Bertrand Russell, British philosopher & polymath, 1872-1970
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“Perhaps we might make this even more vague and ask ourselves whether we have any evidence of purpose in the universe apart from the purposes of living beings on the surface of this planet.
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“The usual argument of religious people on this subject is roughly as follows: ‘I and my friends are persons of amazing intelligence and virtue. It is hardly conceivable that so much intelligence and virtue could have come about by chance. There must, therefore, be someone at least as intelligent and virtuous as we are who set the cosmic machinery in motion with a view to producing Us.’ I am sorry to say that I do not find this argument so impressive as it is found by those who use it. The universe is large; yet, if we are to believe Eddington, there are probably nowhere else in the universe beings as intelligent as men. If you consider the total amount of matter in the world and compare it with the amount forming the bodies of intelligent beings, you will see that the latter bears an almost infinitesimal proportion to the former. Consequently, even if it is enormously improbable that the laws of chance will produce an organism capable of intelligence out of a causal selection of atoms, it is nevertheless probable that there will be in the universe that very small number of such organisms that we do in fact find.
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“Then again, considered as the climax to such a vast process, we do not really seem to me sufficiently marvelous... I cannot but think that Omnipotence operating through all eternity might have produced something better. And then we have to reflect that even this result is only a flash in the pan. The earth will not always remain habitable; the human race will die out, and if the cosmic process is to justify itself hereafter it will have to do so elsewhere than on the surface of our planet. And even if this should occur, it must stop sooner or later. The second law of thermodynamics makes it scarcely possible to doubt that the universe is running down, and that ultimately nothing of the slightest interest will be possible anywhere...If this is to be taken as evidence of purpose, I can only say that the purpose is one that does not appeal to me. I see no reason, therefore, to believe in any sort of God, however vague and however attenuated.”
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— Bertrand Russell, “Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?” (1930) Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, Touchstone Books, 1957, p31-33

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Arthur C. Clarke, English inventor, science fiction author, & futurist, 1917-2008
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“Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.”

― Arthur C. Clarke, “Valediction,” 3001: The Final Odyssey, Random House, 1999 p262

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Abhijit Naskar, Indian neuroscientist, 1991-
‍
“Current research in any field of Science has not yet reached the point where we could start exploring the existential question regarding God as a Supreme Entity driving causality in the universe. However, as modern Neuroscience progresses further and gets more advanced, we shall get to dive deeper into the physiological processes underneath the Qualia of God in human mind. What we have seen so far through our studies in Neurotheology, is that it is not God himself/herself/itself, rather it is people’s perception of God that influences the human life. The Qualia of God impact all aspects of human life by altering the body chemistry at a cellular level.”
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― Abhijit Naskar, What is Mind?, Neuro Cookies, 2017

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Kai Nielsen, American Professor of Philosophy, 1926-2021
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“What I want to stress is the point there can be purposes in life, even though there is no purpose to life. You have lots of intentions, interests, aims, goals, things that you care about, that, God or no God, remain perfectly intact. If you love someone, whether there is a God or not, that love can go on. It remains intact. It might even be more intact, because if death ends it all, the love relationships between people in life are all the more precious because that is all there is in that respect...

“If you have some life plan, if you want to be a doctor or a professor or a political radical, whatever you want to be, if there’s something you want to do in this world, you can do that, God or no God. There are all those intentions, purposes, goals, and the like that you can figure out and find and can have. They are what John Rawls called life plans. You figure out what you want to do with your life. You can have all these purposes in life even though there is no purpose to life, so life doesn’t become meaningless and pointless if you were not made for a purpose.

“There can be small individual purposes, things like love, friendship, caring, knowledge, self-respect, pleasure in life. All of these things remain perfectly intact in a godless world. There can also be larger political and social purposes that you can struggle for... Even if you are skeptical about transforming the world, at least you can try to cut back some of the evil in the world, and sometimes you can succeed in some measure.

“And all of this remains perfectly in place in a godless universe... There are these intact purposes in life, and they can be forged together in clusters to give you a coherent but still utterly secularist worldview. There are, that is, things that are worthwhile doing and having. It is worthwhile struggling to make a better world. Friendship, love, caring, all these things I mentioned remain intact in a godless world.

“And morality in the terms of questions of justice and the like will still retain a point in a godless world. We need, in living together, a set of practices that work to adjudicate, in a fair way, conflicts of interests. That is in a simple way what justice is all about. We need a set of social practices which, when you get into a hassle with a colleague, let’s say, or if one group gets in a hassle with another group, or suppose you and I get into a hassle about how long we’re going to talk, we need some procedures rooted in social practices to fairly adjudicate those conflicts of interests. And those remain totally intact in a godless world. Justice hardly requires God.”

— Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist?, Prometheus Books, 1988 p104-105

“Part of the reason I believe that belief in God is implausible is that without recourse to God, we can make perfectly good sense out of our moral life, find meaning in life, and at certain junctures give meaning to life. In this connection, there is another thing I would say vis-à-vis what Professor [J.P.] Moreland was saying. There can be larger purposes in life. I mean you can be a Marxist or a socialist or you could be all kinds of things. There can be larger purposes in life even if you’re an atheist. I have lots of larger purposes. There are a bunch of connected things, things connected with what kind of a social world I would like to see us forge together, which are among the things which give meaning to my life.”

— Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist?, Prometheus Books, 1988 p131

Albert Einstein, German-American theoretical physicist, 1879-1955
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“I don’t try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.”
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— Albert Einstein (quoted by Richard Dawkins), The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p31
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Douglas Adams, English science-fiction author, 1952-2001-
‍
“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?”
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— Douglas Adams (quoted In Memoriam by Richard Dawkins), The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008
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Sam Harris, PhD, American philosopher & neuroscientist, 1967-
‍
“No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation.” 
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— Sam Harris, The End of Faith, W.W. Norton Company, New York, 2004 p227
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Richard Dawkins, PhD, British evolutionary biologist, 1941-
‍
“...Obviously Beethoven’s late quartets are sublime. So are Shakespeare’s sonnets. They are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn’t. They do not prove the existence of God; they prove the existence of Beethoven and of Shakespeare. A great conductor is credited with saying: ‘If you have Mozart to listen to, why would you need God?’”
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— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p110

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Michael Ruse, Canadian philosopher of science, 1940-
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“If the designer can make – and rightfully takes credit for — the very complex and good, then the designer could prevent — and by its failure is properly criticized for – the very simple and awful. The problems in theology are as grim as are those in science...”

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— Michael Ruse, “Creationism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Sept 21, 2018

Robin Le Poidevin, British professor of metaphysics, 1962-
‍
“...Even if we are right to be sceptical of the suggestion that religious experiences provide evidence for the existence of God, however, we should take a critical look at the reasons given for dismissing such experiences as illusory:

“1. Not everyone has them.

“Part of the suspicion directed at reports of religious experiences arises from the fact that such experiences are far from universal...

“2. There is no sense organ for perceiving God.

“...We perceive things because they impinge on our sense organs... How, then, do we perceive [God]? Presumably through some other organ– but no such organ (that we have been able to discover) exists...

“3. We can artificially induce ‘religious’ experiences by stimulating the temporal lobes of the brain.

“In the 1980s, American neuroscientist Michael Persinger was conducting experiments into the effect of magnetic fields on the brain, especially the temporal lobes. The apparatus he developed has come to be known, perhaps somewhat facetiously, as the ‘God helmet.’... Many of those who wore the helmet reported strange sensations, often of another presence in the room with them, and in some cases, the presence was felt to be God...

“4. We have an inbuilt tendency to interpret things as the result of agency.“This is the so-called ‘hyperactive agency-detection device.’... Could religious experiences, and religious belief in general, just be the over-enthusiastic promptings of the agency-detection device?...

“5. Religious experiences do not appear to be the source of completely new ideas or concepts to those who have them; they are just interpreted in the light of beliefs already held or entertained.

“Each one of these objections to using reports of religious experience to support the God hypothesis should make us cautious of accepting those reports at face value. But we can’t take them as completely discrediting those reports unless we are prepared to entertain an uncomfortable degree of scepticism about our non-religious beliefs.”

— Robin Le Poidevin, Agnosticism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2020 p69-71
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Abhijit Naskar, Indian neuroscientist, 1991-
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“Pathology can indeed evoke experiences of Absolute Godliness, but not all God experiences are caused by pathology. They can also occur due to disturbance in the geomagnetic field of our planet, consumption of psychedelics, excruciatingly extreme level of stress during a near-death situation, or ultimately through a natural and healthy procedure of meditation or/and prayer.”
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― Abhijit Naskar, Love, God & Neurons, Neuro Cookies, 2017
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Robert Ingersoll, American lawyer & orator, 1833-1899
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“One of the corner-stones of Christianity is the miracle of inspiration, and this same miracle lies at the foundation of all religions. How can the fact of inspiration be established? How could even the inspired man know that he was inspired? If he was influenced to write, and did write, and did express thoughts and facts that to him were absolutely new, on subjects about which he had previously known nothing, how could he know that he had been influenced by an infinite being? And if he could known how could he convince others?

“What is meant by inspiration? Did the one inspired set down only the thoughts of a supernatural being? Was he simply an instrument, or did his personality color the message received and given? Did he mix his ignorance with the divine information, his prejudices and hatreds with the love and justice of the Deity? If God told him not to eat the flesh of any beast that dieth of itself, did the same infinite being also tell him to sell this meat to the stranger within his gates?

“A man says that he is inspired–that God appeared to him in a dream, and told him certain things. Now, the things said to have been communicated may have been good and wise; but will the fact that the communication is good or wise establish the inspiration? If, on the other hand, the communication is absurd or wicked, will that conclusively show that the man was not inspired? Must we judge from the communication? In other words, is our reason to be the final standard?

“How could the inspired man know that the communication was received from God? If God in reality should appear to a human being, how could this human being know who had appeared? By what standard would he judge? Upon this question man has no experience; he is not familiar enough with the supernatural to know gods even if they exist. Although thousands have pretended to receive messages, there has been no message in which there was, or is, anything above the invention of man. There are just as wonderful things in the uninspired as in the inspired books, and the prophecies of the heathen have been fulfilled equally with those of the Judean prophets. If, then, even the inspired man cannot certainly know that he is inspired, how is it possible for him to demonstrate his inspiration to others? The last solution of this question is that inspiration is a miracle about which only the inspired can have the least knowledge, or the least evidence, and this knowledge and this evidence not of a character to absolutely convince even the inspired.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll, Why Am I an Agnostic, 1900 (Anodos Books edition, 2019, p28-30)
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Thomas Paine, English philosopher, political theorist,& revolutionary, 1737-1809
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“A thing which everybody is required to believe requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal.”

— Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Citadel Press, New York, 1988 (1794) p54
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“That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.

“As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or writings that man has made...”

— Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Citadel Press, New York, 1988 (1794) p73
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“Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

“Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

“As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

“No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if He pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.

“It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication–after this it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him. When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them...”

— Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Citadel Press, New York, 1988 (1794) p51-52
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 “But it is with Prophecy as it is with Miracle. It could not answer the purpose even if it were real. Those to whom a prophecy should be told could not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it had been revealed to him, or whether he conceited it; and if the thing that he prophesied, or pretended to prophesy, should happen, or some thing like it, among the multitude of things that are daily happening, nobody could again know whether he foreknew it, or guessed at it, or whether it was accidental. A prophet, therefore, is a character useless and unnecessary; and the safe side of the case is to guard against being imposed upon, by not giving credit to such relations.

“Upon the whole, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, are appendages that belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means by which so many Lo heres! and Lo theres! have been spread about the world, and religion been made into a trade. The success of one impostor gave encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some good by keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse.”

— Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Citadel Press, New York, 1988 (1794) p97
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“But some perhaps will say—Are we to have no word of God—no revelation? I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation.

“THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.

“Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as he means of unchangeable and universal information. The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviors believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a man might walk to the end of it.

“But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He could speak but one language, which was Hebrew; and there are in the world several hundred languages. Scarcely any two nations speak the same language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknow at the time Christ lived.

“It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as man faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end: but human language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth in manifesting himself universally to man.

“It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

“Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.”

— Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Citadel Press, New York, 1988 (1794) pp68-70
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“That which man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell him he has done it, or seen it, for he knows it already...

“Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man, can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man; but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet, the thing so revealed (if anything ever was revealed, and which, by the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. His account of it to another is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it; or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells; for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation. In all such cases, the proper answer should be, ‘When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be revelation; but it is not and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God.’”

— Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Citadel Press, New York, 1988 (1794) p181

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Richard Dawkins, PhD, British evolutionary biologist, 1941-
‍
“Many people believe in God because they believe they have seen a vision of him – or of an angel or a virgin in blue – with their own eyes. Or he speaks to them inside their heads. This argument from personal experience is the one that is most convincing to those who claim to have had one. But it is the least convincing to anyone else, and anyone knowledgeable about psychology.
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“You say you have experienced God directly? Well, some people have experienced a pink elephant, but that probably doesn’t impress you. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, distinctly heard the voice of Jesus telling him to kill women, and he was locked up for life. George W. Bush says that God told him to invade Iraq (a pity God didn’t vouchsafe him a revelation that there were no weapons of mass destruction). Individuals in asylums think they are Napoleon or Charlie Chaplin, or that the entire world is conspiring against them, or that they can broadcast their thoughts into other people’s heads. We humour them but don’t take their internally revealed beliefs seriously, mostly because not many people share them. Religious experiences are different only in that the people who claim them are numerous...
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“The human brain runs first-class simulation software. Our eyes don’t present to our brains a faithful photograph of what is out there, or an accurate movie of what is going on through time. Our brains construct a continuously updated model: updated by coded pulses chattering along the optic nerve, but constructed nevertheless. Optical illusions are vivid reminders of this. A major class of illusions, of which the Necker Cube is an example, arise because the sense data that the brain receives are compatible with two alternative models of reality. The brain, having no basis for choosing between them, alternates, and we experience a series of flips from one internal model to the other. The picture we are looking at appears, almost literally, to flip over and become something else.

“The simulation software in the brain is especially adept at constructing faces and voices...
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“...It is well capable of constructing ‘visions’ and ‘visitations’ of the utmost veridical power. To simulate a ghost or an angel or a Virgin Mary would be child’s play to software of this sophistication. And the same thing works for hearing. When we hear a sound, it is not faithfully transported up the auditory nerve and relayed to the brain as if by a high-fidelity Bang & Olufsen. As with vision, the brain constructs a sound model, based upon continuously updated auditory nerve data...

“Once, as a child, I heard a ghost: a male voice murmuring, as if in recitation or prayer. I could almost, but not quite, make out the words, which seemed to have a serious, solemn timbre. I had been told stories of priest holes in ancient houses, and I was a little frightened. But I got out of bed and crept up on the source of the sound. As I got closer, it grew louder, and then suddenly it ‘flipped’ inside my head. I was now close enough to discern what it really was. The wind, gusting through the keyhole, was creating sounds which the simulation software in my brain had used to construct a model of male speech, solemnly intoned. Had I been a more impressionable child, it is possible that I would have ‘heard’ not just unintelligible speech but particular words and even sentences. And had I been both impressionable and religiously brought up, I wonder what words the wind might have spoken.”

— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p113-116

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Alan Watts, English philosopher, 1915-1973
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“Now you may say I need some help in this process [of self-improvement], and therefore I am going to find someone else to help me. It may be a therapist. It may be a clergyman, it may be a guru. It may be any kind of person who teaches a technique of self-improvement. Now how will you know whether this person is able to teach you. How can you judge, for example, whether a psychotherapist is effective or just a charlatan? How can you judge whether a guru is himself spiritually wise or merely a good chatterbox? Well of course, you ask your friends, you ask of his other students or patients and they’re all of course enthusiastic. You have to be enthusiastic when you bought something expensive. If you bought an automobile which turned out to be a lemon it’s very difficult to admit that it was a lemon that you were fooled and it’s the same when you buy a religion or an expensive operation. But what people do not sufficiently realize is that when you pick an authority, whether it’s a psychotherapeutic one or a religious one. You chose it. In other words, that this fellow, or this book, or this system is the right one is your opinion. And how are you competent to judge? After all, if you’re saying to this other person or other source, I think you are the authority, that’s your opinion. So you cannot really judge whether an austerity is a sound off already unless you yourself are a sound off already. Otherwise you may just be being fooled.”

— Alan Watts, ‘Mind over Mind - Part 2,’ (lectures compiled in 1972), The Alan Watts Organization

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Sam Harris, PhD, American philosopher & neuroscientist, 1967-
‍
“No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation.” 
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— Sam Harris, The End of Faith, W.W. Norton Company, New York, 2004 p227
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Kai Nielsen, American Professor of Philosophy, 1926-2021
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“Religious experience doesn’t enable you to detect God. It is, of course, perfectly true that people have religious experiences, including mystical experiences. But that is a different matter. That is a matter of having certain feelings. Moreover, Buddhists have such experiences, but Buddhists don’t claim to see God but Christians and Sufis do. It depends upon what religious framework you start with. Religious experience is a matter of feelings, and feelings are not a way of cognition. But even if a religious experience were a form of cognition, it is so variously interpreted from religious tradition to religious tradition that there is no good reason to believe it yields a direct knowledge of God.”

— Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist?, Prometheus Books, 1988 p65

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“Well, there is a historicity of Mohammed too. There is a historicity of Buddha. I return to the fact that there are many, many religions, many, many putative revelations. Don’t say they say the same thing. They don’t. Any being that could be Christ–could be both man and God–for a Jew couldn’t be God. No man, on his conception of things, could be God. That would be idolatry. That is not the sort of thing that God could be. And for the lesser vehicle in Buddhism, which is as old a religion as Christianity, there is neither worship nor God. So I want to say, ‘Why Christianity rather than Buddhism?’ ‘Why Christianity rather than Hinduism?’ They have their claimed revelations too. How do you decide that a claimed revelation is a genuine revelation? And if we use reason, including empirical research to judge revelation, why then do we need revelation?”

— Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist?, Prometheus Books, 1988 p71-72
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“There is the crucial argument about religious experience. What I think is undeniable is that there are religious experiences. Professor [J.P.] Moreland said, I think rightly, that I begged the question to say that they are all of the nature of feelings. It did seem to me when Otto described them, they sounded like feelings. But suppose we say no, they are numinous experiences? They are a form of non-sensory perception that we have. And maybe there is such a thing... Maybe there is some kind of nonsensory or a special sensory direct awareness. But all that to the contrary notwithstanding, one of the things I would argue is there couldn’t be a nonsensory awareness of an infinite eternal God transcendent to the universe. [J.P.] Moreland says that in Christianity God was immanent. That’s one of the paradoxes of Christianity. How could God be both transcendent and immanent?...

“So I still want to say that those people[,] who try to argue that there is a direct awareness of God that gives you a kind of certainty that no philosophical argument can ever give[,] are mistaken. But there is no reason not to think that there are religious experiences, but there’s no good reason to think they are experiences of God. If you use the causal argument to say, ‘I know from experience; I had these experiences and that leads me to postulate God,’ that is not a direct awareness of God. That is to argue for certain experiences and try your best to explain them by postulating God. There are, however, alternative ways of explaining those same experiences, including some purely secular ways. It’s terribly unclear which of those ways are the best at explaining the phenomena.”

— Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist?, Prometheus Books, 1988 p70-71

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“[C.B. Martin & Ronald Hepburn] both argued, soundly, I believe, that [self-authenticating religious experience] yields no knowledge of God... I don’t deny that there are religious experiences and they’re humanly very important. Rudolph Otto was very good at describing the sort of circumstances that generate and sustain religious feelings. They are very real indeed, but they in no way are a ground for religious belief. They do not afford a special experience that gives us a knowledge of God. They are very fundamental religious experiences. People like Ninian Smart have argued they’re quite various from culture to culture... Nobody denies that; it’s a question of how to interpret it.

“So there are two points. It’s supposed to be an experience of God. I’m saying that can’t be if God is in infinite individual transcendent to the universe. Because just think about what you mean by that term, and it should be evident to you that you just could not experience directly such a being. To go back to the anthropomorphic thing, you could only experience an anthropomorphic being. And that’s religiously inadequate, for it is not the infinite transcendent reality of the tradition.

“Suppose one says, ‘Look, look, look. I don’t understand your fancy philosophic arguments. Maybe they’re good; maybe they’re bad. But I’ve experienced God, and I know it in a self-authenticating way.’ But Martin argued powerfully that the only models we have for self-authenticating experiences are things like headaches or sensations–that is, purely psychological realities. Suppose I say to you, ‘I’ve got a headache.’ That’s what Wittgenstein called a first person, present tense avowal. Suppose you say, ‘No, you don’t have a headache.’ Well, I have a kind of authority here on what I avow...

“Those are all very private experiences which, though they are intentional and thus have intentional objects, are not experiences of some strange ontological realm. They are just psychological experiences, and they can’t be used as a model for saying you have a self-authenticating experience of God. That is a more public claim, and then you are faced with the counter that it doesn’t make sense to say such non-purely psychological experiences are self-authenticating...”

— Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist?, Prometheus Books, 1988 p83-85

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Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (A.J. Ayer), English philosopher & humanist, 1910-1989
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“These considerations dispose of the argument from religious experience, which many philosophers still regard as a valid argument in favour of the existence of a god. They say that it is logically possible for men to be immediately acquainted with God, as they are immediately acquainted with a sense-content, and that there is no reason why one should be prepared to believe a man when he says that he is seeing a yellow patch, and refuse to believe him [when] he says that he is seeing God. The answer to this is that if the man who asserts that he is seeing God is merely asserting that he is experiencing a peculiar kind of sense-content, then we do not for a moment deny that his assertion may be true. But, ordinarily, the man who says that he is seeing God is saying not merely that he is experiencing a religious emotion, but also that there exists a transcendent being who is the object of his emotion; just as the man who says that he sees a yellow patch is ordinarily saying not merely that his visual sense-field contains a yellow object to which the sense-content belongs. And it is not irrational to be prepared to believe a man when he asserts the existence of a yellow object, and to refuse to believe him when he asserts the existence of a transcendent god. For whereas the sentence ‘There exists here a yellow-coloured material thing’ expresses a genuine synthetic proposition which could be empirically verified, the sentence ’There exists a transcendent god’ has, as we have seen, no literal significance.

“We conclude therefore, that the argument from religious experience is altogether fallacious. The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge, any more than our having moral experiences implies that there is such a thing as moral knowledge. The theist, like the moralist, may believe that his experiences are cognitive experiences, but, unless he can formulate his ‘knowledge’ in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we may be sure that he is deceiving himself. It follows that those philosophers who fill their books with assertions that they intuitively ‘know’ this or that moral or religious ‘truth’ are merely providing material for the psychoanalyst. For no act of intuition can be said to reveal a truth about any matter of fact unless it issues in verifiable propositions. And all such propositions are to be incorporated in the system of empirical propositions which constitutes science.”

— A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, Penguin Books, 1936 p157-158

Arthur C. Clarke, English inventor, science fiction author, & futurist, 1917-2008
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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” 

— Arthur C. Clarke, “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination,” Profiles of the Future, Harper & Row, 1962

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Carl Sagan, PhD, American astronomer, astrophysicist, & astrobiologist, 1934-1996
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“If prayer works, why can’t God cure cancer or grow back a severed limb? Why so much avoidable suffering that God could so readily prevent? Why does God need to be prayed to at all? Doesn’t He already know what cures need to be performed?” 

— Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World, Ballantine Books, New York, 1996 p234
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Thomas Paine, English philosopher, political theorist, & revolutionary, 1737-1809
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“In the same sense that every thing may be said to be a mystery, so also may it be said that every thing is a miracle, and that no one thing is a greater miracle than another. The elephant, though larger, is not a greater miracle than a mite: nor a mountain a greater miracle than an atom. To an almighty power it is no more difficult to make the one than the other, and no more difficult to make a million of worlds than to make one. Every thing, therefore, is a miracle, in one sense; whilst, in the other sense, there is no such thing as a miracle. It is a miracle when compared to our power, and to our comprehension. It is not a miracle compared to the power that performs it. But as nothing in this description conveys the idea that is affixed to the word miracle, it is necessary to carry the inquiry further.

“Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they call nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something contrary to the operation and effect of those laws. But unless we know the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether any thing that may appear to us wonderful or miraculous, be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting.

“The ascension of a man several miles high into the air, would have everything in it that constitutes the idea of a miracle, if it were not known that a species of air can be generated several times lighter than the common atmospheric air, and yet possess elasticity enough to prevent the balloon, in which that light air is inclosed, from being compressed into as many times less bulk, by the common air that surrounds it...

“The restoring persons to life who are to appearance dead as is practised [sic] upon drowned persons, would also be a miracle, if it were not known that animation is capable of being suspended without being extinct.

“Besides these, there are performances by slight of hand, and by persons acting in concert, that have a miraculous appearance, which, when known, are thought nothing of. And, besides these, there are mechanical and optical deceptions... As, therefore, we know not the extent to which either nature or art can go, there is no criterion to determine what a miracle is; and mankind, in giving credit to appearances, under the idea of their being miracles, are subject to be continually imposed upon.

“Since then appearances are so capable of deceiving, and things not real have a strong resemblance to things that are, nothing can be more inconsistent than to suppose that the Almighty would make use of means, such as are called miracles, that would subject the person who performed them to the suspicion of being an impostor, and the person who related them to be suspected of lying, and the doctrine intended to be supported thereby to be suspected as a fabulous invention.

“Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given, that of miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is the most inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief (for a miracle, under any idea of the word, is a show) it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached. And, in the second place, it is degrading the Almighty into the character of a show-man, playing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter, who says that he saw it; and, therefore, the thing, were it true, would have no better chance of being believed than if it were a lie.

“Suppose I were to say, that when I sat down to write this book, a hand presented itself in the air, took up the pen and wrote every word that is herein written; would any body believe me? Certainly they would not. Would they believe me a whit the more if the thing had been a fact? Certainly they would not. Since then a real miracle, were it to happen, would be subject to the same fate as the falsehood, the inconsistency becomes the greater of supposing the Almighty would make use of means that would not answer the purpose for which they were intended, even if they were real.

“If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is,—Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.” 

— Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Citadel Press, New York, 1988 pp93-94

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Robert Ingersoll, American lawyer & orator, 1833-1899
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“All religions, so far as I know, claim to have been miraculously founded, miraculously preserved, and miraculously propagated. The priests of all claimed to have messages from God, and claimed to have a certain authority, and the miraculous has always been appealed to for the purpose of substantiating the message and the authority.

“If men believe in the supernatural, they will account for all phenomena by an appeal to supernatural means or power. We know that formerly everything was accounted for in this way except some few simple things with which man thought he was perfectly acquainted. After a time men found that under like conditions like would happen, and as to those things the supposition of supernatural interference was abandoned; but that interference was still active as to all the unknown world. In other words, as the circle of man’s knowledge grew, supernatural interference withdrew and was active only just beyond the horizon of the known...

“Others have abandoned the idea of providence in ordinary matters, but still believe that God interferes on great occasions and at critical moments, especially in the affairs of nations, and that his presence is manifest in great disasters. This is the compromise position. These people believe that an infinite being made the universe and impressed upon it what they are pleased to call ’laws,’ and then left it to run in accordance with those laws and forces; that as a rule it works well, and that the divine maker interferes only in cases of accident, or at moments when the machine fails to accomplish the original design.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll, Why Am I an Agnostic, 1900 (Anodos Books edition, 2019, p25-26)

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“Every intelligent American is satisfied that the religions of India, of Egypt, of Greece and Rome, of the Aztecs, were and are false, and that all the miracles on which they rest are mistakes. Our religion alone is excepted. Every intelligent Hindoo [sic] discards all religions and all miracles except his own. The question is: When will people see the defects in their own theology as clearly as they perceive the same defects in every other?

“All the so-called false religions were substantiated by miracles, by signs and wonders, by prophets and martyrs, precisely as our own. Our witnesses are no better than theirs, and our success is no greater. If their miracles were false, ours cannot be true. Nature was the same in India and in Palestine.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll, Why Am I an Agnostic, 1900 (Anodos Books edition, 2019, p27-28)
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Paul Davies, PhD, English physicist & professor, 1946-
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“I have always wanted to believe that science can explain everything, at least in principle. Many nonscientists would deny such a claim resolutely. Most religions demand belief in at least some supernatural events, which are by definition impossible to reconcile with science. I would rather not believe in supernatural events personally. Although I obviously can’t prove that they never happen, I see no reason to suppose that they do. My inclination is to assume that the laws of nature are obeyed at all times.”

— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Touchstone, 1992 p14-15

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Richard Dawkins, PhD, British evolutionary biologist, 1941-
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“Whether we ever get to know about them or not, there are very probably alien civilizations that are superhuman, to the point of being god-like in ways that exceed anything a theologian could possibly imagine. Their technical achievements would seem as supernatural to us as ours would seem to a Dark Age peasant transported to the twenty-first century. Imagine his response to a laptop computer, a mobile telephone, a hydrogen bomb or a jumbo jet. As Arthur C. Clarke put it, in his Third Law: ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ The miracles wrought by our technology would have seemed to the ancients no less remarkable than the tales of Moses parting the waters, or Jesus walking upon them. The aliens of our SETI signal would be to us like gods, just as missionaries were treated as gods (and exploited the undeserved honour to the hilt) when they turned up in Stone Age cultures bearing guns, telescopes, matches, and almanacs predicting the eclipses to the second.
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“In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods? In what sense would they be superhuman but not supernatural?... The crucial difference between gods and god-like extraterrestrials lies not in their properties but in their provenance. Entities that are complex enough to be intelligent are products of an evolutionary process. No matter how god-like they may seem when we encounter them, they didn’t start that way. Science-fiction authors, such as Daniel F. Galouye in Counterfeit World, have even suggested (and I cannot think how to disprove it) that we live in a computer simulation, set up by some vastly superior civilization. But the simulators themselves would have to come from somewhere. The laws of probability forbid all notions of their spontaneously appearing without simpler antecedents. They probably owe their existence to a (perhaps unfamiliar) version of Darwinian evolution...”

— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p98-99

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“More recently, the physicist Russell Stannard (one of Britain’s three well-known religious scientists, as we shall see) has thrown his weight behind an initiative, funded by – of course – The Templeton Foundation [generally pro-theism], to test experimentally the proposition that praying for sick patients improves their health.

“Such experiments, if done properly, have to be double blind, and this standard was strictly observed. The patients were assigned, strictly at random, to an experimental group (received prayers) or a control group (received no prayers). Neither the patients, nor their doctors or caregivers, nor the experimenters were allowed to know which patients were being prayed for and which patients were controls. Those who did the experimental praying had to know the names of the individuals for whom they were praying – otherwise, in what sense would they be praying for them rather than for somebody else? But care was taken to tell them only the first name and initial letter of the surname. Apparently that would be enough to enable God to pinpoint the right hospital bed...
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“Valiantly shouldering aside all mockery, the team of researchers soldiered on, spending $2.4 million of Templeton money under the leadership of Dr Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston. Dr Benson was earlier quoted in a Templeton press release as ‘believing that evidence for the efficacy of intercessory prayer in medicinal settings is mounting.’ Reassuringly, then, the research was in good hands, unlikely to be spoiled by sceptical vibrations, Dr Benson and his team monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals, all of whom received coronary bypass surgery. The patients were divided into three groups. Group 1 received prayers and didn’t know it. Group 2 (the control group) received no prayers and didn’t know it. Group 3 received prayers and did know it. The comparison between Groups 1 and 2 tests for the efficacy of intercessory prayer. Group 3 tests for possible psychosomatic effects of knowing that one is being prayed for.
“Prayers were delivered by the congregations of three churches, one in Minnesota, one in Massachusetts and one in Missouri, all distant from the three hospitals... It is a good experimental practice to standardize as far as possible, and they were all, accordingly, told to include in their prayers the phrase ‘for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.’
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“The results, reported in the American Heart Journal of April 2006, were clear-cut. There was no difference between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not. What a surprise. There was a difference between those who knew they had been prayed for and those who did not know one way or the other; but it went in the wrong direction. Those who knew they had been the beneficiaries of prayer suffered significantly more complications than those who did not...
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“It will be no surprise that this study was opposed by theologians, perhaps anxious about its capacity to bring ridicule upon religion. The Oxford theologian Richard Swinburne, writing after the study failed, objected to it on the grounds that God answers prayers only if they are offered up for good reasons. Praying for somebody rather than somebody else, simply because of the fall of the dice in the design of a double-blind experiment, does not constitute a good reason. God would see through it.”
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— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p86-88
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“...The whole point of NOMA [non-overlapping magisteria] is that it is a two-way bargain. The moment religion steps on science’s turf and starts to meddle in the real world with miracles, it ceases to be religion in the sense [Stephen Jay] Gould is defending, and his amicabilis concordia is broken. Note, however, that the miracle-free religion defended by Gould would not be recognized by most practising theists in the pew or on the prayer mat. It would, indeed, be a grave disappointment to them. To adapt Alice’ comment on her sister’s book before she fell into Wonderland, what is the use of a God who does no miracles and answers no prayers? Remember Ambrose Bierce’s witty definition of the verb ‘to pray’: ‘to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.’ There are athletes who believe God helps them win – against opponents who would seem, on the face of it, no less worthy of his favouritism. There are motorists who believe God saves them a parking space – thereby presumably depriving somebody else. This style of theism is embarrassingly popular, and is unlikely to be impressed by anything as (superficially) reasonable as NOMA.”

— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p84

Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (A.J. Ayer), English philosopher & humanist, 1910-1989
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“For his part, the mystic may protest that his intuition does reveal truths to him, even though he cannot explain to others what these truths are; and that we who do not possess this faculty of intuition can have no ground for denying that it is a cognitive faculty. For we can hardly maintain a priori that there are no ways of discovering true propositions except those which we ourselves employ. The answer is that we set no limit to the number of ways in which one may come to formulate a true proposition. We do not in any way deny that a synthetic truth may be discovered by purely intuitive methods as well as by the rational method of induction. But we do say that every synthetic proposition, however it may have been arrived at, must be subject to the test of actual experience. We do not deny a priori that the mystic is able to discover truths by his own special methods. We wait to hear what are the propositions which embody his discoveries, in order to see whether they are verified or confuted by our empirical observations. But the mystic so far from producing propositions which are empirically verified, is unable to produce any intelligible propositions at all. And therefore we say that his intuition has not revealed to him any facts. It is no use his saying that he has apprehended facts but is unable to express them. For we know that if he really had acquired any information, he would be able to express it. He would be able to indicate in some way or other how the genuineness of his discovery might be empirically determined. The fact that he cannot reveal what he ‘knows,’ or even himself devise an empirical test to validate his ‘knowledge,’ shows that his state of mystical intuition is not a genuinely cognitive state. So that in describing his vision the mystic does not give us any information about the external world; he merely gives us indirect information about the condition of his own mind.”

— A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, Penguin Books, 1936 p156-157


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Richard Dawkins, PhD, British evolutionary biologist, 1941-
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“[Alister McGrath in Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes and the Origin of Life,] goes on to quote Stephen Jay Gould in similar vein: ‘To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can’t comment on it as scientists.’ Despite the confident, almost bullying, tone of Gould’s assertion, what, actually, is the justification for it? Why shouldn’t we comment on God, as scientists? And why isn’t Russell’s teapot, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, equally immune from scientific scepticism? As I shall argue in a moment, a universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?”
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— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p78


“...And whatever else they may say, those scientists who subscribe to the ‘separate magisteria’ school of thought should concede that a universe with a supernaturally intelligent creator is a very different kind of universe from one without. The difference between the two hypothetical universes could hardly be more fundamental in principle, even if it is not easy to test in practice. And it undermines the complacently seductive dictum that science must be completely silent about religion’s central existence claim. The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question, even if it is not in practice – or not yet – a decided one. So also is the truth or falsehood of every one of the miracle stories that religions rely upon to impress multitudes of the faithful.

“Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question with a definite answer in principle: yes or no. Did Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead? Did he himself come alive again, three days after being crucified? There is an answer to every such question, whether or not we can discover it in practice, and it is a strictly scientific answer. The methods we should use to settle the matter, in the unlikely event that relevant evidence ever became available, would be purely and entirely scientific methods. To dramatize the point, imagine, by some remarkable set of circumstances, that forensic archaeologists unearthed DNA evidence to show that Jesus really did lack a biological father. Can you imagine religious apologists shrugging their shoulders and saying anything remotely like the following? ‘Who cares? Scientific evidence is completely irrelevant to theological questions. Wrong magisterium!’ We’re concerned only with ultimate questions and with moral values. Neither DNA nor any other scientific evidence could ever have any bearing on the matter, one way or the other.’

“The very idea is a joke. You can bet your boots that the scientific evidence, if any were to turn up, would be seized upon and trumpeted to the skies. NOMA is popular only because there is no evidence to favour the God Hypothesis. The moment there was the smallest suggestion of any evidence in favour of religious belief, religious apologists would lose no time in throwing NOMA out of the window. Sophisticated theologians aside (and even they are happy to tell miracle stories to the unsophisticated in order to swell congregations), I suspect that alleged miracles provide the strongest reason many believers have for their faith; and miracles, by definition, violate the principles of science.”
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— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p82-83

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“What expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot? In another book I recounted the words of an Oxford astronomer who, when I asked him one of those same deep questions, said: ‘Ah, now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I have to hand over to our good friend the chaplain.’ I was not quick-witted enough to utter the response that I later wrote: ‘But why the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef?’ Why are scientists so cravenly respectful towards the ambitions of theologians, over questions that theologians are certainly no more qualified to answer than scientists themselves?

“It is a tedious cliché (and, unlike many clichés, it isn’t even true) that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions. What on Earth is a why question? Not every English sentence beginning with the word ‘why’ is a legitimate question. Why are unicorns hollow? Some questions simply do not deserve an answer. What is the colour of abstraction? What is the smell of hope? The fact that a question can be phrased in a grammatically correct English sentence doesn’t make it meaningful, or entitle it to our serious attention. Nor, even if the question is a real one, does the fact that science cannot answer it imply that religion can.
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“Perhaps there are some genuinely profound and meaningful questions that are forever beyond the reach of science. Maybe quantum theory is already knocking on the door of the unfathomable. But if science cannot answer some ultimate question, what makes anybody think that religion can? I suspect that neither the Cambridge nor the Oxford astronomer really believed that theologians have any expertise that enables them to answer questions that are too deep for science. I suspect that both astronomers were, yet again, bending over backwards to be polite: theologians have nothing worthwhile to say about anything else; let’s throw them a sop and let them worry away at a couple of questions that nobody can answer and maybe never will. Unlike my astronomer friends, I don’t think we should even throw them a sop...”
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— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p79-80

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Jerry, Coyne, American biologist, 1949-
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“[Philosopher Michael] Ruse fails to grasp the real nature of the conflict. It’s not just about evolution versus creationism. To scientists like Dawkins and Wilson [E. O. Wilson, the celebrated Harvard biologist], the real war is between rationalism and superstition. Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition. Creationism is just a symptom of what they see as the greater enemy: religion. While religion can exist without creationism, creationism cannot exist without religion.”
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— Jerry Coyne, “Science Vs. Religion” (letter to the editor), Playboy, Aug 2006 (quoted by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2008 p92)


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