“At first sight nothing seems more obvious than that everything has a beginning and an end… The prodigious development of physics has now reached the same conclusion…”

For sure, it was "just a theory," as creationists like to dismiss the theory of evolution, even though this Copernican theory was as unassailable as science as heliocentricity was dangerous to theology.

A popular Scientology Q&A says, with a bit of historical amnesia about religion, “psychiatric theories that man is a mere animal have been used to rationalize, for example, the wholesale slaughter of human beings in World Wars I and II.”

The conflict of the Roman Catholic Church against Galileo is an apt illustration of the inescapable irreconcilability of theological doctrine and science. It also shows how bullies destroy benefactors.

“I'm an Atheist,” says Angier. “I don't believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself.... I'm convinced that the world as we see it was shaped by … evolution through natural selection.”

"It vexes me when they [clerics] would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures," wrote Galileo, "and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment."

In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally ... an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. Proof! Proof! That is what I have always been after.

Maxim was an aggressive Atheist. Maxim knew the Chinese statesman and general Li Hung Chang to be just as strong an Atheist as he was himself.

Keith said, "As long as man remains an inquiring animal, there can never be a complete unanimity in our fundamental beliefs. The more diverse our paths, the greater is likely to be the divergence of beliefs."