Julian Huxley

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We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc

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By death the moon was gathered in Long ago, ah long ago;Yet still the silver corpse must spinAnd with another's light must glow.Her frozen mountains must forgetTheir primal hot volcanic breath,Doomed to revolve for ages yet,Void amphitheatres of death.And all about the cosmic sky,The black that lies beyond our blue,Dead stars innumerable lie,And stars of red and angry hueNot dead but doomed to die

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To speculate without facts is to attempt to enter a house of which one has not the key, by wandering aimlessly round and round, searching the walls and now and then peeping through the windows. Facts are the key

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But if God and immortality be repudiated, what is left? That is the question usually thrown at the atheist's head. The orthodox believer likes to think that nothing is left. That, however, is because he has only been accustomed to think in terms of his orthodoxy. In point of fact, a great deal is left.That is immediately obvious from the fact that many men and women have led active, or self-sacrificing, or noble, or devoted lives without any belief in God or immortality. Buddhism in its uncorrupted form has no such belief; nor did the great nineteenth-century agnostics; nor do the orthodox Russian Communists; nor did the Stoics. Of course, the unbelievers have often been guilty of selfish or wicked actions; but so have the believers. And in any case that is not the fundamental point. The point: is that without these beliefs men and women may yet possess the mainspring of full and purposive living, and just as strong a sense that existence can be worth while as is possible to the most devout believers

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Evolution... is the most powerful and the most comprehensive idea that has ever arisen on Earth