“As for an eternity in heaven – that would be hell!”

As for the accusation of intellectual pride, surely the boot is on the other foot. Atheists don’t claim to know anything with certainty — it’s the believers who know it all.

To imagine that “God moves in mysterious ways” is to put up a smokescreen of mystery behind which fantasy may survive in spite of all the facts.

To imagine that God wants prayers and hymns of praise is to make him out to a sort of oriental potentate; while praying for favours is an attempt to get him to change his allegedly all-wise mind.

People who believe in a divine creator, trying to live their lives in obedience to his supposed wishes and in expectation of a supposed eternal reward, are victims of the greatest confidence trick of all time.

This is not to say, of course, that there is no purpose in life at all: we all make our own purposes as we go through life. And life does not lose its value simply because it it not going to last forever.

The one function that most gods seem to have in common is to give human existence some ultimate purpose – and, while it is not possible to disprove an ultimate purpose, there does not seem to be any evidence for it.

Why am I an atheist? The short answer is that I cannot accept any of the alternatives. I simply don’t find them believable.

Like Jonah, the whale had swallowed me; unlike him, I believed I would spend eternity inside the belly of the beast.

If you do not do your God-assigned task, throughout eternity there will be a job that has never been done.

Life is short. Eternity is long.

In whatever position one is in, or in whatever condition in life one is placed, one must find balance. Balance is the state of the present – the here and now. If you balance in the present, you are living in Eternity.

If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws.

Every burden prepares you for eternity.

What do I see there but a frail being forever unable to bring man to heel and force him to bend a knee. This creature, although emanated from him, dominates him, knows how to offend him and thereby merit torments eternally! What a weak fellow, this God!

If you balance in the Present, you are living in Eternity