Quotes On Atheism And Theism

#1. If one believes in a god, one is a Theist. If one does not believe in a god, then one is an A-theist - he is without that belief. The distinction between atheism and theism is entirely, exclusively, that of whether one has or has not a belief in God.

Chapman Cohen

#2. We are all born agnostics. Atheism and theism is sold to us.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#3. Atheism is not synonymous with anti-theism and not all atheists are 'active.' There are many non-believers who aren't activists, who don't oppose religion at all, or who are simply not all are interested in discussing belief or lack thereof.

David G. McAfee

#4. Philosophy may serve as the bridge between theology and science. All atheism is a philosophy, but not all philosophy is atheism. Philosophy ('love of wisdom') is simply a tool depending on how one uses it, and in some cases, logically understanding the nature of God and existence.

Criss Jami

#5. When life is so harsh that a man loses all hope in himself, then he raises his eyes to a shining rock, worshipping it, just to find hope again, rather than looking to his own acts for hope and salvation. Yes, atheism IS a redemptive belief. It is theism that denies man's own redemptive nature.

Isaac Asimov

#6. The theist can only find meaning by leaving this life for a transcendental world beyond the grave. The human world as he finds it is empty of 'ultimate purpose' and hence meaningless. Theism thus is an attempt to escape from the human condition; it is a pathetic deceit.

Paul Kurtz

#7. Our English language really says if you're not a theist, the only alternative is to be an atheist. What I'm trying to do is develop a language that will enable us to talk about God beyond the, what I think, are sterile categories of theism and atheism.

John Shelby Spong

#8. Since science is essentially objective, involving the study of how things actually are, "materialism" would therefore seem to be its antithesis, since its starting point is the desire to impose upon the natural world a particular and limited way of looking at it.

Melanie Phillips

#9. There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message?

Joseph Campbell

#10. For wicked people to do evil requires money, and good people superstition. Combining these elements and we get organized religion, but to achieve the worst of all evil conflate politics to the compound and the tragedies are endless.

Sean S. Kamali

#11. No mainstream philosopher has developed the kind of systematic, comprehensive, original, and influential exposition of atheism that is to be found in Antony Flew's fifty years of antitheological writings.

Antony Flew

#12. The struggle against atheism is foremost and of necessity a struggle against the inadequacy of our own theism.

Karl Rahner

#13. Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism to reason for its existence.

George Holyoake

#14. The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.

Criss Jami

#15. In any modern society encouraging your child to cut himself is an unthinkable act, but only with religious belief becomes part of the culture, and demands respect.

Sean S. Kamali

#16. Mr. Dawkins' assertions are self-refuting- ie. Actual infinity vs. potential infinity easily makes the most reasonable argument for theism and a Deity. Now, the argument for the Creator God of Christianity requires much more time, energy, and logical effort."


~R. Alan Woods [2007]

R. Alan Woods

#17. Materialism sets us free from sin-by proving that there is no such thing as sin. There's just antisocial behavior, which we can control with measures like laws and educational programs.

Phillip E. Johnson

#18. This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control. This is the deepest root of atheism. It is an atheism which is justified as the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications.8

James Carroll

#19. There is no indisputable proof for the big bang," said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?

Robert J. Sawyer

#20. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

Emma Goldman

#21. There was a time when skepticism was an act of rebellion. Since to a degree I both believe in evolution and have faith, I can only conclude that, as prophesied, to have faith will someday be an act of rebellion.

Criss Jami

#22. Theism is so confused and the sentences in which "God" appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible.

A.J. Ayer

#23. I do not regard the limits of the past and present as the limits of humanity of the future

Ludwig Feuerbach

#24. Perhaps even atheism versus theism is an example of this principle that an apparent either/or can really be a both/and. For I suspect that the God you insist does not exist is probably a God I also insist does not exist; and perhaps the God I maintain does exist is a God you have never denied.

Peter Kreeft

#25. Ignorance screens the truth. It is on that screen that people paint pictures and write underneath their labels "god" and "not-god" and "theism.' and "atheism" .

Nanamoli Thera

#26. Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.

Alexander Pope

#27. Theism tells men that they are the slaves of a God. Atheism assures men that they are the investigators and users of nature.

E. Haldeman-Julius

#28. The only theism worthy of our respect believes in God not because of the way the world is made but in spite of that. The only theism that is no less profound than the Buddha's atheism is that represented in the Bible by Job and Jeremiah.

Walter Kaufmann

#29. You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do ... and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself.

Criss Jami

#30. In a society where women are truly equal to men, a kid bred by a theist mother and an atheist father is born an agnostic. In a patriarchal society, the kid is automatically an atheist.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#31. If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I'd be a skeptic.

Criss Jami

#32. God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

#33. I am an atheist and I consider religions to be a form of collective neurosis. I am not an enemy of the Catholics, as I am not an enemy of the tuberculars, the myopic or the paralytics; you cannot be an enemy of the sick, only their good friend in order to help them cure themselves.

Diego Rivera

#34. If there's a god, it knows exactly what it would take to convince me and has refused to provide it. In fact, it has gone to great lengths to hide any evidence of its existence. That doesn't seem like a deity that wants to be worshiped to me.

David G. McAfee