Some quotes on Religion
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.-Gandhi
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. – Pascal
Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world. -Gore Vidal
The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death. - Gore Vidal
I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock. – Howard Stern
But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit! -George Carlin
To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance….. You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that _we_ are the ones that need help? - Dan Barker (Freedom from Religion Foundation)
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I escaped from the stuffy attic of religion's "pray, pay and obey" mentality into journalism's open laboratory of "who, what, where, when and why." Steve Benson, editorial cartoonist
Religion is only good for good people -Mary McCarthy
In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it. - Wendy Kaminer -The Last Taboo Why America Needs Atheism
Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. Lewis Thomas
All is a miracle. The order of nature the revolution of a hundred million of worlds around a million of suns the activity of light the life of animals all are grand and perpetual miracles.- Voltaire
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion.- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means.-Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
Pray, n:. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies. - Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.
Gott Mit Uns (God is with us) - belt buckles of the Nazi SS storm troopers.
Science is the process of starting with the evidence and proceeding to the conclusion that best fits the evidence, regardless of what that conclusion may be. Fundamentalism, on the other hand, starts with a conclusion and searches for evidence to support that conclusion. Bidstrup
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.-James Madison
Christians often decry the general decline in moral behavior these days, but, while that may well be true, it is not because people are less religious. In fact, according to recent polls, the percentage of people who attend church has not changed since the “good old days” of 50 years ago. If religion made one moral, then there should be no decline. - Unknown
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Eric Hoffer- The True Believer
Religion is belief in the existence of an almighty Being, by whom pains and pleasures will be dispensed to mankind, during an infinite and future state of existence. - Jeremy Benthan
Moreover, since self-interest is not an adequate basis for morality, there is reason to believe that heaven and hell cannot perform the regulative function often attributed to them. Heaven and hell are often construed as the carrot and stick that God uses to make us toe the line. Heaven is the reward that good people get for being good, and hell is the punishment that bad people get for being bad. But consider this. Good people do good because they want to do good - not because they will personally benefit from it or because someone has forced them to do it. People who do good solely for personal gain or to avoid personal harm are not good people. Someone who saves a drowning child, for example, only because he was offered a reward or was physically threatened does not deserve our praise. Thus, if your only reason for performing good actions is your desire to go to heaven or your fear of going to hell - if all your other-regarding actions are motivated purely by self-interest - then you should go to hell because you are not a good person. An obsessive concern with either heaven or hell should actually lessen one's chances for salvation rather than increase them. Theodore Schick, Jr.
If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness." Carl Sagan
Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years, with time off for good behavior? -- New York Senator James H. Donovan commenting on capital punishment.
It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you got it. Edmund Way Teale
When you go to war over religion, you're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.~ Yasir Arrafat
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it - George Bernard Shaw All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few - Stendhal
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death - Albert Einstein
Televangelists: The Pro Wrestlers of religion - Unknown
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
The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around - Herb Caen
I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth- Carl Sandburg
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind- Albert Einstein
Religion is what keeps the poor man from murdering the rich- Napolean Bonaparte
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. Oscar Wilde
Faith: not “wanting” to know what is true.- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectually heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise? - Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer",
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers... Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted faggots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.- Clarence S. Darrow (1857-1938), at the Scopes Monkey Trial
The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. Thomas Jefferson
I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.- Albert Einstein
When are we human beings gonna have a meeting? We took this god thing and ran to the god damn end of the earth with it.- George Carlin
When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space. I was free--free to think, to express my thoughts--free to live my own ideal, free to live for myself and those I loved, free to use all my faculties, all my senses, free to spread imagination's wings, free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope, free to judge and determine for myself . . . I was free!- Robert G. Ingersoll
The proof in the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it; they also believed the world was flat.- Mark Twain
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man." -Sir Theodore Martin
When you understand why you do not believe in other gods, then you will understand why I don't believe in yours. – Unknown
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."-- Bertrand Russell, "Why I'm Not a Christian"
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.-- Susan B.Anthony
Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.-- Isaac Asimov
Religion is a collective insanity.-- Mikhail Bakunin,
Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.-- Robert A. Heinlein
History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.-- Robert A. Heinlein
The faith in which I was brought up assured me that I was better than other people; I was saved, they were damned.... Our hymns were loaded with arrogance -- self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us, what hell everybody else would catch come Judgment Day.- Robert A. Heinlein
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. - Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951)
It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.-- Eric Hoffer
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.-Eric Hoffer-- Reflections on the Human Condition
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.—Hippocrates
The methodology employed by the creationists is indicative that their work is not science. A scientific theory must be tentative and always subject to revision or abandonment in light of the facts that are inconsistent with, or falsify, the theory. A theory that is by its own terms dogmatic, absolutist and never subject to revision is not a scientific theory.-- Judge William Overton, ruling on the nature of creationism in addition to the Arkansas' Balanced Treatment Act
The public schools of this country serve the admirable function of bringing together on common ground students from a diversity of cultural and religious backgrounds. The introduction of public prayer into such a setting jeopardizes the sense of community and unnecessarily intrudes an emotional and divisive factor.-- Daniel Polish, testimony on behalf of the Synagogue Council of America September 8, 1980, U.S. House of Representatives
As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.—Kathy Pollitt
Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate and reckless of consequence, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.-- Polybius, Histories (ca. B.C.E 125)
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.-- George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.—unknown
The most malicious kind of hatred is that which is built upon a theological foundation.-- George Sarton, History of Science,
"And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people, don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people, don't blame everything on Satan.- George Burns
The gods don't drop in on us to fix things up when we've botched it. You look at human history and it's clear we're on our own...No, I don't think we're the experiment. Carl Sagan
No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.-George H.W. Bush, Presidential Nominee for the Republican party; Aug. 27,1987
"Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen." -- Michel de Montaigne
"Religion is all bunk." -- Thomas Edison
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.-James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and science, and invariably; and, on the other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good both of religion and science. -_Andrew Dirkson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.
Your petitioners are Atheists and they define their ideas as follows. An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for which we should work now--here on earth--for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist knows that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find within himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it. An Atheist knows that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.An Atheist seeks to know himself then and his fellow rather than to know a god. An Atheist understands that a hospital must be built instead of a church. An Atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand, love and accept all of mankind. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god, channel action into prayer, or hope for an end to our troubles in a hereafter. He knows that we are not only our brother's keepers--but keepers of our own lives foremost, that we are responsible persons and that the job is here and the time is now."-- Murray vs. Curlett, 374 U.S. 203 (1963)(Atheists have to get their scripture wherever they can find it :-)
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.- Frank Lloyd Wright
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.- John Muir
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing. Henry Louis Mencken
What was it that Adam ate that he wasn't supposed to eat? It wasn't just an apple - it was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The subtle message? Get smart and I'll fuck you over -- sayeth the Lord. God is the smartest -- and he doesn't want any competition. Is this not an absolutely anti-intellectual religion? Frank Zappa
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
The Bible is the greatest hoax in all history. The leading characters of the Old Testament would today be in the penitentiary and those of the New would be under observation in psychopathic wards. Charles Smith (1887-1964) U.S. attorney, author
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.Diderot
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? Epicurusiggest cause
Fundamentalism isn’t about religion, it’s about power. -~ Salman Rushdie
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people. ~ Adolf Hitler (an avowed Roman Catholic), April 26, 1933
Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give." Robert Ingersoll
The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down here. Robert Ingersoll
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. – Ferdinand Magellen
Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. - Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian
Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. - Mark Twain, A Celebration
I take Him shopping with me. I say, 'OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain'
Tammy Faye Bakker
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. – Pascal
Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world. -Gore Vidal
The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death. - Gore Vidal
I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock. – Howard Stern
But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit! -George Carlin
To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance….. You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that _we_ are the ones that need help? - Dan Barker (Freedom from Religion Foundation)
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I escaped from the stuffy attic of religion's "pray, pay and obey" mentality into journalism's open laboratory of "who, what, where, when and why." Steve Benson, editorial cartoonist
Religion is only good for good people -Mary McCarthy
In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it. - Wendy Kaminer -The Last Taboo Why America Needs Atheism
Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. Lewis Thomas
All is a miracle. The order of nature the revolution of a hundred million of worlds around a million of suns the activity of light the life of animals all are grand and perpetual miracles.- Voltaire
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion.- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means.-Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
Pray, n:. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies. - Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.
Gott Mit Uns (God is with us) - belt buckles of the Nazi SS storm troopers.
Science is the process of starting with the evidence and proceeding to the conclusion that best fits the evidence, regardless of what that conclusion may be. Fundamentalism, on the other hand, starts with a conclusion and searches for evidence to support that conclusion. Bidstrup
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.-James Madison
Christians often decry the general decline in moral behavior these days, but, while that may well be true, it is not because people are less religious. In fact, according to recent polls, the percentage of people who attend church has not changed since the “good old days” of 50 years ago. If religion made one moral, then there should be no decline. - Unknown
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Eric Hoffer- The True Believer
Religion is belief in the existence of an almighty Being, by whom pains and pleasures will be dispensed to mankind, during an infinite and future state of existence. - Jeremy Benthan
Moreover, since self-interest is not an adequate basis for morality, there is reason to believe that heaven and hell cannot perform the regulative function often attributed to them. Heaven and hell are often construed as the carrot and stick that God uses to make us toe the line. Heaven is the reward that good people get for being good, and hell is the punishment that bad people get for being bad. But consider this. Good people do good because they want to do good - not because they will personally benefit from it or because someone has forced them to do it. People who do good solely for personal gain or to avoid personal harm are not good people. Someone who saves a drowning child, for example, only because he was offered a reward or was physically threatened does not deserve our praise. Thus, if your only reason for performing good actions is your desire to go to heaven or your fear of going to hell - if all your other-regarding actions are motivated purely by self-interest - then you should go to hell because you are not a good person. An obsessive concern with either heaven or hell should actually lessen one's chances for salvation rather than increase them. Theodore Schick, Jr.
If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness." Carl Sagan
Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years, with time off for good behavior? -- New York Senator James H. Donovan commenting on capital punishment.
It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you got it. Edmund Way Teale
When you go to war over religion, you're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.~ Yasir Arrafat
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it - George Bernard Shaw All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few - Stendhal
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death - Albert Einstein
Televangelists: The Pro Wrestlers of religion - Unknown
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
The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around - Herb Caen
I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth- Carl Sandburg
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind- Albert Einstein
Religion is what keeps the poor man from murdering the rich- Napolean Bonaparte
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. Oscar Wilde
Faith: not “wanting” to know what is true.- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectually heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise? - Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer",
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers... Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted faggots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.- Clarence S. Darrow (1857-1938), at the Scopes Monkey Trial
The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. Thomas Jefferson
I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.- Albert Einstein
When are we human beings gonna have a meeting? We took this god thing and ran to the god damn end of the earth with it.- George Carlin
When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space. I was free--free to think, to express my thoughts--free to live my own ideal, free to live for myself and those I loved, free to use all my faculties, all my senses, free to spread imagination's wings, free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope, free to judge and determine for myself . . . I was free!- Robert G. Ingersoll
The proof in the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it; they also believed the world was flat.- Mark Twain
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man." -Sir Theodore Martin
When you understand why you do not believe in other gods, then you will understand why I don't believe in yours. – Unknown
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."-- Bertrand Russell, "Why I'm Not a Christian"
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.-- Susan B.Anthony
Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.-- Isaac Asimov
Religion is a collective insanity.-- Mikhail Bakunin,
Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.-- Robert A. Heinlein
History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.-- Robert A. Heinlein
The faith in which I was brought up assured me that I was better than other people; I was saved, they were damned.... Our hymns were loaded with arrogance -- self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us, what hell everybody else would catch come Judgment Day.- Robert A. Heinlein
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. - Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951)
It was the craving to be a one and only people which impelled the ancient Hebrews to invent a one and only God whose one and only people they were to be.-- Eric Hoffer
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.-Eric Hoffer-- Reflections on the Human Condition
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.—Hippocrates
The methodology employed by the creationists is indicative that their work is not science. A scientific theory must be tentative and always subject to revision or abandonment in light of the facts that are inconsistent with, or falsify, the theory. A theory that is by its own terms dogmatic, absolutist and never subject to revision is not a scientific theory.-- Judge William Overton, ruling on the nature of creationism in addition to the Arkansas' Balanced Treatment Act
The public schools of this country serve the admirable function of bringing together on common ground students from a diversity of cultural and religious backgrounds. The introduction of public prayer into such a setting jeopardizes the sense of community and unnecessarily intrudes an emotional and divisive factor.-- Daniel Polish, testimony on behalf of the Synagogue Council of America September 8, 1980, U.S. House of Representatives
As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.—Kathy Pollitt
Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate and reckless of consequence, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.-- Polybius, Histories (ca. B.C.E 125)
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.-- George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.—unknown
The most malicious kind of hatred is that which is built upon a theological foundation.-- George Sarton, History of Science,
"And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people, don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people, don't blame everything on Satan.- George Burns
The gods don't drop in on us to fix things up when we've botched it. You look at human history and it's clear we're on our own...No, I don't think we're the experiment. Carl Sagan
No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.-George H.W. Bush, Presidential Nominee for the Republican party; Aug. 27,1987
"Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen." -- Michel de Montaigne
"Religion is all bunk." -- Thomas Edison
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.-James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and science, and invariably; and, on the other hand, all untrammeled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good both of religion and science. -_Andrew Dirkson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.
Your petitioners are Atheists and they define their ideas as follows. An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for which we should work now--here on earth--for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist knows that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find within himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it. An Atheist knows that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.An Atheist seeks to know himself then and his fellow rather than to know a god. An Atheist understands that a hospital must be built instead of a church. An Atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand, love and accept all of mankind. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god, channel action into prayer, or hope for an end to our troubles in a hereafter. He knows that we are not only our brother's keepers--but keepers of our own lives foremost, that we are responsible persons and that the job is here and the time is now."-- Murray vs. Curlett, 374 U.S. 203 (1963)(Atheists have to get their scripture wherever they can find it :-)
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.- Frank Lloyd Wright
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.- John Muir
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing. Henry Louis Mencken
What was it that Adam ate that he wasn't supposed to eat? It wasn't just an apple - it was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The subtle message? Get smart and I'll fuck you over -- sayeth the Lord. God is the smartest -- and he doesn't want any competition. Is this not an absolutely anti-intellectual religion? Frank Zappa
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
The Bible is the greatest hoax in all history. The leading characters of the Old Testament would today be in the penitentiary and those of the New would be under observation in psychopathic wards. Charles Smith (1887-1964) U.S. attorney, author
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.Diderot
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? Epicurusiggest cause
Fundamentalism isn’t about religion, it’s about power. -~ Salman Rushdie
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people. ~ Adolf Hitler (an avowed Roman Catholic), April 26, 1933
Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give." Robert Ingersoll
The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down here. Robert Ingersoll
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. – Ferdinand Magellen
Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. - Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian
Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. - Mark Twain, A Celebration
I take Him shopping with me. I say, 'OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain'
Tammy Faye Bakker
posted by Flimsy Sanity @ 11:47 AM
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