Judge (Rev.) Samuel Sewall, who had presided at many trials in Salem, expressed a real fear of divine retribution, but the victims of the Salem Witch Trials would have been better off with less Jesus and more justice.

"My personal position is simple. I have no living sense of commerce with a God," said James. "Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."

"I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe," De Beauvoir said.

We do not know if god-belief or the Trinity would have long survived the assaults of Thomas Aikenhead, so we can be sure it is a good thing that we have priests with no other useful function than to protect us.

“As my ancestors are free from slavery,” McQueen said, “I am free from the slavery of religion.”

Since those who believed Joan a witch and those who believed her a messenger of God subscribed to the same superstitions, it is of little consequence whose side is right.

Anabaptists were semi-Rationalistic, which is always heretical. Manz's death made him the first Protestant in history to be martyred at the hands of other Protestants.

Some of the better-known Fabians include atheist-turned Theosophist Annie Besant, the virulently anti-Christian dramatist George Bernard Shaw, the atheist novelist H.G. Wells, and Rupert Brooke, the Agnostic poet.

"Since I am an atheist, and do not believe that either God or Satan, Heaven or Hell, exists, I can only suppose that when I die, there will only be an eternity of nothingness to follow."

"[Frazer] was not an Atheist. I would say perhaps that he held his judgment in suspense." That is the common definition of an Agnostic.