Atheist Motivational Quotes

Atheists’ anger doesn’t prove that we’re selfish, or joyless, or miserable. It shows that we have compassion, and a sense of justice. We’re angry because we see terrible harm all around us, and we feel desperately motivated to stop it.

It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Without the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power we could have little faith in ourselves. We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love. Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is a part of an unending plan.

It’s possible to be flippant here, when Jihadists fly aircraft into buildings they shout God is Great, what do atheists shout when they do it?

If you pay attention, when you are seeking something, you will move towards your goal. More importantly, however, you will acquire the information that allows your goal itself to transform. A totalitarian never asks, “What if my current ambition is in error?” He treats it, instead, as the Absolute. It becomes his God, for all intents and purposes. It constitutes his highest value. It regulates his emotions and motivational states, and determines his thoughts. All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don’t know, what God they serve.

I'm Godless. And so I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking, which is -- ultimately what my God becomes, which is what my mantra becomes, is the theme.

It did not then cross my mind that they, like religious apologists, might have any personal reasons for holding to this disbelief. It certainly did not cross my mind that I had any low motives for it. Unlike Christians, atheists have a high opinion of their own virtue.

If you do not want to stop the wheels of progress; if you do not want to go back to the Dark Ages; if you do not want to live again under tyranny, then you must guard your liberty, and you must not let the church get control of your government. If you do, you will lose the greatest legacy ever bequeathed to the human race—intellectual freedom. Now let me tell you another thing. If all the energy and wealth wasted upon religion—in all of its varied forms—had been spent to understand life and its problems, we would today be living under conditions that would seem almost like Utopia. Most of our social and domestic problems would have been solved, and equally as important, our understanding and relations with the other peoples of the world would have, by now, brought about universal peace. Man would have a better understanding of his motives and actions, and would have learned to curb his primitive instincts for revenge and retaliation. He would, by now, know that wars of hate, aggression, and aggrandizement are only productive of more hate and more human suffering. The enlightened and completely emancipated man from the fears of a God and the dogma of hate and revenge would make him a brother to his fellow man. He would devote his energies to discoveries and inventions, which theology previously condemned as a defiance of God, but which have proved so beneficial to him. He would no longer be a slave to a God and live in cringing fear!

Blind-believers and staunch atheists have the same god - namely, a self-deluded, one's own shadow's bot.

Believing or not makes no difference to the Absolute of Things That Be. But it does to you. For you shall live and die accordingly. A wise person, or a fool. Choose.

Live joyfully this life. Once gone, who knows if we ever get it back. Atheists think we do not. Mystics say you will. Either way, chill.

I know many people who believe in God, and I expected to find Him on my way to the South Pole if he exists. My religious experiences were very different however, [only] involving myself, nature and the universe.

One friend asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, "During your last days you will begin to believe". I said, No, dear Sir, it shall not be. I will think that to be an act of degradation and demoralization on my part. For selfish motives I am not going to pray. Readers and friends, "Is this vanity"? If it is, I stand for it.

From the hood of his car, he hefted a large green insulated pack - the kind Fadlan's Falafel used for deliveries. "This is for you, Magnus. I hope you enjoy." The scent of fresh falafel wafted out. True, I'd eaten falafel just a few hours ago, but my stomach growled because ... well, more falafel. "Man, you're the best. I can't believe - Wait. You're in the middle of a fast and you brought me food? That seems wrong." "Just because I'm fasting doesn't mean you can't enjoy." He clapped me on my shoulder. "You'll be in my prayers. All of you." I knew he was sincere. Me, I was an atheist. I only prayed sarcastically to my own father for a better colour of boat. Learning about the existence of Norse deities and the Nine Worlds had just made me more convinced that there was no grand divine plan. What kind of God would allow Zeus and Odin to run around the same cosmos, both claiming to be the king of creation, smiting mortals with lightning bolts and giving motivational seminars? Bur Amir was a man of faith. He and Samirah believed in something bigger, a cosmic force that actually cared about humans. I suppose it was kind of comforting to know Amir had my back in the prayer department, even if I doubted there was anybody at the end of that line. "Thanks, man." I shook his hand one last time.

The moment the religious population of the world begins to see the prophets what they really were - mortal teachers of the mortal world, a great portion of the world's religious conflicts shall vanish into thin air.

A Muslim who prays five times a day and yet beats his wife at home, is no religious person. A Christian who goes to Church every Sunday, and yet never talks to his or her neighbor with a smile on the face, is no religious person. On the other hand, an outspoken atheist who most lovingly talks and listens to people of all religions without any bigotry or prejudice is a hundred times more religious than all the theoretical preachers of all religions combined.

Right and wrong, good and bad, he regarded as qualities solely of conduct—of acts and omissions; there being no feeling which may not lead, and does not frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions: conscience itself, the very desire to act right, often leading people to act wrong. Consistently carrying out the doctrine, that the object of praise and blame should be the discouragement of wrong conduct and the encouragement of right, he refused to let his praise or blame be influenced by the motive of the agent.

I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions: how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.

Before you work with me you must know that I am an atheist and I believe in neither supreme powers of any God or the trickery of the Devil, I am student of the criminal psychology and believe that behind every murder there is psychopath at work with some insidious agenda at play and motive unknown to human mind.

Even though it may look like the wicked is gaining ground, God is still in control. We need to pray for our nations, pray for others, pray for forgiveness and mercy over people. We need to love no matter who we are talking to, whether they are Atheist, Moslems, Lesbians, Homosexuals or Pagans. We need to love them and share the love of God with them and not judge and see if we can rebuild our broken nations.

Blue believes the harmony to be motivated by self-interest. There is a resurgence of faith these days, a growing belief in organized religion, grace, damnation, heaven and hell. People treat each other kindly now, thinks Blue, because they hope to escape God's wrath. Blue does not believe in damnation and has trouble empathizing with those who do. In her fifty-two years, she has found no hard evidence, no scientific proof to convince her of God's existence. She considers herself an atheist.

So instead of providing another intellectual answer that would be ignored, David cut right to the heart. He said, “You’re raising all of these objections because you’re sleeping with your girlfriend. Am I right?” All the blood drained from the young man’s face. He was caught. He was rejecting God because he didn’t like God’s morality. And he was disguising it with feigned intellectual objections. This young man wasn’t the first atheist or agnostic to admit that his desire to follow his own agenda was keeping him out of the kingdom. In the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul revealed this tendency we humans have to “suppress the truth” about God in order to follow our own desires. In other words, unbelief is more motivated by the heart than the head. Some prominent atheists have admitted this. Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously wrote, “God is dead and we have killed him,” also wrote, “If one were to prove this God of the Christians to us, we should be even less able to believe in him.”[24] Obviously Nietzsche’s rejection of God was not intellectual! Professor Thomas Nagel of NYU more recently wrote, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My

The duties, which a man performs as a friend or parent, do not seem merely owing to his benefactor or children; nor can he be wanting to these duties, without breaking through all the ties of nature and morality. A strong inclination may prompt him to the performance: A sentiment of order and moral obligation joins its force to these natural ties: And the whole man, if truly virtuous, is drawn to his duty, without any effort or endeavour. Even with regard to the virtues, which are more austere, and more founded on reflection, such as public spirit, filial duty, temperance, or integrity; the moral obligation, in our apprehension, removes all pretension to religious merit; and the virtuous conduct is deemed no more than what we owe to society and to ourselves. In all this, a superstitious man finds nothing, which he has properly performed for the sake of his deity, or which can peculiarly recommend him to the divine favor and protection. He considers not, that the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures. He still looks out for some immediate service of the supreme Being, in order to allay those terrors, with which he is haunted. And any practice, recommended to him, which either serves to no purpose in life, or offers the strongest violence to his natural inclinations; that practice he will the more readily embrace, on account of those very circumstances, which should make him absolutely reject it. It seems the more purely religious, because it proceeds from no mixture of any other motive or consideration. And if, for its sake, he sacrifices much of his ease and quiet, his claim of merit appears still to rise upon him, in proportion to the zeal and devotion, which he discovers. In restoring a loan, or paying a debt, his divinity is nowise beholden to him; because these acts of justice are what he was bound to perform, and what many would have performed, were there no god in the universe. But if he fast a day, or give himself a sound whipping; this has a direct reference, in his opinion, to the service of God. No other motive could engage him to such austerities. By these distinguished marks of devotion, he has now acquired the divine favor; and may expect, in recompense, protection, and safety in this world, and eternal happiness in the next.

Our return to an image-based culture means the destruction of the abstract thought made possible by a literate, print-based society. Image-based societies do not grasp or cope with ambiguity, nuance, doubt and the many layers of irrational motives and urges, some of them frightening, that make human actions complex and finally unfathomable. They eschew self-criticism for amusement. They build fantastic non-reality-based belief systems that cater to human desires and illusions rather than human reality. These illusions, whether religious or secular, offer a simple and unexamined myth that the human race is advancing morally, spiritually and materially toward paradise. This advance is proclaimed as inevitable. This faith in our advancement makes us passive and complacent.

Militant atheists seek to discredit religion based on a highly selective reading of history. There was a time not long ago—just a couple of centuries—when the Western world was saturated by religion. Militant atheists are quick to attribute many of the most unfortunate aspects of history to religion, yet rarely concede the immense debt that civilization owes to various monotheist religions, which created some of the world’s greatest literature, art, and architecture; led the movement to abolish slavery; and fostered the development of science and technology. One should not invalidate these achievements merely because they were developed for religious purposes. If much of science was originally a religious endeavor, does that mean science is not valuable? Is religiously motivated charity not genuine? Is art any less beautiful because it was created to express devotion to God? To regret religion is to regret our civilization and its achievements.

All of this, undoubtedly, follows from an extremely potent and persuasive model of freedom, one that would not have risen to such dominance in our culture if it did not give us a sense of liberty from arbitrary authority, and of limitless inner possibilities, and of profound personal dignity. There is nothing contemptible in this, and there is no simple, obvious moral reproach to be brought against it. Nevertheless, as I have said, it is a model of freedom whose ultimate horizon is, quite literally, nothing. Moreover, if the will determines itself principally in and through the choices it makes, then it too, at some very deep level, must also be nothing: simply a pure movement of spontaneity, motive without motive, absolute potentiality, giving birth to itself. A God beyond us or a stable human nature within us would confine our decisions within certain inescapable channels; and so at some, usually unconscious level—whatever else we may believe—we stake ourselves entirely upon the absence of either. Those of us who now, in the latter days of modernity, are truest to the wisdom and ethos of our age place ourselves not at the disposal of God, or the gods, or the Good, but before an abyss, over which presides the empty power of our isolated wills, whose decisions are their own moral index. This is what it means to have become perfect consumers: the original nothing ness of the will gives itself shape by the use it makes of the nothingness of the world—and thus we are free.

You are a thinker. I am a thinker. We think that all human beings are thinkers. The amazing fact is that we tend to think against artificial intelligence — that various kind of computers or artificial robots can think, but most of us never cast any doubt on human thinking potential in general. If during natural conservation with human any computer or artificial robot could generate human-like responses by using its own ‘brain’ but not ready-form programming language which is antecedently written and included in the brain design and which consequently determine its function and response, then that computer or artificial robot would unquestionably be acknowledged as a thinker as we are. But is it absolutely true that all humans are capable of using their own brain while interpreting various signals and responding them? Indeed, religion or any other ideology is some kind of such program which is written by others and which determines our vision, mind and behavior models, depriving us of a clear and logical thinking. It forces us to see the world with its eyes, to construct our mind as it says and control our behavior as it wants. There can be no freedom, no alternative possibilities. You don’t need to understand its claims, you need only believe them. Whatever is unthinkable and unimaginable for you, is said higher for your understanding, you cannot even criticise what seems to be illogical and absurd for you. The unwritten golden rule of religion and its Holy Scripture is that — whatever you think, you cannot contradict what is written there. You can reconcile what is illogical and absurd in religion with logic and common sense, if it is possible, if not, you should confine your thinking to that illogicality and absurdity, which in turn would make you more and more a muddled thinker. For instance, if it is written there that you should cut head or legs of anyone who dare criticize your religion and your prophet, you should unquestionably believe that it is just and right punishment for him. You can reason in favor of softening that cruel image of your religion by saying that that ‘just and right punishment’ is considered within religious community, but not secular society. However, the absurdity of your vision still remains, because as an advocate of your religion you dream of its spread all over the world, where the cruel and insane claims of your religion would be the norm and standard for everyone. If it is written there that you can sexually exploit any slave girl or woman, especially who doesn’t hold your religious faith or she is an atheist, you should support that sexual violence without any question. After all of them, you would like to be named as a thinker. In my mind, you are a thinker, but a thinker who has got a psychological disorder. It is logical to ask whether all those ‘thinkers’ represent a potential danger for the humanity. I think, yes. However, we are lucky that not all believers would like to penetrate into deeper ‘secrets’ of religion. Many of them believe in God, meditate and balance their spiritual state without getting familiar with what is written in holy scriptures or holding very vague ideas concerning their content. Many believers live a secular life by using their own brain for it. One should love anybody only if he thinks that he should love him/her; if he loves him/her because of God, or religious claims, he can easily kill him/her once because of God, or religious claims, too. I think the grave danger is the last motive which religion cause to arise.

A totalitarian never asks, “What if my current ambition is in error?” He treats it, instead, as the Absolute. It becomes his God, for all intents and purposes. It constitutes his highest value. It regulates his emotions and motivational states, and determines his thoughts. All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don’t know, what God they serve.

Yet all these previous persecutions seem almost trivial when we compare them with the sufferings of the Armenians, in which at least 600,000 people were destroyed and perhaps as many as 1,000,000. These earlier massacres, when we compare them with the spirit that directed the Armenian atrocities, have one feature that we can almost describe as an excuse: they were the product of religious fanaticism and most of the men and women who instigated them sincerely believed that they were devoutly serving their Maker. Undoubtedly, religious fanaticism was an impelling motive with the Turkish and Kurdish rabble who slew Armenians as a service to Allah, but the men who really conceived the crime had no such motive. Practically all of them were atheists, with no more respect for Mohammedanism than for Christianity, and with them the one motive was cold-blooded, calculating state policy.” Adolf

Christians are good citizens, and take human laws very seriously, for religious reasons, not just for secular reasons. That’s why they are better citizens than atheists, and certainly better citizens than moral relativists and subjectivists: they have stronger motives for obedience.

Our inevitable deaths, and the deaths of our loved ones, act as primary motivators for the survival of our gods, because the religions built around them provide consolation and answer the eternal Why? that humans shout at the world. Our own sense of self-worth refuses to accept that our existence is a wonderful accident, and that there is no true purpose in it, except for the purposes we make for ourselves.

These four things then constitute the program, which I have in mind for this society during my ministry. First, to make it a common meeting ground for all men and women, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, theist and atheist, on the single common basis of religious fellowship; second, to make it a fountain of inspiration for ail scientific social betterment; third, to shift the emphasis of thought from the traditional to the scientific, from the theological to the historical, from the irrational to the rational, from the supernatural to the natural; fourth, to hold before the eyes of men the moral ideal and to place behind human endeavor moral motives.   If

Christ the man died long ago, but Christ the idea of love, still exists, not in any church, rather in the mind of humans.

An outspoken atheist who most lovingly talks and listens to people of all religions without any bigotry or prejudice is a hundred times more religious than all the theoretical preachers of all religions combined.

I do not hail myself as an atheist, for I am not an atheist. In fact, I have met God, felt God and even lived in God, same as the prophets of human history. But mark you, humanism cannot be compromised because of some doctrines presented as God’s command. In the domain of transcendence, all commands received by the mind, are created by the mind itself. They manifest as divine revelations, but in reality, they are revelations rising from the mind itself. And as such, they have potential to be both good and evil.

Non-professionals can also misrepresent the personal characteristics, religious beliefs, and appearance, of these therapists, can name-call and otherwise mock them, and can attribute false agendas to them, such as assigning religious motives to secular therapists working with ritual abuse or mind control survivors. For example, there is little to prevent someone from claiming on his or her own website that a psychotherapist is a fundamentalist Christian zealot at war with Satan, when that therapist might be an atheist, Jew, Buddhist, etc., who places no stock in the existence of Satan. But such a claim, when spoken as if it is fact, accomplishes its intended purpose of maligning that therapist." - Common Forms of Misinformation and Tactics of Disinformation about Psychotherapy for Trauma Originating in Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (2012)

So she and Jim decided to check out the single small atheist group in Sandy Cliffs that met once a month in a back room of a public library. But it just wasn’t what Jim and June were looking for. As Jim explained, “The vibe was too negative. It was a lot of criticizing religion, and that’s not what we we’re about. There was a lot of ‘rage against the nativity scene’ stuff—there is a nativity scene in front of city hall, and they were against that. Or it was ‘rage against the bumper sticker’—someone had seen a religious bumper sticker on a city vehicle and they wanted it removed. You know, that sort of thing. And that’s just not what we were looking for. We wanted something positive. And it was also a lot of talking. But where was the doing? We wanted to be out doing things, being motivated by our humanist values. And we didn’t want to be in a group that was solely defined by its opposition to something. That feels too negative. We wanted to be for something, to be our own thing, and to find opportunities to be doing good.

You want to know what gets on my nerves? When people say 'you can't be a Christian because you're LGBT+, or you used to be a Muslim/Hindu/atheist/pretty much anything else really'. The reason people say those things is because we believe doing so is sinning, but haven't we all sinned? Aren't we all in the same boat, at the mercy of the storm raging outside? If so, why keep to ourselves in what we think is the safest corner, but the whole boat sinks nonetheless? Every sin, whether it's stealing a cookie from the cookie jar to murdering and robbing an innocent child is sin. Even if you have never done any wrong, except did one thing, isn't your soul still poisoned, still doomed to being a sinner? Why must we separate ourself because we believe we are 'righteous', when in doing so we simply dirty ourselves in sinful dust even more so, yet continue to believe ourselves better then anyone else? If you don't think you are worthy, or can possibly be righteous, well, I'm afraid your not on track. The only reason we are even not-dead-yet is because a perfect soul died after never sinning, Jesus payed the price we so selfishly went into debt for because we wanted temporary satisfaction and worthless paper called money. If we have all been called to be clean, why must we refuse this and say others are dirty, when if that's true we are dirty as well ourselves? We sink the boat we are on to see others drown, yet in the process we drown ourselves. We have been selfish, lazy, prideful, and sinful, every one of is, and yet are so blind we cannot even see the great light that calls us to be clean and perfect. There is no such thing as too far gone, so why do we say others are too far gone yet set the bar lower for ourselves? Are we more perfect, more righteous, more forgiven then people who don't know God as well as we do? Surely not! If we know God, instead of keeping him to ourselves we are quite clearly instructed to give freely in the Bible, and yet we refuse to do so for the sake of our sinful pride. Why do we not reach down, and get our knees dirty to help the poor? What is stopping us from going that extra mile, from giving more then you have, from reaching out with the great news of the savior? We are too prideful, we don't want our silken robes to get muddy in someone else's sin even when they're already disgusting in ours. We tell ourselves we're are too tired to walk the extra mile, yet powerful enough to strike down the needy and ones in poverty. We are too greedy, we would rather keep the Savior to ourselves then give it, even though in giving you get even more. What right do we have to choose who should come with us into heaven? What heavenly authority gave us the power to say 'you sin, you cannot come to heaven', even though we sinners think we can when there is no difference between us? Any one can truly believe, there is no 'special requirement' to be a Christian other then to know God exists (well, duh you didn't need to tell us that) and to know you are a sinner and to try to not sin, even though we all fail miserably at that, and to love God with all your heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as much as God loves them. (No, autocorrect is not a human, I hate it too). There is no human on earth who is perfect, if you believe yourself to be so you are even more wrong then before. If there is anyone reading this, who is suicidal or LGBT+ and have been bullied or just don't know, trust me, there is nothing, NOTHING preventing you from believing except for your own will. I don't know if this is a quote or a rant ;;

After impression is intention. It’s a soul check to see whether we have ulterior motives. Does my friendship with this person depend on them deciding to follow Christ within some allotted amount of time? (Ulterior motive.) Or do I intend to befriend this person and share my life with them, regardless of if they ever decide to become a follower of Christ? (Ultimate motive.)

Pletho, a neo-pagan, had an ulterior motive in pitting Plato against Aristotle. As an opponent of the proposed union between the Latins and the Greeks, he hoped to demolish the intellectual edifice of the Roman Catholic Church, which he quite rightly recognized had been raised, thanks to Aquinas and others, on Aristotelian foundations. Upending the traditional philosophical hierarchy, he depicted Aristotle as an atheist while stressing Plato’s piety. He pointed out that for Aristotle the Prime Mover—the primary cause of all motion in the universe—existed in only one celestial sphere, which undermined the Christian idea of a god who dwells in all things. He rebutted Aristotle’s attack on Forms by saying it was tantamount to denying the existence of eternal substances. Finally, Aristotle may have paid lip service to various divinities, but, Pletho claimed, he was ultimately an atheist. Plato, on the other hand, understood God as “the universal sovereign existing over all things … the originator of originators, the creator of creators.

It is asked, what motives an Atheist can have to do good? The motive to please himself and his fellow-creatures; to live happily and peaceably; to gain the affection and esteem of men. "Can he, who fears not the gods, fear any thing?" He can fear men; he can fear contempt, dishonour, the punishment of the laws; in short, he can fear himself, and the remorse felt by all those who are conscious of having incurred or merited the hatred of their fellow-creatures.

The Atheist reasons: he consults experience, which he prefers to prejudice. If he reasons justly, his conscience is enlightened; he finds more real motives to do good than the bigot whose only motives are his fallacies, and who never listens to reason.

Every change is done with tremendous compassion, and, consciously. Please understand, no change is an accident. Constantly looking at life as an accident is the attitude of atheists. Understanding, whether the way it happens, or the way you perceive, is a “conscious happening”, is “Living Advaitha”. The way it is happening outside, the way you perceive inside, both, if you think it is accident, you are “Atheist”. If you understand it is “conscious happening”, you are “Living Advaitha

In the world of so-called civilized and intelligent humans, there are only two accepted ways to see religion - one is the way of the believer, and the other is the one of the non-believer. But there is a third way - the way of the real religious person - the way of the real scientist - the way of the real yogi. It is the way where you see religion as it is, that is, an organized structure which helps people go through their daily life with as little hitch as possible. And as such, every organized structure has its pros and cons.

So which is more probable: That today's atheist apocalyptans are unique and right? Or that they are like their many predecessors—at the very least, in their motivations? If anything, the vehemence with which the believers in emergent complexity debunk all religion may betray their own creeping awareness of the religious underpinnings and precedents for their declarations. In fact, the concept of Armageddon first emerged in response to the invention of monotheism by the ancient Persian priest Zoroaster, around the tenth or eleventh century BCE. Until that time, the dominant religions maintained a pantheon of gods reigning in a cyclical precession along with the heavens, so there was little need for absolutes. As religions began focusing on a single god, things got a bit trickier. For if there is only one god, and that god has absolute power, then why do bad things happen? Why does evil still exist? If one's god is fighting for control of the universe against the gods of other people, then there's no problem. Just as in polytheism, the great achievements of one god can be undermined by the destructive acts of another. But what if a religion, such as Judaism of the First and Second Temple era, calls for one god and one god alone? How do its priests and followers explain the persistence of evil and suffering? They do it the same way Zoroaster did: by introducing time into the equation. The imperfection of the universe is a product of its incompleteness. There's only one true god, but he's not done yet. In the monotheist version, the precession of the gods was no longer a continuous cycle of seasonal deities or metaphors. It was nor a linear story with a clear endpoint in the victory of the one true and literal god. Once this happens, time can end. Creation is the Alpha, and the Return is the Omega. It's all good. This worked well enough to assuage the anxieties of both the civilization of the calendar and that of the clock. But what about us? Without time, without a future, how to we contend with the lingering imperfections in our reality? As members of a monotheist culture—however reluctant—we can't help but seek to apply its foundational framework to our current dilemma. The less aware we are of this process—or the more we refuse to admit its legacy in our construction of new models—the more vulnerable we become to its excesses. Repression and extremism are two sides of the same coin. In spite of their determination to avoid such constructs, even the most scientifically minded futurists apply the Alpha-Omega framework of messianic time to their upgraded apocalypse narratives. Emergence takes the place of the hand of God, mysteriously transforming a chaotic system into a self-organized one, with coherence and cooperation. Nobody seems able to explain how this actually happens.