The God Argument Quotes

“The initial probability of there being a deity is not 50 percent, as some try to argue. This is a hidden assumption of agnosticism, which premises the thought that there is insufficient evidence to settle the matter either way. One can see this by asking what initial probability should be attached to the existence of (say) dryads or unicorns, or anything whose presence in myth, fable, legend and religion derives from what our remote ancestors handed down among their stories about the world. Whatever that probability is, if it is not 0 then it is vanishingly close to 0 – though it indeed seem odd even to say ‘the probability that unicorns exist is vanishingly small’. The mistake made by many is to think that because a particular tradition has been institutionalised in society, it increases the probability that the things it talks about actually exist.”
― Anthony Clifford Grayling

“Because being dead is indistinguishable – from a subjective perspective – from being unborn or from dreamless sleep, it can hold no terrors. What seems frightening is the act of dying. But dying is a living act, and as with any other such it might be pleasant or unpleasant. That is why the existence of ways to make dying easy – means of euthanasia – should be available to us all if we desire them. Death is what happens to other people. We experience dying for ourselves; but we experience death only in losing others, and the experience is one of grief and loss. Accordingly, our own deaths are no part of our personal experience: each of us experiences only life, of which dying is part. In this sense, from the subjective perspective we are immortal.”
― Anthony Clifford Grayling