"My view is that atheistic existentialism is the high road where ultimately morality is an aesthetic about the world we choose to live in given existential abandonment and radical free will. There is no inherited and meaningful context and self-deception about such is the low road.The most profound thing is to be good simply because one chooses to do so - not for any received truth or dictate. [wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth] primative religion. This is the new religion. We are insignificant in a universe of collapsing stars and time parameters that we can't even comprehend, but to look that squarely in the face and transcend ourselves by the way we apply our freedom is to become an adult species - and if it all passes and nobody ever knew we did it then more is the profundity."
-MIT
"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and that nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the traditional indoor warmth of humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own."
-Bertrand Russell
"If we look back at the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them; and that custom, respect and tyranny support them, in order to make the blindness of man serve their own interest. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to Gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them."
-Baron D'Holbach