FREETHOUGHT

I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God.  I equally cannot prove that Satan is fiction.  The Christian God may exist; so may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon.  But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other; they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.                         - Bertrand Russell                     What I Believe(1925)

Our hope of immortality does not come from any religion, but clearly all religions come from that hope.

The hope of science is the perfection of the human race.  The hope of theology is the salvation of a few and the damnation of almost everybody.                         -Robert Ingersoll

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 lawgiver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are molded after our own-a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.  Neither do I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear of ridiculous egotisms.                              -Albert Einstein

In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable,why not save a step and say the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question. Or if we say that God always existed, why not save a step and say that the universe always existed. It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.                                 -Carl Sagan

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