I'll long remember the crestfallen look of a pious student when I told him the faculty of a divinity school he planned to attend included a large number of avowed atheists.
I don't think there is prejudice against atheists the same way there is prejudice against fat people. I don't think people hate or contemn atheists; I think people feel sorry for atheists.
Religious people are atheists about all other gods, atheists only take it one god further.
I distrust pious phrases, especially when they issue from my mouth. I try militantly never to be affected by the pious language of the faithful but it is always coming out when you least expect it. In contrast to the pious language of the faithful, the liturgy is beautifully flat.
I will be in Orlando during the atheist convention to do my best to counter the assaults upon Christ of the atheists. I also plan on running a large newspaper ad in the Orlando Sentinel addressed to the atheists and warning the Orlando area of the atheists' vile plans for their children.
One odd thing about the current debate between religious people and atheists is that the participants don't seem to care that they entirely fail to communicate with the other side. They therefore have no account of why the religious or the atheists believe what they do, except that they are stupid or deluded. I think philosophers should try and make sense of their disputes with their opponents as far as possible without treating them as idiots. This applies to the religious participants in the debate as much as to the atheists.
My parents were atheists, strong atheists. I never got the answer 'God.'
Young atheists abound, but old atheists are rare.
In this way, Allah will love the pious person because He, the Most Exalted, loves those who are pious, truthful, charitable, devout, and are sincere to Him and to His Prophet.
God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because they're so empirically familiar with how atheists think.
My family was pious and Presbyterian mainly because my grandfather was pious and Presbyterian, but that was more of an inherited intuition than an actual fact.
I do know plenty of atheists, agnostics and skeptics who have become Christians through the years. In fact, several of my friends were once strong atheists but are now committed followers of Jesus.
When did atheists become so evangelical? I mean, if you don't believe something to be true, wouldn't you just ignore it? That's certainly what I do. Whether it's leprechauns or a congressional debt reduction plan - if I'm convinced it's fiction, I simply put it out of my mind. Not the atheists. They are obsessed with faith and religious practice. Their identities and their works are one big reaction to that which they hate. No longer content to simply dismiss God and those who follow in Him, the New Atheists have created a cult of unbelief.
The ameliorating march of the last few centuries has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the pious of one century are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of a later generation.
I guess it’s true what they say," observed Jace. "There are no straight men in the trenches." "That’s atheists, jackass," said Simon furiously. "There are no atheists in the trenches.
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka" and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"