Albert Einstein

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but
have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world
so far as our science can reveal it."

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

"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider
ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority
behind it."

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

-Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist
Isaac Asimov

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've
been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was
intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it
assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one
was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God
doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want
to waste my time."

"Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up
after being drunk all night"

-Isaac Asimov, Russian-born - American author
Ernest Hemingway

"All thinking men are atheists."

On page 144 of Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals, it states that despite
being raised in a strict Congregationalist household, Ernest "did not
only not believe in God but regarded organized religion as a menace to
human happiness", "seems to have been devoid of the religious
spirit", and "ceased to practise religion at the earliest
possible moment."
Other's have pointed out that Hemingway used the non-existence of God as a
theme in his books.

- Ernest Hemingway, American author (1899-1961).
Arthur C. Clarke

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to
create him."

"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may
have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't
killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of
insanity?"

Arthur C. Clarke, author
Benjamin Franklin

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I
absenteed myself from Christian assemblies."

"Lighthouses are more helpful then churches."

-Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, author, and inventor
Dave Matthews

"I'm glad some people have that faith. I don't have that faith. If
there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he's done an
extraordinary job of making a very cruel world."

-Dave Matthews, South African rock musician
Bertrand Russell

"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious,
fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore
it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My
own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of
fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race."

"Fear is the parent of cruelty, therefore it is no wonder if religion
and cruelty have gone hand-in-hand."

"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will
survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with
terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true
happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose
their value because they are not everlasting."

"I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that
every kind of religious belief will die out."

- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathematician, and
social critic (1872-1970).
Clarence Darrow

"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment, to be called
an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure.
"

"I believe that relgion is the belief in future life and in God. I
don't believe in either. I don't believe in God as I don't believe in
Mother Goose."

- Clarence Seward Darrow, American lawyer (1857-1938). (Scopes Monkey
Trail- Creationism in schools)
Freidrich Nietzsche

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true."

"So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and
poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there
cannot be any answer to the question: What is truth?"

"The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice
of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same
time subjection, a self-derision, and self-mutilation."

"All religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the
intellectual immaturity of the human race - before it had learned the
obligations to speak the truth. Not one of them makes it the duty of its
God to be truthful and understandable in his communications."

"The most serious parody I have ever heard was this: In the beginning
was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was
God."

"There is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than
thy body: fear therefore nothing any more."

- Friedrich Nietzsche, German philologist and philosopher (1844-1900).
Sigmund Freud

"Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a
secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever. "

"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."

"The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that
to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that
the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of
life."

Freud certainly regarded belief in God as an illusion that mature men and
women should lay aside. The idea of God was not a lie but a device of the
unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was
nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang
from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and
fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these
desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of
helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had
been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had
promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity
had come of age, however, it should be left behind. [A History of God]

-Sigmund Freud, Austrian physician and pioneer psychoanalyst (1856-1939).

--- Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (Windows/20071031)