” is generally the accepted term, I think.

My Christian dad and non-religious mother never pushed their views on me when I was young. Conversely, my grandmother would ask me to read Bible passages, go to church, and repeat prayers. I ended up sometimes going to church with her to make her happy, but I was never comfortable with it, nor was I comfortable repeating prayers or reading the Bible.

I started to think critically when I was considering Santa Claus. At the age of three, I questioned his ability to travel around the world with flying reindeer. By four, I noticed that less fortunate children than me in my town and in poorer countries didn’t receive any or as many gifts as children born into more affluent families. If Santa was real, why did he give children toys based on their families’ income? Why was it that a bad, rich kid would get more toys than a good but poor one?

I carried this critical lens with me when I considered the question of god. If he’s good and all-powerful, why are there people living in extreme poverty? He seems to concentrate all of his efforts on the affluent congregation of first world churches. While I understand the value of humility, it puts me off when people thank god for this or that because they’re not considering what god is NOT doing if he exists and is actively intervening in human affairs. God helps someone get a promotion, doesn’t help people starving. God helps an actor win an award, ignores genocide. God helps someone find their keys, ignores entire countries wrought by draught or flooding.

Look at the percentage of people living on less than $2 a day in our world, which correlates to my example that god only cares about people who have enough money.

Many argue that god is an all-powerful, compassionate god whose hallmark is unconditional love of every human on earth, yet he sat back and watched the following, which are only a small percentage of the atrocities in this world, and did nothing:

• each baby die of malnutrition
• each horrific death by one of countless fatal diseases
• each violent rape that the 1.8 million rape victims in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have suffered
• each city be laid to waste by natural disasters

And this doesn’t even include any of the barbaric acts committed in the name of god.

If anyone could explain how it’s possible to have a god who loves everyone but makes a conscious decision to not eliminate these horrors, please do.

Besides all that, I also only believe things that I have a reason to believe. There are no more credible reasons to believe in a god than there are to believe in mermaids or leprechauns. ‘Holy’ texts such as the Bible are collections of stories written and curated by multiple human authors over hundreds of years, and are completely unreliable outside of the realm of literary critique. If acceptance into an afterlife required faith in god, why wouldn’t he make it abundantly clear, without a shadow of a doubt, that he existed?

TL;DR version: Never believed in a god because it doesn’t make sense.

"Many of our moral and political policies are designed to preempt what we know to be the worst features of human nature. The checks and balances in a democracy, for instance, were invented in explicit recognition of the fact that human leaders will always be tempted to arrogate power to themselves. Likewise, our sensitivity to racism comes from an awareness that groups of humans, left to their own devices, are apt to discriminate and oppress other groups, often in ugly ways. History also tells us that a desire to enforce dogma and suppress heretics is a recurring human weakness, one that has led to recurring waves of gruesome oppression and violence. A recognition that there is a bit of Torquemada in everyone should make us wary of any attempt to enforce a consensus or demonize those who challenge it."

Steven Pinker in the introduction to “What is Your Dangerous Idea?” (2007)

(Source: atheismfuckyeah)

atheismandbeautifulthings:

Today is the 70th birthday of Stephen Hawking, arguably the greatest theoretical physicist to have ever lived and a frontman for science itself. Happy birthday, Mr. Hawking! 

Anonymous asked: I don't believe that "best countries are atheist" statistic. It's just another way for people to continue the war on religion and change what is most important to the human race. What about Kim Jong Il and Korea? Mostly atheist nation, he was an atheist, and look how horrible it is there. Religion has nothing to do with how bad a country is. its only about if there is a good leader or not. Hilter is another good example of that.You people will say anything. Atheism, what a sad life.

Hello (again?), anonymous religious poster.

I’m sorry for not responding sooner. While I enjoy pointing out logical fallacies in theist arguments, I don’t always have the time.

The best thing about facts is that they’re true, no matter if you believe them or not. Whether the correlation implies causation is yet to be seen, but an alternative view would be that the level of education promotes both overall satisfaction and atheism.

No matter how hard you imagine there is a war on religion, there will never be. That being said, religion has been waging a war on common sense and logical thinking since its inception, so I wouldn’t consider being a rational human being an act of war.

Religion, the most important thing to the human race? It has been the root of immeasurable atrocities since it began and we have been greatly set back because of it. Consider the treatment of women in many counties all over the world, for example. If it wasn’t for this caveman logic causing many to believe that half of our species should be oppressed in the name of [insert god here], I’m certain things like cancer and AIDS would already have cures, among many other great accomplishments.

It’s a fallacy to consider Kim Jong-il an atheist. True, he didn’t allow his country to believe in any god in heaven, but that was only because the god was still on earth, and his name was Kim Jong-il. North Korea is essentially a fascist theocracy where the citizens are mind-slaves of the regime. One would sooner call Afghanistan a bastion of atheism than North Korea.

Finally, Hitler is probably the worst example you could use for your argument, as he ruthlessly believed he was doing god’s work:

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.”

-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

I won’t say that you live a sad life, as I’m not cruel. However, I will say that you’re terribly ignorant and should do some background reading before posting nonsense on my page. You made yourself look like a fool.