About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Good gods are scarce because the majority of gods are created by evil men

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Why do religious believers hate unbelievers? The feel threatened by them, they feel besieged by them. Religions consider themselves as separate tribes in their own rights and feel like unbelievers will one day overrun their strongholds

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Every word that comes after And the Lord told me. . . “is a pious lie

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Give me something to worship whatever.” Cries the human soul

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Spiritual leaders, priests and prophets are lamps burning in the dark, seeking meaning for humanity.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Science cannot disprove god. Science studies the things that are. The eternal question is who or what made them to be

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Can really anybody put his hand on his heart and profess to know beyond doubt what happens on the other side of this life?

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Once you believe that god is not a private property of anybody, you are on your way to becoming a new messiah. Maybe your own if not the world's

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Theology is like assuming that there is a black cat in a dark room where in fact there is no black cat, and endeavoring to study the cat's properties and how it may have evolved from its ancestors.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

The eyes of god are upon you, I mean the eyes of society. We are prisoners of societies in which we live

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

You take away my golden dreams and my visions of paradise, in its place you wake me up and hand me your reasons and facts and crude reality. You have ruined my life. If I commit murder or hang myself, let the god I used to pray to repay you in full.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

If you believe that God is good and that He loves you without regard to whom you are or what you do, you will worship Him wholeheartedly. You will praise him with thanksgiving. If you believe He is angry against you, you will come to him with fear and trying to appease his anger. And you don't know when His anger will be over. Such a god keeps you in a perpetual psychological anguish. That is the typical kind of god we usually worship. That is the typical god approved by authority.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Each mind conceives god in its own way. There may be as many variation of the god figure as there are people in the world

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him on that level they are all equal

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

What is needed is not that a religion be true, meaning that what it claims exist beyond the ink it is written with in a holy book. That is hard to prove. What is important is that a religion be a good system to help us mere mortal deal with our short and troubled life in the universe. Whether what we hope for in the afterlife materializes or not is not important, what is important is that we believe it will materialize and that gives us hope.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Much terror in religion is not the will of god, it is created by power hungry clerics who thirst for absolute power and claim it for god. God does not seek power, he is already powerful.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

No one knows what god thinks of anything. He only knows and no one can claim to penetrate into his mysteries. Those who do that are liars and must be avoided at all costs

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

It's utter arrogance to think that we can know what god ought to be or do. If we don't understand we must continue our search or recognize our ignorance

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

All religions are revealed and inspired. After all nothing happens without the will of god.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Don't create unbelief or doubt in people's minds. When you do so you ruin their lives and you have nothing to give them in its place. It's ok if people delude themselves those delusions keep their day running.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

An atheist is a disappointed true believer he is an angry and hungry soul who has failed to find a real god to whom he can anchor his hope

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

When you have doubts about God, the right position to take is agnosticism, atheism is outright arrogance

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

All religions are guesswork

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

My gut instinct is that these heavens and hells exist nowhere else except in our hearts and minds

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana