Excerpt #72 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
Those who believe in a god (theists) might acknowledge that when it comes to gods like Baal and the golden calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidon and Apollo, Mithras and Ammon Ra that they are actually non-believers of these myths. We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has believed in. Some of us just go one god further. (From the writings of Richard Dawkins¸ Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University)
All thinking men are atheists. – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Baal – Any of various fertility and nature gods of the ancient Semitic peoples
Thor – The Norse god of Thunder
Poseidon – Greek god of the sea and brother of Zeus
Apollo – Greek god of prophecy, music, medicine, and poetry
Ammon Ra – Ancient Egyptian deity; father of the gods, the fashioner of men, the creator of cattle, the lord of all being. God of the Egyptian nation and empire. Also worshipped in ancient Greek colonies and in Rome.
I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people. – Katharine Hepburn, actress
I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now. It’s an old cliché, I know, but it’s mine. – Jack Nicholson, actor
“In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vastpower in the hands of priests.
“In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.” – Einstein
The drought-plagued residents of a small village in southern India organized a ceremonial wedding for two donkeys to appease the Hindu god of rain.
Dressed up like a bride and groom, the donkeys were escorted to a temple in the village of Sakkayanayakanur in Tamil Nadu state, the Press Trust of India reported.
There a local priest chanted prayers and led the donkeys in a ritual ceremony to propitiate the rain god, Varna.
The beasts were then led in a procession that ended with a wedding feast—for the donkeys and the local villagers.
It is often said…that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal’s wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies? -Richard Dawkins, the first Charles Simonyi professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University