Roy Becker

“The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace, make it free from distractions, train it to look inward, and make all this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind. (p. 20)”
― Ramana Maharshi, Talks With Ramana Maharshi: On Realizing Abiding Peace and Happiness

“Can you prove to me that there's no God, professor?'

'I could prove there is no need for a god, which is the next best thing. The Big Bang is the explanation. The Big Bang followed by billions of years of evolution by natural selection.'

'But what was there before the Big Bang?'

'Nothing.'

'Surely that is based on belief, too. You believe there was nothing. You cannot prove it.'

'Just as there are laws of physics, so there are laws of biology and the main one, the one which explains every living thing on the planet - and every planet in the universe, for that matter - is that all things must start simply and become complex. The complex dolphin began its evolutionary journey hundreds of millions of years ago as a simple, single-celled prokaryote. For a god to create the universe he would have to be hyper intelligent. But intelligence only evolves over time. The argument for a god starts by assuming what it is attempting to explain - intelligence, complexity, it amounts to the same thing - and so it explains nothing. God is a non-explanation. The Big Bang followed by billions of years of evolution is an explanation.”
― Nigel Farndale, The Blasphemer

“Religion is a conspiracy theory.

"God did it" is no different than "the lizard aliens did it."

Like religion, conspiracy theories are popular among the ignorant, because they offer simplistic answers to difficult questions.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Inside The Mind of an Introvert

“When we hear the old bells ringing out on a Sunday morning, we ask ourselves: can it be possible? This for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was the son of God. The proof of such a claim is wanting. Within our times the Christian religion is surely an antiquity jutting out from a far-distant olden time; and the fact that people believe such a claim...is perhaps the oldest part of this heritage. A god who conceives children with a mortal woman; a wise man who calls us to work no more; to judge no more; but to heed the signs of the imminent apocalypse; a justice that accepts the innocent man as a proxy sacrifice; someone who has his disciplines drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of the afterlife, to which death is the gate; the figure of the cross as a symbol, in a time that no longer knows the purpose and shame of the cross - how horribly all this wafts over us, as from the grave of the ancient past! Are we to believe that such things are still believed?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits