An adaptation of religious beliefs to be impenetrable in this way. ibid.
Cartoon [son to mother]: Aren’t you a little old to have an imaginary friend? ibid.
I hate atheists because atheists don’t care if somebody fornicates in the middle of the street. Yousef Al-Khattab, interview Professor Richard Dawkins
In the summer of 2003 I began filming the series: Atheism – A Rough History of Disbelief. As part of the process I talked to a number of writers, scientists, historians and philosophers. Jonathan Miller, The Atheism Tapes
Sometimes Americans say, So you don’t believe in God. Then they say, Do you believe in anything? ibid. Colin McGinn
Where do you get your spirituality? ibid. Jonathan Miller
There’s nothing there. ibid. Colin McGinn
There is no God and it’s a bad idea to believe in God. ibid. Colin McGinn
Russell: A Godless universe is a a kind of exhilarating universe ... This suffocating presence gazing at your every movement and thought and gauging everything you do. It’s a bit depressing to think that way. ibid. Colin McGinn
Russell: There’s no more reason to believe in the Christian God than the Greek gods. ibid. Colin McGinn
Ontological argument: Definition of God entails that God exists ... The most powerful conceivable being ... The most perfect being? ... He must have the attribute of existence. Therefore God must exist. ibid. Colin McGinn
But the most perfect conceivable moral being? What does that mean? ibid.
How does God’s life derive meaning? ibid.
He can’t make something right just by saying it’s right. ibid.
We don’t need God to validate our moral beliefs. ibid.
59,112. Most people will do what’s right. ibid.
The Problem of Evil ... How come there is suffering and pain in the world? ... Why doesn’t He intervene? ... God is actually quite mad ... The conflict between the All Good cf. the Most Powerful. ibid.
It’s hard for people to accept that we’re alone. ibid.
Somehow lonely is our essence. ibid.
God is a wonderful antidote ... A deep craving I think in the human soul for communion with something. ibid.
Atheism: an accusation rather than a conviction. ibid. Jonathan Miller
Suggests one is a professional atheist. ibid. Colin McGinn
Atheism cf. Anti-Theism. ibid.
The impression of design must have been overwhelming. ibid. Steven Weinberg
As we learn more and more about the universe, it seems not such a friendly place. ibid.
Planets: Some of them are going to be comfortable. ibid. Steven Weinberg
Newton was impressed with the regularity of Nature ... The regularity by definitions invokes and invites a regulator. ibid. Jonathan Miller
We are permanently in the tragic position of not being able to understand at the deepest possible level the way things are as they are ... Saying a designer doesn’t settle it. A designer doesn’t help. ibid. Steven Weinberg
People are religious because they know they’re going to die ... That’s the tragedy. ibid.
[Daniel C] Dennett feels the most wounding influence upon religion came with Darwin. ibid. Jonathan Miller
I’m interested in religion. Most of my physicist friends are not. ibid. Steven Weinberg
I care about searching for truth and making a theory of the world. And Christianity or Buddhism for that matter provides an alternative theory of the world. That’s something I feel I have something to say about. ibid.
People who crash aeroplanes into office buildings in order to destroy them must really believe in paradise. ibid.
What’s much more frightening in the world is the Problem of Islam. Where people seems to me take their religion seriously to the point of madness. ibid.
What’s the point of the religion? ibid.
I really don’t like God. ibid.
Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing. ibid.
Seems to me a terrible character. He’s a God who’s obsessed with the degree to which people worship him, and anxious to punish with the most awful torments. ibid.
Belief in a belief of God. ibid. Daniel Dennett
If you believe in God you do all sorts of lunatic things. ibid.
It doesn’t work any more. ibid. Arthur Miller
The wedding of Christianity or Judaism and nationalism is lethal. ibid. Arthur Miller
The death of consciousness is the ultimate mystery. ibid. Arthur Miller
When you say, Oh it was designed by God, you’ve explained absolutely nothing because you’re left with the problem of explaining where the designer came from. So it’s a non-explanation. ibid.
Everything does hang on the question of whether God exists or not. ibid. Denys Turner
Theology, modern or otherwise, can be maddeningly obscure. ibid. Denys Turner
This series is about the disappearance of something: religious faith. It’s the story of what is often referred to as atheism. The history of the growing conviction that God doesn’t exist. Dr Jonathan Miller: A Rough History of Disbelief I: Shadows of Doubt ***** BBC 2004
9/11: It’s inconceivable that it could have been done without religion. For it’s only in the name of some sort of absolute assurance of a permanent life after death that someone would be willing to undertake such an act. ibid.
The spectacle of September 11th is a forceful reminder of the potentially destructive power of the three great monotheistic religions that have dominated the world in one way or another for nearly two thousand years. ibid.
Atheism itself has acquired almost sectarian connotations. ibid.
Christianity was constantly redesigning its own dogma. ibid.
One can’t be in a state of belief all the time. ibid.
Belief is not a continuously experienced mental state. ibid.
Religious belief became almost inevitably associated with authority and power. ibid.
Two loony notions: Judaism and Christianity. ibid.
God for many of the Anglicans is nothing more than a sort of awkward geriatric relative. ibid.
It would be a very thin form of life that didn’t have these images. ibid.
The Christian imagination was more or less surrounded by an impenetrable cyclorama of sacred imagery. Dr Jonathan Miller: A Rough History of Disbelief II: Noughts and Crosses
Increased worldwide travel ... [and] various forms of Greco-Roman pagan scepticism and materialism. A sort of Artesian Well. ibid.
Having closed down the philosophical schools in Athens, the newly converted Christian and Roman Empire made strenuous efforts to Christianise some of the earlier pagan philosophies. ibid.
The advent of new science and technology in the Renaissance would also have a role to play. ibid.
Christianity starts to come apart. ibid.
The deists were a largely upper class group, and as the name suggests they certainly did believe in a deity. But they were dissatisfied with the state of Christianity. ibid.
[Baron Paul Henri] d’Holbach was the first to write an unarguably atheist book ... The Baron d’Holbach was the first person since classical times at least to insist without any hesitation that there was no God and no supernatural dimension to the universe. His book The System of Nature became known as the Atheists’ bible. ibid.
[Thomas] Paine’s sceptical and revolutionary ideas were now taking root in England. Dr Jonathan Miller: A Rough History of Disbelief III: The Final Hour
Darwin’s work would call into question God’s role as creator of Nature. ibid.
By the middle of the nineteenth century there were more than forty secular societies in Britain. ibid.
Why should faith survive? ibid.
He [Sigmund Freud] saw religion as an illusion. ibid.
There is a sense in which the road to atheism is paved not with science but with religious intentions. Jonathan Miller
Miller presented a major television series on the subject of atheism in 2004. Arena: Jonathan Miller, BBC 2012