Famous Atheists/Freethinker/Agnostic Quotes<>Kata Mutiara<>

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Neraka Bulan

banapore posted on 16-4-2013 02:28 PM
For crying out loud you cannot call yourself an agnostic and sit on your high horse about your ...

Huh, agnostic theist adalah apa yang aku pegang dan percaya.

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God(s) are not entities which exist outside the mind of the believer; god(s) are creations of the believer’s mind.
Notions of god(s) are dynamic and unique to the individual; existing only in the thoughts and imaginations of the believer.
This is why people often think they have a “personal relationship with god(s).”
~@R~

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"The Age of Reason"

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Would the Abrahamic deity be worthy of your worship?
















my daughter asked me to share this again since I just explained it to her yesterday. She was literally was in awe and that look on a 7 yr old is beyond what words can express. So without further ado I present to you my Virgo quote.


Member Quote: "Isn't it funny how when something good happens, god gets all the credit, yet when something goes wrong its all how horrible people are. Why does god get the credit when surgery is successful, but the doctor get the blame when things go wrong? If god can save some people, like the Hudson river plane crash, why cant he save others in other plane crashes and disasters? The biggest argument i hear is free will. If i could save just one person by giving up my free will, i would. If free will is what stops god from saving trillions of people suffering everyday, take it from me. I, as an atheist, when something good happens, i see the brilliance of humanity. When things go wrong, i see the failings of humanity. There is no god looking over us, no devil to blame when things go bad, just us humans. We need to take responsibility for our own actions. We need to recognize our own achievements. Stop giving god credit, start believing in you, in humanity."-- Clare Dolphin

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Forcing a religion on your children is as bad as child abuse, claims atheist professor Richard Dawkins

• He said children should be taught 'religion exists' but not taught it as fact
• Prof Dawkins repeating claims that sex abuse does 'arguably less long-term psychological damage' than being brought up a Catholic
  

By ROB COOPER

PUBLISHED: 07:55 GMT, 22 April 2013 | UPDATED: 10:23 GMT, 22 April 2013

Professor Richard Dawkins has claimed that forcing a religion on children without questioning its merits is as bad as 'child abuse'.

In typically incendiary style, the leading atheist said he was against the 'indoctrination of religion' and teaching it as fact.

The evolutionary scientist, speaking at the Chipping Norton Literary Festival yesterday, was repeating claims he made last year which were roundly condemned by charities and politicians.

Incendiary claims: Prof Dawkins said that teaching a child that they are Catholic or Muslim is as bad as 'child abuse'

Professor Dawkins said at the festival that children should be taught religion but scorn should be poured on its claims.

'What a child should be taught is that religion exists; that some people believe this and some people believe that,' the Daily Telegraph reported he had said.

More...

• Anglican school where 75% of the pupils are Muslim drops Christian hymns from assemblies
  

'What a child should never be taught is that you are a Catholic or Muslim child, therefore that is what you believe. That's child abuse.'

He added that teaching children religion would help them understand literature.

Professor Dawkins, a biologist who revolutionised the theory of evolution with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, added that he thought it was still important to teach children about different faiths.

Religion critic: Prof Dawkins' bestseller The God Delusion

'There is a value in teaching children about religion. You cannot really appreciate a lot of literature without knowing about religion. But we must not indoctrinate our children,' he said.

The former Oxford professor - who has been condemned as attention-seeking and unhelpful by critics - said last December that the mental torment inflicted by the religion’s teachings is worse in the long-term than any sexual abuse carried out by priests.

Prof Dawkins' best-selling book The God Delusion argues that belief in a supernatural creator is irrational and harmful to society.

In the earlier interview, he claimed  he had been told by a woman that while being abused by a priest was a ‘yucky’ experience, being told as a child that a Protestant friend who died would ‘roast in Hell’ was more distressing.

In remarks to Qatar-based TV network Al Jazeera, he said: ‘Horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.’

Interviewer Mehdi Hasan asked: ‘You believe that being bought up as a Catholic is worse than being abused by a priest?’.

Professor Dawkins replied: ‘There are shades of being abused by a priest, and I quoted an example of a woman in America who wrote to me saying that when she was seven years old she was sexually abused by a priest in his car.

‘At the same time a friend of hers, also seven, who was of a Protestant family, died, and she was told that because her friend was Protestant she had gone to Hell and will be roasting in Hell forever.

‘She told me of those two abuses,  she got over the physical abuse; it was yucky but she got over it.

‘But the mental abuse of being told about Hell, she took years to get over.’

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Howard exposing the God bullshit

banapore

Saint Augustine, Father of the church and one of the most influential philosophers in the development of Christianity.



"Because I'M IGNORING THAT PART!"














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"Prayer is like masturbation. It feels good to the person doing it, and does nothing for the person they're thinking about"--Don Baker











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Sarcasm!
Another religion of peace!












Why do people pray after a disaster?
Hasn't "God" just made it abundantly clear that "He" doesn't give a f*ck?
~@R~

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Do We Need God to be Moral?Chimps and bonobos and other primates clearly show empathy with others who are suffering. (Getty Images)















COLUMN By LEE DYE
April 7, 2013

One of the world's leading primatologists believes his decades of research with apes answers a question that has plagued humans since the beginning of time.

Are we moral because we believe in God, or do we believe in God because we are moral?

Frans de Waal argues in his latest book that the answer is clearly the latter. The seeds for moral behavior preceded the emergence of our species by millions of years, and the need to codify that behavior so that all would have a clear blueprint for morality led to the creation of religion, he argues.

Most religious leaders would argue it's the other way around: Our sense of what's moral came from God, and without God there would be no morality.

But this is a column about science, not religion, so it's worth asking if de Waal's own research supports his provocative conclusions, documented in the newly released book, "The Bonobo and the Atheist."

Just the title answers one question: he is an atheist, although he disparages the efforts of other atheists to convince the public to abandon all beliefs in the supernatural. Religion serves its purpose, he argues, especially through the rituals and body of beliefs that help strengthen community bonds.

De Waal is a biology professor at Emory University and director of theLiving Links Center at the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta. He is widely regarded as one of the world's top experts on primatology, especially the sometimes violent chimpanzees and their fun-loving sexually obsessed cousins, the bonobos, sometimes called the forgotten apes because they have become so rare.

Through years of research all over the world, de Waal has reached these basic conclusions: Chimps and bonobos and other primates clearly show empathy with others who are suffering. They have a sense of fairness, they take care of those in need, and they will share what they have with others who are less fortunate.

Those and other human-like characteristics, that have been clearly documented by other researchers as well, at least show they have some grasp of morality. It doesn't mean they are moral -- especially chimps, which can be very violent -- but they have the "basic building blocks" for morality, de Waal argues.

Chimps, he says, "are ready to kill their rivals. They sometimes kill humans, or bite off their face." So he says he is "reluctant to call a chimpanzee a 'moral being.'"

"There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves," he writes. Yet, "In their behavior, we recognize the same values we pursue ourselves.

"I take these hints of community concern as a sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and we don't need God to explain how we got to where we are today," he writes.

Our sense of morality, he continues, comes from within, not from above. Many activities he has witnessed show that apes feel guilt and shame, which also suggest a sense of morality. Why should anyone feel guilty if they don't know the difference between right and wrong?

For example, Lody, a bonobo in the Milwaukee County Zoo, bit the hand -- apparently accidentally -- of a veterinarian who was feeding him vitamin pills.

"Hearing a crunching sound, Lody looked up, seemingly surprised, and released the hand minus a digit," de Waals writes.

Days later the vet revisited the zoo and held up her bandaged left hand. Lody looked at the hand and retreated to a distant corner of the enclosure where he held his head down and wrapped his arms around himself, signs of both grief and guilt.

And here's the amazing part. About 15 years later the vet returned to the zoo and was standing among a crowd of visitors when Lody recognized her and rushed over. He tried to see her left hand, which was hidden behind the railing. The vet lifted up her incomplete hand and Lody looked at it, then at the vet's face, then back at the hand again.

Was he showing shame and grief? Or was it fear of a possible reprisal? The ape at least realized he had done something wrong, de Waal argues, showing the seeds of moral behavior.

There are scores of other examples showing deep grief over a dying colleague and compassion for a mother ape that has lost her young and care for young apes that have lost their parents. All those things are signs of what we would call unmistakable morality, if the subjects were humans, not apes.

"Some say animals are what they are, whereas our own species follows ideals, but this is easily proven wrong," de Waals writes. "Not because we don't have ideals, but because other species have them too."

When an ape expresses grief or guilt or compassion he is living out the blueprint for survival in a culture that is becoming more complex, and possibly more dangerous. He is acting from within, not because he believes in God who defined right and wrong. De Waal puts it this way:

"The moral law is not imposed from above or derived from well-reasoned principles; rather it arises from ingrained values that have been there since the beginning of time."

He cites at least one instance when those "ingrained values" led to action among bonobos that seems like a divine solution to a nasty problem that confronts human society around the world.

Bonobos, according to his research, know how to avoid war.

Over and over he has seen neighboring bonobo colonies gather near a common border as the males prepare to do battle. Ape warfare can indeed be violent. But when the bonobos are ready to fight, the females often charge across the boundary and start making out with both genders on the other side.

Pretty soon, the war has degenerated to what we humans would call an orgy, after which both sides are seen grooming each other and watching their children play.

So an orgy is moral? Maybe these guys understand it really is better to make love, not war.