Fabricated Marcus Aurelius Quote

In June last year, I posted a quote that I was led to believe was from Marcus Aurelius Antonius (121-180 CE), after reading Meditations recently, I discovered that quote was no where to be found, and there are no other known writings of Marcus. I must correct my previous mistake.

The quote I posted was this one:

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but...will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."

The closest thing to that in my copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is this:

"Now departure from the world of men is nothing to fear, if gods exist: because they would not involve you in any harm. If they do not exist, or if they have no care for humankind, then what is life to me in a world devoid of gods, or devoid of providence? But they do exist, and they do care for humankind: and they have put it absolutely in man's power to avoid falling into the true kinds of harm."
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.11

It seems to me like the former quote was fabricated based loosely on the latter, and I have not been able to track down the source of the forgery. Marcus Aurelius was NOT an atheist, the actual quote should show this quite clearly, though much of his philosophy was very practical, and for the most part disinterested in the supernatural.

EDIT: If anyone finds another translation that is closer to the quote I have decided is a fake, I'd like to know about it.

God is Superfluous Pierre-Simon Laplace quote

When doing my post a while back called 'God is Superfluous' I was searching around for this quote, and google wasn't helping me much because I had the wording wrong. Alas, I have found the quote that I was searching for. The quote comes from French Mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827). Laplace was giving a copy of his work Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics) to Napoleon, who had been informed that it made no mention of god, and Napoleon asked Laplace "they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." and Laplace responded "I had no need of that hypothesis."

So it is with all of our natural models, they do not contain god in them, because they work perfectly well without the assumption of god.

Great Quote from Marcus Aurelius

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but...will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” 

—Marcus Aurelius

EDIT: This quote is a fabrication, please refer to my recent post on the issue HERE