“I am really amazed, really delighted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: what brought me to him now was the guidance of instinct. Not only is his whole tendency like my own, to make knowledge the most powerful passion, but also in five main points of his doctrine I find myself; the most abnormal and lonely think is closest to me in these points precisely: he denies free will, purposes, the moral world order, the nonegoistical, evil; of course the differences are enormous. I summa: my solitariness which, as on the very high mountains, has often, often made me grasp for breath and lose blood, is now at least a solitude for two.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche (c.1885), comment to close friend in his later yeas [16]

“Science has nothing to do with Christ, except insofar as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence. For myself, I do not believe that there ever has been any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.”

— Charles Darwin (1879), “Letter to German student” [18]

“What you write of the paralyzing atheism of the town, I am afraid is too true; but what do you think of such a thing as achristism? I am sure Ephesians 2:12 (Ѻ) mentions both. How many are there that own a god, and worship him, that have no regard to Jesus Christ in doing so; as if we could come to him, and have to do with him, and receive from him, without a mediator! How is he then 'the way?' Hath he not said, 'No man cometh unto the father but by me?' Is he the way to those that do not walk in him, or an advocate to those that do not employ him?”

— Philip Henry (1694), “Letter to reverend Francis Tallents”, Aug 13 [19]

“I have dictated thirty pages on the world’s three religions; and I have read the Bible. My own mind is made up. I do not think Jesus Christ ever existed.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte (1817)

“I wish there were a term in the English language that honestly captures the idea that all we experience is due to brain function. ‘Materialism’ comes close, but is laden with excess metaphysical baggage. The philosopher John Searle coined ‘biological naturalism’ as a mind-body theory within philosophy, and that comes very close. ‘Asoulism’ is more modest: a simple disbelief in the existence of souls based on evidence.”

— David Weisman (2010), “The Experience of a Unified Mind and the Possibility of an Everlasting Soul are Connected and there is Scant Evidence to Support the Existence of Either” [2]

“Not all those who denied the existence of an afterlife—the mortalists—were atheist, the history of atheism and that of mortalism are closely connected.”

— David Berman (2007), “Unbelief during the Enlightenment” [1]

“One’s theological holdings [can be divided] into two classes: those for which a man would go to the stake, and those for which a man would not go to the stake.”

— Edwards A. Park (c.1870)

“For the second law [of thermodynamics], I will burn at the stake.”

— Heinz London (c.1933), comment made to H. Montgomery during his time at Harwell [10]

“The belief state of an obscure lump of molecules wandering around a remote corner of England is of no importance whatsoever epistemologically speaking.”

— Barry Barnes (1998), response to David Mermin whether he “might perhaps be into astrology” [9]

“There are many questions in philosophy to which no satisfactory answer has yet been given. But the question of the ‘nature of the gods’ is the darkest and most difficult of all. So various and so contradictory are the opinions of the most learned men on this matter as to persuade one of the truth of the saying that philosophy is the child of ignorance.”

— Cicero (45BC), On the Nature of the Gods (Ѻ)

“Spinoza’s equation ‘god = nature’ is self-contradictory, and must be seen as a subterfuge. After all, Spinoza’s motto was ‘be prudent’. Consequently, the vulgar characterization of Spinoza as a pantheist is incorrect: he was a secret atheist because he was a naturalist. The same holds for Einstein, who once declared that his religion was Spinoza’s, i.e. none.”

— Mario Bunge (2010), Matter and Mind: a Philosophical Inquiry [7]