 | Penn Jillette |
Wanting to believe something is not any reason at all to believe it. If anything, it`s a reason to question it.
Death is nothing. I`m not afraid of nothing. But time passing is something different. I`m terrified of time passing. I tremble at the thought of my little girl growing up. I can`t face my son growing stronger than me and helping me up the stairs. I quake at the prospect of looking at my adult children`s faces with eyesight worse than I have now.
It`s not sad to feel that life and the love of your real friends and family is more than enough to make life worth living. Isn`t it much sadder to feel that there is a more important love required than the love of the people who have chosen to spend their limited time with you?
We must always remember that we can never know what`s in someone else`s heart, but in order to function, we must guess.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.
You don`t have to be brave or a saint, a martyr, or even very smart to be an atheist. All you have to be able to say is "I don`t know".
If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
My mom and dad (and most moms and dads) said that I would never understand how much they loved me until I had my own children. (...) It`s the love you don`t choose, the animal love that gives the reason to live.
The one thing that every one of our ancestors back to single cell sludge had in common was they reproduced and their offspring reproduced. If an organism failed to reproduce, that organism was a dead end, not an ancestor. The love that I feel for my children is different from the love I have for the cute things they say that get quoted by my wife on Twitter and the fun I have with them. It`s different from the hugs and the kisses they give. The real love is a biological urge. Love that is like breathing.
The air smells sweeter and time stands still any day you`re in the world and everyone else is working or in school.
If all morality comes from god, what does it mean to believe "god is good"? Wouldn`t that be a tautology? If Satan were to win the final battle (the spoiler says he doesn`t), defeat god, and become the most powerful force in the universe, wouldn`t he be our god? We`d meet the new boss, and he`d be the same as the old boss - good, by definition.