'Believing' cannot tip the scales in making a historical judgment about whether something really happened. I can choose to believe that George Washington threw a silver dollar across the Rappahannock, but my believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether or not he really did to it. So also with the story of Jesus walking on the water: Believing that he did it has nothing to do with whether he really did do it. 'Belief' cannot be the basis for historical conclusion; it has no direct relevance.
["Faith and Scholarship" by Marcus J. Borg August, 1993 issue of Bible Review]
'But if oxen (and horses) and lions… could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen… Aethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair.' Like many later critics of anthropomorphism, Xenophanes evidently did not question the gods themselves but only their human attributes. Later Western writers think the Greek gods especially anthropomorphic, but gods in many other religions are equally so.
Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 178.
'But look,' said Ponder, 'the graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely.'
'Ook.'
'What did he say?' said the Bursar.
'I think he said, "Sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody".'
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
'God works in many ways his wonders to perform.' But He's not a skillful mechanic. A man drives over a cliff and 'by a miracle' he only breaks his back. It would be more divine if he were a better driver and stayed on the road.
[Paul Goodman]
'God's' message in my dream was very different. It confirmed what I have come to believe — that we are here on earth to live life fully. It helped me respect myself, and stop feeling wrong for doing what felt right. When I consider some kind of life-force, I now believe that she/he/it supports me in being who I am. There are no easy answers and life can get tough at times. Yet despite the ambiguity we all need to plunge ahead and do it anyway. We can find the courage and discover great joy.
Marlene Winell, Leaving the Fold (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 1993), pp. ix-x.
'I thought we could do it without anyone getting hurt. By using our brains.'
'Can't. History don't work like that. Blood first, then brains.'
'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle.
'There's got to be a better way than fighting,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Yep. Lots of 'em. Only none of 'em work.'
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)
'It is demonstrated,' [Pangloss] said, 'that things cannot be otherwise: for, since everything was made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose. Note that noses were made to wear spectacles; we therefore have spectacles. Legs were clearly devised to wear breeches, and we have breeches. Stones were created to be hewn and made into castles; [the Baron Thunder-Ten-Tronkh] therefore has a very beautiful castle…'
[Voltaire, Candide]
'Theocracy' has always been the synonym for a bleak and narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained tyranny.
[William Archer (1667-1735)]
'Twas only fear first in the world made gods.
[Ben Jonson (1572?-1637), Sejanus]
'Witches just aren't like that,' said Magrat. 'We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it's wicked of them to say we don't. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.'
(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
'Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha.
'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om.
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
'You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?' said Ginger, not paying him the least attention. 'It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad ploughmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never born in a time when it is possible to find out.'
(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)
"And I suppose you know what sound is made by one hand clapping, do you?" said the holy man nastily.
YES. CL. THE OTHER HAND MAKES THE AP.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
"Any monsters under my bed tonight?"
"Nope." "No." "Uh-Uh."
"Well there better not be, I'd hate to have to torch one with my flamethrower!"
"You have a flamethrower?"
"They lie. I lie."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Bad news Dad. Your polls are way down."
"My polls?"
"You rate especialy low among tigers and six year old white males."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Dad, I'd like to have a little talk."
"Um…ok."
"As the wage earner here, its your responsibility to show some consumer confidence and start buying things that will get the economy going and create profits and employment. Here's a list of some big-ticket items I'd like for Christmas. I hope I can trust you to do whats right for our country."
"I've got to stop leaving the Wall Street Journal around."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?"
"I'm not sure that man needs the help."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Do you like being a girl?"
"Its gotta be better than the alternative."
"Whats it like? Is it like being a bug?"
"Like a WHAT?"
"I imagine bugs and girls have a dim perception that nature played a cruel trick on them, but they lack the intelligence to really comprehend the magnitude of it."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Faith," said St. Paul, "is the evidence of things not seen." We should elaborate this definition by adding that faith is the assertion of things for which there is not a particle of evidence and of things which are incredible.
[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]
"God" as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle. The point is wider than just the Judeo- Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a "super-existence."
[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism"]
"God" as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle. The point is wider than just the Judeo- Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a "super-existence.
[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism"]
"God": The word that comes after "go-cart".
[Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English author]
"God"—as revealed in his book of edicts and narratives— is practically an idiot. He has nothing to say that any sensible person should want to listen to.
[Johann Most (c. 1890), Popular anarchist speaker]
"Hello Susie, this is Calvin. I lost our homework assignment. Can you tell me what we were supposed to read for tomorrow?"
"Are you sure you're not calling for some other reason?"
"Why else would I call you?"
"Maybe you missed the melodious sound of my voice?"
"WHAT? Are you crazy? All I want is the STUPID assignment!"
"First say you missed the melodious sound of my voice."
"THIS IS BLACKMAIL!"
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Here comes that new girl. HEY SUSIE DERKINS, IS THAT YOUR FACE OR IS A POSSUM STUCK IN YOUR COLLAR? I HOPE YOU SUFFER A DEBILITATING BRAIN ANEURISM, YOU FREAK!"
"She's cute, isnt she?"
"GO AWAY!
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Here's a movie we should watch."
"Who's in it?"
"It says 'Japanese Cast'…two big rubbery monsters slug it out over major metropolitan centres in a battle for world supremacy…doesn't that sound great?"
"And people say that foreign film is inaccessible."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"I just read this great science-fiction story. It's about how machines take control of humans and turn them into zombie slaves."
"So instead of us controlling machines, they control us? Pretty scary idea."
"I''ll say…HEY What time is it? My TV show is on."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"I wonder where we go when we die?"
"…Pittsburgh?"
"You mean if we're good or if we're bad?"
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"I'm a simple man, Hobbes."
"You?? Yesterday you wanted a nuclear powered car that could turn into a jet with laser-guided heat-seeking missiles!"
"I'm a simple man with complex tastes."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"I'm never gonna get married. Are you?"
"Hmm…I suppose if the right person came along, I might. Someone with green eyes and a nice laugh, who I could call 'Pooty Pie'."
"POOTY PIE?"
"Or bitsy pookums."
"I think that would affect my stomach a lot more than my heart."
"Bitsy pookums I'd say. Yes snoogy woogy, she'd reply…"
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"I'm not going to so my maths homework. Look at these unsolved problems. Here's a number in mortal combat with another. One of them is going to get subtracted. But why? What will be left of him? If I answered these, it would kill the suspense. It would resolve the conflict and turn intriguing possibilities into boring old facts."
"I never really thought about the literary possibilities of maths."
"I prefer to savour the mystery.
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"MOM, CAN I SET FIRE TO MY BED MATTRESS?"
"No, Calvin."
"CAN I RIDE MY TRICYCLE ON THE ROOF?"
"No, Calvin."
"Then can I have a cookie?"
"No, Calvin."
"She's on to me."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Mom's not feeling well. So I'm making her a get well card."
"That's thoughtful of you."
"See, on the front it says, 'Get Well Soon' … and on the inside it says,'Because me bed isn't made, my clothes need to be put away and I'm hungry. Love Calvin.' Want to sign it?"
"Sure, I'm hungry too."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"My powerful brain has come up with a topic for my paper."
"Great."
"I'll write about the debate over Tyrannosaurs. Were they fearsome predators or disgusting scavengers?"
"Which side will you defend?"
"Oh, I believe they were fearsome predators, definitely."
"How come?"
"They're so much cooler that way."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Of course I am rich and why shouldn't I be? The Lord has given me a job to do and I'll be darned if I am not going to be well compensated for it! I'm saving souls here!"
Wiley Farmer (Christian Pastor 1952)
"See Any UFOs?"
"Not yet."
"Well, keep your eyes open, they're bound to land here sometime."
"What will we do when they come?"
"See if we can sell mom and dad into slavery for a star cruiser."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"The world isn't fair, Calvin."
"I know Dad, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favour?"
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Theology: The study of elaborate verbal disguises for non-ideas."
Unknown
"There's a new girl in our class."
"Well, whats her name?"
"WHO KNOWS?"
"Is she nice?"
"WHO CARES? Not me!"
"Do you LIKE her?"
"NO!"
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"This article says that many people find christmas the most stressful time of year."
"I believe it. This season sure fills me with stress."
"Really? How come?"
" I hate being good…"
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Too bad the world will be ending soon."
"Beg your pardon?"
"Halley's Comet. Comets are harbingers of doom."
"No they aren't, thats just superstition."
"Really? Guess I'd better write that book report."
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Try this," she said, "it can't hurt. A simple experiment, and who knows? It might mean a lot to you in the future." She handed me a pocket Bible, which she carried at all times. "Open it randomly to a passage and read what's written here." I don't know how I managed, but I kept sober as I read the passage chance had sent me. "Does it mean something to you?" I nodded gravely, and handed the passage to Todd. He had to leave the room to keep from bursting. Exodus 22, xviv: Whosoever copulateth with a beast shall be put to death.
[Richard Powers, The Gold Bug Variations]
"We are a fierce and dirty band of cut-throat pirates! Keep a sharp lookout matey, we dont want any sissy girls on our ship!"
"We don't like girls???"
"Of course not dummy, we're a murderous bunch of pirates, remember?"
"Who do we smooch then?"
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"Well, why did the Puritans come to this country?" a teacher asked his history class. "To worship in their own way and to make other people do the same" was the reply.
[Frank Zindler]
"What are all of us but self-reproducing robots?" he asked. "We have been put together by our genes and what we do is roam the world looking for a way to sustain ourselves and ultimately produce another robot - a child."
Richard Dawkins
"What's a philosopher?" said Brutha.
"Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting," said a voice in his head.
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
(19) Yet she increased her whorings, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt (20) and lusted after her paramours whose members were like those of donkeys and whose emissions was like that of stallions.
[Ezekiel 23]
(Darwins's notebooks) include many statements showing that he espoused but feared to expose something he perceived as far more heretical than evolution itself: philosophical materialism -- the postulate that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products.
Stephen Jay Gould
(When asked merely if they accept evolution, 45 percent of Americans say yes. The figure is 70 percent in China.) When the movie "Jurassic Park" was shown in Israel, it was condemned by some Orthodox rabbis because it accepted evolution and because it taught that dinosaurs lived a hundred million years ago—when, as is plainly stated at every Rosh Hashonhan and every Jewish wedding ceremony, the Universe is less than 6,000 years old.
[Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, p. 325]
[…] the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent and have to be led.
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
[66] "To sum up (or I shall be pursuing the infinite), it is quite clear that the Christian religion has a kind of kinship with folly in some form, though it has none at all with wisdom. If you want proofs of this, first consider the fact that the very young and the very old, women and simpletons, are the people who take the greatest delight in sacred and holy things, and are therefore always found nearest the altars, led there doubtless solely by their natural instinct. Secondly, you can see how the first great founders of the faith were great lovers of simplicity and bitter enemies of learning. Finally, the biggest fools of all appear to be those who have once been wholly possessed by zeal for Christian piety. They squander their possessions, ignore insults, submit to being cheated, make no distinction between friends and enemies, shun pleasure, sustain themselves on fasting, vigils, tears, toil and humilations, scorn life and desire only death - in short, they seem to be dead to any normal feelings, as if their spirit dwelt elsewhere than in their body. What else can that be but madness? And so we should not be surprised if the apostles were thought to be drunk on new wine, and Festus judged Paul to be mad.
[Erasmus, 'Praise of Folly']
[as for evolution]….cutting out the sections [on the subject] is preferrable if the portions are not thick enough to cause damage to the spine of the book as it is opened and closed in normal use. When the sections needing correction are too thick, paste the pages together being careful not to smear portions of the book not intended for correction.
[R.E. Martin, American creationist, in Reviewing and Correcting Encyclopaedias (1983: 205-7), instructing followers to censor books that don't follow creation dogma]
[E]very major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 144.
[Fundamentalists] never wonder why, if herpes is sent by 'god' to scourge "adulterers," whooping cough and measles weren't purposely created to lambaste children.
[Fred Woodworth]
[God explaining the doctrine of free will.] "In order not to impair human liberty, I will be ignorant of what I know, I will thicken upon my eyes the veils I have pierced, and in my blind clear-sightedness I will let myself be surprised by what I have foreseen.
[Anatole France]
[I]f history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure.
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 262.
[I]n 1776 perhaps 15 percent of all colonists were regular churchgoers.
[Forrest G. Woods, The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century (Knopf, 1990, p. 247)]
[I]n a like manner we must endure the authority of the prince. If he misuse or abuse his authority, we are not to entertain a grudge, seek revenge or punishment. Obedience is to be rendered for God's sake, for the ruler is God's representative. However they may tax or exact, we must obey and endure patiently.
[Martin Luther, "Tribute to Caesar" sermon, from The Political Theories of Martin Luther, Luther Hess Waring (New York, Putnam's, 1910) p. 104]
[In reference to a creationist book which has a picture of a man and a dinosaur together and states, "Adam wasn't scared to watch dinosaurs eat because all the creatures ate plants and not meat"]: "The kind of thing you're characterizing certainly is silly, just almost as silly as the work of Richard Dawkins, and as damaging.
Philip Johnson in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" Firing Line, 4 December 1997, p. 39.
[In regard to the Trinity]; "Tom, had you and I been 40 days with Moses, and beheld the great God, and even if God himself had tried to tell us that three was one . . . and one equals three, you and I would never have believed it. We would never fall victims to such lies.
[John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson]
[My] mind is not for rent to any god or government
[Rush, "Tom Sawyer"]
[My] purpose…is is to transform theologians into anthropologists, lovers of God into lovers of man, candidates for the next world into students of this world … I negate the fantastic hypocracy of theology and religion only in order to affirm the true nature of man.
[Feuerbach]
[N]o philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.
[Annie Besant, "The Gospel of Atheism"]
[O]ld beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 256.
[P]rescientific people… could never guess the nature of physical reality beyond the tiny sphere attainable by unaided common sense. Nothing else ever worked, no exercise from myth, revelation, art, trance, or any other conceivable means; and notwithstanding the emotional satisfaction it gives, mysticism, the strongest prescientific probe in the unknown, has yielded zero.
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 46.
[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs… but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base.
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 54.
[T]heology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 6.
[The U.S. Supreme Court] Declined, without comment, to hear a challenge to the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Religious groups challenged the establishment of diplomatic relations, saying the ties would violate the First Amendment's requirements for separation of church and state. American Baptist Churches vs. Reagan, 86-113, said that religious groups did not have legal standing to try to block the administration's decision.
[San Francisco Chronicle, 21 October 1986]
[This world] exists nonnecessarily, improbably, and causelessly. It exists for absolutely no reason at all. It is inexplicably and stunningly actual . . . The impact of this captivated realisation upon me is overwhelming. I am completely stunned. I take a few dazed steps in the dark meadow, and fall among the flowers. I lie stupefied, whirling without comprehension in this world through numberless worlds other than this one.
Quentin Smith, "Atheism, Theism and Big Bang Cosmology"
[W]e shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.
[Lynn White, Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis", Science V. 155 No. 3767 (10 March 1967), pp. 1203-1207.]
[W]hen the martyr's righteous forebrain is exploded by the executioner's bullet and his mind disintegrates, what then? Can we safely assume that all those millions of neural circuits will be reconstituted in an immaterial state, so the conscious mind carries on?
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, (First edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 245.
… A socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
[Pat Robertson on Feminism]
… believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him 'good' and worshipping him is a still greater danger… The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissable.
[C. S. Lewis, in letter to John Beversluis]
… I want it so that every minister will be not a parrot, not an owl sitting upon a dead limb of the tree of knowledge and hooting the hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. But I want it so that each one can be an investigator, a thinker; and I want to make his congregation grand enough so that they will not only allow him to think, but will demand that he shall think, and give to them the honest truth of his thought.
[Robert Ingersoll, "Some Mistakes of Moses"]
… mid-eighteenth century America had a smaller proportion of church members than any other nation in Christendom….in 1800 [only] one of every fifteen Americans was a church member
[Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974, p. 89]
… the best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments, which seems to be equally true in the intellectual and in the moral sense.
R.A. Fisher
… the Bible was a collection of books written at different times by different men — a strange mixture of diverse human documents — and a tissue of irreconcilable notions. Inspired? The Bible is not even intelligent. It is not even good craftsmanship, but is full of absurdities and contradictions.
[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]
… the true utility function of life, that which is being maximized in the natural world, is DNA survival. But DNA is not floating free; it is locked up in living bodies and it has make the most of the levers of power at its disposal.
Richard Dawkins
… This brings us to our familiar resting place. The 'goodness' of God is different in kind from goodness as we comprehend it. To say that God's 'goodness' is compatible with the worst disasters imaginable, is to empty this concept of its meaning. By human standards, the Christian God cannot by good. By divine standards, God may be 'good' in some unspecified, unknowable way - but this term no longer makes any sense. And so, for the last time, we fail to comprehend the Christian God.
George Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1989), p. 87.
… when people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
[Bertrand Russell in "Theory of Knowledge"]
… why have those countries with a strong Church-State alliance displayed such an eagerness to enforce religious dogmas and eliminate dissent through the power of the state. Why has Christianity refused, whenever possible, to allow its beliefs to compete in a free marketplace of ideas? The answer is obvious and revealing. Christianity is peddling an inferior product, one that cannot withstand critical investigation. Unable to compete favorably with other theories, it has sought to gain a monopoly through a state franchise, which means: through the use of force.
[George H. Smith, from Atheism: The Case Against God]
….Man can contemplate his own mortality and finds the thought intolerable. Any animal will struggle to protect itself from a threat of death. Faced with a predator, it flees, hides, fights or employs some other defensive mechanism, such as death-feigning or the emission of stinking fluids. There are many self-protection mechanisms, but they all occur as a response to an immediate danger. When man contemplates his future death, it is as if, by thinking of it, he renders it immediate. His defence is to deny it. He cannot deny that his body will die and rot—the evidence is too strong for that; so he solves the problem by the invention of an immortal soul—a soul which is more 'him' than even his physical body is 'him.' If this soul can survive in an afterlife, then he has successfully defended himself against the threatened attack on his life. This gives the agents of the gods a powerful area of support. All they need to do is to remind their followers constantly of their mortality and to convince them that the afterlife itself is under the personal management of the particular gods they are promoting. The self-protective urges of their worshippers will do the rest.
[Desmond Morris, "Religious Displays," Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour, 1977, Abrams, New York, p. 149-51.]
…a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests…. 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.
[Albert Einstein, address at the Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939, published in Out of My Later Years, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950.]
…a gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies. If so, this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.
Richard Dawkins
…a lion wants to eat an antelope's body, but the antelope has very different plans for its body. This is not normally regarded as competition for a resource, but logically it is hard to see why not.
Richard Dawkins
…an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that [crucifixion of Jesus Christ]!' . . . the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form — the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!
[Friedrich Nietzsche]
…and if Jesus were alive today he'd be locked up in an insane asylum, along with all his cohorts.
Walter Kerney 1961 (Excerpt from The Messianic Travesty)
…And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man
[A. E. Housman]
…And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers. No matter how assured we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions. This is true in religion as it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive. As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be advised to leave them to heaven. They will not, unfortunately, do us the same courtesy. They attack us and each other, and whatever their protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword. My own belief in God, then, is just that — a matter of belief, not knowledge. My respect for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth. But even well-educated Christians are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record. Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it. Some Christians, alas, resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
[Steve Allen]
…and now we're down to our last $37,000."
"But just last week you said you were down to your last $50,000, what happened to $13,000 since then?"
"Uh…um…I don't know.
[Tammy Fae Bakker]
…and sporteth twice they the camels, before the third hour. And so the Millionites went forth, to Ramgilliad, in Kadesh-belgamesh, by Shorethberagalion, to the house of Gashbillbethuelbasda, he who brought the butterdish to Balshaza, and the tent-peg to the house of Rashamon. And there, slew they the goats, yeah, and put they the bits, in little pots.
[Monty Python]
…And whereas it has also come to the knowledge of the said Congregation that the Pythagorean doctrine — which is false and altogether opposed to the Holy Scripture — of the motion of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, which is also taught by Nicolaus Copernicus in De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium, and by Diego de Zuiga on Job, is now being spread abroad and accepted by many… Therefore, in order that this opinion may not insinuate itself any further to the prejudice of Catholic truth, the Holy Congregation has decreed that the said Nicolaus Copernicus, De Revolutionibus orbium, and Diego de Zuiga, On Job, be suspended until they are corrected.
[Decree of the Roman Catholic Congregation of the Index condemning "De Revolutionibus", March 5, 1616]
…Any organization could profit from a 10-year-old member with enough strength of character to refuse to swear falsely.
[New York Times editorial, 12/12/93, on the Boy Scouts' refusing membership to Mark Welsh, who would not sign a religious oath]
…anyone who writes about "Darwin's theory of evolution" in the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently.
Ernst Mayr
…Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the 2, in the 1st instance I should be mad to believe in him, and in the 2nd a fool.
[Marquis de Sade (1740-1814)]
…but I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature.
["An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", David Hume, 10:2:30]
…But in the Bullshit Department, the businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell ya the truth, folks, when it comes to Bullshit, big time, major league BULLSHIT, you have to stand in awe, in awe, of the all time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: RELIGION!…No contest, no contest!!
George Carlin
…definitions are temporary verbalizations of concepts, and concepts- particularly difficult concepts- are usually revised repeatedly as our knowledge and understanding grows.
Ernst Mayr
…democracy can be interpreted to assert not only equality before the law but also essentialistic identity in all respects. This is expressed in the claim, "All men are created equal," which is something very different from the statement, "All men have equal rights and are equal before the law." Anyone who believes in the genetic uniqueness of every individual thereby believes in the conclusion, "No two individuals are created equal.
Ernst Mayr
…full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean the end of mystical feelings of any kind, that, in other words, natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion. The church, by making the fight over sexuality the center of its dogmas and of its influence over the masses, confirms this concept.
[Wilhelm Reich]
…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
[Stephen F. Roberts]
…I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due.
[W. Somerset Maughman, "The Razor's Edge"]
…I was suddenly inspired to describe the Judeo-Christian god as a penis which has been endowed with cosmic significance.
[Soledad de Montalvo]
…if all the bones of all the victims of the Catholic Church could be gathered together, a monument higher than all the pyramids would rise…
[Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p. 497]
…if I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
[Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir]
…If we are going to save America and evangelize the world, we cannot accommodate secular philosophies that are diametrically opposed to Christian truth…We need to pull out all the stops to recruit and train 25 million Americans to become informed pro-moral activists whose voices can be heard in the halls of Congress. I am convinced that America can be turned around if we will all get serious about the Master's business. It may be late, but it is never too late to do what is right. We need an old-fashioned, God-honoring, Christ-exalting revival to turn American back to God. America can be saved!
[Jerry Falwell, in the Moral Majority Report, September 1984.]
…in matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.
Gore Vidal
…it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions.
Richard Dawkins
…it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such — it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, seed of all sin, the original sin. This alone is morality. 'Thou shalt not know' — the rest follows.
[Nietzsche, "Antichrist"]
…it is certainly wrong to condemn poor old Homo Sapiens as the only species to kill his own kind, the only inheritor of the mark of Cain, and similar melodramatic charges.
Richard Dawkins
…it is high time that scholars of all godly religions united to confront the forces of immorality in the present day under various names such as secularism, human rights, freedom of speech.
[Tehran's Kayhan International newspaper urging cooperation with the Vatican in opposing the U.N. population control document]
…it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions.
[Thomas Huxley]
…it seems that it would take less than half a million years to evolve a good camera eye … It's no wonder 'the' eye has evolved at least 40 times independently around the animal kingdom … It is a geological blink.
Richard Dawkins
…it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
[Sidney Hook]
…It was as if the interlopers had suggested to a bunch of born-again Christians that they hunt up the Ark of the Covenant and turn it into a pay toilet.
[Stephen King (The Wastelands)]
…it was Darwin's chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly improbable.
… Let the reader … attempt to calculate the prior probability that a hundred generations of his ancestry in the direct male line should each have left at least one son. The odds against such a contingency as it would have appeared to his hundredth ancestor (about the time of King Solomon) would require for their expression forty-four figures of the decimal notation; yet this improbable event has certainly happened.
R.A. Fisher
…Jesus was almost certainly not 'of Nazareth'. An overwhelming body of evidence indicates that Nazareth did not exist in biblical times. The town is unlikely to have appeared before the third century.
[Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy]
…Jesus was not as peaceful as commonly believed, and that his actual teachings did not represent a fundamental break with the tradition of Jewish military messianism. A strong pro-zealot-bandit and anti-Roman bias probably pervaded his original ministry. The decisive break with the Jewish messianic tradition probably came about only after the fall of Jerusalem, when the original politico-military components in Jesus' teachings were purged by Jewish Christians living in Rome and other cities of the empire as an adaptive response to the Roman victory.
[Marvin Harris, anthropologist, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches]
…little children who have begun to live in their mothers' womb and have there died, or who, having just been born, have passed away from the world without the sacrament of holy baptism… must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire.
[quoted in Hell, A Christian Doctrine]
…most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic.
Ernst Mayr
…once a person admits to not believing in God, this raises the question of whether or not that person believes in America . . ." - -
[Chief spokesman for National office of the Boy Scouts]
…once a person admits to not believing in God, this raises the question of whether or not that person believes in America….
[Chief spokesman for national office of the Boy Scouts]
…our constitutional tradition, from the Declaration of Independence and the first inaugural address of Washington… down to the present day, has, with a few aberrations, see Church of Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 12 S.Ct. 511, 36 L.Ed. 226 (1892), ruled out of order government-sponsored endorsement of religion—even when no legal coercion is present, and indeed even when no ersatz, "peer-pressure" psycho-coercion is present—where the endorsement is sectarian, in the sense of specifying details upon which men and women who believe in a benevolent, omnipotent Creator and Ruler of the world are known to differ (for example, the divinity of Christ).
[Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 641 (1992)]
…perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
…so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
[Voltarine de Cleyre]
…that freedom of the press is one of the greatest evils threatening modern society. Freedom of the press was universally one of the most pernicious of the evils of the day.
[Cardinal Pedro Segura, NY Herald Tribune, 12/5/52]
…the Bible as we have it contains elements that are scientifically incorrect or even morally repugnant. No amount of "explaining away" can convince us that such passages are the product of Divine Wisdom.
[Bernard J. Bamberger, The Story of Judaism]
…the fundamentalist mind, running in a single rut for fifty years, is now quite unable to comprehend dissent from its basic superstitions, or to grant any common honesty, or even any decency, to those who reject them.
HL Mencken
…the genetic code is in fact literally identical in all animals, plants and bacteria … All earthly living things are certainly descended from a single ancestor.
Richard Dawkins
…the likelihood is that, in 100,000 years time, we shall either have reverted to wild barbarism, or else civilisation will have advanced beyond all recognition—into colonies in outer space…
Richard Dawkins
…the only "right" a sodomite has in a Chrisian Theocracy is the right to die.
[Dan Gentry, of Christian Research]
…the stereo- type of scientists being scruffy nerds with rows of pens in their top pocket is just about as wicked as racist stereotypes.
Richard Dawkins
…the stereo- type of scientists' being scruffy nerds with rows of pens in their top pocket isjust about as wicked as racist stereotypes."
…a fairly common pattern in television news: right at the end a smile comes onto the face of the newsreader and this is the scientific joke—'some scientist has proved that such and such is the case.' … And it's clearly the bit of fun at the end, it's not serious at all. I want science to be taken seriously, because, after all, it's less ephemeral—it has a more eternal aspect than whatever the politics of the day might be, which, of course, gets the lead in the news.
Richard Dawkins
…Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded…
[Plato, Phaedrus]
…They tried to make me go to Catholic school, too. I lasted a very short time. When the penguin came after me with a ruler, I was out of there.
[Frank Zappa]
…this monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornotherapy, pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes of all types.
[Judge Braswell Dean, in Time Magazine, March 1981]
…to argue with a man who has renouced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.
[Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p.127]
…truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
Thomas Jefferson
…two devils rose from the water, and flew off through the air, crying, 'Oh, oh, oh!' and turning one over another, in sportive mockery….
[Martin Luther]
…unless one is able to find faint foreshadowings of it in the dryopithecids. Pilbeam assumes that the relationship exists, and has so indicated in a chart he has constructed — although he does leave a huge gap in it, and makes no attempt to link any specific dryopithecid with any living ape. He contents himself with the observation that dryopithecids are primitive apes with certain things in common, things that they do not have in common with a second group of Miocene apes that he has also succeeded in sorting out and lumping together: the ramampithecids, named after the aforementioned Ramapithecus.
What is the distinction? It is a simple but overwhelmingly important one. With the exception of their premolars, which are apelike, all of the ramapithecids have peculiar unapelike teeth: Big molars, heavy enamel, small canines. They foreshadow hominids. The dryopithecids, with apelike teeth, foreshadow modern apes.
"LUCY The Beginnings of Humankind" Donald Johanson & Maitland Edey, Copyright 1981
…we are entitled to make almost any reasonable assumption, but should resist making conclusions until evidence requires that we do so.
Steve Allen
…when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.
Richard Dawkins
…you need more than luck to navigate successfully through a thousand sieves in succession.
Richard Dawkins
…your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.
[Krishnamurti]
++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)
+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++
(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)
Atheism, therefore, is the absence of theistic belief. One who does not believe in the existence of a god or supernatural being is properly designated as an atheist. Atheism is sometimes defined as "the belief that there is no God of any kind," or the claim that a god cannot exist. While these are categories of atheism, they do not exhaust the meaning of atheism— and are somewhat misleading with respect to the basic nature of atheism. Atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief: it is the absence of belief. An atheist is not primarily a person who believes that a god does not exist, rather he does not believe in the existence of a god.
[George Smith]
Telegraph: For God to create the universe he would have to be hyper- intelligent. But intelligence only evolves over time. Is that about the strength of it?
Dawkins: It's worse than that, the argument for God starts by assuming what it is attempting to explain — intelligence, complexity, it comes to the same thing — and so it explains nothing. God is a non-explanation. Whereas evolution by natural selection /is/ an explanation. It really does start simply and become complex.
[Sunday Telegraph (UK) interview with Richard Dawkins, Sept. 26, 1999]
As historians we are not obliged to take anybody's word for anything; we must attempt to verify every scrap of information we decide to use in our reconstructions. That an involves an assessment of the proclivities of our sources along with an evaluation of the sources from which they got their information.
Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Fransisco: Polebridge Press, 1996), p. 58.
Atheism, therefore, is the absence of theistic belief. One who does not believe in the existence of a god or supernatural being is properly designated as an atheist. "Atheism is sometimes defined as 'the belief that there is no God of any kind,' or the claim that a god cannot exist. While these are categories of atheism, they do not exhaust the meaning of atheism— and are somewhat misleading with respect to the basic nature of atheism. Atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief: it is the absence of belief. An atheist is not primarily a person who believes that a god does not exist, rather he does not believe in the existence of a god.
George Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1989), p. 7.
Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.
Richard Feynman (The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1)
There is virtually nothing which the Christian will accept as evidence of God's evil. If disasters that are admittedly 'unmerited, pointless, and incapable of being morally rationalized' [quoting Hick] are compatible with the 'goodness' of God, what could possibly qualify as contrary evidence? The 'goodness' of God, it seems, is compatible with any state of affairs. While we evaluate a man with reference to his actions, we are not similarly permitted to judge God. God is immune from the judgment of evil as a matter of principle.
George Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1989), p. 86
Ubi dubium ibi libertas:
Where there is doubt, there is freedom
Latin proverb
McDonald: "Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are—-well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family life. I mean, your life is good—-not everybody's life is good, and religion brings them comfort."
Dawkins: "There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting—-it might be more comforting, for all I know. But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true."
Richard Dawkins
3. Interpreting the Bible: All reading of Scripture (including a literalist approach) involves subjective interpretation. For example, to read the stories of Jesus' birth as literal historical accounts involves an act of interpretation just as much as reading them as symbolic narratives (namely, it involves a decision to read them literally). The recognition that all interpretations are subjective does not, however, mean that all are equally good. About any interpretation, one may ask (or be asked), "what have you got to go on? Why do you read it that way?
["Faith and Scholarship" by Marcus J. Borg August, 1993 issue of Bible Review]
7. Certain crimes are committed more immediately against God himself; others, against the state; and a third kind against certain persons. The chief crie in the first class, cognizable by temporal courts, is blasphemy, under which may be included atheism. This crime consists in denying or vilifying the Deity, by speech or writing. All who curse God or any of the persons of the blessed Trinity, are to suffer death, even for a single act; and those who deny him (sic), if they persist in their denial. The denial of a providence, or of the authority of the holy Scriptures, is punishable capitally for the third offence.
[1771 edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica, under Law: Tit. 33 "Of crimes"]
A believer is a bird in a cage, a free-thinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing.
[Robert G. Ingersoll]
A blow to the head will confuse a man's thinking, a blow to the foot has no such effect, this cannot be the result of an immaterial soul.
[Heraclitus, 500 BC]
A Boss in Heavan is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished.
[Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) Russian anarchist, atheist author, and founder of Nihilism]
A boy missing for 15 hours in a partly flooded cave where six others drowned was pulled out of the cave alive Saturday, providing a moment of light in the relentless gloom of the Midwest flood. …'It was God that was with him and brought him back,' said his grandmother. The bodies of a 21-year-old female school counselor and another 12-year-old boy were discovered in the cave, raising the total number of victims in the tragedy to six.
[Bob Burgdorfer, Reuters, San Francisco Examiner, 25 July 1993]
A callous, heartless religion is that which defines it's God as a cold and unmerciful deity, quick to anger and even quicker to condemn it's people to an eternity in fire. I know of only one such God and he is the God of Christianity.
Sherman Milliken [Playwrite and Author of books on world religions]{1923}
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
[Nietzsche]
A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian. Hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the sense, of the joy of the senses, of joy in general is Christian.
[Nietzsche]
A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.
Jane Smiley (in the Chicago Tribune)
A Christian is a man who feels repentance on Sunday for what he did on Saturday, and what he is going to do on Monday.
[Thomas Ybarra]
A Christian Reconstructionist is a Dominionist. He takes seriously the Bible's commands to the godly to take dominion in the earth. This is the goal of the gospel and the Great Commission. The Christian Reconstructionist believes the earth and all its fullness is the Lord's: that every area dominated by sin must be "reconstructed" in terms of the Bible. This includes, first, the individual; second, the family; third, the church; and fourth, the wider society, including the state.
[The Creed of Christian Reconstruction by Rev. Andrew Sandlin]
A church that sets up a religious faith as more essential than purity, than kindness, charity or goodness, is a dangerous institution.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
A clergyman is a man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his earthly ones.
[Ambrose Bierce]
A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.
[Voltaire]
A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
Elbert Hubbard
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
A crime against god is a demonstrated impossibility.
[Robert G. Ingersoll]
A critic may reject some miracle stories as legendary, and not others, with no inconsistency at all for the simple reason that even if one holds miracles to be possible, one need not hold legends to be impossible! There are other factors, literary and historiographical ones, that might lead a critic to conclude that even though miracles can happen, it does not appear that in this or that case they did.
Robert M. Price, Beyond Born Again, p. 116.
A cult is a religion with no political power.
Tom Wolfe
A disturbing fact continues to surface in sex abuse research. The first best predictor of abuse is alcohol or drug addiction in the father. But the second best predictor is conservative religiosity, accompanied by parental belief in traditional male-female roles. This means that if you want to know which children are most likely to be sexually abused by their father, the second most significant clue is whether or not the parents belong to a conservative religious group with traditional role beliefs and rigid sexual attitudes. (Brown and Bohn, 1989; Finkelhor, 1986; Fortune, 1983; Goldstein et al, 1973; Van Leeuwen, 1990). (emphasis in original)
["Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches", by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, Herald Press, Scotdale, PA, 1993 p. 73]
A dogma is the hand of the dead on the throat of the living.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
A dogma will thrive in soil where the truth could not get root.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.
Robert G. Ingersoll
A few weeks ago a hurricane struck the little religious community of Bethany, Okla. A number of pious citizens of the little town were killed. Houses were destroyed — homes in which prayer and devotion reigned. A church was demolished. Only a few miles away is the large, wicked city of Oklahoma City — at least we can certainly assume that, from the religious viewpoint, many sinners live in Oklahoma City. Assuming also (which is a great deal riskier assumption) that there is a God, why should he perpetrate this grim and sardonic joke? The sinners in the big city were left untouched. The godly folk in the little nearby village were punished by the evidences of God's wrath. How do the religious people interpret this calamity? Often and often they explain such calamities as flood, fire and storm by saying that God is angry at the sinful people and is warning them or destroying them for their sins. Was the hurricane in Bethany a sign of the love of God for his faithful worshipers? And God missed an even better chance, if there were a God who wished to punish rebels against his majesty and inscrutability. Just a few hundred miles north and east of Bethany, Okla., is Girard — the home of The American Freeman: and The Debunker and The Joseph McCabe Magazine and the Little Blue Books — the center of American free thought where an enormous stream of atheistic literature and. godless modern knowledge pours forth to enlighten the masses. If there were a God directing hurricanes and he wanted to really "get" an uncompromising foe, whom he has no chance of persuading in the ordinary way, it would have been a devastating stroke for him to send his howling punitive blasts through the town of Girard. It would be a more remarkable suggestion of the avenging act of a God if only the Haldeman-Julius plant were destroyed and the rest of the town left unhurt — and, as good neighbors, we shouldn't wish the Christian and respectable, people of Girard nor those who are respectable and not so Christian nor those who are Christian and not exactly respectable to suffer from our proximity and our propaganda of atheism. Is God a joker? No — let us whisper it — the joke is that there is no God. Hurricanes come upon the just and the unjust, the pious and the impious.
[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]
A fools prayer: Dear Lord, Please help us not to be blasphemers. In Jesus name we pray….
[Bill Huston]
A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
[H. L. Mencken]
A God of love, a God of wrath, a God of jealousy, a God of bigotry, a God of vulgar tirades, a God of cheating and lying — yes, the Christian God is given all of these characteristics, and isn't it a wretched mess to be offered to men in this twentieth century? The beginning of wisdom, the beginning of humanism, the beginning of progress is the rejection of this absurd, extravagantly impossible myth of a God.
[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]
A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect. "he" becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all- knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.
[Karen Armstrong, A History of God, pg. 383, speaking on Paul Tillich]
A good rule for interpretation is: 'If the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense lest you come up with nonsense'
[Anonymous]
A great deal is already gained with the first step: the humanization of nature. Impersonal forces and destinies cannot be approached… if everywhere in nature there are Beings around us of a kind that we know in our own society…. we can apply the same methods against these violent supermen outside that we employ in our own society; we can try to adjure them, to appease them, to bribe them, and, by so influencing them, we may rob them of a part of their power
[Sigmund Freud, "The Future of an Illusion"]
A great many men believe in providence until they get caught in a railroad accident.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911]
A great many people who worship Jesus would not let him come at the back door.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
A handsome bonnet covers a multitude of sins.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911]
A healthy nature needs no God or immortality.
[Johann Schiller]
A hearty fool is he that believeth every word of the bible.
Jacob Elleker 1638 (English Philospher and Physician)
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
[Albert Einstein]
A large number of deaf, crippled and blind people are afflicted solely through the malice of the demon. And one must in no wise doubt that plagues, fevers and every sort of evil come from him.
[Martin Luther]
A LITTLE BOY LOST
"Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know:
"And Father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door."
The Priest sat by and heard the child,
In trembling zeal he seiz'd his hair:
He led him by his little coat,
And all admir'd the priestly care.
And standing on the altar high,
"Lo! what a fiend is here!" said he,
"One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy Mystery."
The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents were in vain;
They strip'd him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain;
And burn'd him in a holy place,
Where many had been burn'd before:
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such things done on Albion's shore?
[William Blake, from "Songs of Experience"]
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.
Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
A long acquaintance with the literature of the Witnesses leads one to the conclusion that they live in the intellectual `twilight zone'…. Whenever their literature strays onto the fields of philosophy, academic theology, science or any severe mental discipline their ideas at best mirror popular misconceptions, at worst they are completely nonsensical.
[Alan Rogerson, Millions Now Living Will Never Die: A Study of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1969, p. 116]
A major function of fundamentalist religion is to bolster deeply insecure and fearful people. This is done by justifying a way of life with all of its defining prejudices. It thereby provides an appropriate and legitimate outlet for one's anger. The authority of an inerrant Bible that can be readily quoted to buttress this point of view becomes an essential ingredient to such a life. When that Bible is challenged, or relativized, the resulting anger proves the point categorically.
Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism, (San Fransisco: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 5.
A man cannot be happy who believes in hell, any more than he can sweeten his coffee with a pickle.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
A man said to the Universe, "Sir, I exist."
"Yes, said the Universe, but that has not created within me a sense of obligation."
[Stephen Crane]
A man who believes that he eats his God we do not call mad; yet, a many who says he is Jesus Christ, we call mad.
[Helvetius]
A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred for the religious.
[H.L. Mencken]
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; 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.
[Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930]
A miracle is not an explanation of what we cannot comprehend.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
A miracle was not in our development plan, but this Madonna thing will go well with our new water amusement park.
[Pietro Tidei, Mayor of Civitavecchia (1995), from a news story in the Ottawa Citizen]
A Mormon is a man that has the bad taste and the religion to do what a good many other people are restrained from doing by conscientious scruples and the police.
[Mr. Dooley]
A mutation doesn't produce major new raw material. You don't make new species by mutating the species. That's a common idea people have; that evolution is due to random mutations. A mutation is NOT the cause of evolutionary change. Something else than natural selection brings about species at new levels, trends and direction.
Stephen Jay Gould
A mystery dating from medieval times — the ability of the reputed clotted blood of a saint to turn liquid when handled in a religious ceremony — may be just ordinary chemistry, researchers say. The scientists say they created a dark brown gel that turns easily to liquid when disturbed and then thickens back into a gel. Such a mixture may be in the vial that is said to hold the blood of St. Januarius, also called San Gennaro, in the Roman Catholic cathedral of Naples, Italy, the researchers propose in today's issue of the journal Nature. In a ceremony performed since the 14th century, the hermetically sealed, four-inch glass container is repeatedly turned upside down. Many Neapolitans believe that good luck will come if the vial's contents liquefy, but that disasters such as earthquakes may await if the contents remain solid. …The gel was made with substances available in the 14th century, including table salt, water, calcium carbonate and ferric chloride hydrate, the researchers wrote.
[San Francisco Chronicle, 10 October 1991 (AP)]
A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent
[Elbert Hubbard]
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
[James Feibleman, "Understanding Philosophy", 1973]
A nation can assume that the addition of the words "under God" to its pledge of allegiance gives evidence that its citizens actually believe in God whereas all it really proves is that they believe in believing in God.
[Huston Smith, "The Religions of Man
[Buddhism]"]
A one sentence definition of mythology? "Mythology" is what we call someone else's religion.
[Joseph Campbell]
A person has not much excuse for living who can make no better use of life than passing it in a nunnery.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.
[Jean de La Bruy re (1645-1696)]
A Planarian has a better grasp of the world at large than a fetus to viability.
A pleasant justice, that, which a river or a mountain limits. Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, may be heresy on the other!
[Blaise Pascal, Pensees]
A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass, and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts--physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on—remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all!
Richard Feynman
A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood… How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts— physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on— remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!
Richard Feynman (The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1)
A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an after-life would also be a proof of the existence of a deity. This is far from being the case. If - as I hold -there is no good reason to believe that a god either created or presides over this world, there is equally no good reason to believe that a god created or presides over the next world, on the unlikely supposition that such a thing exists.
[Sir A.J. Ayer, in the Sunday Telegraph, Aug. 28, 1988, pg. 5]
A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20: Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals… Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.
[Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"]
A religion is sometime a source of happiness, and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong. The great trouble with religion - any religion - is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak certainty of reason- but one cannot have both.
[Robert A. Heinlein, from "Friday"]
A Roman Catholic priest and theologian has called on his church to consider the possibility of evangelizing extraterrestrials, according to published reports. After two Swiss astronomers said they had discovered the first planet in a solar system similar to Earth's, Piero Coda, a theology professor in Rome, said any beings living on the planet would be in need of salvation.
[Associated Baptist Press article, as quoted Jennifer Graham, Knight-Ridder Newspaper, in "Mork from Ork is going to hell? Some scholars say extraterrestrials would be tainted by original sin."]
A Roman Catholic worships a god who speaks through the Pope, while a Baptist worships a god who does not. They cannot be worshipping the same god.
Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One? (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1997), p.
A second possible thing that creationists might look for is some kind of instrument that will detect darkness. It is my conclusion, based on [scripture] that darkness is a positive thing.
[Richard Niessen, Professor, Christian Heritage College]
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson]
a sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised
[Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume]
A sober, devout man will interpret "God's will" soberly and devoutly. A fanatic, with bloodshot mind, will interpret "God's will" fanatically. Men of extreme, illogical views will interpret "God's will" in eccentric fashion. Kindly, charitable, generous men will interpret "God's will" according to their character.
[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]
A society without religion is like a crazed psychopath without a loaded .45
A spokesman for the Lyon Group, producers of Barney and Friends, denied that Barney is an instrument of Satan.
[the Advocate, spring 1994]
A tack points heavenward when it causes the most mischief. It has many human imitations.
[Texas Siftings]
A tendency to drastically underestimate the frequency of coincidence is a prime characteristic of innumerates, who generally accord great significance to correspondences of all sorts while attributing too little significance to quite conclusive but less flashy statistical evidence.
[John Allen Paulos, mathematics professor, in "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences"]
A theologian is a person who uses the word "God" to hide his ignorance.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
[Oscar Wilde]
A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism.
[Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian]
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider godfearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
[Aristotle, "Politics"]
A universe with a God would like quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory. "
The trouble is that God in this sophisticated, physicist's sense bears no resemblance to the God of the Bible or any other religion. If a physicist says God is another name for Planck's constant, or God is a superstring, we should take it as a picturesque metaphorical way of saying that the nature of superstrings or the value of Planck's constant is a profound mystery. It has obviously not the smallest connection with a being capable of forgiving sins, a being who might listen to prayers, who cares about whether or not the Sabbath begins at 5pm or 6pm, whether you wear a veil or have a bit of arm showing; and no connection whatever with a being capable of imposing a death penalty on His son to expiate the sins of the world before and after he was born.
Richard Dawkins
A universe with a God would like quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different.
Richard Dawkins
A very pious friend of mine, having heard that I had said the world was full of imperfections, asked me if the report was true. Upon being informed that it was, he expressed great surprise that any one could be guilty of such presumption. He said that, in his judgement, it was impossible to point out an imperfection "Be kind enough," said he, "to name even one improvement that you could make, if you had the power." "Well," said I, "I would make good health catching, instead of disease." The truth is, it is impossible to harmonize all the ills, and pains, and agonies of this world with the idea that we were created by, and are watched over and protected by an infinitely wise, powerful and beneficent God, who is superior to and independent of nature.
[Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872]
A whole generation started the day with prayer and ended up not benefiting very much from it. After all, it was not 7-year-olds who gathered stoned and naked at Woodstock.
[Richard Cohen]
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
David Hume
A woman is a pitcher full of filth with it's mouth full of blood, yet all run after her
[Talmud, Shabbath 152]
A woman suspected of being a witch was dragged from her hut, tied to a tree and then axed to death by her neighbors in an eastern India village, police said yesterday. Sonamoni Kisku was killed Sunday by Ganesh Soren and his brother, Meghraj, in Goaljoi, about 155 miles northwest of Calcutta, police said. …It was the latest in several killings of women suspected of being witches in the predominantly tribal region of the state.
[San Francisco Chronicle, 26 April 1989 (AP)]
A world where most men prefer sex with little children to sex with grown women, mostly allegedly Christian parents secretly engage in bloody Satanic rituals and every third person has suffered anal, genital and other harassments by demonic dwarfs from outer space makes as much sense - and just as little sense - as a world where the universe is ruled by the ghost of a crucified Jew and George Bush had rational reasons (which no one can now remember) for bombing Iraq again two days before leaving the White House.
[Prof. T.F.X. Finnegan, Trinity College, Dublin]
A zealot's stones will break my bones, but gods will never hurt me.
About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill … Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection.
[Gerald L. Berry, "Religions of the World"]
Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.
[Gary Zukav, "The Dancing Wu Li Masters"]
According to a story in the New Republic magazine, Pat Robertson paid former football star Roosevelt Grier a $3,000 'honorarium' for appearing at a rally in a Brooklyn ghetto to express his support for the candidate. … He introduced the candidate as Pat Robinson. … The magazine also reported that Robertson paid singer and Christian Pat Boone $5,000 for his endorsement.
[Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 31 March 1988]
According to a survey being published in the April 3, 1997, Nature, 40% of scientists in the U.S. believe in God. This ratio has not changed in the 80 years since a similar survey was conducted in 1916. Biologists were the biggest doubters in 1916; physicists and astronomers are now the leading disbelievers, with 77.9% denying the existence of God. Mathematicians, who create their own universes, are the most inclined to believe in God with a total of 44.6%.
According to the theologians, God prepared this globe expressly for the habitation of his loved children, and yet he filled the forests with ferocious beasts; placed serpents in every path; stuffed the world with earthquakes, and adorned its surface with mountains of flame. Notwithstanding all this, we are told that the world is perfect; that it was created by a perfect being, and is therefore necessarily perfect. The next moment, these same persons will tell us that the world was cursed; covered with brambles, thistles and thorns, and that man was doomed to disease and death, simply because our poor, dear mother ate an apple contrary to the command of an arbitrary God.
[Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872]
According to theism, if a universe is to have any probability of existing, this probability is dependent upon God's beliefs, desires and creative acts. But the Hartle-Hawking probability is not dependent on any supernatural considerations; Hartle and Hawking do not sum over anything supernatural in their path integral derivation of the probability amplitude.
Quentin Smith, "Quantum Cosmology's Implication of Atheism" (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/quantum.html, 1997).
According to this account the promise of the devil was fulfilled to the very letter, Adam and Eve did not die, and they did become as gods, knowing good and evil.
[Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872]
Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.
[Pliny to Trajan about the Christians, 111 AD]
Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more.
(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on.
[Anonymous]
Adam lived 930 years and may have been around 15 feet tall! Then mankind "deteriorated"…Noah at 12 feet…and now we're down to half of that! NOTE: If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS??
Jim Pinkoski
Adam may not have been so perfect after the 'fall," but he was not so big a fool.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World)
After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well.
Albert Einstein
After all, any religion that can get numerous Christians to ignore a simple and direct command from jesus in the name of "context" obviously is going to have a hard time with teaching better morality to everybody else. Maybe this explains the widespread explosion of religion in America and the widespread rise in hatefulness, racism, right winged savagery, and widespread lack of honesty.
[William Barwell, wbarwell@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM]
After all, the principle objection which a thinking man has to religion is that religion is not true — and is not even sane.
[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]
After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil.
Gary Potter, president of Catholics for Christian Political Action
After the survivor of the Spanish conquest has told his life's story he is convicted by the Inquisition: "He posted no brief in defense or mitigation of his offenses, and when he was most solemnly advised by the Court President of the dire consequences he faced if found guilty, Juan Damasceno volunteered only one comment: 'It will mean I do not go to the Christian heaven?' He was told that that would indeed be the worst of his punishments: that he would most assuredly not go to Heaven. At which, his smile sent a thrill of horror through every soul of the Court.
["Aztec", by Gary Jennings]
Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of to-day arises.
[Margaret Sanger, "Shall We Break This Law?", The Birth Control Review, vol. 1 no. 1, Feb. 1917]
Agnosticism is not properly described as a 'negative' creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle, which is as much ethical as intellectual. This principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainity. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny, and repudiate as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence.
Thomas Henry Huxley, "Agnosticism and Christianity" Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays (1889, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1992), p. 193.
AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters.
[Jerry Falwell]
All Bibles are man-made.
[Thomas Edison]
All countries censored books; Protestant authorities labored to keep "papist" works from the eyes of the faithful … … In the Catholic world, with the trend toward centralization under the pope, a special importance attached to the list published by the bishop of Rome, the papal Index of Prohibited Books. Only with special permission, granted to reliable persons for special study, could Catholics read books listed on the Index, on which most of the significant works written in Europe since the Reformation have been included.
[A History of the Modern World, R.R. Palmer,p. 90]
All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons; chiefly do they torment freshly-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless new-born infants.
[Saint Augustine (354-430)]
All Gaza's temples are torn down and burned and the city is cleansed of every belief but the Christian faith. The most stubborn opponents, faute de mieux, are tied up, marched away to the provincial capital, severely tortured, and all killed mala morte, 'a great number.'
[Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire", p.89, from information from the Life of Porphyry.]
All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.
[Fran Lebowitz]
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
[George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), "Annajanska" (1919)]
All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private.
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
All honorable men of good character who may be lucky enough to get a BJ not only refrain from pointing the finger, but lie about it if asked.
All in all, I can't say I believe in god. If, in fact, I ever find out that he does indeed exist, I think I'll stay away from him, because if he's responsible for half the things he gets credit for, he's got to be one mean son of a bitch.
[Peter Gether, A Cat Abroad, pp. 89-90]
All my work in the field of science and research has come through a change in my earlier opinions on religion. Growth is the law of life. Orthodoxy is the death of scientific effort.
[Luther Burbank, from "Burbank the Infidel" by Joseph Lewis]
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)
All of the "extant post-Pauline epistles of the New Testament which are likely to have been written before the end of the first century (and probably before 90) refer to Jesus in essentially the same manner as Paul does. They stress one or more of his supernatural aspects — his existence before his life on earth, his resurrection and second coming - - but say nothing of the teachings or miracles ascribed to him in the gospels, and give no historical setting to the crucifixion, which remains the one episode in his incarnate life unambiguously mentioned, at least in some of them."
G.A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 47.
All of us, indeed, who have ever come to close quarters with theologians must have left them with an elated feeling that our sort of decency is a great deal better than theirs. For they are not, as a class, fair men, nor is there any honesty in them. To find their match in secular life recourse must be had, not to philosophers, but to politicians.
HL Mencken
All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself.
[Martin Luther (1483-1546), German Protestant leader]
All political power comes from the barrel of either guns, pussy, or opium pipes, and people seem to like it that way.
Hunter S. Thompson
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
[Edgar Allan Poe]
All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
[Stendhal]
All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them.
[George Bernard Shaw]
All religions die of one disease - that of being found out.
[John Morley]
All religions have been made by men.
[Napoleon Bonaparte, letter to Gaspard Gourgaud, 28 January 1817]
All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All separated from government are compatible with liberty.
[Henry Clay]
All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete personality of their intellectual powers.
[Mikhail A. Bakunin]
All religious vows, codes, and commitments are null & void herein. Please refrain from contaminating the ideosphere with harmful memes through prayer, reverence, holy books, proselytizing, prophesying, faith, speaking in tongues or spirituality. Fight the menace of second-hand faith! Humanity sincerely thanks you!
[Greg Erwin, The Nullifidian]
All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be skeptical, or at least cautious; and not to admit of any hypothesis, whatsoever; much less, of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.
[David Hume]
All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention — of barbarian invention — is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the coiled form of superstition — then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity.
[Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872]
All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science.
[Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)]
All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.
[Simone de Beauvoir, "The Second Sex"]
All the ills from which America suffers can be traced to the teaching of evolution.
[William Jennings Bryan]
All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word, Hell.
[Ingersoll]
All the other prophets came back with commandments!"
"Where they get them?"
"I … suppose they made them up."
"You get them from the same place.
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
All thinking men are atheists.
Ernest Hemingway
All through the centuries scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture. Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth.
[Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible Part 2. (From Great Infidels pg. 143.)]
All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'.
(Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent)
All we have to do is get out and vote, while it's still legal, and we will wash those crooked warmongers out of the White House.
Hunter S. Thompson
Allegations by U.S. presidential candidate Pat Robertson that the Soviet Union has placed nuclear missiles in Cuba are 'wild fantasy,' the official Soviet news agency Tass said yesterday. 'Of course it is up to the Americans themselves to decide who will be the next occupant of the White House. But in this case we are dealing with problems concerning international security, concerning all,' Tass said. 'That is why Robertson's wild fantasy gives rise to a legitimate question: How is it that such an irresponsible politician could at all become a candidate for the presidency in such a country as the United States?'
[San Francisco Chronicle, 17 February 1988 (Chronicle Wire Services)]
Almighty God, dear heavenly Father. In Thy name let us now, in pious spirit, begin our instruction. Enlighten us, teach us all truth, strengthen us in all thatis good, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from all evil in order that, as good human beings, we may faithfully perform our duties and thereby, in time and eternity, be made truly happy. Amen.
[Mandatory secondary school prayer in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, from July-August 1995 issue of Liberty: A Magazine of Religious Freedom, published by the North American Division of the Seventh- day Adventist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland]
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality. All proffered samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to common tests. It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse. The characteristic of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generally known; authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary ways…It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists, there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics where the method of free inquiry has made its way. The "religious" would be the last to be willing that either the history or the content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device, but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against its being taught in any other spirit.
[John Dewey, "Democracy in the Schools", 1908]
Although I cannot believe that the individual survives the death of his body, feeble souls harbor such thought through fear or ridiculous egotism.
[Albert Einstein]
Although intelligent design fits comfortably with a belief in God, it doesn't require it, because the scientific theory doesn't tell you who the designer is. While most people - including myself - will think the designer is God, some people might think that the designer was a space alien or something odd like that.
Michael Behe
Although it does not logically follow, I would claim that there is a strong case for the subjectivity of morality if there is such widespread disagreement. This is so especially if, as is the case, proponents of subjective morality can provide plausible accounts of such disagreement (social and biological evolution, psychological influences from individuals and cultures) whilst the proponents of objective morality can provide no account of such disagreement, except the rather unsatisfactory statement that we may, in the future, detect the reasons why there is such disagreement. Indeed, we may, but until we have done so, it seems as if the subjectivists have a much more convincing story to tell.
Niclas Berggren, "On the Nature of Morality" (1998)
Although it has many of religion's virtues, [science] has none of its vices. Science is based upon verifiable evidence.
Richard Dawkins
Although it is uncertain, it is necessary to make science useful. Science is only useful if it tells you about some experiment that has not been done; it is not good if it only tells you what just went on.
Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law)
Although Murray O-Hair did play an important role in this controversy [government-led prayer in public schools], she did not 'single-handedly' remove state-sponsored religious exercises from public schools. Other people were involved. Today the controversial Texas atheist serves as a convenient villain for Religious Right propagandists who hate religious liberty and church-state separation.
Robert Boston, Why The Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church & State (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 227.
Although the ICR often emphasizes that it is the scientific nature of creationist theory which brings scientists to a belief in a supreme being, it is curious that they include a requirement for membership (the inerrancy of the Christian Bible) which effectively excludes Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and the majority of Christian sects (who do not accept a literal reading of all parts of the Bible) from membership. It is clear that the ICR, which is the most respected of creationist groups in its attempts to appear scientifically legitimate, is essentially an organization composed solely of Christian Fundamentalists.
Kenneth R. Miller, "Scientific Creationism versus Evolution" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 22.
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
[Isaac Asimov, "On Religiosity", Free Inquiry]
America was founded by the refuse of the religious fanatics of England, these undesirable elements that came over on the Mayflower. Ignorant, religious fanatics who land here, abuse the Indians, and then go to bed with a board down the middle, you know, the bundling board, so they don't have sex. That's how we got started.
[Frank Zappa]
America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
Hunter S. Thompson
American conservatism works from the premise that a system of economic anarchy coupled with social intolerance is the true road to liberty, freedom and fairness.
Among all mental diseases that have been systematically inoculated into the human cranium, the religious pest is the most abominable.
[Johann Most, "The God Pestilence",]
Among mammals, a virgin birth (parthenogenesis) can only produce female offspring, for chromosomal reasons. Messiahs are mammals. Therefore, Jesus was… On the other hand, among turkeys, the chromosomal situation is such that all products of virgin birth are males. So if Jesus was a male, he might also have been…" (Zindler's own punctuations)
[Frank Zindler, in a note to the debate Does god exist? with John Koster]
An agreeable opinion is accepted as true: this is the proof by pleasure (or, as the church says, the proof by strength), that all religions are so proud of, whereas they ought to be ashamed. If the belief did not make us happy, it would not be believed: how little must it then be worth!
[Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human]
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
[Samuel Butler]
An appointment is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls. It is important not to confuse the two.
(Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)
An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question.
[John McCarthy]
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
[Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)]
An attempt to give credibility to Hebrew mythology by making people believe that the the world's foremost biologists, paleontologists, and geologists are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops.
[Ron Peterson, on "creation science"]
An eartly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.
[Martin Luther]
An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan officer, to dinner for finally giving in to her pleas to shave off the scraggly beard he grew on vacation. His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both feel comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester-blend golf shirts. But, as always, she wears the gold and pearl pendant he gave her the day her divorce decree was final. They're laughing over their menus because they know he always ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won't be talked into anything more fattening than shrimp." "Quiz: How many biblical prohibitions are they violating? Well, wives are supposed to be 'submissive' to their husbands (I Peter 3:1). And all women are forbidden to teach men (I Timothy 2:12), wear gold or pearls (I Timothy 2:9) or dress in clothing that 'pertains to a man' (Deuteronomy 22:5). Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7, 10) as are usury (Deuteronomy 23:19), shaving (Leviticus 19:27) and clothes of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19). And since the Bible rarely recognizes divorce, they're committing adultery, which carries the rather harsh penalty of death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:22)." "So why are they having such a good time? Probably because they wouldn't think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or — at best — unrealistic. Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify their own anti-gay attitudes.
[from `And Say Hi To Joyce' by lesbian columnist Deb Price]
An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.
Max Planck
An honest god is the noblest work of man. … God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. … Most of the gods were pleased with sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine perfume.
[Robert G. Ingersoll, "Gods", 1879]
An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as possible.
[Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"]
An organization that requires the suppression of facts and the discouragement of knowledge in order to maintain its supremacy, is the relic of a tyranny which our free age and our free thought are in duty bound to remove from the earth.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
And all the good you've done will soon be swept away, You've begun to matter more than the things you say
[Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Weber, Jesus Christ Superstar]
And how can we ever again succeed in educating children to become moral men and women if, in America's public schools, we consciously deny them all religious instruction, and deny them access to that primary source of morality, God's own word. The Bible is the one book from which they are expressly not allowed to be taught.
[US Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, "The City and The Crusade", Commencement Address for Christendom College, May 6, 1996]
And I want to conquer the world,
Give all the idiots a brand new religion…"
[Bad Religion]
And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.
Robert A. Wilson (Prometheus Rising, 1986)
And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited.
[Adolf Hitler, speech, April 12 1922, published in "New Order"]
And it is in his own image, let us remember, that Man creates God.
[H. Havelock Ellis]
And it's not just faith itself: it's the idea that faith is a virtue and the less evidence there is, the more virtuous it is. You can actually quote, well, Tertullian for example: "It is certain because it is impossible." Sir Thomas Brown, actually seeking for more difficult things to believe, because things for which there is mere evidence are just too easy, and it's no test of his faith. In order to have a test of your faith, you must be asked to believe really daft things like the transubstantiation, you know, the blood of Christ turning into wine, and stuff… That is so manifestly absurd that you've got to be a really great believer, in the class of the Electric Monk, in order to believe it….. You're actually showing off your believing credentials by the ability to believe something like that… If it were an easy thing to believe, substantiated by facts, then it wouldn't be any great achievement.
[Richard Dawkins, interview with Douglas Adams]
And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"
They replied,"You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed."
And Jesus replied, "What?"
And lo, Jesus did say unto the soldiers 'Not the OTHER hand. Ow shit, that hurts! You assholes!'
[2 Kinison 3:45]
And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky, Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
[from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam trans. Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883)]
And the alcoholic bastard waved his finger at me His voice was filled with evangelical glee Sipping down his gin and tonics While preaching about the evils of narcotics And the evils of sex, and the wages of sin While he mentally fondles his next of kin…
[Danny Elfman, "Insanity"]
And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter.
Thomas Jefferson
And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.
[Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp.174]
And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible.
Tertullian
And there shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, and there will be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base, that has an attachment they will not be there. At this time a friend shall lose his friends's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before …
[Prophet in Monty Python's, "Life of Brian"]
And we are called upon to worship such a God; to get upon our knees and tell him that he is good, that he is merciful, that he is just, that he is love. We are asked to stifle every noble sentiment of the soul, and to trample under foot all the sweet charities of the heart. Because we refuse to stultify ourselves — refuse to become liars — we are denounced, hated, traduced and ostracized here, and this same god threatens to torment us in eternal fire the moment death allows him to fiercely clutch our naked helpless souls. Let the people hate, let the god threaten — we will educate them, and we will despise and defy the god.
[Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872]
And what if we picked the wrong religion? Every week, we're just making God madder and madder!
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons
Another meme of the religious meme complex is called faith. It means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence. The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence. Nothing is more lethal for certain kinds of meme than a tendency to look for evidence. The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held up to us as worthy of imitation. The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
[Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene"]
Another point important to recognize is that the creation was 'mature' from its birth. It did not have to grow or develop from simple beginnings. God formed it full-grown in every respect, including even Adam and Eve as mature individuals when they were first formed. The whole universe had an 'appearance of age' right from the start. It could not have been otherwise for true creation to have taken place. 'Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them' (Genesis 2:1).
Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, (General edition, second edition, El Cajon, CA: Master, 1985), p. 210.
Another possible danger is that in presenting the gospel to the lost and in defending God's truth we ourselves will seem to be false. It is time for Christian people to recognize that the defense of this modern, young-Earth, Flood-geology creationism is simply not truthful. It is simply not in accord with the facts that God has given. Creationism must be abandoned by Christians before harm is done. The persistent attempt of the creationist movement to get their points of view established in educational institutions can only bring harm to the Christian cause. Can we seriously expect non-Christian educational leaders to develop a respect for Christianity if we insist on teaching the brand of science that creationism brings with it? Will not the forcing of modern creationism on the public simply lend credence to the idea already entertained by so many intellectual leaders that Christianity, at least in its modern form, is sheer anti-intellectual obscurantism? I fear that it will.
[Christianity and the Age of the Earth, by Davis Young, Zondervan 1982. p. 163.]
Anti-abortionists believe that life begins at the moment you agree with them.
[Saturday Night Live]
Anti-intellectualism among millenarians and Bible Literalists is a recurrent phenomenon, but no other religious movement in America ever has been as programatically set against its intellect as are Jehovah's Witnesses. The Fundamentalist majority wing of the Southern Baptist Convention are devotees of pure reason compared to Jehovah's Witnesses.
[Harold Bloom, The American Religion, pg. 162]
Antichrist is the pope and the Turk [Muslim] together. A beast full of life must have a body and soul. The spirit or soul of Antichrist is the pope, his flesh or body the Turk.
[Martin Luther, Table Talk]
Any belief worth having must survive doubt.
Any Latter-day Saint who denounces or opposes, whether actively or otherwise, any plan or doctrine advocated by the 'prophets, seers, and revelators' of the Church is cultivating the spirit of apostasy. Lucifer….wins a great victory when he can get members of the Church to speak against their leaders and to 'do their own thinking'…. "When our leaders speak, the thinking had been done. When they propose a plan — it is God's plan. When they p