Chapter2: The God Hypothesis

The god of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it: a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak;
p.51

Pope John Paul II created more saints than all his predecessors of the past several centuries put together...
p.56

I am not attacking any particular version of Godd or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, whereever and whenever they have been or will be invented.
p.57

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are literally, patriarchal - God is the omnipotent Father - hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky god and his earthly male delegates
Gore Vidal
p.58

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle....Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatvely: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him
T.H. Huxley
p. 72

That you cannot prove God's non-existence is accepted and trivial, if only in the sense that we can never absolutely prove the non-existence of anything. What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn't) but whether his existence is probable.
p.77
And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent. On the contrary we shall see.
p.77

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