Penn Jillette: Every Day is an Atheist Holiday! |
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.
We must always remember that we can never know what`s in someone else`s heart, but in order to function, we must guess.
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.
An unexamined life is not worth living, but an electronically recorded life is not lived at all.
One of the big reliefs for the atheist is not having to worry about what to hope, wish, and pray for. Did I want to pray for my mother`s suffering to end? Did I want to hope for her death? I didn`t have to worry about that. I could hope one day that she`d live longer so I could talk to her, and wish the next day that she would die and not have to suffer her paralysis and physical loss any longer. My wishing and hoping were inert; I could let them run wild. I could use them as pure solace.
Only atheists can be moral. If you`re doing it for reward or to avoid punishment, it`s not morality.