Peter Atkins, Brits hoogleraar in de scheikunde aan het Lincoln College van de Universiteit van Oxford.

The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight -- that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether.

~ Daniel C. Dennett