Peter

“The believers who say they are praying for me are victims of a lie and think they are doing something good; I let them know they are not. I tell them to imagine I had a newfangled gun that forcibly turned religious people into atheists. I tell them the gun didn’t really work, but I thought it did. Let’s say I decided to force them to be atheists, so I pointed the atheist gun at them and pulled the trigger. Would they think that was a nice thing to do? Would they appreciate my effort, or would they feel assaulted? When you pray for me, you are asking your god to change me. You are asking your god to forcibly enter my life and my brain and change my way of thinking (using euphemisms such as asking God to “open my heart to Jesus” is evidence of the intent of the assault).”
― David Silverman, Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World

“Unlinked by a pacemaker, the cells beat irregularly, spasmodically, each tapping out a rhythm approximate to the 350 beats a minute normal to a chick. But as the observer watches, over a period of hours an astonishing phenomenon occurs. Instead of five independent heart cells contracting at their own pace, first two, then three, and then all the cells pulse in unison. There are no longer five beats, but one. How is this sense of rhythm communicated in the saline, and why?”
― Paul W. Brand, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

“Theology has not advanced an inch in the last 1,000 years. How much respect does a profession deserve if it cannot add to the knowledge and understanding of man?”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Wouldn’t the sentence ‘I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign’ have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?”
― Martin Gardner, Aha! Insight