"Mysticism is a disease of the mind."
-------
"As long as Baptists can stagger to the polls, there
will never be liquor by the drink in this town."
-------
"If God had wanted us to make sense,
He would have existed."
-------
Several thousand years ago, a small tribe of ignorant near-savages wrote
various collections of myths, wild tales, lies, and gibberish. Over the
centuries, these stories were embroidered, garbled, mutilated, and torn
into small pieces that were then repeatedly shuffled. Finally, this material
was badly translated into several languages successively. The resultant text,
creationists feel, is the best guide to this complex and technical subject.
-------
The last time we mixed
religion and government
people were burned at the stake.
-- bumper sticker
-------
-------
In the beginning there was nothing, and God said, "Let there
be light." And there was still nothing, but you could see it.
-------
Find God? Why, is God missing?
-------
Freedom is the Distance Between Church and State
-------
To Hell With the Baptists, I'm Going to Disney Land
-------
Focus on Your Own Damn Family
-------
Wise Men Still Seek Him...Apparently, He's lost.
-------
Jesus Loves Me, Yes I Know /
For the Voices Tell Me So.
-------
When The Religious Right Takes Over, We'll All Live In Iran
-------
Welcome to Burger God: Have it YAHWEH!
-------
Want to know what happens after death?
Go look at some dead things.
-------
Public prayer...Don't Stand for it!
-------
A mystic is someone who wants to understand
the universe, but is too lazy to study physics
-------
I am a demo religious meme which has been replicated here.
You will be blessed if you copy me and pass me on to infect
the next mind. And damned if you don't.
-------
Jesus - Myth or Legend?
-------
Re: God...
1) The emperor has no clothes.
2) There is no emperor.
-------
Christians believe that the most wonderful thing that can happen to them
is to go to Heaven, but few of them are in a hurry to make the trip.
-------
Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
-------
Help preserve your child's belief in Santa Claus. Tell him or her
that Santa will send them to hell if they don't believe in him.
-------
There are none more ignorant and useless,
than they that seek answers on their knees,
with their eyes closed.
-------
God inspires men to preach what sounds like bullshit.
Men who preach the bullshit admit it sounds like bullshit.
God punishes those who hear the bullshit and characterize it as
bullshit. If God has a problem with that, it's His own damn fault.
-------
"If, as they say, God spanked this town
For being much too frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
And save Hotaling's Whiskey?"
[Poem on 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, in which
the city's largest whiskey distillery was left unscathed]
-------
Person 1: Solomon had many horses, he had many wives; he did
exactly the opposite of what the bible says...
Person 2: He was the wisest of men..."
[transcript of actual talk show]
-------
God wanted to have a holiday, so He asked St. Peter for suggestions on
where to go.
"Why not go to Jupiter?" asked St. Peter.
"No, too much gravity, too much stomping around," said God.
"Well, how about Mercury?"
"No, it's too hot there."
"Okay," said St. Peter, "What about Earth?"
"No," said God, "They're such horrible gossips. When I was
there 2000 years ago, I had an affair with a Jewish woman, and they're
still talking about it."
-------
Christianity: Safer than a lobotomy, but just as effective.
-------
Once purged of the insanity, plagiarisms, illegalities,
contradictions, and the perverse, the Bible could be
printed on match book covers while increasing it's usefulness.
-------
A metaphysician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat
that isn't there, and a theologian is one who finds the cat.
-------
The Christians have fathers who aren't fathers, mothers who aren't mothers,
brothers who aren't brothers, and sisters who aren't sisters, they swear
off sex, and then try to explain "family values" to the rest of us.
-------
Atheism and truth, 2 words 1 meaning.
-------
Cogito, ergo non credo.
-------
Exploring the universe through meditation is like
studying human relationships through masturbation.
-------
A god's primary function is to confirm for us deeply held beliefs that
we can't let go of, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. When
you are totally and absolutely convinced of something fundamentally
unreasonable, it helps to believe you have divine guidance.
-------
"Probably get his dumb ass nailed to a cross..."
[Response to WWJD (What Would
Jesus Do) paraphernalia]
-------
"When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated,
and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove
as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense."
[Edward Abbey (from Voice Crying in the Wilderness)]
-------
"The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages--
as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already."
[Edward Abbey]
-------
"Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require
unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions.
Thus the fear and hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the
gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward."
[Edward Abbey]
-------
"Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination."
[Edward Abbey]
-------
"We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government
can constitutionally force a person 'to profess a belief or disbelief in any
religion.' Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements
which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can aid those
religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those
religions founded on different beliefs."
[School District of Abington TP. PA. v. Schempp/Murray v. Curlett, 1963]
-------
"The world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men
without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
[Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri (973-1057; Syrian poet)]
-------
"Who made who?"
[AC/DC]
-------
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
That unalterable rule applies both to God and man."
[John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (Lord Acton) in
a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5,1887]
-------
"Thought is one of the manifestations of human energy, and among
the earlier and simpler phases of thought, two stand conspicuous
-- Fear and Greed. Fear, which, by stimulating the imagination,
creates a belief in an invisible world, and ultimately develops a
priesthood; and Greed, which dissipates energy in war and trade."
[Brooks Adams (1848-1927), The Law of Civilization and Decay]
-------
"The power of the priesthood lies in the submission to a creed.
In their onslaughts on rebellion they have exhausted human torments;
nor, in their lust for earthly dominion, have they felt remorse,
but rather joy, when slaying Christ's enemies and their own."
[Brooks Adams, The Emancipation of Massachusetts]
-------
"If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!"
[Clark Adams]
-------
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having
to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
[Douglas Adams]
-------
"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies
faith, and without faith, I am nothing."
"Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't
it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D."
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that." says God, who promptly vanishes
in a puff of logic.
[Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"]
-------
"The idea that any personal deity could find pleasure or profit in
torturing a poor woman, by accident, with a fiendish cruelty known to
man only in perverted and insane temperaments, could not be held for a
moment. For pure blasphemy, it made pure atheism a comfort."
[Henry Adams, grandson and great-grandson of presidents John
Adams and John Quincy Adams, after the death of his sister
in 1870, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
-------
"And then there are the churches. Since the time of separation of church and
state they have been classified as voluntary associations: they depend in
principle upon voluntary membership and voluntary contributions. The
collection plate in the Sunday Service is sometimes objected to for
aesthetic reasons, but it is an earnest, indeed a symbol, of the voluntary
character of the association, and it should be interpreted in this fashion.
It is a way of saying to the community, "This is our voluntary, independent
enterprise, and under God's mercy we who believe in it will support it. We
do not for its support appeal to the coercive power of the state."
[James Luther Adams, theologian Harvard Divinity School, in
On Being Human Religiously, (1976). From "The Great Quotations
On Religious Freedom" compiled by Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr]
-------
"The demand for the separation of church and state and the emergence of the
voluntary church represent the end of an old era and the beginning of a new
one. The earlier era had been dominated by the ideal of "Christendom," a
unified structure of society in a church-state. In the new era the voluntary
church, the free church, no longer supported by taxation, was to be self-
sustaining; and it was to manage its own affairs. In the earlier era, kinship,
caste, and restricted community groups had determined most of the interests
and the forms of participation. In the new era these interests became
segregated. In this respect the freedom of choice was increased. The divorce
of church and state and the advent of freedom of religious association
illustrate this type of increase in freedom of choice."
[James Luther Adams, theologian Harvard Divinity School, in
On Being Human Religiously, (1976). From "The Great Quotations
On Religious Freedom" compiled by Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr]
-------
"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do
irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs.
This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion."
[Scott Adams, "The Dilbert Principle"]
-------
"Eat a big plate of jambalaya, head off to the can, and meditate
on this, "defecating is more productive than praying."
[Todd Adamson]
-------
"Walking on water is easy. It is what we do for a
living. You just have to know where the rocks are.
Step from rock to rock, and those on the shore will
think you are performing a miracle."
[advice from professional prophets]
-------
"A spokesman for the Lyon Group, producers of _Barney and
Friends_, denied that Barney is an instrument of Satan."
[the Advocate, spring 1994]
-------
"The truth which makes men free is for the most
part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
[Herbert Agar, "A Time for Greatness" 1942]
-------
"When you see a cross sticking in the ground, that usually means that
someone is buried there, or someone got killed there. Perhaps, by
wearing that cross around their neck, what they're saying is that
they're dead from the neck up? That would explain a *lot* of things."
[Wayne Aiken, on AACHAT]
-------
"Faith in God and seventy-five cents will get you a cup of coffee."
[Wayne Aiken]
-------
"The so-called religious right of the Republican Party- the Christian
right, they call themselves, although in my view they are neither
Christian nor right- is after a totalitarian state."
[Edward Albee, interview in Progressive August 1996 issue]
-------
"Had I been present at the creation of the world,
I would have proposed some improvements."
[Alfonso X (Alfonso the Wise;
1226-1284; King of Castile)]
-------
"Sensible men no longer believe in miracles; they
were invented by priests to humbug the peasants."
[King Alfonso]
-------
"Goodnight, thank you, and may your god go with you"
[Dave Allen, Irish Comedian,
at the end of all of his shows]
-------
"Most of us spend the first 6 days of each week sowing wild oats,
then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure."
[Fred Allen]
-------
"Religions change; beer and wine remain"
[Harvey Allen]
-------
"...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 frustrated 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]
-------
"As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject
of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction
in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless
conversions -- to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and
has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. The
problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to
a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy
is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and
irrational -- the powers of reason are surprisingly ineffective in
changing the believer's mind."
[Steve Allen]
-------
"One social evil for which the New Testament is
clearly in part responsible is anti-Semitism."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
-------
"There is not the slightest question but that the God of the Old
Testament is a jealous, vengeful God, inflicting not only on the
sinful pagans but even on his Chosen People fire, lighting,
hideous plagues and diseases, brimstone, and other curses."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
-------
"There are hundreds of millions who believe the Messiah has come.
If he did, then it is unfortunately the case that his heroic
sacrifice and death have had no effect whatsoever on the very
problem his coming might have been expected to address, for
history demonstrates, beyond question, that we Christians have
been just as dangerous, singly and en masse, as non-Christians."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
-------
"The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for
example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders
of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of
offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals. It has been used to encourage
belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching
of scientific truths. We must never forget that both good and evil flow
from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
-------
"Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous
ideas are likely to have destructive consequences."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen,
on the Bible Religion & Morality"]
-------
"God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it
would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith,
then, is built upon ignorance and hope."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen,
on the Bible Religion & Morality"]
-------
"No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of
one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities
attributed to the Deity in the Bible."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen,
on the Bible Religion & Morality"]
-------
"If...we assume that there is no God, it follows that morality is even
more important than if there is a Deity. If God exists, his unlimited
power can certainly redress imbalances in the scale of human justice.
But if there is no God, then it is up to man to be as moral as he can."
[Steve Allen]
-------
"It is not hardness of heart or evil passions that drive certain
individuals to atheism, but rather a scrupulous intellectual honesty."
[Steve Allen, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
-------
"If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall.
If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do.
The same happens in the absence of prayers."
[Steve Allen, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
-------
"To those who wish to punish others--or at least to see them punished, if
the avengers are too cowardly to take matters in to their own hands-- the
belief in a fiery, hideous hell appears to be a great source of comfort."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
-------
"An all-powerful being would have the power to punish a sinner, by any means
he might choose to employ. However, the Scriptures not only attribute to
God a horrible vengefulness but also suggest that God is incredibly stupid.
It would be stupid if an individual, intent on punishing a sinner or group
of them, expended his destructive energy not only on those who it might be
said deserved such punishment but also on enormous numbers of innocent people
who simply had the bad luck to be in the physical proximity of evildoers.
To argue that God works in this way is to put him precisely on the same moral
plane as those modern terrorists who, to kill a particular individual or
small group, will place a bomb on an airplane in the full knowledge that in
addition to the five or six intended victims all the other occupants, in whom
the terrorists have no particular interest, will be killed."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen on
the Bible Religion, & Morality"]
-------
"Believing that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God, certain human
beings are prepared to suspend not only reason but even common sense about
any and all passages found within, no matter how vile or bloodthirsty."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen on
the Bible Religion, & Morality"]
-------
"Another philosopher suggests that saying prayers is equivalent
to believing that the universe is governed by a Being who changes
his mind if you ask him to."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen On the
Bible, Religion and Morality," 1990]
-------
"In every single instance where churchmen placed themselves squarely
athwart the path of science, as regards a particular knotty question,
the religious forces were eventually defeated for the very sound
reason that they were wrong."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen On the
Bible, Religion and Morality," 1990]
-------
"In less than an hour, the Parliament of Toulouse, France publicly burned
400 unfortunate women, having convicted them of crimes that existed only in
the deluded minds of their sentences. Five hundred women were burned at the
stake in the city of Geneva in one month, and approximately a thousand were
murdered in the Italian province of Como. A French judge, over the course of
16 years, could boast that he had sentenced some 800 women to the stake.
This entire vast atrocity was said to be "justified" by the Bible. In
reality, it is the Bible that is blackened by such crimes."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen On the
Bible, Religion and Morality," 1990]
-------
"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like
making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank."
[Woody Allen, "Selections from the Allen
Notebooks," in New Yorker (5 Nov. 1973)]
-------
"Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends."
[Woody Allen]
-------
"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
[Woody Allen]
-------
"As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably
because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on."
[Woody Allen]
-------
"How can I believe in God when just last week I got my
tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"
[Woody Allen]
-------
"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the
worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."
[Woody Allen]
-------
"I do not believe in an afterlife, although
I am bringing a change of underwear."
[Woody Allen]
-------
"The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that
there may be no afterlife -- a depressing thought, particularly for
those who have bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there
is an afterlife but no one will know where it's being held."
[Woody Allen, "The Early Essays," Without Feathers (1976)]
-------
"I do occasionally envy the person who is religious naturally, without
being brainwashed into it or suckered into it by all the organized hustles."
[Woody Allen, Rolling Stone magazine, 1987]
-------
"We face the nineties with a Court that relegates First Amendment
rights to the level of any law, a Justice Department quite willing
to establish first- and second-class citizenship determined by
religious belief....a Christian arrogance and exclusivism reminiscent
of earlier centuries of religious persecution."
[Robert S. Alley, "Christian Exclusivism and
Second-Class Citizenship", in Free Inquiry]
-------
"The present emphasis upon civil religion is a flagrant toying with the
First Amendment. Various trends in national life suggest that a civil
religion of the majority might find religious liberty something it did
not care to preserve."
[Robert S. Alley, "So Help Me God", John Knox Press, 1972.
From The Great Quotations On Religious Freedom compiled
by Albert J. Menendez and Edd Doerr]
-------
"If we encounter in a personality fear of divine punishment as the sole
sanction for right doing, we can be sure we are dealing with a childish
conscience, with a case of arrested development."
[Gordon W. Allport, "Becoming"]
-------
"Imagine encouraging [a child] to participate in such 'twisted' rituals
and worshiping of tortuous crucifixes and such like this from birth.
No wonder we have so many hateful and sadistic people in our society."
[Brent Allsop 10-27-95 (news:alt.atheism)]
-------
"Immaculate deceptions going on every day, still you
follow the clowns who give the circus away"
[The Almighty]
-------
"Is God something that exists 'out there," beyond, and independent of us?
Or is God merely the product of an inherited human perception, the
manifestation of an evolutionary adaptation, a coping mechanism that
emerged in our species in order to enable us to survive our unique and
otherwise debilitating awareness of death?"
[Matthew Alper, "The God Part of the Brain", Rogue
Press, Brooklyn NY, 1999, on the back cover]
-------
"Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam.....it is right
that he whom that woman induced to sin should assume the
role of guide lest he fall again through feminine instability."
[St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, letter 63, 396]
-------
"More than half the world is hungry and the environment of the world is
deteriorating rapidly because of over-population. Any action which impedes
efforts to halt the world population perpetuates the misery in which millions
now live and promotes death by starvation of millions this year and many more
millions in the next few decades.
It has been stated by Roman Catholics that the Pope is not evil, but
simply unenlightened, and we must agree. But, whatever the motives, the evil
consequences of his encyclical are manifest...
(conclusion) The world must quickly come to realize that Pope Paul VI has
sanctioned the deaths of countless numbers of human beings with his misguided
and immoral encyclical. The fact that this incredible document was put forth
in the name of a religious figure whose teachings embodies the highest respect
for the value of human dignity and life should serve to make the situation
even more repugnant to mankind."
[American Association for the Advancement of Science,
Signed by about 2000 Scientists, Dallas, 1968,
on Pope Paul VI's "Humanae Vitae" encyclical]
-------
"Prayer won't cure AIDS. Research will."
[Public service advertisement of the American
Foundation for AIDS Research, dropped because
of complaints by religionists, from
Freethought March 1997
-------
The problem that theists have is they try to argue with the same rules as the atheist or rational man. The secular man uses logic and reason to show that belief in a supernatural being is not supported by any type of evidence. Cannot be supported by logical argument. Is not manifested in any way that can be scientifically measured. The theist then tries to support his deity with the tools of the secular man, but of course uses them incorrectly. Every logical argument presented by the theist has been refuted completely. The only thing left is blind faith, and we all know that this is not proof.
Religion by itself is perhaps benign. But when you couple it with nationalism, or the state apparatus then I have serious problems with it. Take the present case in Israel/Palestine. I have PART of the solution. Evacuate Jerusalem, and flatten it. Remove any other disputed holy site and convert it into a parking lot or landfill. Poof!! A big obstacle to peace is removed. But of course that would never happen.
We have been waiting for the alleged Allah, God, Jehovah or what ever his name is to present himself for over 2000 years. Only the rhetorical din of his adherents can be heard.
[RobertAngel]
-------
No, no, no -- you don't argue with concepts. You have to claim
Dogma, and therefore leave no room for rational thought."
[Kevin J. Anderson, _Flashback_]
-------
"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered.
Religion is answers that may never be questioned."
c"People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction
considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able
to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest
existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human being become more
affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material
scale, God descends the scale of respectability at a commensurate speed."
[Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", p. 101]
-------
"Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is."
[Jean Anouilh (1910-87) French dramatist, playwright]
-------
"With God, what is terrible is that one never
knows whether it's not just a trick of the devil."
[Jean Anouilh (1910-87), French playwright.
The Archbishop character in "The Lark"]
-------
"Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and
the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on."
[Anonymous]
-------
"There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction."
[Anonymous]
-------
"A good rule for interpretation is: 'If the literal sense makes good
sense, seek no other sense lest you come up with nonsense'"
[Anonymous]
-------
"Since the Bible and the church are obviously mistaken in telling us
where we came from, how can we trust them to tell us where we are going?"
[Anonymous]
-------
"Unfalsifiable propositions are not amenable to any method at all.
If they were, then religions would be able to find a way to resolve
internal conflicts over differing versions of their unfalsifiables
without resorting to schism, excommunication, torture, or jihad.
In science, however, there are no permanent schisms, because there
is a recognized final court of appeal, namely the universe itself."
[Anonymous]
-------
"I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God and God is
matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or no."
[Anon., "The Unbeliever's Creed," 1754]
-------
"A cardinal doctrine in the Christian faith is total depravity."
[Letter to the editor, Antelope Valley
Press, Lancaster CA, June 20, 1998]
-------
"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]
-------
"I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough
for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight
the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox
religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon."
[Susan B. Anthony, on the Women's Suffrage platform]
-------
"What you should say to outsiders that a Christian has neither more
nor less rights in our Association than an atheist. When our platform
becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself
shall not stand upon it"
[Susan B. Anthony, _Susan B. Anthony: a Biography_,
by Kathleen Barry, New York University Press, 1988, p.310]
-------
"To no form of religion is woman
indebted for one impulse of freedom..."
[Susan B. Anthony]
-------
"I was born a heretic. I always distrust people who know
so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."
[Susan B. Anthony]
-------
"The religious persecution of the ages has been done
under what was claimed to be the command of God."
[Susan B. Anthony, from Rufus K. Noyes, Views of Religion,
also James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
-------
"Stating the 'The Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce
anyone to support or participate in religious exercises,' the court held
the First Amendment is violated by including clerical members who offer
prayer as part of an official school graduation ceremony, even though
attendance was supposedly voluntary. The court concluding that attendance
was in a real sense obligatory with the students induced to conform."
[Lee v. Weisman (1992, U S) 120 L Ed 2d 467, 112 S Ct 2649, from
the 1996 pocket part for the book "Modern Constitutional Law,
Vol. I: The Individual And The Government", by Chester J. Antieau]
----------------------
"...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)]
-------
"We are asked to recognize the existence of a practice of nonsectarian prayer,
prayer within the embrace of what is known as the Judeo-Christian tradition,
prayer which is more acceptable than one which, for example, makes explicit
references to the God of Israel, or to Jesus Christ, or to a patron saint.
There may be some support, as an empirical observation, to the statement of
the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, picked up by Judge Campbell's
dissent in the Court of Appeals in this case, that there has emerged in this
country a civic religion, one which is tolerated when sectarian exercises are
not. Stein, 822 F.2d at 1409; 908 F.2d 1090, 1098-1099 (CA1 1990)
(Campbell, J., dissenting) (case below); see also Note, Civil Religion and
the Establishment Clause, 95 Yale L.J. 1237 (1986). If common ground can be
defined which permits once conflicting faiths to express the shared conviction
that there is an ethic and a morality which transcend human invention, the
sense of community and purpose sought by all decent societies might be
advanced. But though the First Amendment does not allow the government to
stifle prayers which aspire to these ends, neither does it permit the
government to undertake that task for itself."
[Supreme Court, Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992)]
-------
"The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority
is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of
the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven
days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from
the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the
Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one
1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ...
The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat
lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e.,
Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the
Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E) temperature of the earth (-300K),
gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed...
(However) Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall
have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake
of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the
boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than
Hell at 445C."
[From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972]
-------
"Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible
guide will believe whatever the Church teaches."
[Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologica]
-------
"That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more
abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell."
[Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologica]
-------
"For it is a much more serious matter to corrupt faith, through which comes the
soul's life, than to forge money, through which temporal life is supported.
Hence if forgers of money or other malefactors are straightway justly put to
death by secular princes, with much more justice can heretics, immediately
upon conviction, be not only excommunicated but also put to death."
[Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologica]
-------
"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten,
for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a
perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman
comes from defect in the active power...."
[Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica,Q92, art. 1, Reply Obj. 1]
-------
"The church must never become a government factory, carrying on a nationalized
industry of religion with the people as the bolts and nuts; with God reduced
to the role of cramped advocate of current national policy. Surely the pages
of history are replete and the examples in many a foreign country convincing
that this kind of church-state union -- whatever the original motives, or
however noble the original purposes -- winds up with a state that is less
than stable and a church that is less than sanctified, and with the poor
still hungry."
[Glenn L. Archer, Address, Kansas City, August 1956, from
Menendez and Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom]
-------
"We must work harder than ever to preserve freedom of religion here in this
blessed land. We must not capitulate. Our resolve must not waiver. Much
mischief and grief will come from any alliances, holy or otherwise, between
organized religious groups and the state."
[Glenn L. Archer, from Robert Luce, The Dream Lives On (1982) p. 247,
also from Menendez and Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom]
-------
"I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless infirmity
of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is largely responsible
for the calamities the world is at present enduring"
[William Archer (1856-1924), _Theology and War_]
-------
"To me it seems that mankind can never achieve its highest potentialities
till it has thrown off the incubus of historic (and prehistoric) religion..."
[William Archer (1856-1924), "Is the Battle,Won?"]
-------
"'Theocracy' has always been the synonym for a bleak and
narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained tyranny."
[William Archer (1667-1735)]
-------
"If you were taught that elves caused rain, every
time it rained, you'd see the proof of elves."
[Ariex]
-------
"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 god fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less
easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
[Aristotle (384-322 BCE), "Politics"]
-------
"Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard
to their form but with regard to their mode of life."
[Aristotle, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
-------
"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]
-------
"(R)eligious teaching has had effects the precise opposite
of those commonly held to be its prerogative - the advocacy
of truth and high conduct."
[Dr. Henry Edward Armstrong, "The Outlook for Reason"]
-------
"In a pluralistic society, no group, no matter how numerous or powerful,
has a right to prescribe a set of beliefs or a code of ethics for all."
[Bishop James Armstrong, United Methodist Church, Address,
Phoenix, Arizona February 4, 1975, from Menendez and Doerr,
The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom]
-------
"Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an
insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover
that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same
care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature
whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion
arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit."
[Rudolf Arnheim]
-------
"All the biblical miracles will at last
disappear with the progress of science."
[Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)]
-------
"Miracles do not happen."
[Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma,
last words of preface to 1883 edition]
-------
"It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind
to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence."
[Matthew Arnold, "Literature and Dogma"]
-------
"We are only fabulous
beasts, after all."
[John Ashbery]
-------
"Whatever the Life-Goddess Eve was originally like, she appears in
Genesis as a Hebrew Pandora, the villainess in a story about the origin
of human misfortune....She has dwindled to being merely the first woman,
a troublemaker, created from a rib of the senior and dominant first man."
[Geoffrey Ashe, "The Virgin," 1976]
-------
"I've come to the conclusion that there can be little or no dialogue
between 'proclaimers of truth' (religious and secular ideologues)
and 'discoverers of truth' (empiricists). The former tend to debate,
the latter tend to discuss."
[Edward H. Ashment]
-------
"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to
be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition."
[Isaac Asimov]
-------
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always
been premature, and it remains premature today."
[Isaac Asimov]
-------
"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 and warn the people of Canada..."
[Isaac Asimov, Canadian Atheists Newsletter, 1994]
-------
"To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social
establishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps,
as part of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however,
is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously
brave, without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who
believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do
than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close
a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about
the bilge when a group of astronomers denounces it."
[Isaac Asimov]
-------
"...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_]
-------
"As it happens, Josephus, who mentions John the Baptist, does not mention
Jesus. There is, to be sure, a paragraph in his history of the Jews which
is devoted to Jesus, but it interrupts the flow of the discourse and seems
suspiciously like an afterthought. Scholars generally believe this to
have been an insertion by some early Christian editor who, scandalized
that Josephus should talk of the period without mentioning the Messiah,
felt the insertion to be a pious act."
[Isaac Asimov, _Asimov's Guide To The Bible_ ISBN 0-517-34582-X]
-------
"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]
-------
"We owe it to ourselves as respectable human beings, as thinking human
beings, to do what we can to make humanity more rational...Humanists
recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves,
using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing
values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests."
[Isaac Asimov]
-------
"It is rather remarkable that such a deed would be overlooked when
many more far less wicked deeds of Herod were carefully described."
[Isaac Asimov, "Guide to the Bible", on Herod's allegedly
killing all young male children to prevent the messiah]
-------
"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been
an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually
unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that
one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an
agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of
reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove
that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't
want to waste my time."
[Isaac Asimov, "Free Inquiry", Spring 1982, vol.2 no.2, p.9]
-------
"No other country has as diverse religious groups as the U.S., which
has at least 52 major denominations with memberships exceeding 100,000.
The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches lists 223 sects, cults,
and denominations, not counting groups such as the First Church of
Christ, Scientist, which provide no membership statistics."
[Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts]
-------
"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is
something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
[Isaac Asimov]
-------
"I certainly don't believe in the mythologies of our society, in heaven and
hell, in God and angels, in Satan and demons. I've thought of myself as an
'atheist,' but that simply described what I didn't believe in, not what I
did. Gradually, though, I became aware there was a movement called 'humanism,'
which used that name because, to put it most simply, humanists believe that
human beings produced the progressive advance of human society and also the
ills that plague it. They believe that if the ills are to be alleviated, it
is humanity that will have to do the job. They disbelieve in the influence
of the supernatural on either the good or the bad of society."
[Isaac Asimov, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
-------
"The fundamentalists deny that evolution has taken place; they deny that
the earth and the universe as a whole are more than a few thousand years
old, and so on. There is ample scientific evidence that the fundamentalists
are wrong in these matters, and that their notions of cosmogony have about
as much basis in fact as the Tooth Fairy has."
[Isaac Asimov, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
-------
"I am not responsible for what other people think. I am responsible only
for what I myself think, and I know what that is. No idea I've ever come
up with has ever struck me as a divine revelation. Nothing I have ever
observed leads me to think there is a God watching over me."
[Isaac Asimov, "Religiosity", from Isaac
Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Jan. 1992]
-------
"The bible must be seen in a cultural context. It didn't just
happen. These stories are retreads. But, tell a Christian that
-- No, No! What makes it doubly sad is that they hardly know
the book, much less its origins."
[Isaac Asimov]
-------
"I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole
life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the
tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse."
[Isaac Asimov]
-------
"Naturally, since [the Sumerians] didn't know what caused the flood
anymore than we do, they blamed the gods. (That's the advantage of
religion. You're never short an explanation for anything.)"
[Isaac Asimov, in essay "The Last Man on Earth",
1982, reprinted in his essay collection "The
Tyrannosaurus Prescription"]
-------
"...anger is the common substitute for logic among those who
have no evidence for what they desperately want to believe."
[Isaac Asimov, in essay "Hobgoblin", 1980, reprinted in
his essay collection "The Tyrannosaurus Prescription"]
-------
"Every religion seems like a fantasy to outsiders,
but as holy truth to those of the faith."
[Isaac Asimov, in essay "Is Fantasy Forever",
1982, reprinted in his essay collection
"The Tyrannosaurus Prescription"]
-------
"Properly read, the Bible is the most
potent force for atheism ever conceived."
[Isaac Asimov]
-------
"So the universe is not quite as you thought it was.
You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then.
Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe."
[Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg _Nightfall_]
-------
"It seems to me that it's insulting to human beings to imply that
only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent
human being...I have a conscience. It doesn't depend on religion."
[Isaac Asimov]
-------
"My aim is to argue that the universe can come into existence without
intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a
Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations."
[Peter William Atkins, preface to _The Creation_]
-------
"Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and
environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful
reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of
understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as
sentimental wishful thinking. Would not that same uncluttered mind also
see the attempts to reconcile science and religion by disparaging the
reduction of the complex to the simple as attempts guided by
muddle-headed sentiment and intellectually dishonest emotion?"
[P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science" essay in "Nature's
Imagination", John Cornwell, ed.; 1995 Oxford University Press, p.123]
-------
"Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to
dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to
comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny. Through fear of
being shown to be vacuous, religion denies the awesome power of human
comprehension. It seeks to thwart, by encouraging awe in things unseen,
the disclosure of the emptiness of faith. Religion, in contrast to
science, deploys the repugnant view that the world is too big for our
understanding. Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great
questions of being to rational discussion, to discussion with the
prospect of resolution and elucidation. Science, above all, respects the
power of the human intellect. Science is the apotheosis of the intellect
and the consummation of the Renaissance. Science respects more deeply
the potential of humanity than religion ever can."
[P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science" essay in "Nature's
Imagination", John Cornwell, ed.; 1995 Oxford University Press, p.125]
-------
"It's a vacuous answer . . . To say that 'God made the world' is
simply a more or less sophisticated way of saying that we don't
understand how the universe originated. A god, in so far as it
is anything, is an admission of ignorance."
[Peter Atkins, British Association
for the Advancement of Science]
-------
"I enjoy a little Christian-bashing, now and then."
[Atlanta Freethought Society member survey]
-------
"People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are
not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves
and taking responsibility for what they know."
[Brook Atkinson, "Once Around the Sun"]
-------
"Atheists!? I bet you're feeling a right bunch of charlies.....
And Christians!? Over here please. Yes, you see, I'm afraid
that the jews were right after all."
[Rowan Atkinson as The Devil (or 'Toby')
welcoming new arrivals to Hell]
-------
"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make
empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made
a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the
bonds of Hell."
[Saint Augustine]
-------
"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and
the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and
even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with
certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful
for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things,
claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all
that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as
ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn."
[St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim"
(The Literal Meaning of Genesis)]
-------
"I feel that nothing so casts down the manly mind from
it's height as the fondling of women and those bodily
contacts which belong to the married state."
[St. Augustine, De Trinitate 7.7]
-------
"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)]
-------
"It is indeed better (as no one ever could deny) that men should be led to
worship God by teaching, than that they should be driven to it by fear of
punishment or pain; but it does not follow that because the former course
produces the better men, therefore those who do not yield to it should be
neglected. For many have found advantage (as we have proved, and are daily
proving by actual experiment), in being first compelled by fear or pain, so
that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching, or might follow
out in act what they had already learned in word."
[St. Augustine, Treatise on the
Correction of the Donatists (417), p.214]
-------
"Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations."
[St. Augustine (354-430), "Soliloquies"]
-------
"Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way.
They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause
of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men."
[St. Augustine]
-------
"This then is not God, if thou has comprehended it;
but if this be God, thou hast not comprehended it."
[St. Augustine, "Sermo LII"]
-------
"It is impossible that there should be inhabitants on the
opposite side of the Earth, since no such race is recorded
by Scripture among the descendants of Adam."
[St. Augustine, from "The Dark Side of Christian
History" by Linda Ellerbe, 1995, Morningstar Books]
-------
"If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in
thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth,
which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in
self-delusion and ignorance which does harm."
[Marcus Aurelius]
-------
"God loves all his children, by gum.
That don't mean he won't incinerate some.
Can't you feel those hot flames licking you..."
[Austin Lounge Lizards, "Jesus Loves Me"]
-------
"The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion,
or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free
exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a
qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth."
[Australian Constitution, Section 116, from Menendez
and Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom]
-------
"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]
-------
"Theism is so confused and the sentences in which 'God' appears so
incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to
speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible."
[Alfred Jules Ayer, British philosopher (1910-1989),
"Language, Truth and Logic" quoted in "A History of God"]
-------
"The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from
the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that
there is such a thing as religious knowledge...Unless he can formulate
his "knowledge" in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we
may be sure that he is deceiving himself."
[A.J. Ayer, "Language, Truth and Logic"]
-------
"Religious Cult: The church down the street from yours."
[_B.C._ cartoon, 30 April 1994]
-------
"The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim
is an atheist who deserves to be punished."
[Muslim religious edict, 1993
Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz
Supreme religious authority, Saudi Arabia]
-------
"For they heard that command of our Creator, if they truly listened to
His instructions to be responsible stewards, then their entire framework
of human rationalizations for tearing apart Act comes to naught"
[U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, using
religious arguments to defend the 1973 Endangered Species
Act from conservatives who wish to limit or abolish it]
-------
"The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and
not when they miss and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other."
[Sir Francis Bacon]
-------
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to
laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral
virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all
these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men...the
master of superstition is the people; and arguments are fitted to
practice, in a reverse order."
[Sir Francis Bacon "Of Superstition"]
-------
"A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint."
[Francis Bacon]
-------
"The Trinitarian believes a virgin to be
the mother of a son who is her maker."
[Sir Francis Bacon, quoted in "2000 Years of
Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to
Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
-------
"Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that
natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other."
[Francis Bacon, "Of Death"]
-------
"People prefer to believe what they prefer to be true."
[Francis Bacon]
-------
"Hey Brother Christian with your high and mighty errand
Your actions speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying(...)
Hey Moral Soldier you've got righteous proclamations
And precious tomes to fuel your pulpy conflagrations"
[Bad Religion, "I want to conquer the world"]
-------
"I don't know what stopped Jesus Christ
from turning every hungry stone into bread,
And I don't remember hearing how Moses reacted
when the innocent first born sons lay dead,
Well I guess God was a bit more demonstrative
back when he flamboyantly parted the sea,
Now everybody's praying, Don't prey on me."
[Bad Religion, "Don't Pray on Me",
on the Recipe for Hate album]
-------
"And I want to conquer the world,
Give all the idiots a brand new religion..."
[Bad Religion]
-------
"Life ever-after is what they're in business for
See them brandish the key to their kingdom's door
It's persuasive upon a part of you and me
But not overwhelming as they wish it to be
If no one believed in fairy tales
There's nothing they could do but fail"
[Bad Religion, "Operation Rescue"]
-------
"No one really knows why we die
No one gets a break, so we try
Ignoring mortality, we worship mediocrity
And wait to see what happens up on high"
[Bad Religion, "In so Many Ways"]
-------
"Speak of Truth with a mighty voice
But politics are your real choice
Hire men to change the Law
Protect and serve with one small flaw
The Voice of God is government!"
[Bad Religion]
-------
"So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will
always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them
it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong."
[Walter Bagehot, Literary Studies]
-------
"When someone comes and proselytizes for another god or another final authority
(and by the way, that god may be man)--when someone tries to undermine the
commitment to Jehovah which is fundamental to the civil order of a godly
state--then that person needs to be restrained by the magistrate. However,
this does not mean that individuals should be punished for holding heretical
views, the views that Baptists think are heretical or Lutherans think are
heretical and so forth. It simply means that those who will not acknowledge
Jehovah as the ultimate authority behind the civil law code which the
magistrate is enforcing would be punished and repressed. You would, therefore,
be open, I believe, to hold Muslim views or Hindu views in the privacy of your
own home, provided it was not a Christian home that you've now come into to
subvert and draw away from Jehovah. You would be able to hold these views as a
private conviction. But you would not be allowed to proselytize and undermine
the order of the state. Before people who are non-theonomists get too terribly
upset about this view, I would at least ask them to reflect on this fact:
every civil order protects its foundations."
[Greg Bahnsen, Christian Reconstructionist, in "An Interview
with Greg L. Bahnsen," Calvinism Today, Jan. 1994, p. 23]
-------
"On the other hand, in a theonomic society the civil government would
promote virtues that it often works against today. It would reinstitute
laws protecting the observance of the Sabbath."
[Greg Bahnsen, God and Politics, ed. by Gary Scott Smith,
(New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1989), p. 263]
-------
"For Christianity, the world must be regarded as the "creation" of a
kind of Superman, a person possessing all the human excellences to an
infinite degree and none of the human weaknesses, Who has made man in His
image, a feeble, mortal, foolish copy of Himself. In creating the universe,
God acts as a sort of playwright-cum-legislator-cum-judge-cum-executioner."
[Kurt E. M. Baier, "The Meaning of Life"]
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"...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_]
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"Why is it that Christianity more than any other of the
world's religions has succumbed to the racist disease?"
[John Austin Baker, the former Bishop of Salisbury UK,
Theology and Racism, quoted by Edward Patey, Dean of
Liverpool Cathedral in "Questions for Today", 1986, p81]
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"One of the many burdens of the person professing Christianity has always
been the odium likely to be heaped upon him by fellow Christians quick to
smell out, denounce and punish fraud, hypocrisy and general unworthiness
among those who assert the faith. In ruder days, disputes about what
constituted a fully qualified Christian often led to sordid quarrels in
which the disputants tortured, burned and hanged each other in the
conviction that torture, burning and hanging were Christian things to do..."
[Russell Baker, The New York Times, December 1988,
from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
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"It's not listed in the Bible, but my spiritual gift, my specific
calling from God, is to be a television talk-show host."
[James Bakker]
-------
"I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim."
[Tammy Fae Bakker]
-------
"...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]
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"You can educate yourself right out of a relationship with God."
[Tammy Faye Bakker (1942-), U.S. television evangelist,
former co-host of PTL TV ministry and wife of Jim Bakker
who was imprisoned for defrauding his followers.
From "Observer" (London), 28 Feb. 1988]
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"There's times when I just have to quit thinking... and
the only way I can quit thinking is by shopping."
[Tammy Faye Bakker, in "And I Quote,"
by Ashton Applewhite, 1992]
-------
"I take Him shopping with me. I say, "OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain."
[Tammy Faye Bakker, from "Food for Thought,"
internet collection by Jack Tourette]
-------
"You don't have to be dowdy to be a Christian."
[Tammy Faye Bakker, "Newsweek," 8 Jun. 1987]
-------
"I always say shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist."
[Tammy Faye Bakker, in "And I Quote,"
by Ashton Applewhite, 1992]
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"A Boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth,
therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished."
[Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876) Russian
anarchist, atheist author, and founder of Nihilism,
from "God and the State", 1874]
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"The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice;
it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily
ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice. He
who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about
the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity."
[Mikhail Bakunin, from "Federalism,
Socialism, and Anti-Theologism"]
-------
"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, "God and the State" (Dieu et l'etat)
1874, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
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"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and
emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and
obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and
humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge."
[Bakunin, _God and the State_ (1874)]
-------
"A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute
condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I
reverse the phrase of Voltaire and say, 'if God really
existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.'"
[Mikhail Bakunin, "God and the State", 1874]
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"If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and
must be free; then, God does not exist."
I defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle;
now, therefore, let all choose."
[Mikhail Bakunin, "God and the State", 1874]
-------
"They [religious idealists] say in a single breath: "God and the liberty
of man," "God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity
of men" -- regardless of the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God
exists, all these things are condemned to nonexistence. For, if God is,
he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master, and, if such a
master exists, man is a slave. Now, if he is a slave, neither justice,
nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity are possible for him. In
vain, flying in the face of good sense and all the teachings of history,
do they represent their God as animated by the tenderest love of human
liberty. A master, whoever he may be and however liberal he may desire
to show himself, remains none the less always a master."
[Mikhail Bakunin, "God and the State", 1874]
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"With the name of God they imagine that they can establish fraternity among
men, and on the contrary, they create pride, contempt; they sow discord,
hatred, war; they establish slavery. For with God came the different
degrees of divine inspiration; humanity is divided into men highly inspired,
less inspired, uninspired. All are equally insignificant before God, it is
true; but compared with each other, some are greater than others; not only
in fact- which would be of no consequence, because inequality in fact is
lost in the collectivity when it cannot cling to some legal fiction or
institution- but by the divine right of inspiration, which immediately
establishes a fixed, constant, petrifying inequality. The highly inspired
must be listened to and obeyed by the less inspired, and the less inspired
by the uninspired. Thus we have the principle of authority well established,
and with it the two fundamental institutions of slavery: Church and State."
[Mikhail Bakunin, "Church and State", 1872, p. 53]
-------
"For ten centuries Christianity, armed with the omnipotence of the Church
and State and opposed by no competition, was able to deprave, debase, and
falsify the mind of Europe. It had no competitors, because outside the
Church there was neither thinkers nor educated persons. It along taught,
it alone spoke and wrote, it alone taught."
[Mikhail Bakunin, "Church and State", 1872, p. 78]
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"The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology,
of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven,
we will be slaves on earth."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, "God and the State," from
James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
-------
"Christianity is the complete negation of common sense and sound reason."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, God and the State, from
James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
-------
"God, or rather the fiction of God, is thus the sanction and the
intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery on earth, and the
liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will have completely
annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, Oeuvres, vol. 1, p. 143, from
James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
-------
"Theology is the science of the divine lie."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, from George Seldes, ed., The Great
Quotations, also James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
-------
"People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to
stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves,
for a few minutes anyway, free and happy."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, Circular Letter to My Friends in
Italy, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
-------
"We are materialists and atheists, and we glory in the fact."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, from Rufus K. Noyes, Views of Religion,
also James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
-------
"Religion is a collective insanity."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, from Rufus K. Noyes, Views of Religion,
also James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
-------
"All temporal or human authority proceeds directly from spiritual authority.
But authority is the negation of liberty. God, or rather the fiction of God,
is thus the sanction and the intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery
on earth, and the liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will
have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, Oeuvres, Vol. I, p. 283]
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"Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty-
necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have
discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels."
[James Baldwin, "Letter from a Region in My Mind," in New
Yorker (17 Nov. 1962; repr. in The Fire Next Time, 1963)]
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"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. "Letter from a Region in My Mind," in New
Yorker (17 Nov. 1962; repr. in The Fire Next Time, 1963)]
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"...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_]
-------
"Love your drag, honey, but did you know your purse is on fire?"
[Tallulah Bankhead, to the censer preceding
the bishop up the aisle at Catholic service]
-------
"Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present."
[Iain M Banks]
-------
"God has been replaced, as he has all over the West,
with respectability and air conditioning."
[Imamu Amiri Baraka, "What Does Non-Violence
Mean?" Home, 1966, from James A. Haught,
ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
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"The very concept of sin comes from the bible. Christianity offers to
solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person
who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"How happy can you be when you think every action and
thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost?"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a
bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say
"God is love," they will claim that *you* are taking things out of context!"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never
again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and
suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity.
Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal
torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules.
Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love
that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is
respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a
healthy, unafraid human being."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
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"I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say
anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is
valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe,
deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently
evil--you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential
to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind.
Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling--absolutely essential
to mental health and happiness."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"It's not easy to change world views. Faith has its own momentum and belief
is comfortable. To restructure reality is traumatic and scary. That is why
many intelligent people continue to believe: unbelief is an unknown."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"For my money, I'll bet on reason and humanistic kindness. Even if I am wrong
I will have enjoyed my life, the existence of which is under little dispute."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed
I am that I ever believed Christian notions."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"Not thinking critically, I assumed that the "successful" prayers
were proof that God answers prayer while the failures were proof
that there was something wrong with me."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"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."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"Without "The Law of Moses" would we all be wandering around like little gods,
stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended?"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
-------
"Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday,
singing, "yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I
believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down.
Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it."
[ex-preacher Dan Barker]
-------
"Just say NO to religion."
[Dan Barker]
-------
"You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time,
But I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime."
[Dan Barker]
-------
"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, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
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"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the
only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then
you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits."
[Dan Barker Former evangelist, author, critic]
-------
"I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God.
That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist"]
-------
"If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist"]
-------
"We were blood brothers, pals forever. He was my very best friend.
Nobody else could see him. I now know he was just pretend."
[Dan Barker]
-------
"I threw out all the bath water, and there was no baby there."
[Dan Barker, referring to the Bible in a debate, 1989]
-------
"God is the anthropomorphized Aesop character who represents the
culmination of all the guilt (i.e. vulnerability) we feel whenever
our own megalomaniacal self-support structure (sense of internal reality
control) fails to distract us from the dread of our imminent demise."
[Br0d Barkett]
-------
"The orthodox faith painted God as a revengeful being,
and yet people talk about loving such a being."
[P.T. Barnum (1810-1891), from Rufus K. Noyes, Views of
Religion, also James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
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"If there were a god, there would be no need for religion.
If there were not a god, there would be no need for religion."
[Ron Barrier, [email protected]]
-------
"There is no such thing as a god. If such a creature existed,
belief would be rendered unnecessary, and the entire system
of organized religion would collapse."
[Ron Barrier, [email protected]]
-------
"Atheism - Your Gain, No Pain!"
[Ron Barrier]
-------
"God is a placebo for your own mortality."
[Robert Barron]
-------
"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukkah"
and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
Hanukkah!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
[Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"]
-------
"In fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation
Man came up with for *anything* until about 1926 was stupid."
[Dave Barry]
-------
"Pretty rowdy behavior for Jesus. He'd get a buzz off
the beer and go squealing out of the parking lot."
[Bartender in Waco, TX]
-------
"There should be absolutely no 'Separation of Church and State' in America."
[David Barton, president of Wallbuilders and a close ally of
the Christian Coalition, 1994 Anti-Defamation League Report]
-------
"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, [email protected]]
-------
"If a man achieves or suffers change in premises which are deeply
embedded in his mind, he will surely find that the results of that
change will ramify throughout his whole universe."
[Gegory Bateson]
-------
"We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There's a lot of talk
in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody's values will
prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe."
[Gary Bauer, religious-right Family Research Council]
-------
"Do you want 'Transvestite Coming Out Week?' 'Sado-masochist Coming
Out Week?' People can do all sorts of things in the privacy of their
bedrooms, and they will bear the consequences of what they do. But I
don't understand this insistence in putting it in our face."
[Gary Bauer, Pres., Family Research Council and 2000 US
Presidential candidate, from USA Today Oct. 15, 1999]
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