Are you never afraid of God's judgement in denying him? Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Brahma, but this causes me no qualms. I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the idea that doubt in the existence of God is not inherently wrong and should not invoke fear of judgment.
Bertrand Russell points out that many individuals do not believe in God or deities such as Zeus and Odin, yet they do not face punishment for their disbelief. He suggests that if a supreme being existed, it is unlikely that such a being would be so insecure as to take offense at those who question or deny their existence, thus inviting a rational discourse on faith and doubt.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about the nature of belief and skepticism.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
The soul is neither inside nor outside the body; neither proximate to nor separate from it.
The true penance comes when God takes away the soul's health and strength for doing penance. Even though I have mentioned elsewhere the great pain this lack causes, the pain is much more intense here. All these things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.
For every nation that lives peaceably, there will be many others to grow hard and push their arrogance to extremes; the gods attend to these things slowly. But they attend to those who put off God and turn to madness.
Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village-the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.
To me, reason is as spiritual as anything else, the beauty of reason seems to me indelible and ineffable and numinous... the spirit is after all the same word we use to describe... essence
I don't think tragic situations are necessarily devoid of beauty.
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