#agnosticism

"Interviewer: Didn't Sagan want to believe?Druyan: he didn't want to believe. he wanted to know."

"Thus, as far as he is a scientific man, as far as he knows anything, he is a materialist; outside his science, in spheres about which he knows nothing, he translates his ignorance into Greek and calls it agnosticism."

"What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons."

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

"I believe in God the way I believe in quarks. People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they've learned, I'd find quarks and God just like they did."

"Are there any religions on your list that include the slaughter of noblemen as a holy duty?"

"In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not..."

"The typical atheist rebels against God as a teenager rebels against his parents. When his own desires or standards are not fulfilled in the way that he sees fit, he, in revolt, storms out of the house in denial of the Word of God and in scrutiny of a great deal of those who stand by the Word of God. The epithet 'Heavenly Father' is a grand reflection, a relation to that of human nature."

"Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?"

"The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended, is a willingness to have our beliefs and behaviors modified by the power of conversation."

"Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both."

"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There`s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning."

"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means."

"We all ought to understand we're on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn't do kids any harm for a few years but it isn't smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins."

"When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do."

"What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives."

"The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."

"We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper."

"Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?""I give.""You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog."

"The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe."