Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

If there is a God, he is a malign thug.

Does God exist? Well, I would say, 'not yet'.

The argument from improbability, properly deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist.

If that god is described as being all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good, I don't see evidence for it anywhere in the world. So I remain unconvinced. If that god is all-powerful and all-good, I don't see that when a tsunami kills a quarter-million or an earthquake kills a quarter-million people. I'd like to think of good as something in the interest of your health or longevity.

I think the probability of a supernatural creator existing is very very low.

We cannot start with God and deduce the universe from his existence; we must start with the world as we know it, and deduce God from the world.

The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain.

God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.

God's existence needs to be established independently before he can be brought into account for causation; it cannot be assumed at the start.

It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.

I have hitherto followed the lines marked out by the Theist in his attempt to prove that there exists a mind behind natural phenomena, and that the universe as we have it is, at least generally, an evidence of a plan designed by this mind. I have also pointed out that the only datum for such a conclusion is the universe we know. We must take that as a starting point. We can get neither behind it nor beyond it. We cannot start with God and deduce the universe from his existence; we must start with the world as we know it, and deduce God from the world.

Traditional arguments for the existence of God and contemporary attempts to use fine-tuning and cosmology to back up the case for his existence always strike me as kinds of games, since hardly anyone believes on the basis of these arguments at all.

Atheism is really nothing but a sorry litany of non-sequiturs, e.g., if God existed, why do we have all the evil and horrors in the world? But this presupposes that God is all-good, an obvious non-sequitur.

Back when the natural sciences, philosophy, and theology were one great intellectual hodgepodge, proving the existence of God was a relatively commonplace exercise. To the modern mind, however, science and religion talk past each other.

I see myself as a spiritual person, but I don't think anyone should claim proof of a god. No one can prove it. That's why I don't claim to know whether there are one, many or no gods.

I think there will always be a possibility that God doesn't exist because He is infinitude and into that infinitude must come that possibility.

We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.

My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad job that he isn't worth discussing.

If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed.

If by some bizarre chance there turns out to be a god [...], I'm willing to bet he's an atheist too.

When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we're told that? God is mysterious.

I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.

If God is God He is not good, if God is good He is not God; take the even, take the odd.

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?