“I have no idea what a god is.  I can only critique what other people claim a god is.”

“I believe atheists have already won the intellectual war against religion.  We haven’t won the emotional war or the political war, but we have won the intellectual war.”

“According to Christian theology, God sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself.”

“Sacred texts are usually taken literally until secular sources prove them to be a scientific or ethical embarrassment.  At that point religious leaders and apologists do one of three things: (1) they have a new revelation or (2) they reinterpret the old revelation as being an allegory, symbol, metaphor, or parable or (3) they say the sacred text only applied to the past.  Whichever remedy they choose, it has the appearance of being an act of convenience, not conviction.”

“It never ceases to amaze me that the same religious people who demand a molecule-by-molecule explanation for the origins of life will accept religious explanations that offer no information at all.”

“In general, I don’t care what people believe; I care how they vote.  What they believe affects them; how they vote affects me.  But since what people believe affects how they vote, any erroneous beliefs that have a detrimental affect on their voting must be critiqued.”

“If you had the knowledge and power of a god, would you have created birth defects, disease, and natural disasters?  If not, then you are nicer than the god you believe in.  This god should be praying to you for moral advice, rather than the other way around.”

“Would you take a syringe full of malaria and inject it into someone you love?  Yet that’s exactly what God does to people he claims to love, using a mosquito as a syringe.”

“We humans spend a lot of time mopping up after God’s mistakes.  Some say that God works through us.  But the reason we have to do ‘the Lord’s work’ is because ‘the Lord’ isn’t doing it himself.  And if we’re doing the work, shouldn’t we take the credit?”

“Even an atheist can find something good in the Bible.  For me, the Old Testament asks the question: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’  The New Testament answers that question: ‘Yes.’ ”