It's already been said better than I could hope to...
"Freethinkers—Atheists—admit that they don't know life's punch line. Indeed, we admit to not knowing a great many things. But we would rather be in ignorance than in error. And the best way to minimize error and the misfortunes that errors lead to, is to insist on facts and reason as the basis for our opinions. We resist the temptation to believe something for no better reason than that it might afford us a false—and probably temporary—sense of comfort or security. Indeed, we do not see beliefs themselves—at least about many things—as especially important. Rather, we consider that beliefs are merely stopping-off places, or resting points, in the essential process of the human condition, which is thinking. For you cannot think if you are believing. Nor can you believe if you are thinking."
-Dr. Tim Gorski
"If a man accepts a religious proposition as true, it is hardly ever after having first considered it as a hypothesis and found compelling evidence through an impartial inquiry. Few religious people have studied comparative religion, and hardly any have attained their beliefs as a result of study: yet this would be de rigeur if the religious person's attitude toward the religious propositions he believes were at all similar to the historian's or the scientist's attitude toward the propositions with which they concern themselves. The fact that religious person frequently considers his religious propositions ever so much more important only aggravates the problem. The more important the issue at hand, the more it demands careful scrutiny. This is a simple but important issue which most religious people overlook."
Walter Kaufmann
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