Greg M. Epstein > Quotes

“We've also evolved the ability to simply 'pay it forward': I help you, somebody else will help me. I remember hearing a parable when I was younger, about a father who lifts his young son onto his back to carry him across a flooding river. 'When I am older,' said the boy to his father, 'I will carry you across this river as you now do for me.' 'No, you won't,' said the father stoically. 'When you are older you will have your own concerns. All I expect is that one day you will carry your own son across this river as I no do for you.' Cultivating this attitude is an important part of Humanism--to realize that life without God can be much more than a series of strict tit-for-tat transactions where you pay me and I pay you back. Learning to pay it forward can add a tremendous sense of meaning and dignity to our lives. Simply put, it feels good to give to others, whether we get back or not.”
― Greg Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“This is not a book about whether one can be good without God, because that question does not need to be answered --it needs to be rejected outright. To suggest that one can't be good without belief in God is not just an opinion, a mere curious musing -- it is a prejudice.”
― Greg Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“The fact that we live without God is, in a sense, not up to us. It's not really a choice. . . But goodness is a choice. It is the most important choice we can ever make. And we have to make it again and again, throughout our lives and in every aspect of our lives.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“There is no life after death, so offer kindness to all, not in the next life but now.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“But it’s not enough to just “discover” the meaning of life. What really matters is whether we live according to our values, and that takes hard work and a hundred hard choices every day.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“There are different kinds of atheism. The most popular kind is “ontological” atheism, a firm denial that there is any creator or manager of the universe. There is “ethical” atheism, a firm conviction that, even if there is a creator/manager of the world, he does not run things in accordance with the human moral agenda, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. There is “existential” atheism, a nervy assertion that even if there is a God, he has no authority to be the boss of my life. There is “agnostic” atheism, a cautious denial that claims that God’s existence can be neither proved nor disproved; this type of atheist ends up with behavior no different from that of the ontological atheist. There is “ignostic” atheism, another cautious denial, which claims that the word “God” is so confusing that it is meaningless; this belief, again, translates into the same behavior as the ontological atheist. There is “pragmatic” atheism, which regards God as irrelevant to ethical and successful living, and which views all discussions about God as a waste of time.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“we are most fully ourselves when we admit that we are emotional beings, that we are defined by the ways we find though our behavior to express all these myriad emotions constantly bubbling beneath the surface of us as we try our fragile best to reason our way through the world.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“Therefore wisdom is a more precious thing even than philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“If you ever meet anyone who tells you his or her religion can offer all the answers, run for the hills. Or at least hide your wallet.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“The scientific method, while imperfect, is the most reliable tool human beings have ever known for determining the nature of the world around us.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“Those who want to convince us that there is a God, and that a certain religion has access to eternal truth, should be expected—just as Humanists should be—to produce serious, credible, testable evidence in support of their claims.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“We have the potential for strength, wisdom, and love inside ourselves. But by ourselves we are not enough. We need to reach out beyond ourselves—to the world that surrounds us and sustains us, and most especially to other people.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“But as Beauvoir chides in The Ethics of Ambiguity, if the individual is nothing, the society cannot be anything either. “One can not, without absurdity, indefinitely sacrifice each generation to the following one.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“If we can convince ourselves today that one entire group comprising millions of people might be incapable of goodness, might be “no good,” then we harbor inside us the ability to turn against and hate any other group as well, and no one should feel safe.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“Nothing to fear in God; Nothing to feel in Death; Good can be attained; Evil can be endured.6”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“Humanists recognize that competition between groups has been part of our evolution—there is no way to expunge this basic fact from our minds or our history books—but now that humanity has discovered this, we can and must search fervently for healthy, nonviolent ways for groups of people, as well as individuals, to relate to one another.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“contrast, humanistic ethics takes the position that if man is alive he knows what is allowed; and to be alive means to be productive, to use one’s powers not for any purpose transcending man, but for oneself, to make sense of one’s existence, to be human. As”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“As TV and film writer/director Joss Whedon said, “The enemy of Humanism is not faith—the enemy of Humanism is hate, it is fear, it is ignorance, it is the darker part of man that is in every Humanist, and every person in the world…But faith is something we have to embrace. Faith in God means believing absolutely in something, with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers.”4”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“Humanists don’t believe in turning water into wine—but we definitely believe in turning lemons into lemonade.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“When asked if he believed in God, Einstein famously responded, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“Humanists believe that God is the most important, influential literary character human beings have ever created.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“As Al Gore reminds us, human survival depends on our doing something truly unprecedented: making a decision together—not just as a family, clan, tribe, city, nation, or bloc of nations, but as the human species. We must decide, all of us together, to survive.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“If he who departs from the body goes to another world, Why does he not come back again, Restless for love of his kinfolk It is only as a means of livelihood That Brahmins have established here Abundant ceremonies for the dead— There is no other fruit anywhere. Hence for kindness to the mass of living beings”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“Humanism is being good without God.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“In fact, we religious skeptics have always been a little dangerous to those religious and political authorities who have nothing to offer their people in this world and so must promise more fortune in the next one to maintain control.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“have”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“(Those considering themselves deists rather than atheists or agnostics today could also reasonably call themselves Humanists, provided they did not feel the need to worship the creator God or look to it for supernatural instruction on how to live a good life.)”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“Those of us who don’t want to worship an invisible being or spend our days fretting about punishment in Hades do want to be able to share what we hold dear with our families and the broader world, and we want to be understood and appreciated for who we are.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“As Lily Tomlin famously said, “The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

“It is not easy to live a good life or be a good person—with or without a god. The fact is that life is hard.”
― Greg M. Epstein, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe