| Quote |
Author |
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Isn't
it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without
having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom
of it too?
|
|
"I
refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for
proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing."
"Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is
a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and
so therefore You don't. Q.E.D." "Oh, I hadn't
thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes
in a puff of logic.
|
|
The
question before the human race is, whether the God of
nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether
priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?
|
|
This
would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were
no religions in it.
|
|
If
you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall.
If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually
do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.
|
|
No
actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty
of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other
atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible.
|
|
I
always distrust people who know so much about what God
wants them to do to their fellows.
|
|
The
idea of an incarnation of God is absurd: why should
the human race think itself so superior to bees, ants,
and elephants as to be put in this unique relation to
its maker?... Christians are like a council of frogs
in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking
and squeaking "for our sakes was the world created."
|
Julian
the Apostate |
To
surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been
premature, and it remains premature today.
|
|
I
am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to
say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but
somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to
say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge
that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one
was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence
to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect
that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
|
|
Creationists
make it sound as though a theory is something you dreamt
up after being drunk all night.
|
|
The
Bible contains legendary, historical and ethical contents.
It is quite possible to consider them separately, and
one doesn’t have to accept the legends in order
to get the ethics. Fundamentalists make a grave mistake
to insist on the letter of the writings, because they
drive away many who can’t swallow the Adam-and-Eve
bit.
|
|
Properly
read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism
ever conceived.
|
|
My
spell-checker lacks the word 'creationism' in its dictionary,
so each time that word is encountered, an alternative
pops up at the bottom of my screen, 'cretinism'.
|
E.T.
Babinski |
People
go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern:
to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine
themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.
|
Mikhail
Bakunin |
You
believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards,
witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling
from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts
of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say
that we are the ones that need help?
|
|
Religion
seems to have a way of making people abandon logic.
|
Amanda
Baxter |
| If
you love God, burn the church. |
Jello
Biafra |
Bible,
n.: A divinely inspired book, admirably suited for the
needs of one’s neighbors.
|
|
Christian,
n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely
inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs
of his neighbor.
|
|
Faith,
n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who
speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
|
|
Impiety,
n.: Your irreverence toward my deity.
|
|
Infidel:
In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian
religion; in Constantinople, one who does.
|
|
Pray,
v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled
on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
|
|
Religion:
A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance
the nature of the Unknowable.
|
|
Scriptures:
the sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished
from the false and profane writings on which all other
faiths are based.
|
|
| We
have fossils... We win! |
Lewis
Black
on creationism
|
Religion
is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
|
Napoleon
Bonaparte |
I
have observed that the world has suffered far less from
ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is
not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues
who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned
anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic,
or an unbeliever.
|
|
To
explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure;
to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological
lunacy.
|
David
Brooks |
If
the bible had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I
would believe it.
|
William
Jennings Bryan |
An
atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
|
John
Buchan |
Believing
in gods always causes confusion.
|
|
I
feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human
beings. Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the
wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think
of heaven and the angels.
|
|
For
those who believe in God, most of the big questions
are answered. But for those of us who can't readily
accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain
stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries.
We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith
a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the
teachings of the church, state, and our educational
system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill
war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives
so well that Death will tremble to take us.
|
|
Science
has done more for the development of Western civilization
in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen
hundred years.
|
Jeff
Burroughs |
The
more I study religions the more I am convinced that
man never worshipped anything but himself.
|
Richard
Francis Burton |
I'm
completely in favor of the separation of Church and
State. My idea is that these two institutions screw
us up enough on their own, so both of them together
is certain death.
|
|
I
would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol
was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.
|
|
Our
scientists can see stars that have been dead for a billion
years; they can document microscopic bacteria that concluded
their brief lives on earth eons ago. But of God we have
no trace, except for the testimony of scribes writing
of events neither they nor those around them ever witnessed--and
the faith of millions of people who have managed to
convince themselves that he lives and reigns somewhere
in the sky.
|
Steven
Chapman |
Three
quarters of the American population literally believe
in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the
devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that --
it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere
else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go
to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in
Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American
population.
|
Noam
Chomsky |
Religion
is the human response to being alive and having to die.
|
F.
Forester Church |
The
greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history my be the
hijacking of morality by religion. However valuable
- even necessary - that may have been in enforcing good
behavior on primitive peoples, their association is
now counterproductive. Yet at the very moment when they
should be decoupled, sanctimonious nitwits are calling
for a return to morals based on superstition.
|
Arthur
C. Clarke |
Gods
are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of
science or a dose of common sense.
|
Chapman
Cohen |
It
is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe
anything upon insufficient evidence.
|
William
K. Clifford |
I
do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment
to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where
many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism
means.
|
|
In
spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce
a single fact or reason to support the belief in God
and in personal immortality.
|
|
I
do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother
Goose.
|
|
When
I view all beings not as special creations, but as the
lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long
before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited,
they seem to me to become ennobled.
|
|
For
my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic
little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order
to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon,
who, descending from the mountains, carried away in
triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished
dogs -- as from a savage who delights to torture his
enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide
without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows
no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.
|
|
Faith
is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the
need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief
in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
|
|
It
is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to
humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow"
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable
to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
|
|
We
are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity
has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
|
|
We
are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines,
but we have the power to turn against our creators.
We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of
the selfish replicators.
|
|
I
do think the Roman Catholic religion is a disease of
the mind which has a particular epidemiology similar
to that of a virus... Religion is a terrific meme. That's
right. But that doesn't make it true and I care about
what's true. Smallpox virus is a terrific virus. It
does its job magnificently well. That doesn't mean that
it's a good thing. It doesn't mean that I don't want
to see it stamped out.
|
|
Nearly
all peoples have developed their own creation myth,
and the Genesis story is just the one that happened
to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle
Eastern herders. It has no more special status than
the belief of a particular West African tribe that the
world was created from the excrement of ants.
|
|
In
laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency,
in treating the forms that had been regarded as types
of fixity and perfection as originating and passing
away, the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking
that in the end was bound to transform the logic of
knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics,
and religion.
|
|
A
deist is someone who has not lived long enough to become
an atheist.
|
|
An
Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: "If
I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
"No," said the priest, "not if you did
not know." "Then why," asked the Inuit
earnestly, "did you tell me?"
|
Annie
Dillard |
Religion
is a disease. It is born of fear; it compensates through
hate in the guise of authority, revelation. Religion,
enthroned in a powerful social organization, can become
incredibly sadistic. No religion has been more cruel
than the Christian.
|
Dr.
George A. Dorsey |
| I
prayed for twenty years but received no answer until
I prayed with my legs. |
|
If
I were personally to define religion I would say that
it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul
made bloody by circumstance.
|
|
Religion
is all bunk.
|
|
All
religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same
tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling
man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical
existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
|
|
True
religion is real living; living with all one's soul,
with all one's goodness and righteousness.
|
|
A
man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on
sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis
is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he
had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope
of reward after death.
|
|
Scientists
were rated as great heretics by the church, but they
were truly religious men because of their faith in the
orderliness of the universe.
|
|
I
do not believe in the immortality of the individual,
and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern
without any superhuman authority behind it.
|
|
My
religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely
superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that
we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can
comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance
- but for us, not for God.
|
|
The
foundation of morality should not be made dependent
on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the
myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil
the foundation of sound judgment and action.
|
|
The
further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances,
the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine
religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and
the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
|
|
I
am a deeply religious nonbeliever... This is a somewhat
new kind of religion.
|
|
Since
our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and
combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of
a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid
of meaning.
|
|
Man
makes himself, and he only makes himself completely
in proportion as he desacrilizes himself and the world.
The sacred is the prime obstacle to his freedom. He
will become himself only when he is totally demysticized.
He will not be truly free until he has killed the last
god.
|
Mircea
Eliade |
In
an early class, one of the students asked me if I believed
in God. I replied, 'I don't think so.' And then proceeded
to wail on the theme, using material from this column
of some weeks ago, in which I observed the perpetuation
of insanity on this planet through the mediums of Arabs-vs-Jews,
Catholics-vs-Protestants, Southern Baptists-vs-Everyone.
I said I felt if 'God created man in his own image,
in the image of God created he them,' (Genesis 2:27,
King James's italics, not mine) then we were God. And
when Man (my capitalization, not King James's) in his
most creative, his most loving, his most gentle and
most human, then he is most God-like. The student said
he would pray for my immortal soul. He also asked for
my address, so he could send me some literature on the
subject of God. I thanked him politely and told him
I'd gotten all the literature I could handle on the
subject from a certain Thomas Aquinas.
|
|
Is
God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is
impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?
|
|
A
myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
|
James
Feibleman |
Science
is of value because it can produce something.
|
|
Religion
is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
|
|
Devout
believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the
risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance
of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing
a personal one.
|
|
Organized
Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals
that were its founders' than any other agency in the
world.
|
Richard
Le Gallienne |
I
do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who
has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has
intended us to forgo their use.
|
|
It
is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically
the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others'
religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly
study of the world's religions is a sacred duty.
|
Mohandas
K. Gandhi |
The
most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history
has record have been committed under the cover of religion
or equally noble motives.
|
Mohandas
K. Gandhi |
The
philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without
any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the
concept of an actual, real world with its liberating,
expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against
an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and
mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.
|
|
On
religious issues there can be little or no compromise.
There is no position on which people are so immovable
as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful
ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or
God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.
But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name
on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious
factions that are growing throughout our land are not
using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying
to force government leaders into following their position
100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups
on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten
you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly
sick and tired of the political preachers across this
country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be
a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just
who do they think they are? And from where do they presume
to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to
me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must
endure the threats of every religious group who thinks
it has some God-granted right to control my vote on
every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today:
I will fight them every step of the way if they try
to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans
in the name of conservatism.
|
Barry
Goldwater |
In
science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed
to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold
provisional assent." I suppose that apples might
start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not
merit equal time in physics classrooms.
|
Stephen
J. Gould |
Leave
the matter of religion to the family altar, the church,
and the private schools, supported entirely by private
contributions. Keep the church and the state forever
separated.
|
|
Heresy
is only another word for freedom of thought.
|
|
It
is the position of some theists that their right to
freedom OF religion is abridged when they are not allowed
to violate the rationalists' right to freedom FROM religion.
|
James
T. Green |
I
am treated as evil by people who claim that they are
being oppressed because they are not allowed to force
me to practice what they do.
|
D.
Dale Gulledge |
The
god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs
from moping over their situation must also have created
fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby.
Let us be duly thankful for out blessings.
|
|
If
we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative
to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory
as an alternative to biological reproduction.
|
Judith
Hayes |
One
man's religion is another man's belly laugh.
|
|
Men
rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to
themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of
a spoiled child.
|
|
It
is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion
will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the
political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing
opposition, subverting all education to seize early
the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up,
or driving underground all heretics.
|
|
One
man’s “magic” is another man’s
engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
|
|
The
most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed
up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler
of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration
of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and
becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery.
Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence
to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest,
largest, and least productive industry in all history.
|
|
Calling
Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
|
Don
Hirschberg |
One
is presuming ... that this is the same god who actually
created the audience he was addressing. This leaves
us with the insoluble mystery of why he would have molded
("in his own image," yet) a covetous, murderous,
disrespectful, lying, and adulterous species. Create
them sick, and then command them to be well? What a
mad despot this is, and how fortunate we are that he
exists only in the minds of his worshippers."
|
Christopher
Hitchins |
The
opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical
atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there
is a god or not.
|
|
At
least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity,
human malice and those great motivators and justifiers
of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing
zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
|
Aldous
Huxley |
Facts
do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
|
Aldous
Huxley |
You
never see animals going through the absurd and often
horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves
with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to
pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent
enough.
|
Aldous
Huxley |
Today
the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable
... and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of
relief. Many people assert that this abandonment of
the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion
and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But
it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated
piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must
construct some thing to take its place.
|
Sir
Julian Huxley |
I
don't care if it rains or freezes,
long as I got my plastic Jesus,
sittin' on the dashboard of my car;
It makes no difference if we hit a bump,
he's held on by a suction cup,
sittin' on the dashboard of my car.
I can even go a hund'rd miles-an-hour,
as long as I've got that dee-vine power,
sittin' on the dashboard of my car.
|
Don
Imis |
Many
people think they have religion when they are troubled
with dyspepsia.
|
|
Few
nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods
were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little,
that generally the god market was fairly glutted and
heaven crammed with these phantoms.
|
|
If
by any possibility the existence of a power superior
to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated,
there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then,
let us stand erect.
|
|
With
soap baptism is a good thing.
|
|
Religion
supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces
no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests.
It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors
of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that
it supports the giver.
|
|
An
infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without
going in partnership with State Legislatures.
|
|
Every
pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit,
defending the justice of his own imprisonment.
|
|
If
a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old
Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow
strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.
|
|
Suppose,
however, that God did give this law to the Jews, and
did tell them that whenever a man preached a heresy,
or proposed to worship any other God that they should
kill him; and suppose that afterward this same God took
upon himself flesh, and came to this very chosen people
and taught a different religion, and that thereupon
the Jews crucified him; I ask you, did he not reap exactly
what he had sown? What right would this god have to
complain of a crucifixion suffered in accordance with
his own command?
|
|
Give
the church a place in the Constitution, let her touch
once more the sword of power, and the priceless fruit
of all ages will turn to ashes on the lips of men.
|
|
For
ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few
brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one
side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other.
This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have
appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to
the known, and to happiness here in this world. The
many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle,
to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter.
The few have said "Think." The many have said
"Believe!"
|
|
Religion
is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
|
|
History,
I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
maintaining a free civil government.
|
|
Question
with boldness even the existence of a God; because,
if there be one, he must more approve of the homage
of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
|
|
Ignorance
is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what
is wrong.
|
|
Shake
off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which
weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly
in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact,
every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence
of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve
of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
|
|
What
has been the effect of religious coercion? To make half
the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
|
Thomas
Jefferson |
The
day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus
by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be
classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva
in the brain of Jupiter.
|
|
One
of my favorite fantasies is that next Sunday not one
single woman, in any country of the world, will go to
church. If women simply stop giving our time and energy
to the institutions that oppress, they could cease to
be.
|
Sonia
Johnson |
"Bullshit is Bullshit, regardless of the Testament it comes from, and you can take that to the bank."
|
Michael W. Jones |
People
of faith are kinder to people of different faith than
they are to people of no faith.
|
Michael
W. Jones |
| Reality
is that set of circumstances which feels most concrete
at the moment. |
Michael
W. Jones |
This
is my simple religion. There is no need for temples;
no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our
own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
|
Dalai
Lama |
You
can safely assume that you've created God in your own
image when it turns out that God hates all the same
people you do.
|
Anne
Lamott |
Businesses
may come and go, but religion will last forever, for
in no other endeavor does the consumer blame himself
for product failure.
|
Harvard
Lamphoon |
It
is a fine thing to establish one’s own religion
in one’s heart, not to be dependent on tradition
and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later,
not a lesser, but a greater thing.
|
D.H.
Lawrence |
There
once was a time when all people believed in God and
the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.
|
Richard
Lederer |
One
reason why I recommend the abandonment of religious
beliefs is because I think those beliefs are wrong.
There is no evidence that our world was created by divine
intention, that a god intercedes in human affairs, or
that there is life after death. Religion is a hangover
from humankind's timorous infancy; it's time for us
to walk upright and unafraid, and to take charge of
our own lives.
|
Simon
LeVay |
Christian
fundamentalism: the doctrine that there is an absolutely
powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning
entity that is deeply and personally concerned about
my sex life.
|
Andrew
Lias |
The
Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion.
I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements
of Christian dogma.
|
Abraham
Lincoln |
When
I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's
my religion.
|
Abraham
Lincoln |
Friends,
I agree with you in Providence; but I believe in the
Providence of the most men, the largest purse, and the
longest cannon.
|
Abraham
Lincoln |
It
will not do to investigate the subject of religion too
closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity.
|
Abraham
Lincoln |
What
influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments
had on society? In some instances they have been seen
to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil
authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding
the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have
they been the guardians of the liberties of the people.
Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have
found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries.
A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate
it, needs them not.
|
James
Madison |
During
almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment
of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits?
More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the
Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,
superstition, bigotry and persecution.
|
James
Madison |
The
church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is
round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I
have more faith in a shadow than in the church.
|
|
Jim
Bakker spells his name with two k's because three would
be too obvious.
|
Bill
Maher |
The
world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men without
religion, and religious men without intelligence.
|
Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri |
| Religious
suffering is at one and the same time the expression
of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the
heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition
of religion as the illusory happiness of the people
is the demand for their real happiness. To call on
them to give up their illusions about their condition
is to call on them to give up a condition that requires
illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore
in embryo the criticism of that vale of tears of which
religion is the halo.
|
|
On
the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant
today, like Noah taking 40 days to find a place to park.
|
Curtis
McDougall |
If
God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise
behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that's
okay, he's God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone
who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of
morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond
recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching
the opposite.
|
Dennis
McKinsey |
The
invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.
|
Delos
B. McKown |
Most
sermons sound to me like commercials - but I can't make
out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.
|
Mignon
McLaughlin |
I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on
top shows a lack of confidence.
|
Doug
McLeod |
You
can never tell the sinner from the Christian. They drink
the same drinks and smoke the same cigars.
|
Aimee
Semple McPherson |
That
is the whole trouble with being a heretic. One usually
must think out everything for oneself.
|
Aubrey
Menan |
Puritanism:
the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
|
|
The
scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight,
is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as
certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into
a bottle of water will turn into a snake.
|
|
God
is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless,
the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms,
but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated
egos; He will set them above their betters.
|
|
It
is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy
by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden
to resort to physics or chemistry.
|
|
The
time appears to me to have come when it is the duty
of all to make their dissent from religion known.
|
|
Moral:
a peerless maxim enumerated by God in his Holy Bible,
such as that of Deut. 23:1, if your testicles are crushed
or your male member missing, you must never enter a
sanctuary of the Lord.
|
Donald
Morgan |
A
thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the
surest path to atheism.
|
Donald
Morgan |
Where
it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to
be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
|
|
| An
Atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of
a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for
which we should work now - here on earth - for all men
together to enjoy. An Atheist thinks that he can get
no help through prayer but that he must find in himself
the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple
|
