Paul Ator
https://www.goodreads.com/Ator
“Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.”
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
“Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past.”
― Freedom Evolves
― Freedom Evolves
“Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.”
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
“[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.”
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
“One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think—though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one—that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.”
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
― God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Paul’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Paul’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Polls voted on by Paul
Lists liked by Paul





















