Best atheist quote?

While thumbing through Jennifer Hecht's brilliant Doubt: A History, I ran across a quote from German atheist Arthur Schopenhauer. Though admittedly ignorant when it comes to the man's contributions to philosophy, I'm reasonably certain his hairstyle carved a deep swath across the history of fashion... and the center of his head.

"And Moses stretched out his hand; and the LORD divided the hair..."

But what really impressed me was this:

For if we could guarantee them their dogma of immortality in some other way, the lively ardor for their gods would at once cool; and… if continued existence after death could be proved to be incompatible with the existence of gods… they would soon sacrifice these gods to their own immortality, and be hot for atheism.

Talk about a searing indictment. It's not an argument we hear often from atheists and agnostics (at least not so well phrased), yet it cuts right to the heart of religion's most obvious Achilles' heel.

For all the complexity and sophistication that surrounds our various theologies, it's worth noting that none of the serious contenders (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.) posit a universe where humankind is utterly damned without chance of parole. Oh, they may chant "God hates fags!" or preach the destruction of other faiths, but not one of them teaches that God is evil, or that no possibility of heaven or enlightenment awaits any of us.

Obviously, any religion that promoted such ideas wouldn't win many converts. Not necessarily because those ideas are inconceivable or patently false, but because they don't tell us what we want to hear.

Religion is like hunting; the bait must entice, but not to the point that it reveals itself as bait. Schopenhauer's criticism here is a sharp one. Give people a choice between immortality (the bait) and their respective deity of choice and they'll kill the latter off faster than you can say "Nietzschean mustache ride."