Some snazzy quotes to get your skepticism going. Updated weekly.
7/21/13
When you starting feeling that a question is becoming too metaphysical, ask yourself one simple question: How would the universe be different if the answer to this question were to change?
7/14/13
Religion teaches us that it's better to brainwash your children than to disappoint your imaginary friend.
7/7/13
It is amazing how many people have difficulty distinguishing between unpleasant and untrue
6/30/13
Discrimination isn't just wrong, it's stupid.
6/23/13
I have found that the Maine pun in Maine is using the word 'Maine' instead of 'main.'
6/16/13
Stop praying and start helping
5/5/13 to 6/9/13
I would post some quotables here, but I'm afraid they would be unintelligibly-laden with string theory
4/28/13
Threats of tortue are not conducive to a loving relationship.
4/21/13
Those of you who do not believe that a worldwide flood wiped out nearly every living being on the planet need to sop presenting the Bible/Torah as a source of history.
4/14/13
Those of you who disagree with the commands contained in Leviticus need to stop presenting the Bible as a source of moral guidance.
4/7/13
In accordance with 3/17/13 (see below), I vow to listen to the children of the next generation when they reach my age, and to avoid standing in the way of their own liberal progress.
3/31/13
Easter, the day billions of people celebrate zombification and call it their salvation.
3/24/13
Here's hoping the Supreme Court will finally declare that gay people are people.
3/17/13
Attention young liberals: I propose that we all promise, here and now and in a very publicly accessible and verifyiable and not-readily-deletable fashion, to listen to our children when they reach our age, and to avoid standing in the way of their own liberal progress.
3/10/13
Yo momma so fat, she puts the 'mass' in 'Christmas'
3/3/13
I've seen plenty of spiritual people, and I can say for sure that I am not, have never been, and have no desire to be, a spiritual person.
2/24/13
I don't always debate theists... but when I do, the pope retires.
2/17/13
If you're constantly "predicting" what you've already observed and never observing what you've already predicted, you're doing it wrong.
2/10/13
A tax-funded birth-control program is a much more financially responsible enterprise than a tax-funded orphanage.
2/3/13
When you start redefining your terminology so that "racism" only applies to things that harm non-whites, suddenly your anti-racism movement stops being an equality movement.
1/27/13
You are physically incapable of building a perpetual motion machine. If this fact does not cause you to realize that you have less free will than you previously imagined, then I think you have a very confused notion of the term 'free will.'
1/20/13
The effects (or rather, the likely effects) do in fact justify the actons. The problem is when you have people insisting that these effects are 'ends' while those other effects are 'means.' Such distinctions are nonsense. I'm not letting you ignore the unplesant effects just because you've decided to rename them 'means.'
1/13/13
Here's an idea. Add into the constitution a clause stating that anyone who signs away a constitutional right is allowed to reclaim said right immediately and without any notification to anyone whatsoever.
1/6/13
Whenever I hear someone say "Guns don't kill people," I'm going to respond with "They just kill more people."
12/30/12
It strikes me as odd that the people who tell me that blind natural forces couldn't possibly have developed something as complex as a human being tend to be the same people who tell me that something as complex as the economy is best left to blind market forces.
12/23/12
I think it's high time we invented a national "Godlessness Day." I know, we can hold it on December 25th, so that Christians won't realize what we're doing...
12/16/12
What is the most efficient way to help people? Short term, feed the hungry. Long term, reduce environmentally harmful waste and give out free birth control. And really long term, space colonization.
12/9/12
The only thing more uncompromising than the Republican party is reality.
12/2/12
While it is rarely necessary to reinvent the wheel, it is occationally useful to redesign it.
11/25/12
In addition to the separation of church and state, I think we need to strive for a separation of money and power.
11/18/12
This week, Hostess has taught us that it's not taxes that kill jobs, it's corporate greed that kills jobs.
11/11/12
I am still waiting for religious extremists to explain either A: Why their omnipotent god planned for Obama to win the election, or B: How we liberals managed to thwart their 'omnipotent' god's plan for America.
11/4/12
New Policy: Anyone who feels the need to pray for me is asked to donate to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia instead.
https://donate.chop.edu/site/SPageNavigator/Gift_of_Childhood/Donate/donate_online.html?JServSessionIdr004=o3m9btleo8.app207b
10/28/2012
You know that whole competition aspect of capitalism that works to drive down prices? Well the same kind of thing tends to work on wages too.
10/21/2012
Atheism verses Religion is just the P.C. story. The real fight is between rationality and faith.
10/14/12
If it starts with, "You can never be sure..." but fails to specify a probability, it's a probably (with p<0.05 confidence!) a bad argument.
10/7/12
People need to do a better job of distinguishing between expect = anticipate and expect = demand. The former is often an entirely realistic assessment of the situation. The latter is often total bullshit.
9/30/12
If you're going to cite the Second Law of Thermodynamics you should at least know how to express it mathematically.
9/23/12
It's time to stop calling religions "metaphorical" and start calling them "wrong."
9/16/12
If there are two sides to the story, it's a safe bet that at least one of them is wrong.
9/9/12
I treat religion with as much respect as it deserves. Which is why I'm perfectly comfortable telling it to fuck off.
9/2/12
When you say, "That's offensive," I hear, "I don't have any good arguments againt that."
8/26/12
Remember that the human brain tends to assume a particular scale. Tell a person that an American commits suicide every fourteen minutes, and their brain imagines a small tribe of 200 or so, with one person dying every fourteen minutes. What they don't realize is that if you scale America down to a tribe of 200, one person every fourteen minutes turns into one person evey fifty years.
8/19/21
Dyslexia is not the key to unlocking time travel
8/12/12
When someone tells their kids to get a job, it is often the case that they have completely failed to comprehend the pigeonhole principle.
8/5/12
Today, like many other Sundays in the past, was a far more productive day for Science than for Religion.
7/29/12
Let's say you wanted to forgive someone for wronging you. Let's make a list of all the various ways you might go about granting said forgiveness. Now, how far down on that list is 'Torture my own son?'
7/22/12
Morality isn't always about being selfless. Sometimes it's a straightforward result of the simple fact that life is not a zero-sum game.
7/15/12
When people separate their notions of right and wrong from the consequences of helpful and harmful, they start providing a lot less help while serving up a lot more harm.
7/8/12
It strikes me as odd that people feel the need to argue against racial and gender discrimination from the assumption that no race or sex is less capable than the others, and yet these very same people have no trouble with the idea that we should not discriminate against people who are deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound.
7/1/12
I am in the business of answering the unknowns, not making you feel all warm and fuzzy for having them.
6/24/12
If in the future you ever feel the urge to pray for me, I instead request that you anonymously donate five dollars to your favorite secular charity. That way, something good might actually come of your efforts.
6/17/12
Instead of saying "The Bible doesn't support gaybashing/sexism/slavery/ethnic clensing/murder/bigory/etc," why don't you try saying "Why the fuck are you trying to learn moral philosophy from a thousand year old book that's been bowdlerized more times than I can count?" It works much better becaue the bible-thumper can't just open his or her bible and prove you wrong.
6/10/12
When you don't know something, the correct response is to say "I don't know," or "I don't know, but here's a wild guess." The incorrect response is to make shit up and treat it as an affirmed truth.
6/3/12
When somebody repeatedly threatens you whenever you annoy them and then tells you they love you, it's called an abusive relationship.
5/27/12
People who talk about things that function outside the laws of physics don't understand what "laws of physics" means.
5/20/12
The ability to ignore reality is not something to be proud of.
5/13/12
Gay people are people. That's all anyone needs to know about gay rights. That's all there is to know about gay rights.
5/6/12
Many people have advised the atheist community to be less confrontational and more diplomatic. But when people get angry simply from noticing your existence, not pissing them off is ceases to be a viable strategy.
4/29/12
The first step in learning mathematics is to stop being intimidated by it.
4/22/12
When commenting on the economy and the merits of getting jobs/scholarships/etc. Please remember to distinguish between "For all x, there exists y such that z," and "There exists y such that for all x, z."
4/15/12
When you call something un-American, I hear, "I don't have any good arguments against that."
4/8/12
Easter, the day when billions of zombie-worshipers will adamantly insist that it isn't a cult.
4/1/12
Instead of agreeing to disagree, let's just admit it when we're wrong.
3/25/12
Gay people are understandably disgruntled when you try to redefine "marriage" so that it can't apply to gays. Please use this example to understand why white people are understandably disgruntled when you try to redefine "racist" so that it can only apply to white people.
3/18/12
Bigots: Homosexuality is unnatural
Me: Like penicillin and cell phones!
3/11/12
There may very well be multiple paths to the truth. But I would still expect all paths to lead to the same truth.
3/3/12
Miracle: A tragic event in which 96% of participants lose their lives.
2/25/12
Ask yourself whether or not you have evidence for your religious beliefs. If the answer is no, then stop pretending your beliefs don't conflict with science. If the answer is yes, then stop pretending you need faith.
2/18/12
The reason atheists need to speak up is because so many people think they shouldn't.
2/11/12
I'm glad the federal courts have decided to rule that gay people are people
2/4/12
Atheists rarely argue that religion has no benefits. Far more often you'll find us arguing that there are just better alternatives.
1/28/12
Taking down a search engine for providing links to sights with pirated material is like taking down a phone book company for printing the phone numbers of drug dealers.
1/21/12
Plenty of people understand that "don't kill innocent people" is a great moral guideline while "slaughter the firstborns of your enemies, even infants" is a terrible way to secure victory. So it should come as no surprise that one needs a pre-existing sense of morality before you can decide which lesson to take from Exodus.
1/14/12
When someone treats you differently because of the color of your skin or the form of your reproductive organs, it's called "discrimination." Unless of course that skin color happens to be white and those reproductive organs happen to include a penis. Then it's called "quit whining."
1/7/12
The best way to avoid a crisis of faith is to stop having faith.
12/31/11
Sometimes I get the feeling that people tend to claim things not because they think those things are true, but because they wish those things were true.
12/24/11
Christmas; a day when millions celebrate the birth of a human sacrifice while derisively referring to others as pagans.
12/17/11
Stop believing and start thinking.
12/10/11
Whether or not you like a given claim is not a reliable indication of said claim's truthfulness.
12/3/11
Whenever you can't think of a quote, give a quote about making quotes
11/27/11
If someone's claims are wrong, it's better to point out why they are wrong than to try and censor them.
11/19/11
If science didn't work, you wouldn't be reading this.
11/12/11
Shoot for the stars. That way when you fall short, you'll land on the moon.
11/5/11
If your "answer" is as mysterious as my question, you're doing it wrong.
10/29/11
Have you ever actually tried to live your life without a god?
10/22/11
When the bible talks about slavery as if it were commonplace, it's being "metaphorical." But when it talks about homosexuality, suddenly we're supposed to take it seriously.
10/15/11
This past week, I encountered no less than a dozen mathematical operations involving some inifinite parameter. And in my experience, that kind of job tends to make claims about an infinite creator sound a whole lot less profound.
10/8/11
If you can't keep your religion out of my government, then you might just find my government in your religion.
10/1/11
Have you ever noticed how many fictional works that champion the validity of theism tend to have a good deal of, you know, evidence?
9/24/11
Read through your chosen holy text, replacing all references to your deity with "Bob." Then ask yourself, is Bob a nice guy?
9/17/11
I've noticed that people will insist they get their morals from their religion. And yet at the same time, they're shopping around for a church that "fits them." These people aren't getting their morals from their religion. They're getting their religion from their morals.
9/10/11
Waiting until marriage is like buying a car without test driving it.
9/3/11
My mom always tells me that you have to pick and choose your battles, since you can't fight every one. But lately, I've noticed that the battles I regret the most are the ones I never fought.
8/27/11
Stop explaining what you believe and start explaining why you believe it.
8/20/11
A lack of complete certainty is not a complete lack of certainty.
8/13/11
Viewpoints are a lot like security systems. The only way to make them the best they can be is to have everyone else try to break them.
8/6/11
If you are confident enough in your beliefs to build your life around them, then you should be confident enough to subject them to open criticism.
7/30/11
In the past, some people have taken issue with my use of the word faith. This is what we call a red herring. Whether or not the word "faith" is a good word to use to express "belief in something without evidence" has nothing to do with whether or not believing in something without evidence can produce a working epistemology. Nor does it change whether or not theists provide evidence for their gods' existence.
7/23/11
My biggest gripe with the scriptures is that they present faith as a virtue rather than a vice.
7/16/11
The people I admire most have been wrong plenty of times. So when I tell you that you are wrong, do not mistake it as an insult.
7/9/11
If you are ever confused and/or doubtful, ask a question.
7/2/11
Truth is that which tells you precisely how to refute it, and yet remains.
6/25/11
If being a fundamentalist is a bad thing then you should try fixing your fundamentals.
6/18/11
Do not be fooled by flowery language. Look past the words and see the meaning.
6/11/11
Do not become so enthralled by the mysteries of life that you forget to solve them.
6/4/11
If someone tells you they have all the answers, be sure to ask all the questions.
