ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Shelley Hopkins for taking her cruel but ultimately merciful editorial machete to my impossibly overgrown manuscript, and in other ways helping make the thing between 1.6 and 2.4 times better than it would otherwise have been (as this very sentence suggests). Thanks also to Ruth Baldwin and Carl Bromley at Nation Books, and to my beloved and ever-supportive Rene.
SOURCES
Main sources of biographical information and quotes:1. Wikipedia.com
2. Jennifer Hecht, Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson
3. James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief
4. CelebAtheists.com
5. Freedom From Religion Foundation (ffrf.org)
6. Internet Movie Database (imdb.com)
7. World Pantheism (pantheism.net)
8. Paul Johnson, Intellectuals
9. Jim Walker, Thomas Jefferson on Christianity & Religion, Nobeliefs. com.
10. Karen Armstrong, A History of God
11. American Atheists (atheists.org)
12. Salon.com
13. AtheistAlliance.org
14. AtheistsUnited.org
15. David Boulton, Who Needs Religion? New Internationalist magazine, August 2004
16. Unitarian Universalist Historical Society (uua.org)
Main sources of quotes:
Adherents.com
Wayne Aikens Atheist Fortune Cookie File
An Amateurs Guide to Heresy: Quotes for the Freethinker (star-lingtech. com)
American Humanist Association
apatheticagnostic.com
atheistsunited.org/wordsofwisdom
The Brights Net
Erics Quotations Related to Atheism (edp.org)
Famous Atheists, Freethinkers, Deists and Agnostics (wonderfulatheistsofcfl.org)
Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
HolySmoke.org
infidelguy.com
infidelityblog.org
Inquisitive Atheists (www.geocities.com/inquisitive79)
S. T. Joshi, ed., Atheism: A Reader
julianbaggini.com
Margaret Knight, Humanist Anthology: From Confucius to Attenborough
palmyra.demon.co.uk
positiveatheism.org
Reasoned Spirituality (reasoned.org)
Paul Rifkin, The God Letters
Secular Web
George Seldes, ed., The Great Thoughts
A
David Aaronovitch (1954), British journalist, broadcaster and author. Former communist. Twice winner of the GEORGE ORWELL prize for political journalism. For making what he called a left-wing case for supporting the overthrow of a fascist regime [Saddam Husseins]... I have had the almost astral experience of finding myself excommunicated and labeled a neoconservative by the leftwhile continuing to be criticized by the right as a liberal. Also accused of Islamophobia for criticizing Muslim organizations for antigay, antifeminist, and illiberal positions. Wrote of his embarrassment at being in the same room as his young daughter when the TV news reported that President Clinton had received oral sex in an Oval Office vestibuleuntil she asked, Daddy, whats a vestibule?
For people with God on their side, monotheists are a touchy lot.... In Exodus, Moses gets the tribe of Levi to go with sword at side and massacre 3,000 calf-worshippers. And we are supposed to celebrate such a violation of the freedom to worship?... Why are they so touchy? The problem is partly that all monotheisms are, by their nature, anti-pluralistic. Theyve got the one true God, and the very latest valid version of his thoughts. It is asking a lot of monotheisms to coexist with other faiths and views. Paganism, on the other hand, is much better suited to modern ideas of tolerance and human rights. Under polytheism you can choose your own god overtly.
Edward Abbey (19271989), American author/environmental advocate. Wrote most memorably about the Western deserts where he was once a park ranger. His novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, about a group of eco-warriors who sabotage development projects, is said to have inspired the formation of radical environmental groups like Earth First. Writer Larry McMurtry called him the THOREAU of the American West; sometimes called the desert anarchist. Specified that he wanted his body to fertilize a cactus, a cliffrose, a sagebrush or a tree.
Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.... Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and the hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward.
Clark Adams, Public relations director for Internet Infidels, creators of the Secular Web; cofounder of the Secular Coalition for America; moderator of the alt.atheism newsgroup; organizer of the annual Lollapalooza of Freethought at the Freedom from Religion Foundations Lake Hypatiaresort in Alabama, right in the buckle of the Bible Belt.
If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease.
Douglas Adams (19522001), British radio dramatist; author of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. Said the idea came to him while he lay drunk in a field in Austria, gazing at the stars. He was carrying a book called The Hitchhikers Guide to Europe. Previous occupations included chicken-shed cleaner, bodyguard for an Arab royal family, and guitarist for Pink Floyd. Was six feet tall by age 12. A giant among freethinkers. Professed radical atheist.
There is a theory that states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable... There is another theory that states that this has already happened.
John Adams (17351826), Founding Father and second U.S. president. A Deist, like many of the F.F.sincluding THOMAS JEFFERSON and GEORGE WASHINGTON. Deists rejected organized religion and the divinity of Christ and held that reason is the path to knowledge, including knowledge of God. Some saw God as a clockmaker who created the world but does not intervene in it, or does so only as a subtle force. Others believed God is the universe. In 1831 an Episcopal minister complained: Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.
God has infinite wisdom, goodness and power; he created the universe.... He created this speck of dirt and the human species for his glory; and with deliberate design of making nine-tenths of our species miserable for ever for his glory. This is the doctrine of Christian theologians, in general, ten to one.... Wretch! What is his glory? Is he ambitious? Does he want promotion? Is he vain, tickled with adulation, exulting and triumphing in his power and the sweetness of his vengeance? Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions.
Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out: This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!
Even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate
