"Creationists make it sound like a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
(Isaac Asimov / 1920-1992)
"When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled."
(Charles Darwin / 1809-1882 / The Origin of Species / 1859)
"A celebrated author and divine has written to me that "he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that he created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his laws."
(Charles Darwin / 1809-1882 / The Origin of Species / 1859)
"I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations."
(Charles Darwin / 1809-1882 / The Descent of Man / 1871)
"I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for his existence. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture."
(Charles Darwin / 1809-1882 / The Descent of Man / 1871)
"On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: "An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'""
(Charles Darwin / 1809-1882)
"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be."
(Sigmund Freud / 1856-1939 / The Future of an Illusion / 1927)
"How orderly philosophical is the landscape, are all the inhabitants of this World! It is the creation of a god who "ever plays the geometer."
(Aldous Huxley / 1894-1963 / Music at Night)
"All the errors and incompetencies of the Creator reach their climax in man."
(Henry Louis Mencken / 1880-1956)
"My father taught me that the question "Who made me?" cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, "Who made God?"
(John Stuart Mill / 1806-1873 / quoted from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief)
"Man is a marvelous curiosity ... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea."
(Mark Twain / 1835-1910 / Letters from the Earth)
"If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment."
(Voltaire / 1694-1778)
"God is not without sins: He created the world."
(Bulgarian Proverb)