http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J2BIzt4uPU (e Feynman Series 1 - Beauty) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCfemmxqaRg (e Sagan Series - A Reassuring Fable) http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=9D05ej8u-gU (Neil Degrasse Tyson - e Most Astounding Fact) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pL5vzIMAhs (Neil Degrasse Tyson - Templeton Foundation , Does e Universe Have a Purpose?) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uo6OCxwUPPg#at=14 (Wonders of Life with Brian Cox and song)

e world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnicent opportunity that life provides. Carl Sagan

I would argue that those who see god in everything are the ones who have a problem seeing life`s true value. ey`re not able to see the enormous beauty in the immense improbability of our very existence. If god created us all for a purpose, we`re just doing a job, pawns in his cosmic game. But if we just happen be be here by random chance, then the lives we have are truly something to value, enjoy, and celebrate. -raabco

e most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth, the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. ese stars, the high mass ones among them, went unstable in their later years they collapsed and then exploded scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy...guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. ese ingredients become part of gas cloud that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems stars with orbiting planets, and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reect on that fact I look up and I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. eres a level of connectivity. ats really what you want in life, you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant you want to feel like a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you. ats precisely what we are, just by being alive - Neil Degrasse Tyson

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your le hand probably came from a dierent star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about the universe: You are all stardust. You couldnt be here if stars hadnt exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - werent created at the beginning of time. ey were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. e stars died so that you could be here today. -Lawrence Krauss

In the past, people were eager to clutch at legends and superstitions in order to attain a quick, simple closure regarding what they did not know or understand, to make it seem to themselves that they did know and understand. Humanism recognizes this historical use of mythologies, and sympathises with the needs that drive people to treat them as truths. It points out that what feeds their hearts and mindslove, beauty, music, sunshine on the sea, the sound of rain on leaves, the company of friends, the satisfaction that comes from successful eortis more than the imaginary can ever give them, and that they should learn to redescribe these thingsthe real things of this worldas what gives life the poetry of its signicance. -From Anthony Graylings e God Argument (pp. 257-258)

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence -David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. at's what it's all nally about, and that's what these clues help us to nd within ourselves Experience of life. e mind has to do with meaning. What's the meaning of a ower? ere's no meaning. What's the meaning of the universe? What's the meaning of a ea? It's just there. at's it. And your own meaning is that you're there. We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture associated with being alive, is what it's all about." -from Joseph Campbell and e Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, Episode 1

Yet for all that idealism, its ideology that drove many of the worst things that people have ever done to each other. ey include the Crusades, the European Wars of Religion, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Russian and Chinese civil wars, the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, and the genocides of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. An ideology can be dangerous for several reasons. e innite good it promises prevents its true believers from cutting a deal. It allows any number of eggs to be broken to make the utopian omelet. And it renders opponents of the ideology innitely evil and hence deserving of innite punishment. - Steven Pinker

An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that atters the virtue and competence of believers, while being vague or conspiratorial enough to withstand skeptical scrutiny. -Steven Pinker, e Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Life is too important to be taken seriously. - Oscar Wilde

Question to NDT: Youre about to die, what would you do? I would request that my body, in death, be buried, not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the Earth, so that ora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon ora and fauna throughout my life. - Neil deGrasse Tyson

All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike--and yet it is

the most precious thing we have. -Albert Einstein

Rational belief is provisional belief. e strength of your belief in something should depend on the strength of the evidence to support it. erefore your beliefs should be continually changing your whole life.

Truth is that which stands up to any degree of questioning. -Patrick Simons

ere are currently over 10,000 distinct religious groups on the planet, a thousand dierent signicant religious groups, 150 with 1 million or more followers--and within Christianity alone there are 33,000 dierent Christian sects...

You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the rst law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world.

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel - Horace Walpole

Who is more humble? e scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved? Carl Sagan

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. Carl Sagan

Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. Woody Allen "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" -- Douglas Adams

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road. -Stephen Hawking

Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the e Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion. - Issac Asimovs Wikipedia page

Overheard conversation: A: Im not an atheist. I believe there is an energy source that we can tap into. B: Like glucose? Glucose is an energy source you can tap into, but it cant listen to your complaints.

"A rational society is one that values argument and considers virtually all points of view subject to debate. It promotes inquiry, experimentation, and empiricism, maintaining some faith in objectivity--which is not the same as certainty. e search for evidence is not the same as a search for indisputable proof. Rationalism is founded on skepticism--a commitment to testing all beliefs, including your own-- and a capacity to tolerate doubt. People hungry for absolutes are more likely to choose supernaturalism or unadulterated emotionalism over any system of free inquiry. What is revealed to you in a moment of oneness with your Higher Power is absolutely reliable. What you know 'in your heart' is rarely open to question. What you manage to gure out, given the limits of your knowledge and intelligence, is more tentative. - Wendy Kaminer, Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials the therapeutic culture shaped by the recovery movement is profoundly irrational. "It seeks not truth in debate but in revelation. It values bolstering people's self-esteem over challenging their ideas. It assesses proposed truths partly by the passion with which they are held and partly by their alleged therapeutic eect. True beliefs are those that help you 'heal.' "What is troubling about it is its celebration of victimization, hostility toward reason, and absurdly expansive notions of addiction and abuse. - Wendy Kaminer

I am, alas, decient in the soul department to the tune of one. As a rationalist, I prefer to concede that I am a mere curious and improbable sequence of naturally occurring molecules rattling around an innitesimal yet rather fortuitous point in space and time. No more. No less. "If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. ere might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true, and someone would nd a way to gure it all out again." - Penn Jillette If atheism is a religion, shouldn't it be tax exempt?

God has an inordinate fondness for beetles. ere are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals. God is most likely to take trouble over reproducing his own image, and his many attempts at the perfect beetle contrast with his slipshod creation of man. When we meet the Almighty face to face he will resemble a beetle. - J. B. S. Haldane British geneticist and evolutionary biologist.

"Trying to win a religious argument is like trying to win a case in court where they don't allow evidence." - Steve Fromstein

If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going? Justin Brown

Deaths in the Bible. God - 2,270,365 not including the victims of Noah`s ood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the many plagues, famines, ery serpents, etc because no specic numbers were given. Satan - 10. Unknown

I cannot persuade myself that a benecent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. (Charles Darwin)

Which is it, is man one of God`s blunders or is God one of man`s? Friedrich Nietzsche

"Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs." -- Sam Harris

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. Albert Einstein

Blind faith is an ironic gi to return to the Creator of human intelligence. Unknown

Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions Blaise Pascal

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes. Gene Roddenberry

e essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. e fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. e subtext is, All the suering you have is because you wanted to nd out what was going on. Frank Zappa

Christianity: e belief that some cosmic Jewish Zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his esh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. Unknown

Doesn`t it bother you that you put more logical thought into choosing a car than you do in choosing a god? Unknown

I am convinced that everyone can develop a good heart and a sense of universal responsibility with or without religion.

Dalai Lama

Fundamentalists believe the problem is eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Atheists believe the problem is cutting it down. Arthur Shuey

No heathen tribe has conceived so grotesque an idea, involving as it does the assumption that man was born with a hereditary stain upon him: and that this stain (for which he was not personally responsible) was to be atoned for: and that the creator of all things had to sacrice his only begotten son to neutralize this mysterious curse. Major Yeats Brown

(On God) For someone who is supposed to be perfect, we have to make an awful lot of excuses for Him. Anonymous

When I point out fallacies in religious logic, adherents tell me that the human brain cannot comprehend God. ey also tell me that God created the human brain. God is clearly inept. Matthew Benjamin Smith

Religion has actually convinced people that there`s an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do..And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of re and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever `til the end of time! ...But He loves you. George Carlin

You do not need the Bible to justify love, but no better tool has been invented to justify hate. Richard A. Weatherwax

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have. Penn Jillette

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. Madalyn Murray O'Hair If all the Christians who have called other Christians not really a Christian were to vanish, there would be no Christians le. Anonymous

eres a phrase we live by in America: In God We Trust. Its right there where Jesus would want it: on our money.

When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. e walls of my prison crumbled and fell. e dungeon was ooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL, Why I Am An Agnostic

If you are right to believe that religious faith oers the only real basis for morality, then atheists should be less moral than believers. In fact, they should be utterly immoral. Are they? Do members of atheist organizations in the United States commit more than their fair share of violent crimes? Do the members of the National Academy of Sciences, 93 percent of whom do not accept the idea of God, lie and cheat and steal with abandon? We can be reasonably condent that these groups are at least as well behaved as the general population. And yet, athiests are the most reviled minority in the United States. SAM HARRIS, Letter to a Christian Nation e word God is a sort of pivotal symbol in human aairs. Perhaps no other word is so vastly used all over the world. Yet for a vast majority of people God is just a word only, and nothing more, as for them it does not evoke any memory; it does not stand for any cognised and experienced reality. e images of God are conceived and portrayed in various religions are mere fancies of an ego-building mind. ey are all man-made. Almost all concepts of God are anthropomorphic, based on mans socio-religious life. All these concepts are unreal, absurd and misleading. Why should God have a gure resembling the human being? Only because Gods image is a projection of the human mind. (Sudhakar S.D, 1988) "I would challenge anyone here to think of a question upon which we once had a scientic answer, however inadequate, but for which now the best answer is a religious one. Now, you can think of an uncountable number of questions that run the other way, where we once had a religious answer and now the authority of religion has been battered and nullied by science, and by moral progress, and by secular progress generally. And I think thats not an accident." -- Sam Harris

"I would believe any religion that could prove it had existed since the beginning of the world. But when I see Socrates, Plato, Moses, and Mohammed I do not think there is such a one. All religions owe their origin to man." -- Napoleon Bonaparte

"It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has perpetrated acts of incalculable cruelty. On the other, it is to suppose that he has perversely given his human creatures an instrument -their intellect -- which must inevitably lead them, if they are dispassionate and honest, to deny his existence. It is tempting to conclude that if he exists, it is the atheists and agnostics that he loves best, among those with any pretensions to education. For they are the ones who have taken him most seriously." -- Galen Strawson

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A mans ethical behavior should be based eectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward aer death. Albert Einstein

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws. Albert Einstein

What has your God done for you that you couldn`t have done for yourself? Jordan T. McQueen

If it turns out that there is a God, I dont think that hes evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically hes an underachiever. Woody Allen

It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible. George W. Foote e bible is not my book nor Christianity my religion, I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma. Abraham Lincoln

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. Isaac Asimov

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours Richard Dawkins

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? en he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? en he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? en whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? en why call him God? Epicurus

ere once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. is time was called the Dark Ages. Richard Lederer

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. Seneca the Younger 4 b.c.- 65 a.d.

I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them Galileo Galilei

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. Unknown

You can not convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it is based on a deep-seated need to believe. Carl Sagan

You are basically killing each other to see who has got the better imaginary friend. Richard Jeni

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of condence. Doug McLeod

e church says the earth is at, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. Ferdinand Magellan Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooops. Richard Dawkins

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Carl Sagan

As people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers. Robert G. Ingersoll

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don`t stand up to experimentation, Buddha`s own words must be rejected. Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, 1988

People who don`t like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn`t have such funny beliefs. Unknown

I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent. Arthur C. Clarke

ose who believe absurdities will commit atrocities. Voltaire

But I don`t have to know an answer. I don`t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn`t frighten me. Richard Feynman

Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature. Carl Sagan

Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything - anything - be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous that the world we are living in. Sam Harris

If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse. Woody Allen

Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. Richard Dawkins

George Bush says he speaks to god every day, and christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd. Sam Harris

Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label `God` there and consider the matter closed? Joseph Lewis

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. Bertrand Russell

Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. Robert A Heinlein

Certainly I see the scientic view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientic world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading. Richard Dawkins

e objections to religion are of two sorts - intellectual and moral. e intellectual objection is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow. Bertrand Russell

Most people can`t bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity? Mark Twain

(Religion) With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. Steven Weinberg

eology, by diverting the attention of men from this life to another, and by endeavoring to coerce all men into one religion, constantly preaching that this world is full of misery, but the next world would be beautiful -- or not, as the case may be -- has forced on men the thought of fear where otherwise there might have been the happy abandon of nature. Elbert Hubbard

...it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions. Richard Dawkins

Without death, the inuence of faith-based religion would be unthinkable. Clearly, the fact of death is intolerable to us, and faith is little more than the shadow cast by our hope for a better life beyond the grave. Sam Harris

For the rst half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria. Richard Dawkins

ere are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting... But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it`s true. Richard Dawkins

If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease! Clark Adams

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satised with not understanding the world. Richard Dawkins

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. Bertrand Russell

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration--courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth. H.L. Mencken

e beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the rst cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is le to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window. Stephen King I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. Susan B. Anthony

It aint those parts of the Bible that I cant understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. Mark Twain

e way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: e Morning Daylight appears plainer when you put out your Candle. Benjamin Franklin

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. Christopher Hitchens

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. Sigmund Freud

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. Arthur C. Clarke

Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has. Martin Luther

e word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. Albert Einstein

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, ned, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the eect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites. omas Jeerson

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whi of science or a dose of common sense. Chapman Cohen

Dressing up Christian ideas about God in language such as `an eternal and free agency` is nothing but the creation of a smokescreen of meaningless jargon in an attempt to make superstition appear sophisticated. Edmund Standing

us I came... to a deep religiosity, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. rough the reading of popular scientic books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true... Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience... an attitude which has never le me. Albert Einstein

Ancient or Age-old are not synonym of Facts & Evidence. Piyush Lodha

Do not pass by my epitaph, traveler. But having stopped, listen and learn, then go your way. ere is no boat in Hades, no ferryman Charon, No caretaker Aiakos, no dog Cerberus. All we who are dead below Have become bones and ashes, but nothing else. I have spoken to you honestly, go on, traveler, lest even while dead I seem talkative to you. Ancient Roman Tombstone

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, on your own intelligence rely not. Proverbs 3:5