Some thoughts from people more eloquent than me (positiveatheism.org):
Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.
-- Peter Ustinov
Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.
-- Walt Whitman
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.
-- Carl Sagan
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.-- Bertrand Russell
Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men -- above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
-- Albert Einstein
My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a "they" as opposed to a "we" can be identified at all.
-- Richard Dawkins
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