Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

Even David Hume, one of history most famous skeptics, said it's just barely possible that God exists.

Tell me," said the atheist , "Is there a God really?" Said the master, "If you want me to be perfectly honest with you, I will not answer." Later the disciples demanded to know why he had not answered. "Because the question is unanswerable," said the Master. "So you are an atheist?" "Certainly not. The atheist makes the mistake of denying that of which nothing may be said... and the theist makes the mistake of affirming it.

The idea of God grew side by side with the idea of materialism.

It's hard to say, 'I don't believe in God.' I would love to know if God exists. But it's a very difficult thing for me to believe.

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.

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.

If there were no God, he would have to be invented.

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

If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. ...But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.

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

I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God.

[I'm] almost positive there is no God.

Seems as unfounded ... to say there isn't a God as to say there is.

Atheists don't hate fairies, leprechauns, or unicorns because they don't exist. It is impossible to hate something that doesn't exist. Atheists - like the painting experts hated the painter - hate God because He does exist.

Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.

The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself.

I don't know whether God exists or not. ... Some forms of atheism are arrogant and ignorant and should be rejected, but agnosticism—to admit that we don't know and to search—is all right. ... When I look at what I call the gift of life, I feel a gratitude which is in tune with some religious ideas of God. However, the moment I even speak of it, I am embarrassed that I may do something wrong to God in talking about God.

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

For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.

I cannot believe in God when there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a supreme being and creator.

God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of science can provide the answer.

Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds beasts and men have their right side and left side alike shaped (except in their bowels) and just two eyes and no more on either side the face and just two ears on either side the head and a nose with two holes and no more between the eyes and one mouth under the nose and either two fore leggs or two wings or two arms on the sholders and two leggs on the hipps one on either side and no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel and contrivance of an Author? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom and the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, and within transparent juyces with a crystalline Lens in the middle and a pupil before the Lens all of them so truly shaped and fitted for vision, that no Artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These and such like considerations always have and ever will prevail with man kind to believe that there is a being who made all things and has all things in his power and who is therefore to be feared.

The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously.

Question boldly even the existence of God.

As a matter of fact, no one knows that God exists and no one knows that God does not exist. To my mind there is no evidence that God exists - that this world is governed by a being of infinite goodness, wisdom and power, but I do not pretend to know.