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Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.
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As quoted in What If Jesus Had Never Been Born (1994) by D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, p. 100; also in Lord Of All : Developing a Christian World-and-life View (2005) by the same authors; "Atheism is so senseless" is a portion of a statement Newton is known to have made in "A short Schem of the true Religion", but there have been no occurrences of the rest of this statement yet located prior to 1994. Newton is known to have been profoundly religious, but the tone, style and arguments simply do not seem to match any which Newton is likely to have used. The argument that Earth is the "right distance from the sun" and even the idea that its placement might have possibly been "by chance" are plainly modern in tone, and strongly imply some evolutionary assumptions which Newton would not likely have even considered.

 

Isaac Newton

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If you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the Moon and the Solar System;—"Damn the solar system! bad light — planets too distant — pestered with comets — feeble contriviance; — could make a better with great ease."

 

Sydney Smith

 

There seems to be no end to the senseless wickedness done on this little planet in a minor solar system, and we puny mortals appear to be decreasing in importance so far as the universe is concerned.

 

Alec Guinness

 

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.

 

Thomas Paine

 

Men are weak now, and yet they transform the Earth’s surface. In millions of years their might will increase to the extent that they will change the surface of the Earth, its oceans, the atmosphere and themselves. They will control the climate and the solar system just as they control the Earth. They will travel beyond the limits of our planetary system; they will reach other Suns and use their fresh energy instead of the energy of their dying luminary.

 

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky

 

In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.

 

Simone Weil