National Atheist Day 2017: Quotes, Facts To Mark The Day

There is no dearth of religious holidays. Be it Christmas, Diwali, Eid or Hanukkah, all religions in the world have some or the other festivities going on throughout the year. But, these holidays carry little meaning for atheists.

For people who lack belief in gods, there is National Atheist Day — April 1. And the story behind how the day came about is amusing.

In 2003, a spoof story said a Florida man sought American Civil Liberties Union’s help and filed a case about discrimination inflicted on atheists by Christian and Jewish festivals and said atheists did not have any holiday to celebrate. To this, the judge replied that April 1, which is April Fool’s Day, was the holiday for atheists. Readers believed the story when it first appeared online and accepted that April 1 was declared as National Atheist Day.

Since then, April 1 is also known as National Atheist Day. However, there has been no recorded activity for this day.

Check out some quotes on atheism, gathered from Goodreads, Ask Atheists and Brainy Quote.

• “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” — Richard Dawkins in “The God Delusion”
• “To you, I'm an atheist. To God, I'm the loyal opposition.” — Woody Allen
• “Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!” — George Carlin
• “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” — Edward Gibbon
• “Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” — George Bernard Shaw
• “Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.” — Napoleon Bonaparte
• “Atheism is a non-prophet organization.” — George Carlin
• “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” — Isaac Asimov
• “To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?” —Christopher Hitchens
• “Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” — Douglas Adams in “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”