"..it is high time that scholars of all godly religions united to confront the forces of immorality in the present day under various names such as secularism, human rights, freedom of speech." [Tehran's Kayhan International newspaper urging cooperation with the Vatican in opposing the U.N. population control document] ------- SONNET Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition The church bells toll a melancholy round, Calling the people to some other prayers, Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound. Surely the mind of man is closely bound In some black spell; seeing that each one tears Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs, And converse high of those with glory crown'd. Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp, -- A chill as from a tomb, did I not know That they are dying like an outburnt lamp; That 'tis their sighing, wailing ere they go Into oblivion; -- that fresh flowers will grow, And many glories of immortal stamp. [John Keats (1795-1821), poet] ------- "Supposing, for the sake of hypothesis, a race of men in a state of total or partial ignorance of Deity, their belief in many gods may have thus commenced. They saw around them various changes brought about by human agency, and hence they knew the power of intelligence to produce effects. When they beheld other and greater effects, they ascribed them to some unseen being, similar but superior to man." [Keightley, "Origin of Mythology"] ------- "My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time." [Garrison Keillor] ------- "It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui." [Helen Keller] ------- "There is much in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention." [Helen Keller (1880-1968), U.S. author, lecturer. "The Story of My Life," pt. 1, ch. 21 (1903)] ------- "Faith is a euphemism for prejudice and religion is a euphemism for superstition." [Paul Keller, American rationalist] ------- "Some husbands are unable to prevent the discharge of their semen before the actual union of bodies. This condition is called "premature ejaculation." By exerting self-control and consciously attempting to remain calm through the preparatory stages of love-making, the conscientious husband can learn to retain his semen until after his wife receives him. When premature ejaculation occurs involuntarily--that is, when it is not the result of the husband's deliberate intention to avoid the deposit of semen into his wife's body--it is not immoral. When such ejaculations are resorted to as a means of preventing conception, they are sinful. It is this sin for which God punished Onan, the first known practitioner, with immediate death." [Rev. George A. Kelly, "The Catholic Marriage Manual" copyright 1958] ------- "I use irrational numbers to count religious people. I use imaginary numbers to count gods." [Graham Kendall] ------- "God whispered in my ear while I was sleeping last night. "He told me he hates you. Prove he did not." [Graham Kendall] ------- "I do not serve gods, as they are hard to catch, let alone cook." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Catholics claim the Protestants are wrong. Protestants claim Catholics are wrong. I agree with both groups in this matter." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Allah is like Jehovah in a turban." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Christians do not have faith in God so much as they have GREATER faith in the people who told them which god to worship, and ultimately -supreme- faith in their ability to choose the correct god, and to correctly interpret that god. Christians, in reality, worship nobody but themselves." [Graham Kendall] ------- "I am wiser than all the gods and goddesses. That is because I am real and they are fictional." [Graham Kendall] ------- "The difference between science and theology is that science has general validity." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Simple proof of God. Since God exists, therefore God exists. QED All other proofs are this one, with added complexity." [Graham Kendall] ------- "God is immaterial, invisible, transcendental-- almost the same definition as 'nothing'." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich" [Graham Kendall] ------- "Christians think a long record of church attendence and Bible reading is equivalent to an advanced degree in science." [Graham Kendall] ------- "If 18,000 gods have been invented then it is likely that god 18,001 is also invented." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Christian theology is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering." [Graham Kendall] ------- "The point of existence is not to find the most powerfull thing you can imagine and then grovel before it." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Faith is delusion with social reinforcement." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Parents teach their children to look both ways when crossing the street. They tell them to look only one way when choosing a religion." [Graham Kendall] ------- "If the bible proves the existence of God, then Action Comics prove the existence of Superman." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Can God make other Gods like Himself? Can God make Himself not exist?" [Graham Kendall] ------- "A fundie claimed "God invented science". All of science is tentative and approximate, also sometimes mistaken. Is that the best God can do?" [Graham Kendall] ------- "Anyone can claim to do anything in the name of God. It does not follow that God is agreeing to this partnership." [Graham Kendall] ------- "If you can not tell the Christians from the crazy people,"then what does that mean?" [Graham Kendall] ------- "A deity who remains silent and invisible should not get angry or surprised at doubt of His reality." [Graham Kendall] ------- "People who need to believe in deities can find them everywhere they look." [Graham Kendall] ------- "The talking donkey said the talking snake story is true." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Theology and astrology are both popular delusions with similar predictive value." [Graham Kendall] ------- "The Bible is accurate only in the original Klingon." [Graham Kendall] ------- "The earlier Christians fought for a static earth. That failed, so they now fight for static species." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Religion is a childhood disease of the race." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Science works very well in the real world. Religion works elsewhere." [Graham Kendall] ------- "If the Christians get creationism into the schools, supposedly as science, teachers are then free to criticize it. The preachers will then complain their religion is being attacked." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Science works well in the whole universe. Theology works only in churches." [Graham Kendall] ------- "The questions Christians ask of me often tend to have built in answers, supporting their own theological world view. Example "WHO made the universe?" [Graham Kendall] ------- "Creation stories are seldom written by the deity involved." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Saying AMEN after prayer is like hitting the ENTER key." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Lies in religion just make another religion." [Graham Kendall] ------- "If you need a God, I just invented one named Larry. If you need a Trinity, add Curley and Moe." [Graham Kendall] ------- "The chance of going to hell is about the same as being impaled on a unicorn's horn." [Graham Kendall] ------- "If people believed in science, preachers would have to go sell shoes instead of myths." [Graham Kendall] ------- "The religious opinions of a scientist have no more authority than those of a football coach." [Graham Kendall] ------- "If Christ touches the Antichrist, do both disappear in a burst of gamma rays? [Graham Kendall] ------- "The Gish Principle -> If a gap exists between two fossil species, and an intermediate fossil species is discovered, then two gaps are present now and evolution is disproved even more." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Fabricating answers to unanswerable questions is the domain of religion. A deity model is not the default alternative to a scientific mystery." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Science needs theology like a free man needs chains." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Modern science has changed when scientists produced the evidence that change was required, not because preachers could not accept it." [Graham Kendall] ------- "When you do not know what you are talking about, label it SPIRITUAL TRUTH." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Being a fundie is a head start toward mental problems." [Graham Kendall] ------- "You need a Holy Ghost Secret Decoder Ring to understand the Bible." [Graham Kendall] ------- "The First law of Thermodynamics disproves the loaves and fishes story. The Second Law of Thermodynamics disproves hell." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Faith leads you anywhere you want to go, It can lead to the Hale-Bopp space ship, Waco or Jonestown. ALL ABOARD." [Graham Kendall] ------- "If you can invent a great God, I can invent a greater God and it is Gods all the way up." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Change in religion is a scandal. Change in science is progress." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Many reports of resurections occurred in the past. Apparently it was harder to stay dead back then." [Graham Kendall] ------- "An incomplete model of reality is not equivalent to a false model of reality." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Christians pick on past errors and present mysteries to disprove all of science and hope that automatically makes their system the default one." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Honesty is necessary in science but only an option in theology." [Graham Kendall] ------- "God is no more and no less than what the inventors proposed." [Graham Kendall] ------- "Science does very well without a Holy Spirit to advise it and the creationists do very poorly with it." [Graham Kendall] ------- "WE MUST NOT LET THE HOMOSEXUALS TAKE AMERICA'S CHILDREN. Please send your gift right away. Thank you again!" [Rev. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries fundraising letter, November 1999] ------- "God is raising up an army of believers to take back the land and Reclaim America." [Rev. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries On-line Newsletter, February, 1999] ------- "The court decided, based on its reading of our precedents, that the effects test of Lemon is violated whenever government action "creates an identification of the state with a religion, or with religion in general," ...or when "the effect of the governmental action is to endorse one religion over another, or to endorse religion in general." [Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee vs. Weisman, 1992] ------- "The First Amendment's Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed by the State. The design of the Constitution is that preservation and transmission of religious beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere, which itself is promised freedom to pursue that mission. It must not be forgotten then, that while concern must be given to define the protection granted to an objector or a dissenting non-believer, these same Clauses exist to protect religion from government interference. James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights, did not rest his opposition to a religious establishment on the sole ground of its effect on the minority. A principal ground for his view was: "[E]xperience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of main- taining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation." [Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee vs. Weisman, 1992] ------- "In religious debate or expression the government is not a prime participant, for the Framers deemed religious establishment antithetical to the freedom of all. The Free Exercise Clause embraces a freedom of conscience and worship that has close parallels in the speech provisions of the First Amendment, but the Establishment Clause is a specific prohibition on forms of state intervention in religious affairs with no precise counterpart in the speech provisions. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 92-93, and n. 127 (1976) (per curiam). The explanation lies in the lesson of history that was and is the inspiration for the Establishment Clause, the lesson that in the hands of government what might begin as a tolerant expression of religious views may end in a policy to indoctrinate and coerce. A state-created orthodoxy puts at grave risk that freedom of belief and conscience which are the sole assurance that religious faith is real, not imposed." [Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee v. Weisman] ------- "The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lession is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people," [Supreme Court Justice Kennedy for majority, Lee v. Weisman, 1992] ------- "It is beyond dispute that, at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise..." [Justice Kennedy, lead opinion, Lee v. Weisman, 505US 577 (1992)] ------- "Priestesses should be burnt at the stake because they are assuming powers they have no right to. In the medieval world that was called sorcery. The way of dealing with sorcerers was to burn them at the stake. It's illegal now but if I had my way that is what would happen to them. In medieval times, I would burn the bloody bitches." [Church of England vicar Rev. Anthony Kennedy, March 9,1994 as reported in the Times, regarding female CofE priests] ------- "I would shoot the bastards if I was allowed, because a woman can't represent Christ. Men and women are totally different, that's not my fault, and Jesus chose men for his disciples." [Church of England vicar Rev. Anthony Kennedy, March 9,1994 regarding female CofE priests] ------- "It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses." [Flo Kennedy] ------- "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him." [President John F. Kennedy, speech to the National Council of Churches] ------- "I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end... where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice." [Pres. John F. Kennedy, to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960] ------- "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view." [Ben Kenobi] ------- "When the missionaries first came to our land, they had the Bibles and we had the land. Fifty years later, we had the Bibles and they had the land." [Jomo Kenyatta, first President of Kenya after independence] ------- "The party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and Positive Christianity IS National Socialism...National Socialism is the doing of God's will...God's will reveals itself in German blood...Dr. Zoellner and Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh...No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed...True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially by the Fuehrer to a real Christianity...The Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation." [Dr. Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs] ------- "The Essenses are not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament, although their numbers were at least as great as the Sadducees and Pharisees. This would suggest an element of intentional secrecy regarding the influence of the sect on the teachings and work of Jesus." ["The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection" by Holger Kersten & Elmer R. Gruber p. 239] ------- "The Essenes had various communities in Palestine, with the main center at Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. The sensational discovery of numerous scrolls in a cave at Qumran in 1947 made it possible to gain glimpses into a community which practised in a way, 'Christianity before Christ'. As is well known, the translation of the material was systematically boycotted and only very recently almost all the Qumran texts have appeared in print. Similarities between the teaching of Jesus and those of the Essenes are obvious..." ["The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection" by Holger Kersten & Elmer R. Gruber p. 239] ------- "Qumran lies directly within the orbit of Jesus' early activity. His first public appearance occurred in this region. It is a striking fact that the place where Jesus received the ritual baptismal bath in the Jordan at the hands of John, was only 5 km from the monastic settlement of Qumran. There is of course a reason for this. John the Baptist was a *schaliach*, an apostle of the sect of Qumran...John led a community of Essene moderates. After his baptism one should similarly count Jesus as a member of one of these communities, and refer to him as a Nazarene. This later led to the falsely translated and irrational description of him as 'Jesus of Nazareth', a place which was not even in existence at the time of Jesus. Later a sign was said to have been fixed to the Cross, giving charge against him as membership of this sect: "Jesus, Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum--Jesus, Nazarene, King of the Jews." ["The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection" by Holger Kersten & Elmer R. Gruber p. 239] ------- ROONEY: "Did you really seriously worry about going to prison?" KEVORKIAN: "No! Never! Am I a criminal? The world knows I'm not a criminal! What are they trying to put me in jail for? You've lost common sense in this society because of religious fanaticism and dogma. You're basing your laws, and your whole outlook on natural life, on mythology! It won't work! That's why you have all these problems in the world. Name them -- India, Pakistan, Ireland. Name them! All these problems -- they're all religious problems!" [Dr. Jack Kevorkian, with Andy Rooney on "60 Minutes"] ------- "Politics must be founded on the solid faith of God almighty" [Alan Keyes, Rep. presidential candidate, at Christian Coalition "Road to Victory" convention] ------- "If we accept the logic of the Declaration, reverence for God is not just a matter of religious faith, it is the foundation of justice and citizenship in our republic." [Alan Keyes, Rep. presidential candidate, 1995] ------- "The doctrine of 'separation of church and state' is a misinterpretation of the Constitution." [Dr. Alan Keyes, 2000 Presidential candidate, on his webpage at www.keyes2000.com] ------- "Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise! One thing at least is certain--This life flies; One thing is certain and the rest is lies; The Flower that once has blown for ever dies." [Omar Khayyam (11th century) "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"] ------- "Killing is a form of mercy because it rectifies the person. Sometimes a person cannot be reformed unless he is cut up and burnt....You must kill, burn and lock up those in opposition." [Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranian religious leader, Feb. 3, 1984] ------- "The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever." [Soren Kierkegaard] ------- "Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it." [Soren Kierkegaard, Time magazine, 16 December 1946] ------- "We are protesting the fact that this country and especially Texas would give any place to these filthy sodomites. It would be better to give honor to a maggot than a faggot. At least maggots are natural and serve a worthwhile purpose, while faggots are filthy, ungodly, perverts who hate God, His word and His people." [Kilgore, Texas group's press release protesting the play "Angels in America" from The Washington Blade, Oct. 22, 1999] ------- "Read the Bible. It teaches you how to act. Read the hymn book. It contains the finest poetry ever written. Read the almanac. It shows you how to figure out what the weather will be. There isn't another book that is necessary for anyone to read, and therefore I am opposed to all libraries." [Hal Kimberly, a Georgia legislator, first part of this century, quoted in Ray Ginger, "Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes", (Oxford > University Press, 1974 (1958)), p. 15.] ------- "...It was as if the interlopers had suggested to a bunch of born-again Christians that they hunt up the Ark of the Covenant and turn it into a pay toilet." [Stephen King (The Wastelands)] ------- "...sane men and women don't believe in God. That was all, that was flat. You can't say it from the pulpit, because the congregation'd run you out of town, but it's the truth. God isn't about reason; God is about faith and belief. God says, "Sure take away the safety net. And when that's gone, take away the tightrope, too." [Stephen King, "Desperation"] ------- "The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window." [Stephen King] ------- "As far as Roland was concerned, God o' the Cross was just another religion which taught that love and murder were inextricably bound together-that in the end, God always drank blood." [Stephen King] ------- "The Semites all had one thing in common. Their gods lived in stone. Yahweh lived in Beth El. The Semites weren't sculptors so they couldn't humanize their gods. Their gods remained abstract and powerful. Al Uzza of the Nabateans. Yahweh and Allah. Allah still lives in a stone in Mecca. It's _that stone_ that a devout Moslem faces five times a day. Yahweh lived in the stone that was housed in the Ark of the Covenant, and the Jews would still be worshipping it today if it hadn't been destroyed when the Temple of Solomon was sacked. "The God of my Rock; in Him Ah will trust,'' she said, quoting the Southern Baptist Bible." [Donald Kingsbury, _The Moon Goddess and the Son_, p. 72] ------- Xtian (at crucifixion): " It's a shame he has to die" Jesus (shouting from cross): "Well maybe I wouldn't have to die if somebody would get a LADDER and a pair of PLIERS!!" [Kinison, 0:0] ------- "And lo, Jesus did say unto the soldiers 'Not the OTHER hand. Ow shit, that hurts! You assholes!' " [2 Kinison 3:45] ------- "The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so! To my own Gods I go. It may be they shall give me greater ease than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities." [Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), British author, poet. Plain Tales from the Hills, chapter heading to "Lispeth" (1888)] ------- "Obedience. A religion of slaves. A religion of intellectual death. I like it. Don't ask questions, don't think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it has been conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy Rolex on his wrist. I like that job! Where can I sign up?" [Oleg Kiselev] ------- "Since they want Creationism taught in public schools, contemporary Creationists cannot present their view as based on religious faith. On the other hand, the doctrine is too dear to be subjected to the possibility of outright defeat. What is wanted, then, is a version of Creationism that is not vulnerable to refutation, but that appears to enjoy the objective status that can only be conferred by evidential support. This is an impossible demand. A theory cannot drink at the well of evidential support without running the risk of being poisoned by future data." [Philip Kitcher, "Abusing Science, The Case Against Creationism"] ------- "Christianity has been giving humanity a hand job for thousands of years. Why do you think they say, "Jesus coming soon"." [Steve Knight] ------- "You think there is a magic pixie that came from nowhere, made the universe, then tortures people eternally for not believing in it, because it loves them? Does that sum it up?" [Steven Knight] ------- "Ethical teaching is weakened if it is tied up with dogmas that will not bear examination." [Margaret Knight, "Morals Without Religion," 1955] ------- "It is amazing how few religers actually sit down and decide for themselves what the "book of punishment" is all about. Whenever you quote one of the atrocities their deity commits, they will turn around and say, "But god is just." Never mind fictionally drowning millions, the important part is how "good" the deity is for doing it. The depth of fear installed by this monster's parasites (preachers) is a human disgrace. They take advantage of the "masses" and fill their heads with fear and punishment, just to propagate the institution of fear-based religion." [Stephen Knight] ------- "You think there is a magic pixie that came from nowhere, made the universe, then tortures people eternally for not believing in it, because it loves them? Does that sum it up?" [Steve Knight] ------- "Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate." [F. M. Knowles, "A Cheerful Year Book"] ------- "Woman was made for only one reason, to serve and obey man." [John Knox, of Presyterian fame] ------- "God is an invention of Man. So the nature of God is only a shallow mystery. The deep mystery is the nature of man." [Nanrei Kobori, Buddhist Abbot of the Temple of the Shining Dragon] ------- "Apparently xians require constant affirmation of their beliefs, else they begin to revert to their natural state of disbelief. This must be one of the defense mechanisms of the xian memes, evolved over 2000 years of ignoring reality." [Paul J. Koeck] ------- "I have repeatedly stressed that the selfish impulses of man constitute a much less historic danger than his integrative tendencies. To put it in the simplest way: the individual who indulges in an excess of aggressive self-assertiveness incurs the penalties of society- he outlaws himself, he contracts out of the hierarchy. The true believer, on the other hand, becomes more closely knit into it; he enters the womb of his church, or party, or whatever the social holon to which he surrenders his identity." [Arthur Koestler, "The Ghost in the Machine"] ------- "God seems to have left the receiver off the hook and time is running out." [Arthur Koestler] ------- "God is dethroned; and although the incognizant masses are tardy in realizing the event, they feel the icy draught caused by that vacancy. Man enters upon a spiritual ice age; the established churches can no longer provide more than Eskimo huts where their shivering flock huddles together." [Arthur Koestler] ------- "How many men choose the belief system for which they are prepared to die? Your credo is just as much a matter of the hazards of birth as your citizenship. If you were in Jordan, you'd be a good Moslem. Once the credo is imprinted, man's schizoid brain permits his faith to coexist with his reason, even when they contradict on every point." [Arthur Koestler] ------- "What...can we surmise about the likelihood of someone's being caring and generous, loving and helpful, just from knowing that they are a believer? Virtually nothing, say psychologists, sociologists, and others who have studied that question for decades." [Alfie Kohn, in "Psychology Today"] ------- "In the brain of every religious person there is a god shaped vacuum." [Jeremy Konopka on alt.atheism] ------- "The church lives on the fact that modern research about Jesus is not known amongst the public." [Hans Konzelmann] ------- "Illusions die hard and it is painful to yield to the insight that a grown-up can be no man's disciple." [Sheldon B. Kopp] ------- "O ye who believe! Murder those of the disbelievers .... and let them find harshness in you." [Koran, Repentance: 123] ------- "Humiliate the non-Muslims to such an extent that they surrender and pay tribute." [Koran, Repentance: 29] ------- "O believers, do not treat your fathers and brothers as your friends, if they prefer unbelief to belief, whosoever of you takes them for friends, they are evil-doers." [Koran, Repentance: 20] ------- "Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends.... whoso does that belongs not to God." [Koran, The House of Imram: 60] ------- "Give tidings, O Mohammed, of painful doom to those who disbelieve.. Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them..And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah." [The Koran] ------- "They who believe not shalt have garments of fire fitted unto them; boiling water shall be poured upon their heads; their bowels shall be dissolved thereby, and also their skins, and they shall be beaten with maces of iron." [The Koran] ------- "When I was a kid in the ghetto, a gang started going around harassing people, so some of the toughest kids formed a gang called The Sharks to stop them. The other gang was called The Jehovah's Witnesses." [Charles Kosar] ------- "Changes in the educational levels of the general population in recent years appear to account for much of the variance in biblical beliefs over time. The current proportion of biblical literalists is 32%, only half of what it was in 1963, when 65% of Americans said they believed in the absolute truth of all words in the Bible and that it represented the actual word of God. Belief in inerrancy is most likely to be found among people who did not complete high school (58%), and least likely among college graduates (29%)." [One Nation Under God, (1993) Barry A. Kosmin & Seymour P. Lachman. pg. 268] ------- "The issue for fundamentalism is how to get people to obey absolute rules that cannot be obeyed absolutely. There is of course force and fear. But it is more reliable to have people who want to obey the rules. The easiest way to do this is to make people feel bad about themselves and then offer them a way of feeling better. Fundamentalism does this by creating a worldview of sin and redemption via a moral order whose basic tenets give these easy answers to life: 1. Why am I here? To get better through obeying the rules. 2. Why do I need to get better? Because a part of you is bad (original sin) - you're not good enough. 3. What happens if I break the rules? You get punished by a power that is inescapable. If you have sufficient remorse and resubmit, you may be forgiven. 4. What happens if I keep the rules? You get rewarded by that same power - usually after death." [Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad, The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power, p.169-70, pub. A.D. 1993] ------- "Having good and evil as separate categories made it easier to control people within hierarchies. The external controls of tribalism (group approval or censure, shame, and ostracism) became insufficient for controlling larger groups in which people did not know each other. A dualistic morality where the abstract concepts of good and evil are internalized, coupled with an omniscient God who spies on every act, shifts control to internal mechanisms such as fear and guilt." [Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad, The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power, p.189, pub. A.D. 1993] ------- "Self-consciously designed to be an instrument with which to structure the secular politics of individual interest and happiness, the Constitution was bitterly attacked for its failure to mention God or Christianity... In fact, this under-documented and under-remembered controversy of 1787-88 over the godless Constitution was one of the most important public debates ever held in America over the place of religion in politics. The advocates of a secular state won, and it is their Constitution we revere today." [Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, "The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness"] ------- "...You watch these debates, brimming with God- talk, and you catch a whiff of the Taliban." [Charles Krauthammer, on the 2000 Presidential debates] ------- "Over the years I realized the god I prayed to was the god I invented. When I was talking to him, I was talking to myself. He had no understanding or qualities that I did not have. When I realized god was an extension of my imagination, I stopped praying to him." [Howard Kreisner, host of "The American Atheist Hour"] ------- "Satan the envious said with a sigh: Christians know more about their hell than I." [Alfred Kreymborg] ------- "...your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life." [Krishnamurti] ------- "Seems to me that Christians worship the incredible shrinking god. I mean at one time it was supposedly capable of flinging thousands of billions of galaxies into existence with a mere thought. By the time of Noah, it was reduced to flooding an insignificant speck in the cosmos. By the time of Moses, its best trick was moving a tiny portion of a minor sea aside for a short while. By the time of Jesus, it has to send a delegate on its behalf who leaves behind only rumors that he was able to turn water into another beverage, or render himself extra buoyant. Now it counts as a miracle if a water stain grows mold that kind of looks like a bearded face which could be claimed to resemble this supposed delegate. How much more pathetic can this god get? How do Christians manage to sing praises of its glory and greatness without feeling like fools--or at best, like new parents gushing over their toddler's ability to make a pee." ["Kronk" on alt.atheism] ------- "People who think are not blessed with that naivet‚ which permitted the ordinary Christian to reconcile the omnipotent benevolence of God with the existence of a Devil." [Joseph Wood Krutch] ------- "There must be a Silicon Heaven. Where do all the calculators go?" [Kryten, "Red Dwarf"] ------- "To believe a myth is as easy a thing as breathing the air. But holding one's breath for a lifetime -- that is difficult." [Michael P. Kube-McDowell, "Exile"] ------- "For 15 hours a day, I sit in this same chair, totally dependent on someone else coming in here to make me a cup of tea. It's neither living nor dying. It's stuck in the middle. My only regret is that for 40 years I spoke of a good God who helps people, who knows what you need and how all you have to do is ask for it. Well, that's baloney. I want to tell the world that it's a bunch of bull. Don't believe a word of it." [Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross, author of "A Deathbed Confession" on death and dying, after a debilitating stroke; to Ken Ross of the _San Francisco Chronicle_ on May 31; article in_Skeptic_ magazine, Vol.5 No.2 1997, page 28] ------- "It is quite more likely that the Christians chose the name Christian (rather than Chrestian) for the luster that the high name would shed on them than that their virtues shed luster upon the name. The name needed no extraneous illumination; the Christians (as has been seen) doubtless did." [A.B. Kuhn] ------- "From the walls of the temple of Luxor... there faces Christianity a group of four scenes that spell the non-historicity of four episodes purveyed as history in the Gospel's recital of the Christ's nativity: the angel's pronouncement to the shepherds tending their flocks by night in the fields; the annunciation of the angel to the virgin; the adoration of the infant by three Magi; and the nativity scene itself. Egypt had used the symbol of a star rising in the east as the portent of coming deity for millenia anterior to the Christian era. Egypt had knelt at the shrine of the Madonna and Child, Isis and Horus, for long centuries before a historical Mary lifted a historical Jesus in her arms... Egypt had known a Jesus who long antedated the Gospel Messiah and who presented to the student some one hundred and eight items of identity, similarity, and correspondence in word, deed, and function with his later copy. [Alvin Boyd Kuhn, "Who Is This King of Glory?" Elizabeth, N.J. Academy Press, 1944 pp. x-xi) quoted in John G. Jackson, "Christianity Before Christ" Austin TX: American Atheist Press, 1985 on page 116] ------- "It should be made clear that in order to live a Christian life, any Christian must be able to discriminate and hate, because that's what the bible says." [Bernhard Kuiper, Colorado Springs pastor] ------- "It makes a big difference if we think of God as a person or as a force. One way you get Christianity, the other you get Star Wars." [Jayne Kulikauskas] ------- "Secular humanism does not have the essential attributes of a religion: belief in a deity, the wish for some sort of afterlife, "sacred" dogma or texts, or an absolutist moral creed. Instead, it expresses a philosophical and ethical point of view, and it draws upon the scientific method in formulationg its naturalistic view of the nature." [Paul Kurtz & Tim Madigan, "Eupraxophy and Secular Humanism", Free Inquiry] ------- "In the last analysis it is the theist who can find no ultimate meaning in this life and who denigrates it. For him life has no meaning per se. This life here and now is hopeless, barren, and forlorn; it is full of tragedy and despair. the theist can only find meaning by leaving this life for a transcendental world beyond the grave. The human world as he finds it is empty of "ultimate purpose" and hence meaningless. Theism thus is an attempt to escape from the human condition; it is a pathetic deceit. To the theist, death is not real; it is not final and tragedy is not irreparable. There is always hope of some saving grace. Living in this world, unable to cope with its problems, dilemmas, and conflicts, the theist leaps beyond it into another world, more akin to his fancy - though he has not come up with a clear notion of what the soul does in eternal paradise." [Paul Kurtz, _Forbidden Fruit. The Ethics of Humanism_ Prometheus Books: Amherst, 1988, p.235] ------- "The theist who asks the question "What is the meaning of life?" and insists that without some divine purpose life would be meaningless is not only masking his own insecurity but also desplaying an infantile reaction; he has little faith in his own unaided powers of reason and fragile confidence in his ability to solve the problems of life on his own. Insofar as man is dependent upon God for his being, his life has no significance in itself. This is all the more true if this life is simply a testing ground or a waiting room for the afterlife, a way-station to hell or paradise. [Paul Kurtz, _Forbidden Fruit. The Ethics of Humanism_ Prometheus Books: Amherst, 1988, p.236] ------- "We live in a culture where any criticisms of the uncorroborated claims of religions are generally considered to be ill-advised or in bad taste." [Paul Kurtz, Jul-Aug 96 Skeptical Inquirer] ------- "Everybody's praying to the nothing in the sky. They cry for what they've laid upon the earth." [Buddy Lackey, "Psychotic Waltz"] ------- "If there is a god, must it be sane?" [Lucien LaCroix (Nigel Bennett) from "Forever Knight" show] ------- "What bears no doubt in this fierce Judao - Christian campaign against the Muslim world, the likes of which has never been seen before, is that the Muslims must prepare all the possible might to repel the enemy on the military, economic, missionary, and all other areas. It is crucial for us to be patient and to cooperate in righteousness and piety and to raise awareness to the fact that the highest priority, after faith is to repel the incursive enemy which corrupts the religion and the world, and nothing deserves a higher priority after faith...." [Osama Bin Laden, November 1996 interview, Nida'ul Islam] ------- "In the shadow of these discussions and arguments truthfulness is covered by the falsehood, and personal feuds and partisanship created among the people increasing the division and the weakness of the Ummah; priorities of the Islamic work are lost while the blasphemy and polytheism continue its grip and control over the Ummah. We should be alert to these atrocious plans carried out by the Ministry of Interior." [Osama Bin Laden, The Ladenese Epistle: Declaration of War, Dec 1996] ------- "We are certain - with the grace of Allah - that we shall prevail over the Jews and over those fighting with them. Today however, our battle against the Americans is far greater than our battle was against the Russians. Americans have committed unprecedented stupidity. They have attacked Islam and its most significant sacrosanct symbols.... We anticipate a black future for America. Instead of remaining United States, it shall end up separated states and shall have to carry the bodies of its sons back to America." [Osama Bin Laden, May 1998 interview, Frontline] ------- "All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries.... On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim." [Osama Bin Laden, Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, February 23, 1998] ------- "If people want to believe in fairy tales and erect altars to the Wizard of Oz, far be it from me to stop them. But I will always be adamant that they keep it away from me." [Ladyhank] ------- "I talk to God every day, and He's never mentioned you." [movie, _Ladyhawke_] ------- "If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy." [General Marquis De Lafayette (1789)] ------- "There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained." [Suzanne Lafollette] ------- "The woman who is truly Spirit-filled will want to be totally submissive to her husband...This is a truly liberated woman. Submission is God's design for women." [Beverly LaHaye, "The Spririt-Controlled Woman"] ------- "The Y2K could very well trigger a financial meltdown, leading to an international depression, which would make it possible for the Antichrist or his emissaries to establish a one world currency or a one-world economic system, which would dominate the world commercially until it is destroyed." [Tim LaHaye, TIME Magazine, Jan. 18, 1999] ------- "Perhaps God is not dead; perhaps God is himself mad." [R.D. Laing] ------- Little Rhyme Mary, Mary what a whore Screwed a soldier on the floor She claimed a virgin birth you see Now we've got christianity!! [Larry Laird] ------- "The Church doesn't believe in book-burning, but it believes in restricting the use of dangerous books among those whose minds are unprepared for them." [Francis J. Lally, American Roman Catholic Monsignor, Mike Wallace Interview, Fund for the Republic, 1958] ------- "The Church has through the centuries, understood that ideas are really more dangerous than other weapons. Their use should be restricted." [Francis J. Lally, American Roman Catholic Monsignor, Mike Wallace Interview, Fund for the Republic, 1958] ------- "Religious belief is not a precondition either of ethical conduct or of happiness." [Dalai Lama, "Ethics for the New Millennium"] ------- "This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." [Dalai Lama] ------- "Precisely the very worst thing about Christianity is the doctrine that the worst sin ever committed is the attempt to gain knowledge. Religious belief is not a precondition either of ethical conduct or of happiness." [Dalai Lama, "Ethics for the New Millennium"] ------- "As he grew older, he grew more cautious. At Springfield and at Washington he was beset on the one hand by political priests, and on the other by honest and prayerful Christians. He despised the former, respected the latter, and had use for both. Indefinite expressions about 'Divine Providence', the 'Justice of God', and 'the favor of the Most High,' were easy and not inconsistent with his religious notions. In this, accordingly, he indulged freely; but never in all that time did he let fall from his lips or his pen an expression which remotely implied the slightest faith in Jesus as the son of God and the Savior of men." [Summary from 'Life of Abraham Lincoln, pp 157-497 Published 1872, by Col. Ward H. Lamon, friend and acquaintance of Lincoln] ------- "We do not ask to be born; and we do not ask to die. But born we are and die we must. We come into existence and we pass out of existence. And in neither case does high-handed fate await our ratification of its decree. [Corliss Lamont (1902-1995) "The Illusion of Immortality", 1959] ------- "If an awakening into a blessed hereafter were as much a law of Nature as our daily awakening to a far from blissful morrow, no God would be required to play cosmic philanthropist to a suffering humanity." [Corliss Lamont (1902-1995) "The Illusion of Immortality", 1959] ------- "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." [Anne Lamott] ------- "Why do I want to believe what I believe?... Science, to put it somewhat vulgarly, is a technique to keep yourself from kidding yourself." [Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land, p. 12] ------- "We found a great number of books...and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the Devil we burned them all." [Catholic Bishop Diego De Landa, after burning priceless books of Mayan history and science, July 1562] ------- "No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence." [Ann Landers, advice columnist] ------- "So long as any large group of persons, anywhere on this earth, believe the ancient supersition that some Authority is responsible for their welfare, they will set up some image of that Authority and try to obey it. And the result will be poverty and warfare." [Rose Wilder Lane, "The Discovery Of Freedom"] ------- "We really have dinosaurs today, without any question. You just need the right weather conditions, as I see it, to get huge creatures. And in the ocean, of course,, we have huge creatures...This is where the pleisosauruses seem to be today, and perhaps also this fire-breathing dragon is still down there- very rare, but occasionally there." [Rev. Walter Lang, Founder, Bible-Science Association] ------- "The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don't like that statement, but few can argue with it." [Kenneth V. Lanning, Supervisory Special Agent at the Behavioral Science Institution and Research Unit of the FBI Academy, from The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan] ------- "Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis." [Astronomer Pierre Simon Laplace's response to Napoleon's inquiry as to why he did not mention God in his book _Mecanique celeste_ In 1995, Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay for the _Natural History_ magazine where he says that this story probably is not true] ------- "Ubi dubium ibi libertas" (Where there is doubt, there is freedom) [Latin proverb] ------- "However incompatible the spirit of Jesus and armed force may be, and however unpleasant it may be to acknowledge the fact, as a matter of plain history the latter has often made it possible for the former to survive." [Prof. Kenneth Scott Latourette, _A History of the Expansion of Christianity_ (New York:Harper & Brothers, 1937) Vol. I, p.164] ------- "Every religion in the world that has destroyed people is based on love." [Anton LaVey] ------- "Whatever alleged 'truth' is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!" [Anton Szandor LaVey] ------- "That's why the present "religious war" isn't between any forces of "Good" and "Evil." It is being waged between Media (the State) vs. Churches (Catholic and otherwise) who are tying up millions of dollars of valuable property and assets. As Satanists, we have the advantage of realizing this early in the game. It has never been enough for us to be atheistic -- we have learned how to smash religious ignorance by beating them at their own game, using the Christian's own manufactured fears to destroy them." [Anton Szandor LaVey, "The Devil's Notebook", p. 85] ------- "The man who worships God is worshipping by proxy the man who created God." [Anton Szandor LaVey] ------- "The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision." [Lynn Lavner] ------- "There are no gods in my coffee cup." [Tony Lawrence] ------- "radical antiabortion groups like Operation Rescue and Rescue America have to be dealt with as domestic terrorists as deadly as the ones who blew up the World Trade Center and as fanatic as the cultists in Waco. " [John Laws] ------- "If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion.... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.'" [Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness"] ------- "One of the conditions (for escaping the stake) was that of stating all they knew of other heretics and apostates, which proved an exceedingly fruitful source of information as, under the general terror, there was little hesitation in denouncing not only friends and acquaintances, but the nearest and dearest kindred -- parents and children, and brothers and sisters." [Henry Charles Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain] ------- "For the church to say that abortion is not acceptable for a Catholic is fine. To say directly or indirectly that on something that is a church teaching that you must also vote according to that -- that's not acceptable in a country based on the First Amendment." [Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy] ------- "Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelics drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A.D., and besides, telescopes are unnatural." [Timothy Leary, "The Politics of Ecstasy"] ------- "All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable." [Fran Lebowitz] ------- "Randomness scares people. Religion is a way to explain randomness." [Fran Lebowitz] ------- "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's; and unto human beings, what?" [Stanislaw J. Lec] ------- "There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith." [William E.H. Lecky, from Ira D. Cardiff, "What Great Men Think of Religion"] ------- "The church fathers laid it down as a distinct proposition, that pious frauds are justifiable and even laudable." [William E.H. Lecky, from Ira D. Cardiff, "What Great Men Think of Religion"] ------- "There once was a time when all people beleived in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages." [Richard Lederer, _Anguished English_] ------- "Antiscience includes fundamentalists, creationists, cultists, the Religious Wrong- people who have a desperate need to believe; that's okay, but they have an equally desperate need to have you believe, too." [Leon Lederman, Nov-Dec 96 Skeptical Inquirer] ------- "Would you sing 'Krishna bless America' or pledge allegience to 'One nation under Allah'? If not, would that make you unpatriotic?" [Chris Lee] ------- "Praying is like a rocking chair-- it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere. [Gypsy Rose Lee] ------- "The principle that government may accommodate the free exercise of religion does not supersede the fundamental limitations imposed by the Establishment Clause, which guarantees at a minimum that a government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which "establishes a [state] religion or religious faith, or tends to do so." Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 678. Pp.7-8. (b)State officials here direct the performance of a formal religious exercise at secondary schools' promotional and graduation ceremonies. Lee's decision that prayers should be given and his selection of the religious participant are choices attributable to the State." [Lee vs. Weisman, 1992, Supreme Court decision regarding prayers at US high school graduation ceremonies] ------- "The Establishment Clause was inspired by the lesson that in the hands of government what might begin as a tolerant expression of religious views may end in a policy to indoctrinate and coerce. Prayer exercises in elementary and secondary schools carry a particular risk of indirect coercion. The school district's supervision and control of a high school graduation ceremony places subtle and indirect public and peer pressure on attending students to stand as a group or maintain respectful silence during the invocation and benediction. A reasonable dissenter of high school age could believe that standing or remaining silent signified her own participation in, or approval of, the group exercise, rather than her respect for it. And the State may not place the student dissenter in the dilemma of participating or protesting. Since adolescents are often susceptible to peer pressure, especially in matters of social convention, the State may no more use social pressure to enforce orthodoxy than it may use direct means." [Lee vs. Weisman, 1992, Supreme Court decision regarding prayers at US high school graduation ceremonies] ------- "To hell with the U.S. Constitution." [Father Bernard Leeming, from America Magazine, 7/23/63] ------- "...for the Lankhmarts believe that religion and minds half- fuddled, or at least drink-soothed, go nicely together." [Fritz Leiber, "Swords in the Mist"] ------- "God made the integers; all else is the work of Man." [Leibniz] ------- "In saying, therefore, that things are not good according to any standard of goodness, but simply by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, without realizing it, all the love of God and all his glory; for why praise him for what he has done if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the contrary?" [Leibniz, "Discourse on Metaphysics"] ------- "The wish to capture evanescent reflections is not only impossible... but the mere desire alone, the will to do so, is blasphemy. God created man in His own image, and no man-made machine may fix the image of God. Is it possible that God should have abandoned His eternal principles, and allowed a Frenchman... to give to the world an invention of the Devil?" [Leipzig City Advertiser, newspaper report denouncing the invention of the daguerrotype, 1839] ------- "Let it suffice on this head to say, that it is not possible in the nature of things to establish religion by human laws without perverting the design of civil law and oppressing the people." [John Leland, from The Yankee Spy, writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794] ------- "What leads legislators into this error, is confounding sins and crimes together -- making no difference between moral evil and state rebellion: not considering that a man may be infected with moral evil, and yet be guilty of no crime, punishable by law. If a man worships one God, three Gods, twenty Gods, or no God -- if he pays adoration one day in a week, seven days or no day -- wherein does he injure the life, liberty or property of another? Let any or all these actions be supposed to be religious evils of an enormous size, yet they are not crimes to be punished by laws of state, which extend no further, in justice, than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor." [John Leland, from The Yankee Spy, writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794] ------- "...[A]nd the reason why public worship is enjoined (required) by authority, and private worship is omitted, is only to pave the way for some religious establishment by human law, and force taxes from the people to support avaricious priests." [John Leland, from The Yankee Spy, writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794] ------- "Is it the duty of a deist to support that which he believes to be a cheat and imposition? Is it the duty of the Jew to support the religion of Jesus Christ, when he really believes that he was an imposter? Must the papist be forced to pay men for preaching down the supremacy of the pope, whom they are sure is the head of the church? Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics." [John Leland, from The Yankee Spy, writing under the pen name of Jack Nipps, Boston, 1794] ------- "What makes you think that a conscious, social animal that can invent a God to explain the universe could not also develop a code of ethics by which to live?" [Gerry Lemay] ------- "If you don't think that logic is a good method for determining what to believe, make an attempt to convince me of that without using logic. No one has even bothered to try yet." [Brett Lemoine] ------- "Theists have good reasons for not believing in every god but their own. Atheists make no exception for the last one." [Brett Lemoine] ------- "First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principle or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion (citation omitted); finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion." [The "Lemon Test", from Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971] ------- "All contemporary religions and churches, all and every kind of religious organization, Marxism has always viewed as organs of bourgeois reaction, serving as a defense of exploitation and the doping of the working-classes." [Nikolai Lenin] ------- "Imagine there's no heaven; it's easy if you try No hell below us, above us only sky Imagine all the people living for today ... Imagine there's no countries; it isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too Imagine all the people living life in peace...." [John Lennon, "Imagine"] ------- "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that. I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first--rock'n'roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." [John Lennon, London Evening Standard of March 4, 1966, repeated in Time magazine, Aug 12, 1966] ------- "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." [John Lennon, "God", (1970)] ------- "It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man." [Pope Leo XIII, "Great Encyclical Letters",16] ------- "Hence from all we have hitherto said, it is clear beloved Catholics that we cannot approve the opinions which some [Protestants, Jews, and other heretics] comprise under the head of Americanism [freedom]." [Pope Leo XIII, "Great Encyclical Letters",252] ------- "The equal toleration of all religions...is the same as atheism. [Pope Leo XIII, "Imortale Dei"] ------- "They [Catholics] must penetrate wherever possible in the administration of civil affairs... all Catholics should do all in their power to cause the constitution of states, and legislation to be modeled on the principles of the true Church." [Encyclical of Leo XIII] ------- "The people have heard quite enough about what are called the rights of man. Let them hear about the rights of God for once." [Pope Leo XIII, "Encyclical Tametsi futura"] ------- "To despise legitimate authority, no matter in whom it is invested, is unlawful; it is rebellion against God's will." [Pope Leo XIII] ------- "It is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual, either to disregard all religious duties, or to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion." [Pope Leo XIII, "On the Christian Constitution of States," 1885] ------- "...The fatal theory of the separation of Church and State." [Pope Leo XIII, "Libertas Praestantissimum," 1888] ------- "Man has created so many gods in his own image, how do you know which one to worship?" [Leper Messiah] ------- "The true atheist is not the person who combats God by denying that he exists but the one who never thinks about his existence." [Maurice Lever in Sade: A Biography, quoted by Richard Dooling in Blue Streak] ------- "Americans are equipped to handle propaganda and sort it out for themselves, but there's something slippery about program that offers up a vision of Islam without violence and controversy as an "educational" service. ... This seems like something a proper history might want to grapple with. A procession of PBS-approved American Muslims assuring us that nothing in Islam condones Sept. 11 is hardly comforting when millions of Muslims around the world plainly believe otherwise." [Collin Levey, "Mister Allah's Neighborhood: When did PBS become a for-prophet network?"] http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/clevey/?id=110002791] ------- "When one creates phantoms for oneself, one puts vampires into the world, and one must nourish these children of a voluntary nightmare with one's blood, one's life, one's intellegence, and one's reason, without ever satisfying them." [Eliphas Levi] ------- "There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God." [Primo Levi (1920-1987) Interview, 1986 in Ferdinando Camon _Conversations with Primo Levi_ (1989, tr. John Shepley) _ad fin_] ------- "One of the key figures of the Arab conquests is Khalid ibn al-Walid, the chief general of Abu Bakr. After fulfilling orders by restoring the status quo at the death of the Prophet, he decided for himself the problem of what to do next by embarking on a programme of military expansion. The real beginning of the Arab conquests is the Battle of 'Aqraba' in 633 in eastern Najd. The victory proved to the Arabs the capacity of the Medinese Government and the advisability of submitting to it. Thereafter a series of expeditions radiated in all directions" [Bernard Lewis, "The Arabs in History"] ------- "Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness." [C.S. Lewis, "Mere_Xtianity"] ------- "... believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him 'good' and worshipping him is a still greater danger... The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissable." [C. S. Lewis, in letter to John Beversluis] ------- "The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to teach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right." [C.S. Lewis] ------- "Theocracy is the worst of all government. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep... But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infintely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience." [C.S. Lewis, Christian writer] ------- "When man comes to the realization that he is not the "favorite" of God; that he was not specifically created, that the universe was not made for his benefit, and that he is subject to the same laws of nature as all other forms of life, then, and not until then, will he understand that he must rely upon himself, and himself alone, for whatever benefits he is to enjoy; and devote his time and energies to helping himself and his fellow men to meet the exigencies of life and to set about to solve the difficult and intricate problems of living." [Joseph Lewis, "An Atheist Manifesto"] ------- "Superstition is the poison of the mind." [Joseph Lewis] ------- "Religious Liberty is safe only in the hands of the Freethinker, whose philosophy of freedom of thought is expressed by Thomas Paine in the words, "He who would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression." [Joseph Lewis quoting Thomas Paine, in "Franklin the Freethinker"] ------- "Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter closed?" [Joseph Lewis] ------- "A precept claiming infallibility should certainly possess the universality of the law of gravitation and the perfection of the arithmetical table." [Joseph Lewis] ------- "Of the ten crimes which Biblical Hebrew law punished by stoning, nine have ceased to be offenses in modern society." [Joseph Lewis] ------- "Imagine using as an authority in the matter of marriage the opinion of a celibate priest!" [Joseph Lewis] ------- "The writers of the Bible had slight concern for the principles of morality. They were more concerned with rape, murder, robbery, slavery,licentiousness, brutal ignorance and degrading superstition. If the ministers of the Gospel are too dense and stupid to realize the moral mischief resulting from the perverse teachings of the Bible, then it is about time to bring them to their senses." [Joseph Lewis] ------- "If I had the power that the New Testament Narrative says that Jesus had, I would not cure one person of blindness, I would make blindness impossible; I would not cure one person of leprosy, I would abolish leprosy." [Joseph Lewis, Answer to Preacher Jack Coe, Miami, 1956] ------- "That prudent mother, while she admired the beauty of the sacred writings, was convinced that, unrestricted, no reading more improper should be permitted to a young woman. Many of the narratives can only tend to incite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast; everything is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a brothel can scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions." [Matthew Lewis, "The Monk", 1794. The Bishop of London, Beilby Porteus, objected to this as an "intolerable" slur on Holy Writ, and asked that it be deleted- two years later, he introduced the Porteusian Bible with chapter headings designed to guide believers away from the more embarassing parts of Scripture.] ------- "It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a FACT, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution." [R. C. Lewontin "Evolution/Creation Debate: A Time for Truth" Bioscience 31, 559 (1981) reprinted in EVOLUTION VERSUS CREATIONISM] ------- "Henceforth anyone applying for government employment - and soon for various other positions as well - had to submit proof that he was not a Jew. Since prior to 1874-1876 births had been registered only by the churches, the latter were asked to help in determining who was or was not fully Aryan, for under Nazi law this depended on the racial (i.e., religious) status of the parents and grandparents. The Church co-operated as a matter of course, complaining only that priests already overburdened with work were not receiving compensation for this special service to the state. The very question of whether the Church should lend its help to the Nazi state in sorting out people of Jewish descent was never debated. ... And the co-operation of the Church in this matter continued right through the war years, when the price of being Jewish was no longer dismissal from a government job and loss of livelihood, but deportation and outright physical destruction." [Lewy, G., "The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany", Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1968, p.282.] ------- "Jesus is not my best friend, I have real friends." [Andrew Lias on alt.atheism] ------- Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life. [Andrew Lias] ------- Christian Liberalism: The doctrine that there may be an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about baby seals but doesn't give a damn about my sex life. ------- "...The next time someone tells me that Jesus died for my sins, I'm tempted to reply, "Oh yeah? Well, Prometheus spent several thousand years getting his liver ripped out by a vulture just so you could cook your food -- and HE doesn't threaten to punish you if you don't worship him!"" [Andrew Lias] ------- "You know, this attitude astounds me. I consider myself the product of a marvelous and intricate four-billion plus year process that unifies me with the entire biological world at a very deep and intimate level. These people tend to see themselves as the product of some god's whim enacted upon some random lump of clay dredged from a river. And *I* am the one who is supposed to feel demeaned by my perceived origins? The mind boggles." [Andrew Lias] ------- "There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist." [G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99), German physicist, philosopher. Aphorisms, "Notebook L," aph. 16 (written 1765-99; tr. by R. J. Hollingdale, 1990)] ------- "As nations improve, so do their gods." [G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799) German physicist, writer] ------- "There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven." [G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99), German physicist, philosopher. Aphorisms, "Notebook F," aph. 84 (written 1765-99; translated by R. J. Hollingdale, 1990)] ------- "Many a man who is now willing to be shot down for the sake of his belief in a miracle would have doubted, if he had been present, the miracle itself." [C. G. Lichtenberg, "Reflections," 1799] ------- "It belongs to American liberty to separate entirely from the political government the institution which has its object the support and diffusion of religion." [Prof. Francis Lieber (1802-1872), American constitutional authorities, as quoted in Anson Phelps Stokes, Church And State In The United States Vol I, p. 34-35] ------- "The primary foe of reproductive rights for over a century has been the Roman Catholic church. During the last decade in particular, the Vatican has had a staggering process in stifling family planning programs worldwide and especially in the United States." [Roland Van Liew, "Pronatalist Zealotry and Reproductive Rights", in Free Inquiry] ------- "Lord, we pray that someday the Supreme Court will not be packed with right wing creeps, that once again the separation of church and state will be upheld and that the public schools can get out of the religion business and back to education where they belong". [Life in Hell cartoon by Matt Groening, character Bongo upon being called upon to lead prayer at school- final frame shows him tied to his chair and gagged.] ------- "Heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water. . . . this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on the twenty-third of October, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning." [John Lightfoot (Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge), 1859] ------- "The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Abraham Lincoln] ------- "I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity." [Abraham Lincoln] ------- "I see a very dark cloud on America's horizon, and that cloud is coming from Rome." [Abraham Lincoln] ------- "It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity." [Abraham Lincoln, from "What Great Men Think Of Religion" by Ira Cardiff] ------- "My husband is not a Christian but is a religious man, I think." [Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, in _Toward The Mystery_] ------- "I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by religious men who are certain they represent the Divine will. ... I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that if it be probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me." [Abraham Lincoln. Chapter 14 of Part 5 of "Six Historic Americans" by John Remsburg] ------- "I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." [Abraham Lincoln] ------- "Here are 23 ministers, of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent members of the Churches, a very large majority of whom are against me. Mr. Bateman, I am not a Christian -God knows I would be one -but I have carefully read the Bible, and I do not understand this book'; and he drew from his bosom a pocket New Testament. 'These men well know,' he continued, 'that I am for freedom in the territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution and the laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. they know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not understand it at all.'" [Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Newton Bateman, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Illinois, from "The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, From Washington to F.D.R.", by Franklin Stiner] ------- "It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him." [Abraham Lincoln, chiding the editor of a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper, from Antony Flew: How to Think Straight p 17] ------- "When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion." [Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President [1861-1865]. From Henry O. Dormann, compiler, The Speaker's Book of Quotations, New York: Ballantine] ------- "The churches used to win their arguments against atheism, agnosticism, and other burning issues by burning the ismists, which is fine proof that there is a devil but hardly evidence that there is a God." [Ben N. Lindsey and Wainwright Evans, The Revolt of Modern Youth, 1925] ------- "God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures under God, are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves." [Lestat de Lioncourt, _Interiew With the Vampire_ by Anne Rice] ------- "Those who use their reason do not reach the same conclusions as those who obey their prejudices." [Walter Lippmann, "Preface to Morals"] ------- "The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defines its prejudices, and then to make it representative of a whole class." [Walter Lippmann] ------- "I thought, if I murdered them all, my family would all go to heaven, and at least later on, I would have a chance to go to heaven; however, if I committed suicide, it would be 100% automatic that I would go to hell." [John List, who murdered his mother, wife, and three children] ------- "Much of the discussion on the existence of race reminds me of the obituary in _Time_ Magazine (January 11, 1963) of Arthur O. Lovejoy. When the late Professor Lovejoy was asked at a government investigation if he believed in God, he promptly rattled off thirty-three definitions of God and asked the questioner which one he had in mind. But of course it really didn't matter to the questioner. To avow a belief in the existence of God simply assured one's participation in the socio-cultural system, in which everyone knows that God exists out there but we humans are just too ignorant to perceive or define Him accurately." [pp. 55-56 of "On the Nonexistence of Human Races", Frank B. Livingstone, in _The Concept of Race_, ed. by Ashley Montagu, (Collier-Macmillan, London), 1964.] ------- "I'd rather navigate the seas of uncertainty than be mired in the concrete of dogma." [Patrica Livingston, Freethinker, Humanist] ------- "Superstition brings the gods into even the smallest matters." [Titus Livy, Roman historian, in Annales (XXVII, 23)] ------- "Christianity still practices virtual cannibalism by eating their God's body and drinking his blood during their rituals. They also venerate his execution by placing its depiction in a prominent position in their sanctuaries. Worshipers even go so far as to wear a miniature of the murder weapon as a necklace. Then, they have the temerity to complain about the violence depicted on television." ["Liz" on Usenet] ------- "I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason." [John Locke, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690] ------- "So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men most often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves. Credo, quia impossibile est: I believe, because it is impossible, might, in a good man, pass for a sally of zeal; but would prove a very ill rule for men to choose their opinions or religion by." [John Locke, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"] ------- "I implore you to recognize the Church as a lady and in the name of the Pope take the King as lord of this land and obey his mandates. If you do not do it, I tell you that with the help of God I will enter powerfully against you all. I will make war everywhere and every way that I can. I will subject you to the yoke and obedience to the Church and to his majesty. I will take your women and children and make them slaves ... The deaths and injuries that you will receive from here on will be your own fault and not that of his majesty nor of the gentlemen that accompany me." ["The Requirement, repeated by Spaniards, in Spanish, to natives upon "discovery" in the New World, from "Lies My Teacher Told Me," by James W. Loewen, pg. 43] ------- "It is possible to pay another man's debts on his behalf, but it is not possible to make a guilty man innocent by suffering in his place." [Carl Lofmark, _What is the Bible?_] ------- "If you're 20 and you believe in God, you have no experience. If you're 40 and you still believe in God, you have no brain." [Marc Loi] ------- "I have given myself a lot of trouble in this world with small result. I took my own life and the Church seriously, and the consequence is that I have wasted one and disturbed the other. The search for truth is not a trade by which a man can support himself; for a priest it is a supreme peril. For a long time now I have not really been a Catholic in the official sense of the word. I have strewn my intelligence and my activity to the four winds of an empty ideal...Roman Catholicism, as such, is bound to perish, and it deserves no regrets." [Alfred Loisy, "My Duel with the Vatican", 1924] ------- "From all this the conclusion follows that what we have here is not a historical tradition of a factual resurrection...but an assertion of faith. The stories of imagined apparitions are, for the most part, apologetic constructions for butressing belief by clothing it in material form. Whence it follows in this crucial case, as in that of miracles in general, that the only history we can glean from stories of supernatural magic is the history of belief." [Alfred Loisy, Catholic Modernist. bible scholar, Professor at the Institut Catholique in France from 1889 until his excommunication from the Church in 1908, writing on contradiction between various stories of the resurection] ------- "It seems obvious to me that the notion of God has never been anything but a kind of ideal projection, a reflection upward of the human personality, and that theology never has been and never can be anything but a more and more purified mythology." [Alfred F. Loisy, "My Duel with the Vatican", 1924] ------- "History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion -- i.e. none to speak of." [Lazarus Long] ------- "The fundamentalists leap up and down in apoplectic rage and joy. Their worst fantasies are vindicated, and therefore (or so they like to think), their entire theology and socio-political agenda is too. Meanwhile, teen-age misanthropes and social misfits murder their enemies, classmates, families, friends, even complete strangers, all because they read one of Anton LaVey's books or listened to one too many AC/DC records. The born- agains are ready to burn again, and not just books this time." [excerpt from "Loompanics' Greatest Hits"] ------- We landed with a discomfiting "crunch!" "Damn!" They were everywhere - I couldn't avoid them. I looked around - "Let's try the next system - whaddaya say? This one looks to be two-legged vermin-infested." But, alas, our quarkium-tachyon containment had been ruptured by the cross-topped spire upon which we were impaled. [Tom Lorenzin, short story] ------- "the sole miracle I've perfected: turning wine into warm water" [Tom Lorenzin] ------- "Witness to a religious miracle: "I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it!" [Tom Lorenzin] ------- "With religion, even the village idiot can feel like Einstein." [Denis Loubet] ------- "Whenever [one] hears [our] religion abused, he should not attempt to defend its tenets, except with his sword, and that he should thrust into the scoundrel's belly, as far as it will enter." [King Louis IX of France, recounted by friend and biographer John of Joinville, from Piers Paul Read's "The Templars"] ------- "I don't really miss god but i sure miss Santa Claus!" [Courtney Love] ------- "Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity." [HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 10/4/30] ------- "Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." [James Russell Lowell, Literary Essays, Witchcraft] ------- "It would be a curious, were it not a melancholy spectacle, to see the indifference with which the laity look on while theologians thrash their wheatless straw, utterly unconscious that there is no longer any common term possible that could bring their creeds again to any point of bearing on the practical life of man." [James Russell Lowell] ------- Well you can't believe what they tell you when you're young And you can't believe what they tell you when you're old And you can't believe what they say about you when you're gone Not much of a conversation left to hold But Sunday morning in the church we'll catch up on the news There's a murmur in the flock but, there's a reason they're called pews 'Cause something smells kind of fishy with the local holy plan And I can only thank the Lord that I don't give a damn [Lowest of the Low, Canadian band, from "The Gossip Talkin' Blues" from the album "Shakespeare My Butt..."] ------- "We should always be disposed to believe that which appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides." [Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus [Jesuits], Exercitia spiritualia, 1541] ------- "I don't see Star Wars as profoundly religious. I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct-- that there is a greater mystery out there. I remember when I was 10 years old, I asked my mother, "If there's only one God, why are there so many religions?" I've been pondering that question ever since, and the conclusion I've come to is that all the religions are true." [George Lucas, Time Magazine, 4/17/1999] ------- "I keep hearing that Jesus Christ is coming, but nobody knows his tour dates." [Michael Lucas] ------- "The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day - the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account...You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property." [Lucian of Samosato, c. 170CE, Greek satirist in _The Death of Peregrine_, 11-13. The character Pregrine rises to influence and power among Christians, leaves with an attack of conscience.] ------- "Even if I knew nothing of the atoms, I would venture to assert on the evidence of the celestial phenomena themselves, supported by many other arguments, that the universe was certainly not created for us by divine power: it is so full of imperfections." [Lucretius, "On the Nature of the Universe"] ------- "If God can do anything he can make a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it. Then there is something God cannot do, he cannot lift the stone. Therefore God does not exist." [Lucretius, Roman poet] ------- "Fear was the first thing on earth to make gods." [Lucretius (96?-55 B.C.)] ------- "How many evils have flowed from religion." [Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 57 B.C.] ------- "Nature free at once and rid of her haughty lords is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods." [Lucretius] ------- "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum" --"So vast is the sum of the iniquities that religion has induced." [Lucretius, 1st c. BC] ------- "Often men for fear of death are seized by hatred of life itself...For just as children tremble, afraid of everything in blinding darkness, so we sometimes in broad daylight have fears as groundless as the ones that frighten children--imaginary terrors lurking in dark corners. This terror of the mind, these shadows must be dispelled not by the sun's bright shafts nor by the brilliant daylight, but by an understanding of the laws of Nature." [Lucretius] ------- "All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher." [Lucretius] ------- "The theory that you should always treat the religious convictions of other people with respect finds no support in the Gospels." [Arnold Lunn (1888-1974), British author] ------- "All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself." [Martin Luther (1483-1546), German Protestant leader] ------- "People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon....This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." [Martin Luther in one of his "Table Talks" in 1539] ------- "People give ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy." [Martin Luther, Works, Volume 22, c. 1543] ------- "Their synagogues ... should be set on fire." "Their homes should be broken down and destroyed. They ought to be put under one roof or in a stable, like Gypsies, in order that they may realize that they ... are ... but miserable captives." "They should be deprived of their prayerbooks and Talmuds." "Their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more." [Martin Luther] ------- "Die verfluchte Huhre, Vernunft." (The damned whore, Reason). [Martin Luther] ------- "What shall we Christians do now with this depraved and damned people of the Jews? ... I will give my faithful advice: First, that one should set fire to their synagogues. . . . Then that one should also break down and destroy their houses. . . . That one should drive them out the country." [Martin Luther] ------- "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God." [Martin Luther] ------- "Reason should be destroyed in all Christians." [Martin Luther] ------- "The Jews are the most miserable people on earth. They are plagued everywhere, and scattered about all countries, having no certain resting place. They sit as on a wheelbarrow, without a country, people or government... but they are rightly served, for seeing they refused have Christ and his gospel, instead of freedom they must have servitude." [Martin Luther] ------- "Either God must be unjust, or you, Jews, wicked and ungodly. You have been, about fifteen hundred years, a race rejected of God." [Martin Luther] ------- "Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts, and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children." [Martin Luther, Table Talk] ------- "God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoilt all, when she persuaded him to set himself above God's will. 'Tis you women, with your tricks and artifices, that lead men into error." [Martin Luther, "The bondage of the Will," 1527] ------- "Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason." [Martin Luther] ------- "Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets." [Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148] ------- "There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason...Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed." [Martin Luther, quoted by Walter Kaufmann, _The Faith of a Heretic_, (Garden city, NY, doubleday, 1963), p. 75] ------- "[I]n a like manner we must endure the authority of the prince. If he misuse or abuse his authority, we are not to entertain a grudge, seek revenge or punishment. Obedience is to be rendered for God's sake, for the ruler is God's representative. However they may tax or exact, we must obey and endure patiently." [Martin Luther, "Tribute to Caesar" sermon, from _The Political Theories of Martin Luther_, Luther Hess Waring (New York, Putnam's, 1910) p. 104] ------- "Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child- bearing, it does not matter; let them go on bearing children till they die, that is what they are there for." [Martin Luther, Works 20.84] ------- "The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes." [Martin Luther, Works 12.94] ------- "I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen." [Martin Luther, Introduction to "On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "He did not call them Abraham's children, but a "brood of vipers" [Matt. 3:7]. Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they declared, "He has a demon' [Matt 11:18]. Our Lord also calls them a "brood of vipers"; furthermore in John 8 [:39,44] he states: "If you were Abraham's children ye would do what Abraham did.... You are of your father the devil." It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Therefore the blind Jews are truly stupid fools..." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "...their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Learn from this, dear Christian, what you are doing if you permit the blind Jews to mislead you. Then the saying will truly apply, "When a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into the pit" [cf. Luke 6:39]. You cannot learn anything from them except how to misunderstand the divine commandments..." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it. But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "If I had to refute all the other articles of the Jewish faith, I should be obliged to write against them as much and for as long a time as they have used for inventing their lies-- that is, longer than two thousand years." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "..Christ and his word can hardly be recognized because of the great vermin of human ordinances. However, let this suffice for the time being on their lies against doctrine or faith." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?" [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Alas, it cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God which permits anyone to sink into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness, envy, and arrogance. If I were to avenge myself on the devil himself I should be unable to wish him such evil and misfortune as God's wrath inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie and to blaspheme so monstrously, in violation of their own conscience. Anyway, they have their reward for constantly giving God the lie." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "...but then eject them forever from this country. For, as we have heard, God's anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!" [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Over and above that we let them get rich on our sweat and blood, while we remain poor and they such the marrow from our bones. [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "I brief, dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule-- if my counsel does not please your, find better advice, so that you and we all can be rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become guilty sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the curses which the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all Christians, all authority, and ourselves. Do not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or communion with us.... With this faithful counsel and warning I wish to cleanse and exonerate my conscience." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "However, we must avoid confirming them in their wanton lying, slandering, cursing, and defaming. Nor dare we make ourselves partners in their devilish ranting and raving by shielding and protecting them, by giving them food, drink, and shelter, or by other neighborly acts..." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Therefore we Christians, in turn, are obliged not to tolerate their wanton and conscious blasphemy." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire... Second, that all their books-- their prayer books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible-- be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and that these be preserved for those who may be converted... Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country... Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing. For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it..." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "He who hears this name [God] from a Jew must inform the authorities, or else throw sow dung at him when he sees him and chase him away." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "But what will happen even if we do burn down the Jews' synagogues and forbid them publicly to praise God, to pray, to teach, to utter God's name? They will still keep doing it in secret. If we know that they are doing this in secret, it is the same as if they were doing it publicly. for our knowledge of their secret doings and our toleration of them implies that they are not secret after all and thus our conscience is encumbered with it before God." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews' blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "...they remain our daily murderers and bloodthirsty foes in their hearts. Their prayers and curses furnish evidence of that, as do the many stories which relate their torturing of children and all sorts of crimes for which they have often been burned at the stake or banished." -Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies) [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "...that everyone would gladly be rid of them." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "Undoubtedly they do more and viler things than those which we know and discover." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "If I had power over the Jews, as our princes and cities have, I would deal severely with their lying mouth." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "They [rulers] must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did... If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "My essay, I hope, will furnish a Christian (who in any case has no desire to become a Jew) with enough material not only to defend himself against the blind, venomous Jews, but also to become the foe of the Jews' malice, lying, and cursing, and to understand not only that their belief is false but that they are surely possessed by all devils. May Christ, our dear Lord, convert them mercifully and preserve us steadfastly and immovably in the knowledge of him, which is eternal life. Amen." [Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543] ------- "God does not work salvation for ficticious sinners. Be a sinner and sin vigorously.... Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the abiding place of justice; sin must be committed." [Martin Luther] ------- "Sin cannot tear you away from him [Christ], even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders." [Martin Luther, letter to Melanchton, Aug. 1, 1521] ------- "A large number of deaf, crippled and blind people are afflicted solely through the malice of the demon. And one must in no wise doubt that plagues, fevers and every sort of evil come from him." [Martin Luther] ------- "An eartly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects." [Martin Luther] ------- "As for the demented, I hold it certain that all beings deprived of reason are thus afflicted only by the Devil." [Martin Luther] ------- "As to the common people, ... one has to be hard with them and see that they do their work and that under the threat of the sword and the law they comply with the observance of piety, just as you chain up wild beasts." [Martin Luther] ------- "At Poltersberg, there is a lake similarly cursed. If you throw a stone into it, a dreadful storm immediately arises, and the whole neighboring district quakes to its centre. 'Tis the devils kept prisoner there." [Martin Luther] ------- "How often have not the demons called 'Nix,' drawn women and girls into the water, and there had commerce with them, with fearful consequences." [Martin Luther] ------- "I myself saw and touched at Dessay, a child of this sort, which had no human parents, but had proceeded from the Devil. He was twelve years old, and, in outward form, exactly resembled ordinary children." [Martin Luther] ------- "I should have no compassion on these witches; I should burn them all." [Martin Luther] ------- "Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities, as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads...." [Martin Luther] ------- "In many countries there are particular places to which devils more especially resort. In Prussia there is an infinite number of evil spirits." [Martin Luther] ------- "In Switzerland, on a high mountain, not far from Lucerne, there is a lake they call Pilate's Pond, which the Devil has fixed upon as one of the chief residences of his evil spirits...." [Martin Luther] ------- "Many demons are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark poolly places ready to hurt and prejudice people; some are also in the thick black clouds, which cause hail, lightning and thunder, and poison the air, the pastures and grounds." [Martin Luther, "Table Talk"] ------- "Many sweat to reconcile St. Paul and St. James, but in vain. 'Faith justifies' and 'faith does not justify' contradict each other flatly. If any one can harmonize them I will give him my doctor's hood and let him call me a fool." [Martin Luther] ------- "No gown worse becomes a woman than the desire to be wise." [Martin Luther] ------- "Our bodies are always exposed to Satan. The maladies I suffer are not natural, but Devil's spells." [Martin Luther] ------- "Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God." [Martin Luther] ------- "Snakes and monkeys are subjected to the demon more than other animals. Satan lives in them and possesses them. He uses them to deceive men and to injure them." [Martin Luther] ------- "Some [demons] are also in the thick black clouds, which cause hail, lightning and thunder, and poison the air, the pastures and grounds." [Martin Luther] ------- "The best way to get rid of the Devil, if you cannot kill it with the words of Holy Scripture, is to rail at and mock him. Music, too, is very good; music is hateful to him, and drives him far away. " [Martin Luther] ------- "The Devil can so completely assume the human form, when he wants to deceive us, that we may well lie with what seems to be a woman, of real flesh and blood, and yet all the while 'tis only the Devil in the shape of a woman. Tis the same with women, who may think that a man is in bed with them, yet 'tis only the Devil; and...the result of this connection is oftentimes an imp of darkness, half mortal, half devil...." [Martin Luther] ------- "The Devil...clutched hold of the miserable young man...and flew off with him through the ceiling, since which time nothing has been heard of [him]." [Martin Luther] ------- "The Devil, too, sometimes steals human children; it is not infrequent for him to carry away infants within the first six weeks after birth, and to substitute in their place imps...." [Martin Luther] ------- "The winds are nothing else but good or bad spirits. Hark! how the Devil is puffing and blowing...." [Martin Luther] ------- "There is no rustic so rude but that, if he dreams or fancies anything, it must be the whisper of the Holy Ghost, and he himself a prophet." [Martin Luther] ------- "To be a Christian, you must "pluck out the eye of reason." [Martin Luther] ------- "We are at fault for not slaying them [the Jews]." [Martin Luther, "On the Jews and Their Lies"] ------- "We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer than six thousand years the world did not exist." [Martin Luther (1483-1546) "Lectures on Genesis"] ------- "We need not invite the Devil to our table; he is too ready to come without being asked. The air all about us is filled with demons...." [Martin Luther] ------- "What shall we do with...the Jews?...I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings...are to be taken from them." [Martin Luther] ------- "What shall we do with...the Jews?...I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews." [Martin Luther] ------- "What shall we do with...the Jews? I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach on pain of loss of life and limb." [Martin Luther] ------- "What shall we do with...the Jews?...set fire to their synagogues or schools and bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them." [Martin Luther] ------- "What shall we do with...the Jews?...their homes also should be razed and destroyed." [Martin Luther] ------- "When I was a child there were many witches, and they bewitched both cattle and men, especially children." [Martin Luther] ------- "At Sussen, the Devil carried off, last Good Friday, three grooms who had devoted themselves to him." [Martin Luther] ------- "I almost feel like throwing Jimmy into the stove, as the priest in Kulenberg did." [Martin Luther] ------- "I feel much freer now that I am certain the pope is the Antichrist." [Martin Luther] ------- "I maintain that some Jew wrote it [the Book of James] who probably heard about Christian people but never encountered any." [Martin Luther] ------- "The Devil fears the word of God, He can't bite it; it breaks his teeth." [Martin Luther] ------- "The Devil, it is true, is not exactly a doctor who has taken degrees, but he is very learned, very expert for all that. He has not been carrying on his business during thousands of years for nothing...." [Martin Luther] ------- "The fact that [the biblical book] Hebrews is not an epistle of St. Paul, or of any other apostle, is proved by what it says in chapter two...." [Martin Luther] ------- "...two devils rose from the water, and flew off through the air, crying, 'Oh, oh, oh!' and turning one over another, in sportive mockery...." [Martin Luther] ------- "We may well lie with what seems to be a woman of flesh and blood, and yet all the time it is only a devil in the shape of a woman." [Martin Luther] ------- "We should throw the Epistle of James out of this school [the University of Wittenberg]...." [Martin Luther] ------- "In our sad condition, our only consolation is the expectancy of another life. Here below all is incomprehensible." [Martin Luther, Table Talk] ------- "Heretics are not to be disputed with, but to be condemned unheard, and whilst they perish by fire, the faithful ought to pursue the evil to its source, and bathe their heads in the blood of the Catholic bishops, and of the Pope, who is the devil in disguise." [Martin Luther, Riffel, Kirchengeschichte] ------- "I confess that mankind has a free will, but it is to milk kine, to build houses, etc., and no further." [Martin Luther, Table Talk] ------- "Jews and papists are ungodly wretches; they are two stockings made of one piece of cloth." [Martin Luther, Table Talk] ------- "Antichrist is the pope and the Turk [Muslim] together. A beast full of life must have a body and soul. The spirit or soul of Antichrist is the pope, his flesh or body the Turk." [Martin Luther, Table Talk] ------- "When my heart is cold and I cannot pray as I should I scourge myself with the thought of the impiety and ingratitude of my enemies, the Pope and his accomplices and vermin, and Zwingli, so that my heart swells with the righteous indignation and hatred and I can say with warmth and vehemence: 'Holy be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done!' And the hotter I grow the more ardent do my prayers become." [Martin Luther, Table Talk Number 2387 a-b, as quoted in Frans Funck-Bretano, _Luther_, 1939, p.319] ------- "Whoever would like to cherish such adders and puny devils -- who are the worst enemies of Christ and us all all -- to befriend them and to do them honour simply in order to be cheated, plundered, robbed, disgraced, and forced to howl and curse and suffer every kind of evil, to him I would commend the Jews. And if this is not enough, let him tell the Jews to use his mouth as a privy, or else crawl into the Jew's hind parts, and there worship the holy thing, so as afterwards to be able to boast of having been merciful, and of having helped the Devil and his progeny to blaspheme our dear Lord." [Martin Luther, "Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor" by Peter F. Weiner (1985, Gustav Broukal Press)] ------- "If I had to baptise a Jew, I would take him to the bridge of the Elbe, hang a stone around his neck and push him over with the words 'I baptise thee in the name of Abraham'." [Martin Luther, "Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor" by Peter F. Weiner (1985, Gustav Broukal Press)] ------- "If the peasants are in open rebellion, then they are outside the law of God. Therefore let all who are able slash, strike down, and kill (those who rebel) openly and secretly, remembering that there can be nothing more venomous, harmful, or devilish than a rebel. It is exactly like killing a mad dog." [Martin Luther] ------- "It is impossible for the Christian and true church to subsist without the shedding of blood, for her adversary, the Devil, is a liar and murderer. The church grows and increases through blood; she is sprinkled with blood." [Martin Luther, Table Talk, No. 1571, 1569] ------- "So tenaciously should we cling to the world revealed by the Gospel, that were I to see all the Angels of Heaven coming down to me to tell me something different, not only would I not be tempted to doubt a single syllable, but I would shut my eyes and stop my ears, for they would not deserve to be either seen or heard." [Martin Luther, Table Talk, Number 1687. Also see Eric Hoffer's response in "The True Believer"] ------- "Beliefs, including religious ones, are learned. Which makes atheism a normal state of affairs and religious beliefs a learned "abnormality". No psychological theory is necessary to explain the causes of a normal base state. Any psychological theory of learning, attitude change or socialisation can explain the causes of religious belief." [Rosemary Lyndall, clinical Neuro-psychologist] ------- "W. V. O. Quine has been one of the most ruthless of recent appliers of this principle [Ockham's razor.] I recall an exchange in print (a fest-schrift, around 1980) where someone quoted Shakespeare's "There are more things on heaven and earth, than are dreamed of in your philosophy" at Quine. Quine responded something like, "Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth." [David Lyndes] ------- "If you allow people with religious agendas to set government policy based on their religion, you change a country from the democracy we have to the kind of religiously run country you find in Iran." [Barry Lynn, Exec. director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, full-page ad in the Gazette-Telegraph (Colo. Sprgs.) on Oct. 25. 1996] ------- "God tells Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If this was the only way they could understand the difference between good and evil, how could they have known that it was wrong to disobey god and eat the fruit?" [Laurie Lynn (sechum-l secular humanist discussion list)] ------- "I do not like your Bible verse, It makes no sense, it is too terse, It is devoid of all context, What will your Holy Book say next? I do not like your Bible verse, it seems to go from bad to worse." [Niall McAuley] ------- "Creeds made in Dark Ages are like drawings made in dark rooms" [Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, 1929] ------- "The making of an Atheist implies a mental stimulation and training which brings into play the primary factors of social progress." [Joseph McCabe] ------- "The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature. The one retreats as the other advances." [Joseph McCabe] ------- "Sooner or later the despairing churches will try to get a world-alliance with something like fascist tyranny to check the growth of atheism." [Joseph McCabe, "Is the Position of Atheism Growing Stronger?", 1936] ------- "The clergy never discovered any injustice to woman; and only one in a thousand could see it when it was pointed out." [Joseph McCabe, The Religion of Woman, 1905] ------- "An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question." [John McCarthy] ------- "What you are about to hear is God's word to the men of this nation. We are going to war as of tonight. We have divine power -- that is our weapon. We will not compromise. Wherever truth is at risk, in the schools or legislature, we are going to contend for it. We will win." [CU Football Coach Bill McCartney, CFV Board Member and founder of Promise Keepers, in Freedom Writer, Sept. 1996] ------- "Homosexuality is an abomination of Almighty God." [Bill McCartney, founder of Promise Keepers, in the Denver Post, Feb. 11, 1992] ------- "Take back the nation for Christ." [Bill McCartney, founder of Promise Keepers, at a 1992 rally in Boulder, Colorado, quoted in Church and State Magazine, May 1995] ------- "We're raising our children at a time when it's an effeminate society. It's not the proper culture." [Bill McCartney, founder of Promise Keepers, quoted in The Progressive, August 1996] ------- "I see every guy leaving out of here and coming under the authority of a local shephard." [Bill McCartney, founder of Promise Keepers, on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" show, advocating the dangerous and manipulative "Shepharding" practice popular among control-freak fundies] ------- "Evil is a problem for the theist in that a contradiction is involved in the fact of evil on the one hand, and the belief in the omnipotence and perfection of God on the other. God cannot be both all-powerful and perfectly good if evil is real." [H.J. McCloskey, "God and Evil"] ------- "God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place." [J.D. McCoughey] ------- "Universal deities... never seem to smile. Not in any culture. What's the point of having omnipotence if you don't enjoy it?" [Jack McDevitt, "The Engines of God", p. 108] ------- "If, when we perceive results similar to those that might be due to a wise man, we conclude that they have been produced by a being similar to a wise man, then, when we see results similar to those that might be due to an idiot, shall we not conclude that they have been produced by an idiot?" [E.M. McDonald, "Design Argument Fallacies"] ------- "On the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant today, like Noah taking 40 days to find a place to park." [Curtis McDougall] ------- "If there were an afterlife, Isaac Asimov would have written a book about it by now." [Mary H. McGavick] ------- "The immortality of the soul ... was really an element foreign to Hebrew belief and Hebrew psychology which was never assimilated into the Old Testament or New Testament." [Dictionary of the Bible, by Jesuit priest John L. McKenzie] ------- "Only by the most tortured exegesis and in the most tenuous theologizing can anything resembling an anti-abortion position be ripped from the scripture.... If there are good reasons for opposing abortion on demand, and there may be, then these must be found outside the Bible." [Delos B. McKown, "What Does the Bible Say About Abortion?", Free Inquiry] ------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." [Delos McKown] ------- "It is scandalous that any modern, intelligent, well- educated person should believe in Christianity." [Delos B. McKown, Ph.D., U.S. professor, philosopher, author, Former clergyman] ------- "America's favorite religion is scientifically unsupported, philosophically suspect at best, disreputable at worst, and historically fraudulent." [Delos B. McKown, Ph.D., Former clergyman] ------- "The Catholic textbooks go so far as to state that oaths of office taken by the President, Congressmen, Governor, judge, etc. if the person be a Catholic must be taken with the mental restriction that his upholding of the Constitution and laws is subject to their non-conflict with the laws of the Catholic Church." [Emmet McLoughlins, "American Culture and Catholic Schools", p.56] ------- "Even as adults (dolphins) seem to enjoy play for the sake of play. They make up their involved games like hide-the-fishbucket or chase-the-feather. They tease mischievously. They have been known to harass groupers and moray eels for the sheer devilry of it, to pick handkerchiefs from unguarded pockets, and to take such an active dislike to Roman Catholic priests to spit stones at anyone wearing a clerical collar." [Robert McNally, "So Remorseless a Havoc" 1981] ------- "I'm an atheist, and Christianity appears to me to be the most absurd imposture of all the religions, and I'm puzzled that so many people can't see through a religion that encourages irresponsibility and bigotry." [Butterfly McQueen, Charleston Gazette, 11/01/1996] ------- "They all err; Muslim, Christian and Jew Two make up humanity's universal sect One man intelligent without religion, The other religious without intellect" [Ma'arri (1024)] ------- "[Religions] have made men feeble and caused them to become an easy prey to evil minded men, who can control them more securely, seeing that the great body of men, for the sake of gaining Paradise, are more disposed to endure injuries than to avenge them." [Machiavelli] ------- "It is becoming quite clear that religion is at the heart of so many civil wars and international struggles. People seem willing to kill, maim, torture and die for a religious or spiritual belief which moves them to believe that their source of the divine is the only source...Consider: In the name of God, a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. In the name of God, murder in the Balkans. In the name of God, the bombing of the World Trade Center. In the name of God, the siege at Waco, Texas. In the name of God, Hindus and Muslims kill each other in India. In the name of God, bloody warfare between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. In the name of God, Shi'ites and Sunnis are at each other's throats in Iraq and Iran, as are Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. In the name of God, a doctor is murdered because he believed in a woman's right to choose. In the name of God, what is going on?" [Shirley MacLaine, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996] ------- "The 'proof' in support of creation science consisted almost entirely of efforts to discredit the theory of evolution through a rehash of data and theories which have been before the scientific community for decades. The arguments asserted by creationists are not based upon new scientific evidence or laboratory data which has been ignored by the scientific community. ...The creationists' methods do not take data, weigh it against the opposing scientific data and thereafter reach the conclusions stated in Section 4(a). instead, they take the literal wording of Genesis and attempt to find scientific support for it. ...Act 590 lacks legitimate educational value because 'creation science' as defined in that section is simply not science. ...Creation science has no scientific merit or educational value as science." [Maclean v. Arkansas] ------- "All Gaza's temples are torn down and burned and the city is cleansed of every belief but the Christian faith. The most stubborn opponents, faute de mieux, are tied up, marched away to the provincial capital, severely tortured, and all killed mala morte, 'a great number.'" [Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire", p.89, from information from the Life of Porphyry.] ------- "Anyone who asserted wrong teachings, anyone serving the devil or his demons, earned instead an equally remarkable antagonism. In their official high meetings together, Christians thus could not keep their own disagreements within the bounds of civil language; their continual quarrels required the intervention of the civil authorities; and all this was well known and noted by friends and foes alike." [Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire", p.92] ------- "In the light of their doctrinal dualism and the intransigence, sometimes amounting to ferocity, with which its spirit was applied, Christians might have been expected to press their differences home with every device and force available. Moreover, if they are measured by their bishops (and a better yardstick is not easily thought of), close to half the population who called themselves church members toward mid-century must have belonged to some allegiance other than the one that ultimately prevailed: in other words, they were Arian, donatist, or Meletian. Sectarian rivalry was thus a very real thing, a spur to great exertions. Egypt especially, being split three ways, echoed to the shouts of partisans, the din of violence, and laments for those robbed, stripped naked, flogged, imprisoned, exiled, sent to the quarries and coppermines, conscripted into the army, tortured, decapitated, strangled, or stoned or beaten to death. The express object was to make converts." [Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire", p. 93] ------- "How we should pity the arrogance of the worm that crawls at our feet, if we knew that it also desired to know the secrets of futurity, and imagined that meteors shot athwart the sky to warn it that a tom-tit was hovering near to gobble it up; that storms and earthquakes, the revolutions of empires, or the fall of mighty monarchs, only happened to predict its birth, its progress, and its decay! Not a whit less presuming has man shewn himself; not a whit less arrogant are the sciences, so called, of astrology, augury, necromancy, geomancy, palmistry, and divination of every kind." [Charles Mackay, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"] ------- "If there's any miracle in the world, it's that so many people actually believe god exists." [John Mackie] ------- "The Old Testament is tribal in its provinciality; its god is a local god, and its village police and sanitary regulations are erected into eternal laws." [John Macy, "The Spirit of American Literature"] ------- "You're a group of Christian-based, conservative organizations with several million dollars to spend. Do you: feed the hungry? Clothe the poor? Don't be so naive! You blow the millions on a series of slickly- worded, logic-bending ads espousing a widely-discredited theory that one can be 'cured' of homosexuality through counseling and prayer." [MAD Magazine #337, p. 32] ------- "Dogma still smells the same whether it comes from the podium or the pulpit." [Steve Mading] ------- "When I get down on my knees, it is not to pray." [Madonna] ------- "It is difficult to believe in a religion that places such a high premium on chastity and virginity." [Madonna] ------- "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 Magellan (1480-1521)] ------- "If Jesus was a Jew, why did he have a Spanish name?" [Bill Maher on "Politically Incorrect"] ------- "Jim Bakker spells his name with 2 k's because 3 would be too obvious." [Bill Maher, host of Politically Incorrect] ------- "He's acting like a God - an insane lunatic" [Iron Maiden, "The Edge of Darkness" by Harris/Bayley/Gers] ------- "Christianity says to 'witness'. It does not say to annoy possible converts to the point of making them your enemy." [Michelle Malkin] ------- "Jews bow their heads, Christians get down on their knees, Muslims get down on their knees with their asses in the air. Atheists hold their heads up proudly and kneel to no one and no thing - non-existent deity, threats of a non-existent hell or other humans." [Michelle Malkin] ------- "An honest man can never surrender an honest doubt." [Walter Malone] ------- "Man is a dog's ideal of what God should be." [Andre Malraux] ------- "Christ: an anarchist who succeeded. That's all." [Andre Malraux] ------- "Luther... was also the most anal of theologians...His holiest moments often came when he was seated on the privy ("Abort") ina Wittenberg monastery tower. It was there, while moving his bowels, that he conceived the revolutionary Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. Afterward he wrote: "...This knowledge the Holy Spirit game me on the privy in the tower." [William Manchester, "A World Lit Only by Fire", pp. 139-140] ------- "....his followers... enjoy telling the story of how the devil threw ink at Luther and Luther threw it back. But in the original version it wasn't ink; it was "Scheiss" (shit)... Again and again, in recalling Satan's attacks on him, Luther uses the crude verb "bescheissen", which describes what happens when someone soils you with his Scheiss. In another demonic stratagem, an apparition of the prince of darkness would humiliate the monk by "showing his arse" ("Steis"). Fighting back, Luther adopted satanic tactics. He invited the devil to 'kiss' or 'lick' his "Steiss", threatened to 'throw him into my anus, where he belongs,' to defecate 'in his face' or, better yet, 'in his pants' and then 'hang them around his neck.'... he told his bodyguards that an apparition of the devil had appeared, stinking up the place, but he had replied in kind, routing the demon 'mit einem Furz' ('with a fart')." [William Manchester, "A World Lit Only by Fire", pp. 139-140] ------- "It is in the book of man, not the book of god, that we must look for examples of heroism, love, pity, justice, truth, honor, humanity." [M.M. Mangasarian, _The Bible Unveiled_] ------- "The worst criminals are not half so immoral as the creators and perpetrators of the unquestionable hell of Christian theology" [M.M. Mangasarian _Morality Without God_, 1913] ------- "Christianity teaches you to love your enemies. If you love your enemies, what value does that place on love?" [Marilyn Manson] ------- "Don't be oppressed by the fascism of Christianity!" [Marilyn Manson] ------- "I'm not a slave to a god that doesn't exist" [Marilyn Manson, "The Fight Song"] ------- "The christians have to realise that I am doing the same thing that their preachers are doing every Sunday, I'm getting up in front of a group of people and telling them what they want to hear, giving them a show. The major different between me and the preachers is that I believe in what I am doing. ...Wasn't Jesus a rabble rouser? These christians would have been protesting against him as well, I reckon." [Marilyn Manson, interview on JJJ, youth radio station in Australia, on protests at his concerts] ------- "God has always been hard on the poor." [Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793)] ------- "The religious part of easter is treated with solemnity, even the resurrection, but the secular part is pure paganism with all the heartiness drained out of it. Easter needs its Dickens." [Samuel Marchbank's Almanac] ------- "It is necessary for men to be deceived in religion." [Marcus Terentius Varro] ------- "In some ways the case of Edward H. Winter is a prototypical miracle of modern medicine. ... He would probably have died of a heart attack in May 1988, when he was 82, if a nurse at St. Francis-St. George Hospital had not revived him through electric shock. ... A few months before his heart attack, he watched the slow, agonizing death of his wife of 55 years, who had suffered brain damage after shock resuscitation from a heart attack of her own, and he resolved that nothing like that would happen to him. ... When his time came, he told his children, they should simply let him die. He told his doctor the same thing. ... Two days after he was revived, he suffered a debilitating stroke. ... He is now partly paralyzed and largely confined to his bed in a nursing home, and although he can still speak, he can utter only a few words before he begins to cry, in despair. ... But for the hospital's intervention, he has charged, he could have died, and in dignity. ... His medical bills now total about $100,000 and are still rising, and his life savings are just about depleted. ... His doctors see scant chance for physical improvement. They say he could live for years. ... The hospital argues any damages Winter has suffered resulted from 'an act of God' over which the hospital had no control." [David Margolick, New York Times, Press Democrat, 18 March 1990] ------- "Among life's perpetually charming questions is whether the truly evil do more harm than the self-righteous and wrong." [Jon Margolis] ------- "I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance." [Christopher Marlowe, British playwright (1564-1593), The Jew of Malta", 1590] ------- "However, recent radiocarbon dating of the shroud indicates that it does not date from the first century but from the Middle Ages. This evidence should not come as a surprise to those who have studied its history and the arguments against its authenticity, because there was excellent reason to suppose that the shroud was a forgery prior to its radiocarbon dating. Besides the finding of Walter McCrone, an analytic chemist, that the 'blood' was made of artist's pigments, the different accounts of Jesus' burial in the Gospels (for example, the account of John (19:40) suggesting that Jesus was washed and annointed as was the burial custom of Jews) are difficult to reconcile with the claim that the shroud showed blood stains." [Michael Martin, _The Case Against Christianity_, p. 87] ------- "Religious experiences are like those induced by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, and sleep deprivation: They tell no uniform or coherent story, and there is no plausible theory to account for discrepancies among them." [Michael Martin, "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification"] ------- "Since experiences of God are good grounds for the existence of God, are not experiences of the absence of God good grounds for the nonexistence of God? After all, many people have tried to experience God and have failed. Cannot these experiences of the absence of God be used by atheists to counter the theistic argument based on experience of the presence of God?" [Michael Martin] ------- "[as for evolution]....cutting out the sections [on the subject] is preferrable if the portions are not thick enough to cause damage to the spine of the book as it is opened and closed in normal use. When the sections needing correction are too thick, paste the pages together being careful not to smear portions of the book not intended for correction." [R.E. Martin, American creationist, in 'Reviewing and Correcting Encyclopaedias' (1983: 205-7), instructing followers to censor books that don't follow creation dogma] ------- "I believe in eight of the ten commandments; and I believe in going to church every Sunday unless there's a game on." [Steve Martin] ------- "It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature." [Harriet Martineau] ------- "...I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with the peace and quiet. [Harriet Martineau, letter to Mr. Atkinson, 1848] ------- "I have no proof of there being a God, nor do I have any disproof. I have no proof of there being a Satan, nor do I have any disproof. Until it is proven to me, I will have faith in no one but myself, because I have proof that I exist. I am blessed only to the church within my head..." ["Martyr"] ------- "Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions." [Karl Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law: Introduction", in the Deutsch-Franzoesische Yahrbuecher, 1844. online at http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1844-DFJ/law.htm] ------- "Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurences it cannot understand." [Karl Marx] ------- "The imaginary flowers of religion adorn man's chains. Man must throw off the flowers, and also the chains." [Karl Marx, Simon Emler, editor, The Wisdom of Karl Marx, 1948] ------- "The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion." [Karl Marx] ------- "The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself." [Karl Marx] ------- "So, why did God give all those Christians ears? Oh yeah, for the cute fish earrings." [Terri Mason] ------- "If any person shall Blaspheme the name of God, the Father, Sonne or Holie Ghost, with direct, expresse, Presumptious or high handed blasphemie, or shall curse God in the like manner, he shall be put to death. Lev. 24:15,16" [Massachusetts' "Body of Liberties" of 1641, Section 94] ------- "Immortality is not a gift, Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it." [Edgar Lee Masters 1869-1950] ------- "I knew Lincoln as early as 1834-7; knew he was an Infidel. He and W. D. Herndon used to talk Infidelity in the Clerk's office in this city, about the years of 1837-40. Lincoln attacked the Bible and the New Testament on two grounds: first from the inherent or appparent contradictions under its lids; second, from the grounds of reason. Sometimes he ridiculed the Bible and the New Testament, sometimes seemed to scoff at it, though I shall not use the word in its full and literal sense. I never heard the Lincoln changed his views, though his personal and political friend from 1834 to 1860. Sometimes Lincoln bordered on Atheism. He went far that way and shocked me." [Col. James H. Matheny, friend and campaign manager of Abraham Lincoln] ------- "I do, with all conscience of truth,...report the wonderful displays of His infinite power, wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness, wherewith His divine providence hath irradiated an Indian wilderness." [Cotton Mather, "Annals of Christ in America," on the massacre of 900 friendly Pequot Indians in 1637 by the Puritans] ------- "The absurd claim of biblical inerrancy dangles before us like a dead stinking rat. One scarcely requires the in-depth knowledge of the scholar to see that the rat is dead, that the bible is fully a manmade product. For the thinking, unprejudiced mind, a liberal dose of that rare commodity known as "common sense" will suffice." [David E. Matson] ------- "...I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due." [W. Somerset Maugham, "The Razor's Edge"] ------- "I do have a problem with separation of church and state. I don't think there's anything wrong with the government having religious views and practices." [Martin Mawyer, Pres. Christian Action Network] ------- "That mind is perfect which, through true faith, in supreme ignorance supremely knows the supremely Unknowable." [St. Maximus the Confessor] ------- "Frankly I've never been able to understand [religious thinking] because you would need two totally different compartments in your brain, one that deals with religion and the other with everything else." [Ernst Mayr, interview, Skeptic Vol. 8 No. 1, 2000] ------- "[My] real goal was school prayer legislation, but a moment of silence was the best [I] could do -- for now." [South Carolina State Rep. Becky Meacham, on the value of "moment of silence" as a step toward the goal of official school prayers] ------- "The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein. It rejects it." [P.B. Medawar] ------- "I was negotiating a contract to accept Jesus as my personal savior, but he refused to recognize my free sex clause." [Al Medwin] ------- Brother will kill brother Spilling blood across the land Killing for religion Something I don't understand Fools like me, who cross the sea And come to foreign lands Ask the sheep, for their beliefs Do you kill on God's command? [Megadeth, "Holy Wars...The Punishment Due" by Dave Mustaine] ------- "The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty- four hours. But certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves....Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it." [Melanchthon] ------- "Without the intervention of the civil authority what would our percepts become?- Platonic laws." [Melanchthon, as quoted in Frans Funck-Brentan, _Luther_ (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd. 1939) P. 260] ------- "...[they are] pornographers ... legalized strippers... a devastation sweeping across the land..." [Pastor Melnichuk, referring to women who choose to take advantage of a legal decision allowing them the right to go topless in Ontario, The Toronto Sun, September 15, 1997] ------- "Better sleep with a sober cannibal that a drunken Christian." [Herman Melville] ------- "Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope." [Herman Melville (1819-91), "Moby Dick", ch. 7 (1851)] ------- "I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has turned out to be hollow courtesy." [Herman Melville, Ishmael in "Moby Dick"] ------- "Three are the sources of insanity in this world: love, religion and politics, all of them so dangerous that we must confine them inside institutions; religion, in churches or temples, as a mad dog. Love, in marriage. Politics, chained to parliaments, because of the genocides and wars that happen when it's on the loose." [Pauline Melville] ------- "There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable. Soon or later the laws governing the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly probable." [H.L. Mencken, 1930] ------- "Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian business man." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings comport themselves in crises, but how actors think they ought to. It is thus, like poetry and religion, a device for gladdening the heart with what is palpably not true." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe--that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." [H.L. Mencken, Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks, 1956] ------- "A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Men become civilized not in proportion to their willingness to believe but in proportion to their readiness to doubt." [H.L. Menchen] ------- "There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus arose from the dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any genuine scientists to say that he believes in the Resurrection, or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system." [H.L. Mencken, "Prejudices"] ------- "Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible." [H.L. Mencken, "Prejudices"] ------- "I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind--that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking." [H.L. Mencken, New York Times Magazine, 11 September 1955] ------- "There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Church: A place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to people who will never get there." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred for the religious." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry." [H.L. Mencken, "Minority Report"] ------- "It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or of the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." [H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy," 1949] ------- "What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell. It's a business almost indistinguishable from that of a seller of snake-oil for rheumatism." [H.L. Mencken, "Minority Report", 1956)] ------- "Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent-- slimy, sneaking and abominable." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "[Religion is] so absurd that it comes close to imbecility." [H.L. Mencken, "Treatise on the Gods"] ------- "If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The truth is that every priest who really understands the nature of his business is well aware that science is its natural and implacable enemy... The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings." [Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken, American editor and critic (1880-1956) "Treatise on the Gods," 1930] ------- "The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected." [H.L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy," 1916] ------- "The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn into a snake." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The Belief that man is outfitted with an immortal soul, differing altogether from the engines which operate the lower animals, is ridiculously unjust to them. The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man-say a Tennessee Holy Roller-is really very small, and the difference between the decentest dog and the worst man is all in favor of the dog." [H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)] ------- "The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible." [H.L. Mencken, in Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion] ------- "The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence." [H. L. Mencken] ------- "The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear--fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety." [H.L. Mencken, "Prejudices" Second Series] ------- "I see little evidence in this world the of so-called goodness of God. On the contrary, it seems to me that, on the strength of His daily acts, He must be set down a most stupid, cruel and villainous fellow." [H.L. Mencken, in Will Durant, "On the Meaning of Life," p. 34] ------- "The whole Christian system, like every other similar system, goes to pieces upon the problem of evil. Its most adept theologians, attempting to reconcile the Heavenly Father of their theory with the dreadful agonies of man in His world, men can only retreat behind Chrysostom's despairing maxim, that "a comprehended God is no God." [H. L. Mencken, "Treatise on the Gods," 1930] ------- "It is Hell, of course that makes priest powerful, not Heaven... When men cease to fear the gods they cease to be religious in any rational sense... The essences of all priestly morality is retribution, and without a Hell of one sort or another retribution becomes mere rhetoric, signifying nothing... The Christian Hell, I incline to believe, is the deepest and hottest of them all." [H. L. Mencken, "Treatise on the Gods," 1930] ------- "I do not believe in immortality and have no desire for it. The belief in it issues from the puerile egos of inferior men." [H.L. Mencken, in Durant, "On the Meaning of Life"] ------- "The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is indeed, no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world." [H. L. Mencken, "Treatise on the Gods," 1930] ------- "The tendency of man to turn to higher powers in time of trouble may be only a borrowing from the childish tendency to turn to its mother. It is natural for all human beings up to the age of six to regard their mothers as omnipotent and omniscient, and it is a sad moment in every child's life when it discovers that this faith is not borne out by the facts." [H.L. Mencken, "Minority Report"] ------- "The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clich‚s. What they mistake for thought is simply repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80% of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought. Whenever a new one appears the average man shown signs of dismay and resentment." [H.L. Mencken, "Minority Report" in "H.L. Mencken's Notebooks"] ------- "In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell." [H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy," 1949] ------- "The inferior man's reasons for hating knowledge are not hard to discern. He hates it because it is complex- because it puts an unbearable burden upon his meager capacity for taking in ideas. Thus his search is always for short cuts. All superstitions are such short cuts. [H.L. Mencken, "Homo neanderthalis", The Baltimore Evening Sun, June 29, 1925] ------- "Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "I can't understand the martyr. Far from going to the stake for the Great Truth, I wouldn't even miss a meal for it. My notion is that all the larger human problems are insoluble, and that life is quite meaningless- a spectacle without purpose or moral. I detest all efforts to read a moral into it." [H.L Mencken] ------- "Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing." [H.L. Mencken] ------- "The man or country that fights priestcraft and priests is to my mind striking deeper for freedom than can be struck anywhere." [George Meredith, letter of Sept. 3, 1874] ------- "Send me money, send me green, Heaven you will meet, Make a contribution and you'll get a better seat..." [Metallica] ------- Pride You Took Pride You Feel Pride That You Felt When You'd Kneel Not The Word Not The Love Not What You Thought From Above It Feeds It Grows It Clouds All That You Will Know Deceit Deceive Decide Just What You Believe I See Faith In Your Eyes Never Your Hear The Discouraging Lies I Hear Faith In Your Cries Broken Is The Promise, Betrayal The Healing Hand Held Back By The Deepened Nail Follow The God That Failed Find Your Peace Find Your Say Find The Smooth Road In Your Way Trust You Gave A Child To Save Left You Cold And Him In Grave It Feeds It Grows It Clouds All That You Will Know Deceit Deceive Decide Just What You Believe I See Faith In Your Eyes Never You Hear The Discouraging Lies I Hear Faith In Your Cries Broken Is The Promise, Betrayal The Healing Hand Held Back By The Deepened Nail Follow The God That Failed I See Faith In Your Eyes Broken Is The Promise, Betrayal The Healing Hand Held Back By The Deepened Nail Follow The God That Failed Pride You Took Pride You Feel Pride That You Felt When You'd Kneel Trust You Gave A Child To Save Left You Cold And Him In Grave I See Faith In Your Eyes Never You Hear The Discouraging Lies I Hear Faith In Your Cries Broken Is The Promise, Betrayal The Healing Hand Held Back By Deepened Nail Follow The God That Failed [Metallica, "The God That Failed" by Hetfield/Ulrich] ------- "Hence, a great fire came from the sky, and many angels were singing off key, rock and roll was rocking the Heavens on high, and god had called the police." [Metallicinthians 69:3-4] ------- "The delegates of the annual conference are decidedly opposed to modern abolitionism, and wholly disclaim any right, wish, or intention to interfere in the civil and political relation between master and slave in the slave-holding states of the union." [Methodist Episcopal Church, Statement of the General Conference, Cincinnati, May 1836] ------- "But might not one suppose as some have supposed, that the feeling which is observed in animated bodies, might belong to a being distinct from the matter of these bodies, to a substance of a different nature united to them? Does the light of reason allow us in good faith to admit such conjectures? We know in bodies only matter, and we observe the faculty of feeling only in bodies: on what foundation then can we erect an ideal being, disowned by all our knowledge?" [Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751) "The Natural History of the Soul" (1742)] ------- "Atheism is the only means of ensuring the happiness of the world, which has been rendered impossible by the wars brought about by theologians." [Julien Offray de la Mettrie, French philosopher] ------- "For God so loved the world that He gave Man Free Will and then got pissed when we didn't meet his arbitrary standards. Oh, and he had his Son offed when he realized how impossible those standards were." [Michael 4:23] ------- "Shepherding us. For what? What happens to animals? Hey, wait a minute, Charlie. If they were angels, what were we? What do angels eat? I looked at the gun." [Cody Ann Michaels] ------- "Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us." [militant religionists everywhere] ------- "The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known." [John Stuart Mill] ------- "The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those most ditinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete skeptics in religion." [John Stuart Mill] ------- "The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious." [John Stuart Mill] ------- "When a man firmly believed that if he violated the sacredness of a particular sanctuary he would be struck dead on the spot or smitten suddenly with a mortal disease, he doubtless took care not to incur the penalty; but when anyone had had the courage to defy the danger and escaped with impunity, the spell was broken.... Unquestionably the conviction which experience in time forced on all but the very ignorant, that divine punishments were not to be confidently expected in a temporal form, contributed much to the downfall of the old religions and the general adoption of one which, without absolutely excluding providential interferences in this life for the punishment of guilt or the reward of merit, removed the principal scene of divine retribution to a world after death. But rewards and punishments postponed to that distance of time... must be awarded not definitely to particular actions but on a general survey of the person's whole life, and he easily persuades himself that, whatever may have been his peccadilloes, there will be a balance in his favor at the last.... The sole quality in these punishments which might seem calculated to make them efficacious, their overpowering magnitude, is itself a reason why nobody (except a hypochondriac here and there) ever really believes that he [or she] is in any very serious danger of incurring them. Even the worst malefactor is hardly able to think that any crime he has had it in his power to commit, any evil he can have inflicted in this short space of existence, can have deserved torture extending through an eternity. Accordingly religious writers and preachers never tire of complaining how little effect religious motives have... on lives and conduct, notwithstanding the tremendous penalties which are alleged to await." [John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, "Utility of Religion"] ------- "It can do truth no service to blind the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected the Christian faith." [John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"] ------- "It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable." [John Stuart Mill, from Cardiff, "What Great Men Think of Religion"] ------- "...what is meant by design? Contrivance: the adaptation of means to and end. But the necessity for contrivance--the need of employing means--is a consequence of the limitation of power. Who would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word was sufficient? The very idea of means implies that means have an efficacy which the direct action of the being who employs them has not. Otherwise they are not means but an encumbrance. ...if the employment of contrivance is in itself a sign of limited power, how much more so is the careful and skillful choice of contrivances: Can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means when the means have no efficacy but what is given them by the will of him who employs them, and when his will could have bestowed the same efficacy on any other means? Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, and there is no room for them in a being whom no difficulties exist." [John Stuart Mill, "Theism"] ------- "Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it is called." [John Stuart Mill] ------- "Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them." [John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty," 1859] ------- "One single well-established fact, clearly irreconcilable with a doctrine, is sufficient to prove that it is false." [John Stuart Mill, "Essays on Politics and Culture"] ------- "Here, then, I take my stand on the acknowledged principle of logic and of morality, that when we mean different things we have no right to call them by the same name, and to apply to them the same predicates, moral and intellectual. Language has no meaning for the words Just, Merciful, Benevolent, save that in which we predicate them of our fellow-creatures; and unless that is what we intend to express by them, we have no business to employ the words. If in affirming them of God we do not mean to affirm these very qualities, differing only as greater in degree, we are neither philosophically nor morally entitled to affirm them at all. If it be said that the qualities are the same, but that we cannot conceive them as they are when raised to the infinite, I grant that we cannot adequately conceive them in the one of their elements, their infinity. But we can conceive them in their other elements, which are the very same in the infinite as in the finite development. Anything carried to the infinite must have all the properties of the same thing as finite, except those which depend upon the finiteness. What belongs to either as Infinite or as Absolute I do not pretend to know; but I know that infinite goodness must be goodness, and that what is not consistent with goodness, is not consistent with infinite goodness. If in ascribing goodness to God I do not mean what I mean by goodness; if I do not mean the goodness of which I have some knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an incomprehensible substance, which for aught I know may be a totally different quality from that which I love and respect...what do I mean by calling it goodness: And what reason have I for respecting it? If I know nothing about what the attribute is, I cannot tell that it is a proper object of respect. To say that God's goodness may be different in kind from man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good? To assert in the words what we do not think in meaning, is as suitable a definition as can be given of a moral falsehood. Besides, suppose that certain unknown attributes are ascribed to the Deity in a relation to external evidences of which are so conclusive to my mind, as effectually to convince me that it comes from God. Unless I believe God possess the same moral attributes which I find, in however inferior a degree, in a good man, what ground of assurance have I of God's goodness? But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do; he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go. [John Stuart Mill, "An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy"] ------- "I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go." [John Stuart Mill] ------- "Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction;... Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good...It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character... It essentially the doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established." [John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"] ------- "My father, educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only the belief in Revelation but the foundations of what is commonly called Natural religion. My father's rejection of all that is called religious belief was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness. His aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius: he regarded it with the feeling due not to mere mental delusion but to a great moral evil. It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of duty to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions and feelings respecting religion: and he impressed on me from the first that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known." [John Stuart Mill, "Autobiography"] ------- "No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusion it may lead." [John Stuart Mill, quoted in Cardiff, "What Great Men Think of Religion"] ------- "So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded its adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach." [John Stuart Mill, "The Subjection of Women, Three Essays"] ------- "Man has never been the same since God died. He has taken it very hard. Why, you'd think it was only yesterday, The way he takes it. Not that he says much, but he laughs much louder than he used to, And he can't bear to be left alone even for a minute, and he can't Sit still." [Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), _Conversation at Midnight_, IV] ------- "In regards to Oral Roberts' claim that God told him that he would die unless he received $20 million by March, God's lawyers have stated that their client has not spoken with Roberts for several years. Off the record, God has stated that 'if I had wanted to ice the little toad, I would have done it a long time ago." [Dennis Miller, SNL News] ------- "Let me use their own terminology against them. They aborted a child in the 200th trimester." [Dennis Miller] ------- "I have my own God, and I think my God finds me incredibly fucking funny. That's why I chose him as my God ... " [Dennis Miller] ------- "It seems to be an intrusive nature to religion now in this country that I don't quite understand- there isn't an hour in the day where a television preacher doesn't bully his way into your living room. I see through these guys like used Neutrogena. You know, they say they don't favor any particular denomination, but I think we've all seen their eyes light up at 10s and 20s." [Dennis Miller, from the "Black & White" show] ------- "I think the thing I find most telling about Christianity is its only after many of these people have painted themselves into irrevocable moral corners- then and only then do they turn their life over to Christ. Nobody goes to Christ on prom night- its only when they fuck it up so horribly that nobody down here'll talk to them anymore." [Dennis Miller, from the "Black & White" show] ------- "Now 7-11 has bowed to pressure from the Moral Majority to remove Playboy and Penthouse from their newsstand. I guess to be fair you have to look at it from the fundamentalist perspective - what they're saying is that they don't want pornography out in the open, because what it does is it forces a certain type of literature on somebody in a public place. It would be like..., uh..., oh I don't know, say like ...put the Bible in everybody's hotel room, or something crazy like that." [Dennis Miller, from the "Black & White" show] ------- "Born again?! No, I'm not. Excuse me for getting it right the FIRST time." [Dennis Miller] ------- "John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he temporarily died to save it from himself. But none of that really matters because most people will be tortured for eternity anyways." [Matt Miller] ------- Jesus loves the little children All the children of the world red and yellow black and white they are precisous in his sight except, for the ones who don't grovel before him they burn in hell for all eternity. Jesus loves the little children of the world. [Matt Miller] ------- "If one is willing to make adjustments in the historical claims of the Bible, they can be correlated with the archaeological evidence if one is willing to take some liberties with the archaeological evidence." [J. Maxwell Miller, Biblical archaeologist] ------- "Today some say that Jesus died, And still remains quite dead. But these who speak have surely lied. The real truth is, instead, That Jesus Christ, Whose blood was spilled, Is no corpse, I insist! For how could someone have been killed, Who never did exist?" [David Mills, "Science Shams & Bible Bloopers" http://geocities.com/forbidden_area/book.html] ------- "The bloody history of Christianity would lead any objective person to conclude that religion -- and the Christian religion in particular -- have been a moral abomination to mankind. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch burnings, the torture of 'infidels' were all carried out in the name of the Christian God. While it is unfair to hold Christianity responsible for perversions of its teachings, it is nonetheless indisputable that, historically, more people have been slaughtered in the name of the Christian religion than for ANY reason connected to atheism." [David Mills] ------- "When you meet the frendliest people you have ever known, who introduce you to the most loving group of people you ever encountered, and you find their leader to be the most inspired, caring, compassionate and understanding person you ever met, and then you learn that the cause of the group is something you never dared hope could be accomplished, and all of this sounds too good to be true! Don't give up your education, your hopes and ambitions, to follow a rainbow." [Jeanne Mills, former member of Jims Jones People's Temple who was assassinated one year after the Nov. 18, 1978, Johnstown murder-suicides of 911 adults and children] ------- "The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief -- call it what you will -- than any book ever written." [A.A. Milne] ------- congregation, please be seated and open your prayer guides to the book of revelations, psalm 69 drinking the blood of jesus drinking it right from his veins learning to swim in the ocean learning to prowl in his name the body of christ looked unto me a preacher with god-given hands he wants you to suck on the holy ghost and swallow the sins of man psalm 69 the invisible piss of the holy ghost comes down like acid rain they're making a bonnet of terminal guilt the scavengers go on parade the fathers who write that eternity is used to fight the sword have filled you up with the devil's cock and he'll come in the name of the lord the way to succeed and the way to suck eggs ["Psalm 69", Ministry] ------- "Lord, there's danger in this land. You get witch-hunts and wars when church and state hold hands." [Joni Mitchell] ------- "I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education." [Wilson Mizner] ------- "In the unlikely event of losing Pascal's Wager, I intend to saunter in to Judgement Day with a bookshelf full of grievances, a flaming sword of my own devising, and a serious attitude problem." [Rick Moen] ------- "The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose." [Jacques Monod] ------- "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof" [Ashley Montagu] ------- "'The Good Book'--one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined." [Ashley Montagu] ------- "O senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm and yet will make Gods by the dozen!" [Michel de Montaigne] ------- "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know." [Michel de Montaigne, "Essays," 1580] ------- "Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians." [Michel de Montaigne, "Essays," 1580] ------- "How many things that were articles of faith yesterday are fables today." [Michel de Montaigne, "Essays," 1580] ------- "Men are most apt to believe what they least understand." [Michel de Montaigne] ------- "Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself." [Michel de Montaigne, "Essays" Book 1, Ch. 39] ------- "Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.... Men make themselves believe that they believe....Philosophy is doubt." [Michel de Montaigne] ------- "...I was suddenly inspired to describe the Judeo-Christian god as a penis which has been endowed with cosmic significance." [Soledad de Montalvo] ------- "No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ." [Montesquieu] ------- "So you're a god, eh? Very nice, very nice. But, you still don't have a reservation..." [Monty Python] ------- "A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20: Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." [Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"] ------- "And there shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, and there will be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base, that has an attachment they will not be there. At this time a friend shall lose his friends's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before ..." [Prophet in Monty Python's, "Life of Brian"] ------- "Oh Lord please don't burn us don't kill or toast your flock Don't put us on the barbeque or simmer us in stock, Don't bake or baste or boil us or stir-fry us in a wok." [Monty Python] ------- "...and sporteth twice they the camels, before the third hour. And so the Millionites went forth, to Ramgilliad, in Kadesh-belgamesh, by Shorethberagalion, to the house of Gashbillbethuelbasda, he who brought the butterdish to Balshaza, and the tent-peg to the house of Rashamon. And there, slew they the goats, yeah, and put they the bits, in little pots." [Monty Python] ------- "It's like I always said....there's nothing an agnostic can't do if he really doesn't know whether he believes in anything or not" [Monty Python, "The Meaning of Life"] ------- "Tonight, instead of discussing the existence or non- existence of God, they have decided to fight for it." [Monty Python] ------- "All things dull and ugly, all creatures short and squat; All things rude and nasty, the Lord God made the lot. Each little snake that poisons, each little wasp that stings He made their brutish venom, He made their horrid wings. All things sick and cancerous, all evil great and small, All things foul and dangerous, the Lord God made them all. Each nasty little hornet, each beastly little squid. Who made the spiky urchin? Who made the shark? He did. All things scabbed and ulcerous, all pox both great and small, Putrid, foul and gangrenous, The Lord God made them all. Amen." [Monty Python, "The Meaning of Life" movie] ------- "From the perspective of monkeys, we must all seem like gods. we provide bananas and amusement and electric shocks. but as gods, it is our duty to the monkeys to make them wear diapers and roller skates, to shoot them into space, and periodically dissect them. Fortunately for irony, mankind has religion too." ["mr moody"] ------- "Out of all the Saints sent by God, I think I am the most successful one already as it now stands. When it comes to our age, we must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world. So, we cannot separate the political field from the religious. My dream is to organize a Christian political party including the Protestant denominations, Catholic and all the religious sects. We can embrace the religious world in one arm and the political world in the other. The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world. I have met many famous so-called famous Senators and Congressmen, but to my eyes they are just nothing; they are weak and helpless before God. If the U.S. continues its corruption, and we find among the Senators and Congressmen no one really usable for our purposes we can make Senators and Congressmen out of our members." [Rev. Sun Myong Moon, in MASTER SPEAKS, 5/17/73, detailing his anti-democratic plans for the USA] ------- "So telling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a person, but if you tell a lie to do a good thing for him that is not a sin. Even God tells lies very often; you can see this throughout history." [Rev. Sun Myong Moon, in MASTER SPEAKS, 3/16/72--England, revealing the extent of his respect for truth, i.e. none] ------- "You use the bathroom each morning. When you defecate, do you wear a gas mask? This is not a laughing matter but a serious one. If you are near someone else defecating, you will quickly move a good distance away. But when you smell your own feces, you do not even notice it. This is because that fecal matter is one with your body. Therefore, you do not feel that it is dirty." [Rev. Sun Myong Moon's delusional speech to a room full of world leaders, in Buenos Aires] ------- "The sentient may perceive and love the universe, but the universe may not perceive and love the sentient. The universe sees no distinction between the multitude of creatures and elements which comprise it. All are equal. None is favored. The universe, equipped with nothing but the materials and the power of creation, continues to create: something of this, something of that. It cannot control what it creates and it cannot, it seems, be controlled by its creations (though a few might deceive themselves otherwise). Those who curse the workings of the universe curse that which is deaf. Those who strike out at those workings fight that which is inviolate. Those who shake their fists, shake their fists at blind stars." [Michael Moorcock, from The Chronicles of Corum] ------- "When gods die, self-respect buds. Gods and their examples are not needed by those who respect themselves and, consequently, respect others. Gods are for children; for little, fearful people; for those who would have no responsibility to themselves or their fellows." [Michael Moorcock, "The Eternal Champion Saga: The Quest for Tanelorn"] ------- "Gods are but metaphors. As metaphors they might be very acceptable - but they should never be allowed to become beings in their own right." [Michael Moorcock, "The Eternal Champion Saga: The Quest for Tanelorn"] ------- "But faith, fanatic faith, once wedded to some falsehood, hugs it to the last." [George Moore] ------- "My duty under the Constitution is to acknowledge the Judeo-Christian God, not the gods of other faiths. We are not a nation founded upon the Hindu god or Buddha. They do not acknowledge the God of the holy Bible on which this country was founded." [Alabama Judge Roy Moore, in defiance of court orders demanding that he remove a replica of the 10 Commandments from his courtroom and cease opening court with prayer] ------- "Faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last." [Thomas Moore, "Lalla Rookh", (1817)] ------- "Vain things!--as lust or vanity inspires, The heaven of each is but what each desires." [Thomas Moore] ------- "Faith is an absolutely marvelous tool. With faith there is no question too big for even the smallest mind." [Rev. Donald Morgan (b. 1933), "Atheist theologian"] ------- "God: The Immutable One, though somewhat different for each person, denomination, religion, society, and historical period. The omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all-wise, infinite mind who -- for strictly personal reasons -- makes a point of seeming to be an impotent, know-nothing, nowhere, bumbling oaf." [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "If God is love, and if God is also omnipresent, then the Devil cannot exist. If the Devil exists, God cannot be love and also be omnipresent. Yet, an omnipresent God of love and the Devil are both said to exist. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure that there is something wrong here!" [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian] ------- "Thank God" that the Bible cannot possibly be the word of God. [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian] ------- "If the Bible is telling the truth, then God is either untruthful or incompetent. If God is truthful, then the Bible is either untruthful or erroneous." [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian] ------- "Moral: A peerless maxim enumerated by God in his Holy Bible, such as that of Deut. 23:1, if your testicles are crushed or your male member missing, you must never enter a sanctuary of the Lord." [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian] ------- "A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism." [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian] ------- "Atheist: A person who believes in one less god than you do." [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologist] ------- "Christians say that--without exception--their God answers all of their prayers; it's just that He sometimes says "yes" and other times "no," "maybe," or "wait." Of course the same could be said of the rain-god,"Bob." [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "If God existed as an all-powerful being, He would not need the money that faithful believers donate to their churches." [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "The certainty with which a religious belief is held is usually in direct proportion to its absurdity." [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "The effectiveness of any one of three prayers, each given twice, is expressed mathematically as: ((3x2)-6)/((6+1)-7)" [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "Jesus' last words on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here." [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "God: The Preeminent Chameleon; whenever the need is felt by one or more of his followers, He obligingly recreates himself to suit the occasion." ["Rev." Donald Morgan] ------- "Theologian: An uncommon individual who, though possessing finite abilities, has been called by God himself who, though possessing infinite abilities, requires the assistance of the former in explaining Himself to the rest of us. [Translation: if God existed, theologians would be out of work.]" [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "The biblical concepts of sin and salvation are an integral part of Christian doctrine. Christianity first creates a problem (sin) and then offers a "solution" (salvation). This is not unlike the protection racket; you either buy "protection"--or else!" ["Rev." Donald Morgan] ------- "It is said that a neurotic builds castles in the sky and the psychotic moves in. What does this say about the mental state of Christians with their Heaven paved in gold?" [Donald Morgan] ------- "God-who is said to have created everything from nothing and to have done so with no help from anyone is now completely helpless to do anything at all without the assistance of an army of clergymen and the charity of a flock of faithful followers." [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "Resurrection: The means by which his friends became convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. Though they never got together on the details of the story, faith teaches us that it is nonetheless a historical fact." [Donald Morgan] ------- "Irreverence: As defined by religionists, the reluctance on the part of an atheist or agnostic to passively listen to incessant god- speak without wanting to respond." [Don Morgan] ------- "If you eat sausage, you are better off not knowing the inner workings of sausage factories, and if you are a Christian, that of the Christian church." [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "Pope: The visible representative of God Invisible. Were it not for the diligent efforts of the former, the latter--who travels incognito--would go entirely unnoticed." [Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheist theologian] ------- "Christians say that...without exception...their God answers all of their prayers; it's just that He sometimes says "yes" and other times "no," "maybe," or "wait." Of course the same could be said of the rain-god, "Bob." [Rev. Donald Morgan] ------- "The treatment of prayer proposals by Congress seems, as much as anything, a reflection of the state of the level of morale within the institution. If congressional morale is high and much is going on, little attention is paid to such hardy perennials. When, however, Congress begins to feel excluded and ineffectual, the bad penny of a prayer amendment seems to turn up and begins commanding attention again." [Richard E. Morgan, "The Supreme Court and Religion"] ------- "All religions die of one disease - that of being found out." [John Morley] ------- "Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat." [John Morley] ------- "....Man can contemplate his own mortality and finds the thought intolerable. Any animal will struggle to protect itself from a threat of death. Faced with a predator, it flees, hides, fights or employs some other defensive mechanism, such as death-feigning or the emission of stinking fluids. There are many self-protection mechanisms, but they all occur as a response to an immediate danger. When man contemplates his future death, it is as if, by thinking of it, he renders it immediate. His defence is to deny it. He cannot deny that his body will die and rot--the evidence is too strong for that; so he solves the problem by the invention of an immortal soul--a soul which is more 'him' than even his physical body is 'him.' If this soul can survive in an afterlife, then he has successfully defended himself against the threatened attack on his life. This gives the agents of the gods a powerful area of support. All they need to do is to remind their followers constantly of their mortality and to convince them that the afterlife itself is under the personal management of the particular gods they are promoting. The self-protective urges of their worshippers will do the rest." [Desmond Morris, "Religious Displays," _Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour_, 1977, Abrams, New York, p. 149-51.] ------- "Religious Displays, as distinct from religious beliefs, are submissive acts performed towards dominant individuals called gods. The acts themselves include various forms of body-lowering, such as kneeling, bowing, kowtowing, salaaming and prostrating; also chanting and rituals of debasement and sacrifice; the offering of gifts to the gods and the making of symbolic gestures of allegiance. The function of these actions is to appease the super-dominant beings and thereby obtains favours or avoid punishments. There is nothing unusual about this behaviour in itself. Subordinates throughout the animal world subject themselves to their most powerful companions in a similar way. But the strange feature of these human submissive actions, as we encounter them today, is that they are performed towards a dominant figure, or figures, who are never present in person. Instead they are represented by images and artifacts and operate entirely through agents called holy-men or priests. These middle-men enjoy a position of social influence and respect because some of the power of the gods rubs off on them. It is therefore extremely important to the holy-men to keep the worshippers permanently obedient to the super- dominant figures, and they do this in several ways." [Desmond Morris, _Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour_, 1977, Abrams, New York, pages 148-9] ------- "One of the demands put upon the priests and holy-men is that they should provide impressive rituals. Nearly all religions include ceremonial procedures during which the followers of a particular deity can indulge in complex group activities. This is essential as a demonstration of the power of the gods--that they can dominate and command submissive behaviour from large numbers of people at one and the same time--and it is also a method of strengthening the social bonding in relation to the common belief. Since the gods are super-parents and super-leaders, they must necessarily have large houses in which to 'meet' with their followers. Anyone flying low over human settlements in a spacecraft and ignorant of our ways would notice immediately that in many of the villages and towns and cities there were one or two homes much bigger than the rest. Towering over the other houses, these large buildings must surely be the abodes of some enormous individuals, many times the size of the rest of the population. These--the houses of the gods--the temples, the churches and the cathedrals--are buildings apparently made for giants, and a space visitor would be surprised to find on closer examination that these giants are never at home. Their followers repeatedly visit them and bow down before them, but they themselves are invisible. Only their bell-like cries can be heard across the land. Man is indeed an imaginative species." [Desmond Morris, "Religious Displays," _Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour_, 1977, Abrams, New York, page 152.] ------- "I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape" [Desmond Morris, "The Naked Ape"] ------- "No matter how old we become, we can still call them [i.e., the super- dominant beings] 'Holy Mother' and 'Father' and put a child-like trust in them (or their agents, who often adopt similar titles for themselves)." [Desmond Morris, "Religious Displays," _Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behaviour_, 1977, Abrams, New York] ------- "When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data." [Henry Morris, Head of Institute for Creation Research] ------- "Evolution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behaviorism, racism, economic imperialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism, and all manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice." [H. M. Morris, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth, San Diego, Creation-Life Publishers, 1972] ------- "The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since He has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years in age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestrial chronology." [Henry Morris, ICR President, 1974] ------- "The "stars" associated with the solar system, such as the planets and asteroids (and it should be remembered that the term "star" in Biblical usage applies to any heavenly body other than the sun and moon) would be particularly likely to be involved, in the view of the heavy concentration of angels, both bad and evil, around the planet Earth." [Henry Morris, ICR] ------- "The so-called geologic ages are essentially synonymous with the evolutionary theory of origins. The latter is the anti-God conspiracy of Satan himself." [Dr Henry Morris, President of the Institute for Creation Research, 1978] ------- "The only Bible-honoring conclusion is, of course, that Genesis 1-11 is actual historical truth, regardless of any scientific or chronological problems thereby entailed." [Dr Henry Morris, President ICR, 1972] ------- "There is no observational fact imaginable which cannot, one way or another, be made to fit the creation model. [Henry Morris, Past President, Institute for Creation Research] ------- "Unfortunately, God doesn't give us all the details. All we can do is begin with what we do know and make reasonable inferences. I can think of several possibilities which are biblically acceptable...Is it possible that this highly intelligent being [Lucifer] performed breeding experiments, or genetic engineering on both mankind and the animals, in his attempt to mock the true Creator/God and usurp His authority? Perhaps even the ancient legends of composite mixtures of beasts and half-men/half-beasts have some basis in fact." [John D. Morris, 1997] ------- "Pass the pub that wrecks your body And the church, all they want is your money" [Morrisey] ------- "The church is actually patronized by the social order as a means of stabilizing and perpetuating the existing system." [C. C. Morrison] ------- "There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes." [James Morrow] ------- "'Here's a question you *can* answer.' Beauchamp [scientist addressing Yeshua on the cross] pointed to the INRI plaque. 'That sign above your head-it's in all the crucifixion paintings. I've always wondered, what does it mean?' '"I'm Not Returning Immediately.'" [James Morrow, "Blameless in Abaddon", pg. 248] ------- "One man's ecstatic vision is another man's reminder to get his prescription refilled." [Debby Morse, "What Would Freud Say?" article in the The Examiner (San Francisco) March 27, 2002 www.examiner.com/noremorse/default.jsp?story=n.morse.0327w] ------- "Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man ... , keep alive for yourselves." [Moses, relaying God's orders to his people, Numbers 31:17-18] ------- "God"--as revealed in his book of edicts and narratives-- is practically an idiot. He has nothing to say that any sensible person should want to listen to." [Johann Most (c. 1890), Popular anarchist speaker] ------- "As set forth by theologians, the idea of "God" is an argument that assumes its own conclusions, and proves nothing." [Johann Most (c. 1890), popular anarchist speaker] ------- "Among all mental diseases that have been systematically inoculated into the human cranium, the religious pest is the most abominable." [Johann Most, "The God Pestilence",] ------- "The god of the Christians, as we have seen, is the god who makes promises only to break them; who sends them pestilence and disease in order to heal them; a god who demoralizes mankind in order to improve it. A god who created man "after his own image", and still the origin of evil in man is not accredited to him. [Johann Most, "The God Pestilence",] ------- "It is a just retribution for improper sexual misconduct" [Mother Teresa, on AIDS] ------- "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." [Mother Teresa, on poverty] ------- "It is the greatest enemy of peace." [Mother Teresa, on abortion] ------- "There is no problem of overpopulation, only God's will." [Mother Teresa, on overpopulation] ------- "Of course, any people always have the government they deserve, or the God they deserve. It seems incredible that people could believe that God would speak from a high mountain only to tell them "no-nos". But many did, and some still do. Original sin, no. Original stupidity, yes." [Marcelo Ramos Motta, from Class C commentary to Liber LXV] ------- "It's going to affect your kids if they go to school and they are told Heather has two mothers. Men sleeping with men and women sleeping with women is wrong because God said it was wrong." [California State Sen. Richard Mountjoy, (R-Monrovia), San Francisco Chronicle, May 26, 1999 -- Speech on bill to outlaw discrimination against gays in CA schools] ------- "I'm a pedestrian. I see religion like footwear. Some people like to wear really comfortable shoes; some people like to wear big, tall boots, really immerse themselves in it. I choose to go barefoot, just don't step on my toes and we can get along just fine." [K. Muir] ------- "Though science has long since pulled the plug on religion's life support system, the patient stll has convulsions and will not die easily." [Andy Mulcahy] ------- "No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve." [Saki, H.H. Munro (1870-1916), Scottish author] ------- "CEE is opposed to censoring such things as the true Christian history of our nation and the scientific evidence that renders macro-evolution impossible. Both of these have been extensively censored. We do support rejection or removal of obscene, morbid and unhealthy materials." [David Muralt, Texas Director of Citizens for Excellence in Education, from Feb. 7, 1994 Austin American-Statesman] ------- "I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped." [Iris Murdoch] ------- "God does not and cannot exist. But what led us to conceive of Him does exist and is constantly experienced and pictured." [Iris Murdoch] ------- "Find a christian today and tell him he is sick. Convert him, if that term means anything, to a healthy lifestyle. Christians don't have a monopoly on morality. We too can do 'the good work'." [On Confrontation, from _Essays of an Atheist Activist_ by Jon G. Murray] ------- "There was no such person in the history of the world as Jesus Christ. There was no historical, living, breathing, sentient human being by that name. Ever. [The Bible] is a fictional, nonhistorical narrative. The myth is good for business." [Jon Murray, President of American Atheists, as quoted in Life Magazine, Dec. 1994 "Jesus" issue] ------- "Religion is or ought to be a private matter and cannot and should not be accepted in the public arena as representing rational thinking." [Jon G. Murray, 1995] ------- "I have never met a religious person, no matter how devout, who has not at one time in their life thought that maybe there is no god, maybe I'm talking to myself, maybe this prayer isn't answered. We are despised because we are a walking, talking personification of the doubts that are harbored in the subconscious of every religious person. And what religionists can't stand about us is that by and large we are happy when we're supposed to be unhappy without a god." [Jon Murray, interviewed by Tony Semerad of the Salt Lake Tribune, 21 December 1991] ------- "A Mormon is a man that has the bad taste and the religion to do what a good many other people are restrained from doing by conscientious scruples and the police." [Mr. Dooley] ------- "I was on my knees, doggie-style, with my feet hanging off the bed... He pulled his jogging suit down around his ankles and left his T-shirt on... He stuck it in and pumped a couple of time and pulled it out... He was very easy. A few pumps and that was it. He'd just moan, and as soon as he got done, he'd throw the rubber in the trash, tuck it in and walk out the door." [Debra Murphree, on Jimmy Swaggart's sexual escapades, Penthouse magazine, July 1988] ------- "When I seen him on TV, I'd mostly watch his motions, just to see how he acted. The same voice. I said "God, what a freak. Kinky. Here he is up there preaching for all this money and when I see him, he's kinky and cheap." [Debra Murphree, refering to Jimmy Swaggart Penthouse magazine, July 1988] ------- "For man is the maker of all deities, inventer of all abstractions, builder of all laws and from first to last, the measure of all things, the very meaning of the earth." [Harry A. Murry] ------- "Fascism is a religious concept." [Benito Mussolini, _Fascism, Institutions And Doctrines_] ------- "Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." [Vladimi Nabokov (1899-1977), Russian- American novelist from Laurence J. Peter, "Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time"] ------- "The assumption that there is a superior and more direct way of grasping the secrets of the universe than the painfully slow road of science has been so repeatedly shown to be a romantic illusion, that only those who are unable to profit from the history of the human intellect can seriously maintain it." [Ernest Nagel, "Malicious Philosophies of Science"] ------- So blind if you pray Lost another day Get off your knees Do something for yourself It'll teach you nothing About the world today Take the belief and throw it away Throw it away / destroy it all The church and its glory Is draining all your money No gods no masters Religious cancer Throw it away / destroy it all. [Nailbomb, "Religious Cancer"] ------- "The history of the rise of Christianity has everything to do with politics, culture, and human frailties and nothing to do with supernatural manipulation of events. Had divine intervention been the guiding force, surely two millennia after the birth of Jesus he would not have a world where there are more Muslims than Catholics, more Hindus than Protestants, and more nontheists than Catholics and Protestants combined." [John K. Naland, "The First Easter", Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2] ------- "I write against the religion because if women want to live like human beings, they will have to live outside the religion and Islamic law." [Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, in exile, 6/21/94] ------- "Religion, society and state; from none of these do women get their proper honour. It is religion which has created an unparalleled disparity between men and women." [Taslima Nasrin] ------- "The prime necessity of a human being is freedom. It is the state which has forbidden women from enjoying that liberty. Religion is now the first obstacle to women's advancement. Religion pulls human beings backwards, it goes against science and progressiveness. Religion engulfs people with a fear of the supernatural, It bars people from laughing and never allows people to exercise their choice." [Taslima Nasrin] ------- "Jesus said, 'Love your neighbors.' Well, I do love them. I love to kill them." ["Nasty Nick," Croatian Policeman] ------- "In Rome, they forgive atheists, sodomites, libertines and all other kinds of offenders, but they will never forgive anyone who speaks badly of the Pope or of the Curia or who even creates an impression of having doubts about Papal omnipotence." [Gabriel Naude, during the Inquisition] ------- "Almighty God, dear heavenly Father. In Thy name let us now, in pious spirit, begin our instruction. Enlighten us, teach us all truth, strengthen us in all thatis good, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from all evil in order that, as good human beings, we may faithfully perform our duties and thereby, in time and eternity, be made truly happy. Amen." [Mandatory secondary school prayer in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, from July-August 1995 issue of Liberty: A Magazine of Religious Freedom, published by the North American Division of the Seventh- day Adventist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland] ------- "The loud speakers spoke up and said! The loud speakers spoke up and said! The loud speakers spoke up and said! Christianity is stupid! Christianity is stupid!" [Negativland] ------- "No country or people who are slaves to dogma and the dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded." [Jawaharlal Nehru - a Biography vol. I, by Sarvepalli Gopal] ------- "The applications of science are inevitable and unavoidable for all countries and peoples today. But something more than its application is necessary. It is the scientific approach, the adverturous and yet critical temper of science, the search for the truth and new knowledge, the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, the capacity to change previous conclusions in the face of new evidence, the reliance on observed fact and not on preconceived theory, the hard discipline of the mind all this is necessary, not merely for the application of science but for life itself and the solution of its many problems." [Jawaharlal Nehru, former Prime Minister of India] ------- "The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organized religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled us with horror, and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it." [Jawaharlal Nehru, in Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion] ------- "It brings great pride to my heart to remember that members of my tribe have made many great contributions to the world. Names such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman, Judah Folkman, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jonas Salk and many others come to mind. Quite the résumé we have built, yet when I think that the Jews gave the world Monotheism I fear that all of it cancels out. Monotheism is the great negation sign on the outside of the set." [Neichin, "Pantheist Prophet," (Adamus, 2000) p. ix] ------- "These extremist sects appeal to many people in an antispiritual age because they combine their empowering theology with a warm, supportive environment, at least at first. Those who join become part of a close-knit body of believers who are convinced they understand the meaning of history and what the future holds." [Bruce Nelan, Time Magazine] ------- "One would like to believe that people who think of themselves as devout Christians would also behave in a manner that is in according with Christian ethics. But pastorally and existentially, I know that this is not the case -- and never has been." [John Neuhaus, in San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 1993] ------- "It would be a gain to the country [England] were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion than at present it shows itself to be." [Cardinal John Newman, "Apologia pro Vita Sua"] ------- "Mary Jane still went to church when she could. She had been told that God was forgiving. After all, the Lord returned from the grave and encouraged folk to drink his blood. ...Sometimes she dreamed of opening the throats of angels as they sang, then straddling them as they died." [Kim Newman, in reference to Mary Jeanette Kelly - vampire (Anno Dracula)] ------- "No school ... in which any religious sectarian doctrine shall be taught ... shall receive any portion of the school moneys." [State of New York, Bill passed by legislature, April 11, 1842] ------- "Three years ago, Ralph Reed, the executive director of the Christian Coalition, wished not to be seen. 'I want to be invisible,' he said. 'I do guerilla warfare...'... But on June 25th Reed played the expansive host at a luncheon given by the Coalition, the most influential group on the religious right, which was attended by hundreds of delegates to the Iowa Republican Party convention. They were celebrating their victories in gaining control of the state Party's central committee, ousting moderate Republicans, and in dictating a platform that supported the teaching of creationism in the public schools." ["Christian Soldiers", New Yorker magazine, July 18, 1994] ------- "In January, [Dan Quayle] spoke at a training conference of religious-right activists in Fort Lauderdale, whose theme was 'Reclaiming America,' and before the event began he stood at attention as the crowd of more than two thousand rose, faced a flag with a cross on it, and, with hands on hearts, recited in unison, 'I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Saviour, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Saviour, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe." ["Christian Soldiers", New Yorker magazine, July 18, 1994] ------- "Creationism cannot be defined as a science because it is based on an inflexible presupposition, a conviction based on supposed causes and events that cannot be examined either directly or indirectly by scientific methods. The conclusions precede the search for evidence. In addition, there is no scientific research into the basic tenets of creationism. Revelation is completely outside the scope of science. The "research" of creationists is a biased, destructive critique of all scientific investigation of origins." [Norman D. Newell, "Creation and Evolution"] ------- "Myth-making is a political fact; Myth-breaking is a courageous act." [Tim Newfields] ------- "By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared "abruptly." [Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23] ------- "It is interesting that every time God gives direct orders to anyone, it is always "Thou shalt kill." [Newsweek magazine] ------- "Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they least understand." [Isaac Newton, "Corruptions of Scripture," quoted in Richard S. Westfall, "The Rise of Science and Decline of Orthodox Christianity. A study of Kepler, Descartes and Newton," in David C. Lindberg & Ronald L. Numbers, eds., God and Nature; Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (Berkley, Los Angeles and London, 1986), p231.] ------- "So, how come there are no "talking snakes" nowadays? ... Because you are not righteous enough to hear them talk." [Raoul Newton, net.fundie.idiot] ------- "Think about the bio-mass involved [with the Biblical flood]. What happened to all the corpses?" "Sharks, for one." [Raoul Newton, net.fundie.idiot] ------- "When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes mistakes they call it Nature!" [Jack Nicholson in "The Witches of Eastwick"] ------- "Is god an atheist? If not, who created him? And if so, why can I not agree with him in unbelief?" [John Nicholson] ------- "Creationism was created. Evolution evolves." [John Nicholson] ------- "There is no social evil, no form of injustice which has not been sanctified in some way or another by religious sentiment and thereby rendered more impervious to change." [Reinhold Niebuhr] ------- "The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism." [Reinhold Niebuhr] ------- "There is no religious experience which guarantees that our experience is an experience of God. This can be asserted without for a moment doubting that some people have religious experiences. The psychological reality of such experience is one thing, that these experiences are actually experiences of God is another." [Kai Nielsen, Philosophy and Atheism (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1985) p. 46.] ------- "It is the creationists who blasphemously are claiming that God is cheating us in a stupid way." [J. W. Nienhuys] ------- "A second possible thing that creationists might look for is some kind of instrument that will detect darkness. It is my conclusion, based on [scripture] that darkness is a positive thing." [Richard Niessen, Professor, Christian Heritage College] ------- "Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes." [Nietzsche] ------- "In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?" [Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians] ------- "Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them -- I can write in letters which make even the blind see... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty -- I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind ..." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Anti-Christ", aph. 62 (1895)] ------- "Belief means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, 1889] ------- "Though I drew this conclusion, now it draws me." [Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra] ------- "The belief that the world as it ought to be is, really exists, is a belief of the unproductive who do not desire to create a world as it ought to be. It is a measure of the degree of strength of will to what extent one can do without meaning in things, to what extent one can endure to live in a meaningless world because one organizes a small part of it oneself." All the beauty and sublimity we have bestowed upon... imaginary things I will reclaim as the property and product of man... with what regal liberality he has lavished gifts upon things so as to impoverish himself and make himself feel wretched!" [Friedrich Nietzsche, from "The Will to Power"] ------- "God", "immortality of the soul", "redemption", "beyond" -- Without exception, concepts to which I have never devoted any attention, or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them? I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: It is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers -- at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!" [Freidrich Nietzsche, "Ecce Homo"] ------- "The advent of the Christian God, as the maximum god attained so far, was... accompanied by the maximum feeling of guilty indebtedness on Earth. Presuming we gradually enter upon the reverse course, there is no small probability that with the irresistible decline of faith in the Christian god, there is now a considerable decline in mankind's feeling of guilt; indeed, the prospect cannot be dismissed that the complete and definitive victory of Atheism might free mankind of this whole feeling of guilty in- debtedness towards its origin... Atheism and a kind of second innocence belong together." [Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Genealogy of Morals] ------- "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." [Nietzsche] ------- "Have you noticed there are no interesting people in heaven? --Just a hint to the girls as to where they can find their salvation." [Nietzche, "The Will to Power"] ------- "Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial." [Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: 126] ------- "One is *not* free to become a Christian. One must be sick enough for it." [Nietzsche] ------- "For let us not underestimate the Christian: the Christian, *false to point of innocence*, is far above the ape--regarding Christians, a well-known theory of descent becomes a mere compliment." [Nietzsche] ------- "The 'evangel' died on the cross. What has been called 'evangel' from that moment was actually the opposite of that which he had lived: 'ill tidings,' a *dysangel*." [Nietzsche] ------- "One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this." [Fredrich Nietzsche] ------- "However un-Christian this may sound, I am not even predisposed against myself." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "Assuming that he believes at all, the everday Christian is a pitiful figure, a man who really cannot count up to three, and who besides, precisely because of his mental incompetence, would not deserve such a punishment as Christianity promises him." [Nietzsche, "Human, All too Human"] ------- "Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity." [Nietzsche] ------- "The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all price, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation..." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil," 1886] ------- "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." [Nietzsche "The Dawn" (1881)] ------- "Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains... But it can put mountains where there are none." [Nietzche, _Human, All Too Human_, 1879] ------- "What a theologian feels as true, must be false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth." [Nietzche, The Anti-Christ, 1889] ------- "War to the death against depravity--depravity is Christianity." [Nietzsche] ------- "It is regrettable that a Dostoyevski did not live near this most interesting of all decadents--I mean someone who would have known how to sense the very stirring charm of such a mixture of the sublime, the sickly, and the childlike." [Nietzsche, on Jesus Christ] ------- "The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from life; Dionysus cut to pieces is a *promise* of life: it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction." [Nietzsche] ------- "...it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, seed of all sin, the original sin. This alone is morality. 'Thou shalt not know' -- the rest follows." [Nietzsche, "Antichrist"] ------- "It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven and the redeeming drops of blood: but even these sweet and dismal poisons they took from the body and the earth!" [Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra] ------- "Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teachings?" [Nietzsche] ------- "The noble soul has reverence for itself" [Nietzsche] ------- "Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further." [Zarathustra, in Nietzsche's _Also Sprach Zarathustra_] ------- "What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?" [Nietzsche, "Twilight of the Gods"] ------- ". . . an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' . . . the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form -- the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!" [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad." [Nietzsche] ------- "Only under two suppositions does prayer- that custom of earlier ages that has not yet completely died out- make any sense: it would have to be possible to induce or convert the divinity to a certain course of action, and the person praying would himself have to know best what he needed, what was truly desirable for him. Both presuppositions, assumed true and established by custom in all other religions, are however denied precisely by Christianity; if it nonetheless adheres to prayer in the face of its belief in an omniscient and all-provident rationality in God which renders prayer at bottom senseless and, indeed, blasphemous- in this it once again demonstrates its admirable serpent cunning; for a clear commandment 'Thou Shalt Not Pray' would have led Christians into unchristianity through boredom." [Nietzsche, _The Wanderer and his Shadow_, passage 74] ------- "Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his doctrine." [Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). "Thus Spake Zarathustra"] ------- "Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth." [Zarathustra, in Friedrich Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", First Part] ------- "For the old gods, after all, things came to an end long ago; and verily, they had a good gay godlike end. They did not end in a "twilight," though this lie is told. Instead: one day they *laughed* themselves to death. That happened when the most godless word issued from one of the gods themselves--the word: "There is one god. Thou shalt have no other god before me!" An old grimbeard of a god, a jealous one, thus forgot himself. And then all the gods laughed and rocked on their chairs and cried, "Is not just this godlike that there are gods but no God?" He that has ears to hear, let him hear! [Zarathustra, in Friedrich Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", First Part] ------- "Everywhere the voice of those who preach death is heard; and the earth if full of those to whom one must preach death. Or, "eternal life"---that is the same to me, if only they pass away quickly." [Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"] ------- "An agreeable opinion is accepted as true: this is the proof by pleasure (or, as the church says, the proof by strength), that all religions are so proud of, whereas they ought to be ashamed. If the belief did not make us happy, it would not be believed: how little must it then be worth!" [Nietzsche, "Human, All Too Human"] ------- "Thus a certain false psychology, a certain kind of fantasy in interpreting motives and experiences, is the necessary prerequisite for becoming a Christian and experiencing the need for redemption. With the insight into this aberration of reason and imagination, one ceases to be a Christian." [Nietzsche] ------- "One should not go into church if one wants to breathe pure air." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "The last Christian died on the cross." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly: 'I am looking for God! I am looking for God!' - As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? - thus they shouted and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. WE HAVE KILLED HIM - you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, foreward, in all direction? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light candles in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity--and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive." [Nietzsche, _75_Aphorisms_] ------- "Christianity makes suffering contagious." [Friedrich Nietszche] ------- "A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian. Hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the sense, of the joy of the senses, of joy in general is Christian." [Nietzsche] ------- "But in the end one also has to understand that the needs that religion has satisfied and philosophy is now supposed to satisfy are not immutable; they can be weakened and exterminated. Consider, for example, that Christian distress of mind that comes from sighing over ones inner depravity and care for ones salvation -- all concepts originating in nothing but errors of reason and deserving, not satisfaction, but obliteration." [Freidrich Nietzsche, from "Human, all too Human", s.27, R.J. Hollingdale transl.] ------- "At the deathbed of Christianity.-- Really unreflective people are now inwardly without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people of the intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to say marvelously simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges everything in a manner that in the end will be best for us; a god who gives to us and takes from us our virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all is meet and fit and there is no reason for us to take life sadly, let alone exclaim against it; in short, resignation and modest demands elevated to godhead - that is the best and most vital thing that still remains of Christianity. But one should notice that Christianity has thus crossed over into a gentle moralism: it is not so much 'God, freedom and immortality' that have remained, as benevolence and decency of disposition, and the belief that in the whole universe too benevolence and decency of disposition prevail: it is the euthanasia of Christianity." [Freidrich Nietzsche, from "Daybreaks" 92, R.J. Hollingdale transl.] ------- "The Christian concept of God is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived on earth; perhaps it even represents the low-water mark in the descending development of the God type. God degenerated to the *contradiction of life,* instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! In God a declaration of hostility towards life, nature, and the will to life! God is the formula for every calumny of 'this world', for every lie about the 'next world!' In God nothingess defied, the will to nothingness sanctified . . . . [Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Antichrist_] ------- "In Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and oppressed come to the fore: here the lowest classes seek their salvation. The causistry of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of the conscience, are pursued as a PASTIME, as a remedy for boredom; the emotional reaction to one who has POWER, called 'God,' is constantly sustained (by means of prayer); and what is considered unattainable, a gift, "grace." Public acts are precluded; the hiding-place, the darkened room, is Christian. The body is despised, hygiene repudiated as sensuality; the church even opposes cleanliness (the first Christian measure after the expulsion of the Moors was the closing of the public baths, of which there were two hundred and seventy in Cordova alone). Christian too is a certain sense of cruelty against oneself and against others; hatred of all who think differently; the will to persecute. Gloomy and exciting conceptions predominate; the most highly desired states, designated with the highest names, are epileptoid; the diet is so chosen as to favor morbid phenomena and overstimulate the nerves. Christian too is mortal enmity against the lords of the earth, against the 'noble'-- along with a sly, secret rivalry (one leaves them the 'body,' one wants ONLY the 'soul'). Christian, finally, is the hatred of the SPIRIT, of pride, courage, freedom, liberty of the spirit; Christian is the hatred of the SENSES, of joy in the senses, of joy itself." [Nietzsche, "The Antichrist", 1888, Chapter 21] ------- "Buddha says: 'Do not flatter your benefactor!' Repeat this saying in a Christian church: right away it clears the air of everything Christian!" [Nietzsche] ------- "God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight." [Friedrich Nietzsche,"Thus Spake Zarathustra"] ------- "_Gott ist tot: aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch jahrtausendlang Hohlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt._" (God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.) Nietzche adds, "--And we-- we still have to vanquish his shadow." [Friedrich Nietzsche, _Die Frohliche Wissenschaft_ ("La gaya scienza"), _The Gay (or Joyful) Science_, 2nd edition, III, 108, Leipzig (1887)] ------- "In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God -- today one indicates how the belief that there is a God arose and how this belief acquired its weight and importance: a counter-proof that there is no God thereby becomes superfluous. -- When in former times one had refuted the "proofs of the existence of God" put forward, there always remained the doubt whether better proofs might not be adduced than those just refuted: in those days atheists did not know how to make a clean sweep." [Friedrich Nietzsche, from Daybreaks. 95, R.J. Hollingdale transl.] ------- "The reverse side of Christian compassion for the suffering of one's neighbor is a profound suspicion of all the joy of one's neighbor, of his joy in all that he wants to do and can." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "Daybreaks"] ------- "One should not be deceived: great spirits are skeptics ... Strength, FREEDOM which is born of the strength and overstrength of the spirit, proves itself by skepticism. Men of conviction are not worthy of the least consideration in fundamental questions of value and disvalue. Convictions are prisons." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The AntiChrist"] ------- "Men of fixed convictions do not count when it comes to determining what is fundamental in values and lack of values. Men of conviction are prisoners." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Antichrist" 1888] ------- "When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God's son? The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed -- whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions -- is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross-- how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?" [Freidrich Nietzsche, "Human, all too Human", s.405] ------- "Paul thought up the idea and Calvin rethought it, that for innumerable people damnation has been decreed from eternity, and that this beautiful world plan was instituted to reveal the glory of God: heaven and hell and humanity are thus supposed to exist -- to satisfy the vanity of God! What cruel and insatiable vanity must have flared in the soul of the man who thought this up first, or second. Paul has remained Saul after all -- the persecutor of God." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Wanderer and his Shadow"] ------- "Christianity had brought into life a quite novel and limitless perilousness, and therewith quite novel securities, pleasures, recreations and evaluations of all things. Our century denies this perilousness, and does so with a good conscience: and yet it continues to drag along with it the old habits of Christian security, Christian enjoyment, recreation, evaluation! It even drags them into its noblest arts and philosophies! How worn out and feeble, how insipid and awkward, how arbitrarily fanatical and, above all, how insecure all this must appear, now that the fearful antithesis to it, the omnipresent fear of the Christian for his eternal salvation, has been lost." [Freidrich Nietzsche, "Daybreaks"] ------- "In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God." [Frederick Nietzsche] ------- "It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author-and that he did not learn it better." [Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900) German philosopher] ------- "Nothing is more pathological in our pathological modernity than this disease of Christian pity." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Antichrist" 1888] ------- "Christianity has the rancor of the sick at its very core--the instinct against the healthy, against health. Everything that is well-constructed, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offense to its ears and eyes." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Antichrist" 1888] ------- "I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Antichrist" 1888] ------- "What was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Antichrist" 1888] ------- "Every conviction has its history, its primitive forms, its stage of tentativeness and error: it becomes a conviction only after having been, for a long time, not one, and then, for an even longer time, hardly one." [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Antichrist" 1888] ------- "Convictions are more dangerous to truth than lies." [F. W. Nietzsche, "Human All-too-Human," 1878] ------- "So long as the priest, that professional negator, slanderer and poisoner of life, is regarded as a superior type of human being, there cannot be any answer to the question: "What it truth?" [Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Antichrist" 1888] ------- "His (the theologian) basic instinct of self preservation forbids him to respect reality at any point or even to let it get a word in." [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "God is a conjecture; but I desire that your conjectures be limited by what is thinkable" [Friedrich Nietzsche] ------- "The thumbscrew was usually the first to be applied: the fingers were placed in clamps and the screws turned until the blood spurted out and the bones were crushed. The defendant might be placed on the iron torture chair, the seat of which consisted of sharpened iron nails that could be heated red-hot from below. There were so-called "boots," which were employed to crush the shinbones. Another favorite torture was dislocation of the limbs on the rack or the wheel on which the heretic, bound hand and foot, was drawn up and down while the body was weighted with stones. So that the torturers would not be disturbed by the shrieking of the victim, his mouth was stuffed with cloth. Three and four hour sessions of torture were nothing unusual. During the procedure the instruments were frequently sprinkled with holy water." [Walter Nigg, Swiss Historian, quoted by James A. Haught, "Holy Horrors," 1990] ------- "Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread." [D.T. Niles] ------- heresy he sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see he tries to tell me what i put inside of me he's got the answers to ease my curiosity he dreamed a god up and called it christianity your god is dead and no one cares if there is a hell i will see you there he flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line he made a virus that would kill off the swine his perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain demands devotion atrocities done in his name your god is dead and no one cares drowning in his own hypocrisy and if there is a hell i will see you there burning with your god in humility will you die for this? [Nine Inch Nails, from "The Downward Spiral," lyrics by Trent Reznor] ------- "The whole point of Christianity is that everyone in the world, from Charles Manson to Mother Teresa, deserves to go to hell." [Sean P. Ningen] ------- "There's no reason, in theory, why god's presence couldn't be measured or detected in some way. The only reason that believers claim that god "can't" be detected in this way is because god *isn't* detected, and so a vast and intricate rationale has to be devised to explain this vast, loving, eternal, all-powerful "something" which is, in every external, objective respect, indistinguishable from nothing." [NMS, on alt.atheism] ------- "I have difficult with God and with beliefs. You have to ask the question- if God created man in his own image, what kind of an image is God... I hope God would overlook that he made me in His image, because he sure fucked up." [Nick Nolte, in "Celebrities in Hell" by Warren Allen Smith] ------- "As a literary monument the Bible is of much later origin than the Vedas; as a work of literary value it is surpassed by everything written in the last two thousand years by authors even of the second rank, and to compare it seriously with the productions of Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare or Goethe would require a fantacized mind that had entirely lost its power of judgment. Its conception of the universe is childish, and its morality revolting, as revealed in the malicious vengeance attributed to God in the OT and in the New, the parable of the laborers of the eleventh hour and the episodes of Mary Magdelene and the woman taken in adultery." [Max Nordau] ------- "Religion is a functional weakness." [Max Nordau (1849-1923), German physician and author, "Conventional Lies of Our Civilization" (1884)] ------- "(The Bible's) conception of the universe is childish and morality revolting." [Max Nordau] ------- "So let us be blunt: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberties of the enemies of God." [Gary North, quoted in Albert J. Menendez, Visions of Reality: What Fundamentalist Schools Teach (Prometheus Books, 1993) also "The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right" in Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), p. 25.] ------- "The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant--baptism and holy communion--must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel." [Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 87] ------- "The question eventually must be raised: Is it a criminal offense to take the name of the Lord in vain? When people curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime (Ex. 21:17). The son or daughter is under the lawful jurisdiction of the family. The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death. Clearly, cursing God (blasphemy) is a comparable crime, and is therefore a capital crime (Lev. 24:16)." [Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), pp. 59-60] ------- "A recently articulated philosophy which argues that it is the moral obligation of Christians to recapture every institution for Jesus Christ. It proclaims "the crown rights of King Jesus." The means by which this task might be accomplished--a few CR's are not convinced that it can be--is biblical law. This is the "tool of dominion." We have been assigned a dominion covenant--a God-given assignment to men to conquer in His name (Gen 1:23;9:1-7). The founders of the movement have combined four basic Christian beliefs into one overarching system: 1) biblical law, 2) optimistic eschatology, 3) predestination (providence), and 4) presuppositional apologetics (philosophical defense of the faith). [Gary North, Backward Christian Soldiers? An Action Manual For Christian Reconstruction (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), Glossary] ------- "After serving on the anti-pornography commission, Dobson made a splashy, opportunistic move: In January 1989, he paid a visit to serial killer Ted Bundy on Florida's Death Row (supposedly at Bundy's request). Hours before Bundy went to the electric chair, Dobson conducted a videotaped interview with him. In the interview, Bundy says pornography played a role in making him a serial killer. Dobson advertised the twenty-nine-minute video, peddling it in exchange for $25 donations. Later, according to a _Los Angeles Times_ account, a number of psychologists objected that Dobson used the interview to link hard-core pornography to violent crime, "a correlation they claimed was unproven generally, and particularly in the case of Bundy." [Nancy Novosad, on Dr. James Dobson (head of Focus on the Family) and his propagandistic use of an interview with convicted killer Ted Bundy, article in Dec. 1996 issue of _The Progressive_] ------- "I've gone into thousands of [fortune teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her." [NYC detective] ------- "We profess our faith in a Supreme Being on our coins marked "In God we trust." It seems more appropriate to me to recognize the Deity in our spiritual dedication to the flag, the symbol of our God-given freedom. Our belief in God highlights one of the fundamental differences between us and the Communists." [Rep. Charles G. Oakman, Congressional Record, Appendix, p. A2527] ------- "Whoever did this (burn down the Margaret Sanger Center) is a hero. I think they are heroes. The Bible commands us to rescue those being dragged to death." [Nancy O'Brien, Co-Director Project Jericho, 2/23/87] ------- "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate." ("entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily") [William of Ockham (c. 1280-1349)] ------- "The tolerance of liberty can be maintained until complete federal and state control by Catholics has been accomplished." [Bishop O'Connor, Pittsburgh] ------- "Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic Church." [Bishop O'Conner of Pittsburg] ------- "To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure..." [St. Odo of Cluny (10th century), from Joan Smith, Misogynies (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1989) p.61] ------- "Inter faeces et urinam, mascimir" [("We are born between shit and piss"), St. Odo of Cluny, on the church's views on sex & procreation. Sometimes attributed to Augustine or Pope Innocent III] ------- "I do believe in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe in the separation of God and the state. God has a special place in his plan for our nation. And as the Senate goes, so goes the nation." [Rev. Lloyd Ogilvie, official Chaplain to the U.S. Senate, who receives a salary at taxpayer expense for religious services] ------- Marriage Ceremony: An incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the law being dragged into the affairs of your family. [O. C. Ogilvie] ------- "Why doesn't God behave in such a way as to be worthy of worship?" [Barry O'Grady, bary@it.com.au] ------- "Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea." [Madelyn O'Hair] ------- "The church doctrines of obedience to authority, repentance, fear of punishment, self-abnegation, acceptance of outer direction rather than inner assurance, elevation of faith over reason, and intolerance make institutionalized religion an ideal instrument of social constraint. In an unconstitutional partnership with the state, the church can impose the most irresistible, if covert, controls conceivable." [Madalyn O'Hair, "Freedom under Siege"] ------- "No god ever gave any man anything, nor ever answered any prayer at any time -nor ever will." [Madelyn O'Hair, "An Atheist Epic"] ------- "Atheists are now here to stay. We are ready to take over the culture and move it ahead for the benefit of all mankind. Religion has ever been anti- human, anti-woman, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason, and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education, and science to take over." [Madalyn O'Hair, "Atheists: The Last Minority"] ------- "YOUR PETITIONERS ARE ATHEISTS and they define their life-style as follows. An Atheist loves himself and his fellowman instead of a god. An Atheist knows that heaven is something for which we should work now -- here on earth -- for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist thinks that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue, and enjoy it. An Atheist thinks that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellowman can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment. Therefore, he seeks to know himself and his fellowman rather than to know a god. An Atheist knows that a hospital should be build 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 and love man. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows that we cannot rely on a god nor channel action into prayer nor hope for an end to troubles in the hereafter. He knows that we are our brother's keeper and keepers of our lives; that we are responsibile persons, that the job is here and the time is now." [Madalyn Murray (later O'Hair), preamble to Murray v. Curlett, April 27, 1961] ------- "An Atheist is simply a person who is free from theism." [Madalyn Murray O'Hair] ------- "Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical out look verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds." [Madalyn Murray O'Hair] ------- "The atheist realizes that there must not only be an acceptance of his right to hold his opinion, but that ultimately his is the job to turn his culture from religion, to eliminate those irrational ideas which have held the human race in intellectual slavery." [Madalyn Murray O'Hair, speech at annual convention in Sacramento, California, on April 10, 1993 (from C-SPAN)] ------- "When Christianity asks the aid of government beyond mere impartial protection, it denies itself. Its laws are divine and not human. Its essential interests lie beyond the reach and range of human governments. United with government, religion never rises above the merest superstition; united with religion, government never rises above the merest despotism; and all history shows us that the more widely and completely they are separated, the better it is for both." [Ohio State Supreme Court, Minor V. Ohio, 1872, against forced bible reading in school] ------- "It is in the temporal affairs of mankind, not in the delusions of religious faiths, that man's actual well being and happiness on this earth is attainable." [Culbert L. Olson, "Secularism and Social Progress". 1961] ------- "They keep their free thinking to themselves because of the prevalence and customary acceptance of religious rites and church doings as established institutions, the foundations of which it would be unpopular to openly contradict or oppose.... When the people's presidents, governors, legislators and political party conventions declare their dependence upon God for their guidance, surely the uninformed wanderer in intellectual darkness is encouraged to do the same, while unbelievers assent to the procession by maintaining silence." [California Governor Culbert L. Olson (1876-1961)] ------- "I wouldn't say that religion has promoted the social progress of mankind. I say that it has been a detriment to the progress of civilization, and I would also say this: That the emancipation of the mind from religious superstition is as essential to the progress of civilization as is the emancipation from physical slavery." [California Governor Culbert L. Olson] ------- "Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine." [Austin O'Malley] ------- "Burn the libraries, for their value is in this one book (the Koran)." [Omar I, 2nd Caliph, at the capture of Alexandria] ------- "Your sweet little book is a bizarre collection of out-of-context quotations, misquotations, misleading quotations, non sequiturs, errors of fact and just about every other dirty intellectual trick known to man." [Tim O'Neill, on the JW's anti-evolution book] ------- "Whether or not the statement is _analytically_ true is not as important as the fact that it is _a priori_ true and hence transcendentally true." [Charles Onstott on alt.atheism] ------- "There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors." [J. Robert Oppenheimer, Life, 10 October 1949] ------- "He [Celsus] next proceeds to recommend, that in adopting opinions we should follow reason and a rational guide, since he who assents to opinions without following this course is very liable to be deceived. And he compares inconsiderate believers to Metragyrtae, and soothsayers, and Mithrae, and Sabbadians, and to anything else that one may fall in with, and to the phantoms of Hecate, or any other demon or demons. For as amongst such persons are frequently to be found wicked men, who, taking advantage of the ignorance of those who are easily deceived, lead them away whither they will, so also, he says, is the case among Christians. And he asserts that certain persons who do not wish either to give or receive a reason for their belief, keep repeating, 'Do not examine, but believe!' and, 'Your faith will save you!' And he alleges that such also say, 'The wisdom of this life is bad, but that foolishness is a good thing!'" [Origen, _Contra Celsus_, on the criticisms of early Christianity by Celsus] ------- "When you put the Bible in the hands of the ignorant, it becomes a dangerous weapon." [Eugene Orlando] ------- "Making fun of born-again christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope." [P.J. O'Rourke] ------- "If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it." [William A. Orton] ------- "Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent." [George Orwell] ------- "Recently I was reading somewhere or other about an Italian curio-dealer who attempted to sell a seventeenth-century crucifix to J.P. Morgan. It was not at first sight a particularly interesting work of art. But it turned out that the real point was that the crucifix took to pieces and inside it was concealed a stiletto. What a perfect symbol of the Christian religion." [George Orwell, from notebook published after his death] ------- "In theory it is still possible to be an orthodox religious believer without being intellectually crippled in the process; but it is far from easy, and in practice books by orthodox believers usually show the same cramped, blinkered outlook as books by orthodox Stalinists or others who are mentally unfree. The reason is that the Christian churches still demand assent to doctrines which no one seriously believes in. The most obvious case is immortality of the soul." [George Orwell, from review of T.S. Eliot] ------- "Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." [George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"] ------- "No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid." [George Orwell] ------- "If we turn from history to geography we note that the details given by the evangelists offer difficulties. It should not be over-looked, for example, that the site of Golgotha was not discovered until A.D. 326 and then in a manner strongly suggestive of fraud. At all costs a place sacred to Venus had to be Christianized by claiming it as the site of the crucifixion." [George Ory, "An analysis of Christian Origins", 1961] ------- "There are no unbeatable odds, there are no believable gods." [Ozzy Osbourne, "I Just Want You"] ------- "These are rogues that pretend to be of a religion now! Well, all I say is, honest atheism for my money." [Thomas Otway, English classical poet (1652-1685)] ------- "Why can't the Jews and Arabs just sit down together and settle this like good Christians?" [Overheard in Congressional debate] ------- "Nowhere in the world, and at no time in history, has the average man actually "made up his own mind." Priest and theologians have made it up for him... Kings..., conquerors, dictators, and politicians have made it up for him... Psychologically, the most dangerous power-groups and power individuals in history have been those who have wanted the average man to be a contented follower; a meek acceptor of his lot..." [Harry Overstreet, "The Mature Mind"] ------- "No doubt a sizeable majority of Americans believe in the concept of a Creator or, at least, are not opposed to the concept and see nothing wrong with teaching school children about the idea. The application and content of First Amendment principles are not determined by public opinion polls or by a majority vote. Whether the proponents of Act 590 constitute the majority or the minority is quite irrelevant under a constitutional system of government. No group, no matter how large or small, may use the organs of government, of which the public schools are the most conspicuous and influential, to foist its religious beliefs on others." [U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton, overturning Arkansas Act 590, requiring public schools to teach Creation Science] ------- "It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are." [Ovid, "Ars Amatoria"] ------- "My reason taught me that I could not have made one of my own qualities- they were forced upon me by Nature; that my language, religion, and habits were forced upon me by Society; and that I was entirely the child of Nature and Society; that Nature gave the qualities and Society directed them. Thus was I forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief in every religion which had been taught by man." [Robert Owen (1771-1858)] ------- "Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in error." [Robert Owen, 19th century reformer] ------- "Religion, or superstition, - for all religions have proved themselves to be superstitions, - by destroying the judgement, irrationalized all the mental faculties of man, and made him the most abject slave, through the fear of non-entities created solely by his own disorganized imagination." [Robert Owen, New-Harmony Gazette, Jul. 12, 1826] ------- "Of course, we cannot guarantee our Bibles against normal wear or abuse." [Oxford University Press] ------- "Any Latter-day Saint who denounces or opposes, whether actively or otherwise, any plan or doctrine advocated by the 'prophets, seers, and revelators' of the Church is cultivating the spirit of apostasy. Lucifer....wins a great victory when he can get members of the Church to speak against their leaders and to 'do their own thinking'.... "When our leaders speak, the thinking had been done. When they propose a plan -- it is God's plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give direction, it should mark the end of controversy." [Mormon Elder Boyd K. Packer, The Improvement Era, June 1945, pg. 354] ------- "I was feeling sorry for you and thinking I was doing my Christian duty by making love to you." [Republican Bob Packwood, quoted from his diary, speaking to someone other than his wife] ------- "Science is expanding, and with it our vision of the universe. Although this new and constantly changing view may not always give us comfort, it does have the virtue of truth according to our most effective resources for acquiring knowledge. No philosophy, moral outlook, or religion can be inconsistent with the findings of science and hope to endure among educated people." [Heinz R. Pagels] ------- "I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science." [Heinz Pagels, "The Dreams of Reason"] ------- "People learning to wash their hands before helping in a delivery has saved more lives than all prayer through all time." [Michael Painter] ------- "The [Bible] seems to be an ink blot test with Christians seeing in it whatever they wish." [Michael Painter, alt.atheism] ------- "Religion is like a necktie. Everyone demands that you have one, but it serves no useful purpose whatsoever, and just ends up getting in the way." [Scott Palmer] ------- "All countries censored books; Protestant authorities labored to keep "papist" works from the eyes of the faithful ... ... In the Catholic world, with the trend toward centralization under the pope, a special importance attached to the list published by the bishop of Rome, the papal Index of Prohibited Books. Only with special permission, granted to reliable persons for special study, could Catholics read books listed on the Index, on which most of the significant works written in Europe since the Reformation have been included." [A History of the Modern World, R.R. Palmer,p. 90] ------- "If Jesus had wanted to make a woman an Apostle, He could have done so." [Pamphlet against the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood, 1985] ------- "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." [Dorothy Parker] ------- "Vishnu with a necklace of skulls is a figure of love and mercy compared with the God of the Old Testament." [Theodore Parker] ------- "It is dishonest henceforth to refuse to face the fact that the basic root of modern antisemitism lies squarely in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament." [Rev. James Parkes in Davies A.T. (ed) "Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity", Paulist Press, NY, 1979, p. xi.]] ------- "The Bible is clear on homosexuality. God does condemn homosexuality; yet He sent His son to die for all sinners. We believe that God wants them to change. And, there are thousands upon thousands of individuals who have left the lifestyle and found hope and healing through the power of Jesus Christ." [Janet Parshall, Family Research Council, FRC Press Release, Aug. 3, 1999, despite evidence that gay sexual/religious conversions don't work] ------- "Scientific hypotheses are always tentative; they are designed to be held only so long as they conform to the evidence. Proponents of the theistic hypothesis, on the other hand, are already sure that their hypothesis is correct; they only seek evidence to buttress a foregone conclusion." [Keith Parsons, "Is There a Case for Christian Theism? Does God Exist?"] ------- "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction" [Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1670)] ------- "A pleasant justice, that, which a river or a mountain limits. Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, may be heresy on the other!" [Blaise Pascal, "Pensees"] ------- "Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us consider the two possibilities. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Hesitate not, then, to wager that He is." [Blaise Pascal, in _Pensees_, explaining his "Wager" for believing in a God. The flaw is that there are actually an infinite number of conflicting choices] ------- "If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have nothing in it mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous." [Blaise Pascal, "Pensees"] ------- "Even if there was a God, would you trust a man who got an unmarried girl pregnant and then tried to blame it on someone else?" [Jeremy Pascall, on the immaculate conception, "God: The Ultimate Autobiography"] ------- "Could a being create the fifty billion galaxies, each with two hundred billion stars, then rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh?" [Ron Patterson] ------- "The Bible tells us that Jesus was sacrificed for the redemption of our sins in order that we may be saved from everlasting fire. The Bible also tells us that if we do not believe this we are subject to burn in everlasting fire." [Ron Patterson] ------- "Son, that is the word of God and that is not for you to question." [Ron Patterson, father's response to "How did them kangaroos get to Noah's Ark?"] ------- "So-called Scientific Creationism is really nothing more than an attempt to give credence to an ancient Hebrew myth, by trying to prove that virtually all the world's biologists, geologists, and paleontologists are a bunch of incompetent buffoons." [Ron Patterson] ------- "Many Freethinkers originally left, or never joined a religion because they could not accept the thought of a god who would torture his subjects unto eternity, while those who delighted in such thoughts found a haven there. Hence it is no coincidence that most freethinkers are empathetic people, while most fundamentalist are not." [Ron Patterson] ------- "The average fundamentalist has a mind like a steel trap; snapped shut and rusted closed." [Ron Patterson] ------- "In the Bible we are asked to believe that the entire human race was plunged into sin because one woman took the advice of a talking snake... before she had any knowledge of good and evil." [Ron Patterson] ------- "If I have to resurrect you, I'll resurrect you, whether you like it or not!" [Paul to Jesus, _The_Last_Temptation_of_Christ_] ------- "A woman must learn in silence and be completely submissive. I do not permit a woman to act as teacher or in any way to have authority over a man; she must be quiet." [St. Paul instructing Timothy, 1Tim2:11f] ------- "...I do further promise and declare, that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do and to extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth, and that I will spare neither sex, age nor condition, and that I will hang, waste, boil, flay, strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants' heads against the wall, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race." [Pope Paul III, 1576] ------- "A tendency to drastically underestimate the frequency of coincidence is a prime characteristic of innumerates, who generally accord great significance to correspondences of all sorts while attributing too little significance to quite conclusive but less flashy statistical evidence." [John Allen Paulos, mathematics professor, in "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences"] ------- "Intellectual veracity, sincerity in matters of thought and faith, consistency in thinking, is not one of the virtues encouraged by the Church." [Prof. Friedrich Paulsen, German philosopher] ------- "God" as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle. The point is wider than just the Judeo- Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a "super-existence." [Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism"] ------- "Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for amoment on a correct metaphysics.... Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary; it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence--some supernatural realm--you must do it openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, "To Hell with argument, I have faith." That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason. Objectivism advocates reason as man's sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and thats all." [Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism", lecture series (1976), Lecture 2] ------- "Can God perform miracles? A "miracle" does not mean merely the unusual. If a woman gives birth to twins, that is unusual; if she were to give birth to elephants, that would be a miracle. A miracle is an action not possible to the entities involved by their nature; it would be a violation of identity." [Leonard Peikoff, "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand", p. 32] ------- "It is time to take Christ out of Christmas. It is time to turn the holiday into what is is: a guiltless, egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration." [Leonard Peikoff, op-ed in the Miami Herald, December 23, 1996] ------- "Perhaps there was an organization in Phineas' day known as the N.A.A.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Canaanite People) who took exception with this teaching of segregation. Perhaps there were pulpits proclaiming a more tolerant and socially accepted view and government agency crusading for 'affirmative action.' We really do not know; but we do know from the Bible story in Numbers chapter 25 that the Israel people began to disobey God's law, accept integration, cultural exchange and a type of interracial marriage, and thus were struck collectively by a plague. Phineas was the man who courageously fought against the racial treason even to the point of bloodshed, and he too was honored by God." [Pastor Pete Peters, _THE BIBLE: Handbook For Survivalists, Racists, Tax Protestors, Militants And Right-Wing Extremists_, ND, Scriptures For America, La Porte, Colorado, pp. 4-5] ------- "Thixotropy -- the property that lets toothpaste ooze when squeezed out of its tube and yet not drip off the toothbrush -- may explain a centuries-old miracle. Blood, once congealed, tends to stay that way. But when religious leaders handle a vial believed to contain the blood of St. Januarius, the dark brown substance begins to flow. Periodic demonstrations of this effect have drawn crowds to Naples since 1389, notes Luigi Garlaschelli, an organic chemist at the University of Pavia in Italy. In the Oct. 10 (issue of) Nature, Garlaschelli and two other Italian researchers propose that medieval alchemists could have created a thixotropic substance that looked like blood by mixing water and salt with a mineral called molysite. Thixotropic materials exist as gels until a mechanical stress -- such as picking up or tilting their containers -- makes them flow. To explore this possibility, Garlaschelli searched through the scientific literature and discovered that about 70 years ago, researchers demonstrated thixotropy in an iron hydroxide alloy. He reproduced their work by mixing a ferric chloride compound with calcium carbonate in water, then separating out the iron hydroxide that formed. By adding salt to a solution of this alloy, he created a dark brown gel. 'It looks exactly like the samples in Naples,' he told Science News. All of these materials were available five centuries ago, including ferric chloride, found near Mt. Vesuvius in the form of molysite, he says." [Ivars Peterson, Science News 140(15):229, 12 October 1991] ------- "It is fear that first brought gods into the world." [Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon] ------- "Today's is a war not of politics but cultures, social values, and to an extent even of religion, provoked by the generational value shift which took place in the 1960s. The battle issues are named feminism, abortion, homosexuality, multiculturalism, fundamentalism." [William Pfaff, 23 Dec 98 Los Angeles Times column, reprinted in 4 Jan 99 Liberal Opinion Week] ------- "Ideas that cannot be defended by reason and evidence can lead anywhere, and, if there is no warrant for one's belief, there is no telling where it will end." [Paul M. Pfalzner Canadian medical physicist, author, humanist] ------- "No magic attaches to a particular verbalization of an underlying concept. The concept at issue here is more accurately expressed in Madison's phrase 'separation between Religion and Government,' or in the popular maxim that 'religion is a private matter.'" [Leo Pfeffer, "Church, State, and Freedom," pp. 118-119, responding to the religious claim that "Separation of Church and State doesn't appear in the Constitution, therefore it doesn't exist."] ------- "... Jefferson, who as a careful historian had made a study of the origin of the maxim [that the common law is inextricably linked with Christianity], challenged such an assertion. He noted that "the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or that such a character existed .... What a conspiracy this, between Church and State." [Leo Pfeffer, Religion, State, and the Burger Court, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1984, p. 121.] ------- "For him to invite these fags here and into his church is an abomination. Now, Jerry Falwell is just as much a sinner as Mel White and both will burn in hell." [Rev. Fred Phelps, Associated Press, Oct. 25, 1999] ------- "We display large, colorful signs containing Bible words and sentiments including, GOD HATES FAGS, FAGS HATE GOD, AIDS CURES FAGS, THANK GOD FOR AIDS, FAGS BURN IN HELL." [Rev. Fred Phelps, in Rolling Stone, March, 18, 1999] ------- "The average fag fellates 106 men, swallows fifty seminal discharges, has seventy-two penile penetrations of the anus and ingests feces of twenty-three different men every year." [Rev. Fred Phelps, in Rolling Stone, March, 18, 1999] ------- "If you can walk on water, why would I want to follow you?" [Jake Philaja] ------- "I was walking across a bridge one day, and i saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "stop! don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are you christian or buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you catholic or protestant?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me too! Are you episcopalian or baptist?" He said, "Baptist!" I said, "Wow! Me too! Are you baptist church of god or baptist church of the lord?" He said, "Baptist church of god!" I said, "Me too! Are you original baptist church of god, or are you reformed baptist church of god?" He said, "Reformed baptist church of god!" I said, "Me too! Are you reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off." [Emo Phillips] ------- " I'm very religious. Now, if by religious you mean that I read the Bible every day and go to church faithfully and listen to Debbie Boone -- no, I'm not religious in that way. "But if you mean that I love others and try to help them whenever I can -- again, no. "But if by religious you mean that I like to eat Cole slaw -- yeah, okay." [Emo Phillips] ------- "I treat my body like a temple -- or at least like a reasonably well-organized Methodist youth center." [Emo Phillips] ------- "Oh god, please bend the laws of the universe for my convenience." [Emo Phillips] ------- "When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord, in his wisdom, didn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me." [Emo Phillips] ------- "Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics." [Wendell Phillips, Speech, 7 November 1860] ------- "The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack." [Wendell Phillipst, speech, 1863] ------- "Religions are like farts. Yours is good, but everyone else's stinks." [Picket Fences] ------- "The 11 o'clock hour on Sunday is the most segregated hour in American life." [James A. Pike, Bishop of California, 1960] ------- "You are never dedicated to do something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They *know* it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt." [Robert M. Pirsig, "Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"] ------- "When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion." [Robert M. Pirsig] ------- "...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..." [Plato, _Phaedrus_] ------- "He was a wise man who invented God." [Plato (427? - 348? BC)] ------- "Is what the gods command good because the gods command it, or do they command it, because it is good?" [Plato] ------- "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." [Original Pledge of Allegiance (1892)] ------- "I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under an imaginary deity-figure that was created by ancient men and used to this very day to control the masses by preventing any sort of intelligent freethought and limiting freedoms, and belief in whom has caused countless atrocities throughout the world, and whose human son/savior-figure was actually borrowed from other religions, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. ["Pledge of Allegiance" for atheists] ------- "The creationists have this creator who is evil, who is small-minded, who is malevolent, and who is not very bright and can't even get his science right. Creationists have made their creator in their own image, in my view." [Prof. Ian Plimer - The Skeptic, Vol 13, No 2] ------- "I fight fire with fire. You shouldn't treat a crazy religious cult with kid gloves." [Ian Plimer, Melbourne Univ. Prof. of Geology, in reference to legal action challenging the existence of Noah's Ark] ------- "The fascination I have with my science is that planetary changes, crustal changes, atmospheric changes, oceanic changes and biological changes all operated in tandem. All these changes are evolution. All these changes are interdependent. Evolution of life is closely linked to planetary, crustal, atmospheric and hydrospheric evolution. This is the story of planet Earth. This story is far more visionary, elegant, awesome and exciting than any facile unsubstantiated dogmatic myth. If this story of our world was wrong, I would feel so sad for God." [Ian Plimer, "Telling Lies For God."] ------- "Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition." I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and cure it." [Pliny the Younger's reaction to Christianity in Asia Minor, 111 AD, letter to Emporor Trajan] ------- "The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind." [Edgar Allan Poe] ------- "No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter ... than you and I; and all religion ... is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry." [Edgar Allan Poe] ------- "Not only might one-quarter to one-half of the weight be lost in planing, whereas with iron only a minute fraction was lost in this way, but half of the weight of timber in a wooden ship was wasted, its only use being to hold the other half in position. Even so, a wooden ship had great stresses as a structure. *The absolute limit of its length was 300 feet,* and it was liable to "hogging" and "sagging" in addition to being unable to withstand the local strain of the screw propeller" ["The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870-1914", pp. 13-14, by Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, as cited by Robert Moore in "The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark", on the physical impossibility of Noah's 450 foot-long wooden ark] ------- "For me, religion is serious business--a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny and humble pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom." [Katha Pollitt, "Subject To Debate," The Nation, December 26, 1994, from "Women Without Superstition: No Gods - No Masters", edited by Annie Laurie Gaylor] ------- "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. It is rather the moderns, who seek to extirpate such beliefs, who are to be accused of folly." [Polybius (204?-122? B.C.), "Histories"] ------- "Most confusing of all, though, was probably Marco Polo's claim that public safety and commercial honesty were far better maintained in China than in Europe, without Christianity as a basis for morals." [K. Pomerantz and S. Topik, "The World that Trade Created"] ------- "They came with a Bible and their religion- stole our land, crushed our spirit...and now tell us we should be thankful to the 'Lord' for being saved." [Chief Pontiac (d. 1769) American Indian Chieftain] ------- "We are convinced the masses of evidence render the application of the concept of evolution to man and the other primates beyond serious dispute." [Pontifical Academy of Sciences] ------- "The worst of madmen is a saint run mad" [Alexander Pope] ------- "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man." [Alexander Pope, "Essays on Man"] ------- "By authority of these present Letters, We order that each and every Jew of both Sexes in Our Temporal Dominions, and in all the cities, lands, places and baronies subject to them, shall depart completely out of the confines thereof within the space of three months after the present Letters have been made public. They shall be dispoiled of their goods, and be prosecuted according to the due process of law. They shall become bondsmen of the Roman Church, and shall be subjected to perpetual servitude. And the said Church shall claim the same right over them as other dominions over their slaves and bondsmen." [Pope Pius V, A.D. 1567, Bull. Rom. Pont., VII, 741] ------- "It was once proposed that all religions persuasions should be free and their worship publicly exercised. We Catholics have rejected this article as contrary to Roman Catholic canon law." [Pope Pius VII, 1808] ------- "The state (the U.S. Constitution) has not the right to leave every man free to profess and embrace whatever religion he may desire." [Pope Pius IX] ------- "Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons.... It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given." [Pope Pius IX, 1866] ------- "Let Catholic writers take care when defending the cause of the proletriat and the poor not to use language calculated to inspire among the people aversion to the upper classes of society." [Pope Pius X, letter to the bishops of Italy, 18 December 1903] ------- "Mussolini: a gift from providence." [Pope Pius XI] ------- "One Galileo in two thousand years is enough." [Pope Pius XII] ------- "I think that naming your ignorance God and pretending that, having named it, you have converted ignorance to knowledge is a sorry approach to the unknown." [John Popelish] ------- "Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve." [Karl Popper] ------- "Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths." [Sir Karl Popper] ------- "No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude." [Karl Popper] ------- "The things you are liable to read in the Bible, they ain't necessarily so." [Porgy and Bess] ------- " The year is 2001. Half the population hs been converted to faith in Jesus Christ, and the Christian churches rule the world. Though this seems implausible, more than two hundred Christian missionary organizations are scheming to bring it about--as a birthday present for Jesus. The battle lines are being drawn for the conflict of the century." [Skip Porteous, "Christian Activism Intensifies as 2001 Approaches", Free Inquiry magazine] ------- "The Church preaches love, but in its heyday tortured and burned people. The junction is symbolized by Orwell's "Ministry of Love," which is the torture and liquidation bureau. Love the sinner, hate the sin." [Richard A. Posner, "Orwell vs Huxley: Economics, Technology, Privacy, And State"] ------- "Religion to me has always been the wound, not the bandage." [Dennis Potter] ------- "The act of bellringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people." [Ezra Pound] ------- "The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, its just sort of a tired feeling." [Paula Poundstone] ------- "I go to atheist church. We have crippled guys who stand up and testify that they were crippled, and they still are." [Paula Poundstone] ------- "If God Is Our Father, Then I want to Be Disowned" [John Powell, III] ------- "Try this," she said, "it can't hurt. A simple experiment, and who knows? It might mean a lot to you in the future." She handed me a pocket Bible, which she carried at all times. "Open it randomly to a passage and read what's written here." I don't know how I managed, but I kept sober as I read the passage chance had sent me. "Does it mean something to you?" I nodded gravely, and handed the passage to Todd. He had to leave the room to keep from bursting. Exodus 22, xviv: Whosoever copulateth with a beast shall be put to death." [Richard Powers, _The Gold Bug Variations_] ------- "The world is in need of less religion and more common sense." [Llewelyn Powys, "Celsus and Origen"] ------- "Belief in immortality is definately subversive to man's well-being. By it his efficiency is impaired for regulating his affairs on this planet." [Llewelyn Powys, "Damnable Opinions"] ------- "The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." [Terry Pratchett, "Diggers"] ------- "The merest accident of microgeography meant that the first man to hear the voice of (the God) Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent and need to be led." [Terry Pratchett, "Small Gods"] ------- "God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffeable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [ie., everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who _smiles all the time_." [_Good Omens_ by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Corgi Books 1991, pg 17] ------- Rincewind: ...they're going to sacrifice her, if you must know. Twoflower: What, kill her? Rincewind: Yes. Twoflower: Why? Rincewind: Don't ask me. To make the crops grow or the moon rise or something. Or maybe they're just keen on killing people. That's religion for you. [Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"] ------- "People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people." [Terry Pratchett, _Pyramids_, p. 60] ------- "The Supreme Grand Master smiled in the depths of his robe. It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing." [Terry Pratchett, _Guards! Guards!_, p. 119] ------- "This Is Religion, Boy, Not Comparison Bloody Shopping! You Shall Not Subject Your God to Market Forces!" [Terry Pratchett, "Small Gods", pg 325] ------- "[after discussion of houris, Valhalla] ...why is it that the heathens and the barbarians seem to have the best places to go when they die?' 'A bit of a poser, that,' agreed the mate. 'I s'pose that it makes up for 'em... enjoying themselves all the time when they're alive, too?'" [Terry Pratchett, "Small Gods", pg 218] ------- "In the beginning there was nothing, and God said, "Let there be light." And there was still nothing, but you could see it." [Terry Pratchett] ------- "Many young men have said they have heard the calling to join the priesthood, when in fact the only thing they heard was their inner voice telling them 'It's an indoor job with no heavy lifting, do you really want to be a ploughman like your father?'" [Terry Pratchett, "Small Gods"] ------- "If I get hit or run over by a truck It's not His fault, it's just my own bad luck" [_PRAY TV_] ------- "The universe as a totality is without cause, without origin, without end." [Karl Du Prel (Ludwig Buchner, Force and Matter, p. 11)] ------- "The Madonnas will be returning to a post office near you next year. ...Thanks in part to pressure from President Clinton, the Postal Service on Wednesday reversed its decision to abandon the popular Madonna and Child stamp series in 1995. That action, disclosed last week, had upset religious groups, members of Congress and the president." [Press Democrat, 24 November 1994] ------- "Putting a different spin on Flag Day, a 7-year-old atheist Wednesday urged public-school students to refuse to recite the 'Pledge of Allegiance' until the words 'under God' are excised. ...'When kids are forced to say, 'under God,' it makes them think that atheists are bad people,' Ricky Sherman said at a news conference, reading a statement he wrote on composition paper in large block letters....'Atheists are good people,' he said. 'We just know that God is make believe.'" [Press Democrat, 15 June 1989 (AP)] ------- "Putting a different spin on Flag Day, a 7-year-old atheist Wednesday urged public-school students to refuse to recite the 'Pledge of Allegiance' until the words 'under God' are excised. ...'When kids are forced to say, 'under God,' it makes them think that atheists are bad people,' Ricky Sherman said at a news conference, reading a statement he wrote on composition paper in large block letters. ...'Atheists are good people,' he said. 'We just know that God is make believe.'" [Press Democrat, 15 June 1989 (AP)] ------- "I think the Zapruder film was arranged [by] Jesus, so that this particular 'terrible head wound' would be seen by the whole word for over 3 decades." [John Prewett, net.fundie.idiot] ------- "I predict/prophecy in Jesus name that: John F. Kennedy will publicly reappear, amaze the world, and is in fact the "beast" of the Revelation." [John Prewett, net.fundie.idiot] ------- "An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan officer, to dinner for finally giving in to her pleas to shave off the scraggly beard he grew on vacation. His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both feel comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester-blend golf shirts. But, as always, she wears the gold and pearl pendant he gave her the day her divorce decree was final. They're laughing over their menus because they know he always ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won't be talked into anything more fattening than shrimp." "Quiz: How many biblical prohibitions are they violating? Well, wives are supposed to be 'submissive' to their husbands (I Peter 3:1). And all women are forbidden to teach men (I Timothy 2:12), wear gold or pearls (I Timothy 2:9) or dress in clothing that 'pertains to a man' (Deuteronomy 22:5). Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7, 10) as are usury (Deuteronomy 23:19), shaving (Leviticus 19:27) and clothes of more than one fabric (Leviticus 19:19). And since the Bible rarely recognizes divorce, they're committing adultery, which carries the rather harsh penalty of death by stoning (Deuteronomy 22:22)." "So why are they having such a good time? Probably because they wouldn't think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or -- at best -- unrealistic. Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify their own anti-gay attitudes." [from `And Say Hi To Joyce' by lesbian columnist Deb Price] ------- "When a group has staked everything on a religious belief, and 'burned their bridges behind them,' only to find this belief disconfirmed by events, they may find disillusionment too painful to endure. They soon come up with some explanatory rationalization, the plausibility of which will be reinforced by the mutual encouragement of fellow-believers in the group. In order to increase further the plausibility of their threatened belief, they may engage in a massive new effort at proselytizing. The more people who can be convinced, the truer it will seem," right? "In the final analysis, then, a radical disconfirmation of belief might [may] be just what a religious movement needs to get off the ground!" [Robert Price, "Beyond Born Again"] ------- "People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them." [Phil Proctor's "Planet Proctor" column in October 1999 Funny Times, attributed to Reverend McWallclock, "Boom Dot Bust!"] ------- "Most of it is crap, but in every pile of crap is a gem of stupidity that will have you on the floor in laughter." [psycho@ace.comi (Preacher)] ------- "The best defense against Christianity is a good Christian Education" [Psycho Dave] ------- "I'm willing to bet that when we finally discover the root causes for most sexual problems facing people today, that Christianity will top the list." ["Psycho" Dave, Psycho0@ix.netcom.com] ------- "Christianity faces no greater enemy than the age of information." ["Psycho" Dave, Psycho0@ix.netcom.com] ------- "Might there have been fewer crimes in the name of Jesus, and more mercy in the name of Judas Iscariot?" [Thomas Pynchon] ------- "There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance..." [Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_] ------- "Once a ruler becomes religious, it [becomes] impossible for you to debate with him. Once someone rules in the name of religion, your lives become hell." [Colonel Moammar Qaddafi, at the General People's Congress in Tripoli in October, 1989] ------- "I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Saviour, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Saviour, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe." [Dan Quayle] ------- "Religion and Sex are power plays Manipulate the people for the money they pay Selling skin, selling God The numbers look the same on their credit cards" [Queensryche, Operation:Mindcrime] ------- "Religions tend to disappear with man's good fortune." [Raymond Queneau, "A Model History"] ------- "The future war is between the religious and the materialists. Collaboration between religious governments in support of outlawing abortion is a fine beginning for the conception of collaboration in other fields." [Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Hashemi Rafsanjani, as reported in the Iranian newspaper _Abrar_ of August 1, 1994, after meeting with special envoys from Pope John Paul II] ------- "The human mind is a very complicated system. Unbalance that system with oxygen deprivation, drugs, or religion and you get unreliable results." [Landis D. Ragon] ------- "Jesus was a crackpot." [Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, San Francisco Chronicle 12/17/85] ------- "As Snoopy once implied, the only theologians worth listening to are the ones to whom it has occurred that they might be wrong." [Elaine J. Ramshaw, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care, Methodist Theological School, Delaware, Ohio, in letter to the editor, Discover, August 1992] ------- "Ask youself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves--or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth." [Ayn Rand] ------- "In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and certainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe." [Ayn Rand] ------- "The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence...Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God... Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith....The purpose of man's life...is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question." [Ayn Rand, "For the New Intellectual"] ------- Playboy: "Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?" Ayn Rand: "Qua religion, no - in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man's life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very - how should I say it? - dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith." [Playboy interview with Ayn Rand] ------- "If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your doctrine doesn't make sense--you're ready for him. You tell him there's something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must _feel_. He must _believe_. Suspend reason and you can play it deuces wild." [Ayn Rand, "The Fountainhead"] ------- "And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: "I." [Ayn Rand, _Anthem_] ------- "If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments." [Ayn Rand] ------- "There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority." [Ayn Rand, "The Comprachicos", in _The New Left_] ------- "Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute - and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? The nature of your actions - and of your ambition - will be different, according to which set of answers you come to accept." [Ayn Rand] ------- "(The Doctrine of Original Sin) declares that (man) ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being/ He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire - he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which (the preachers) damn him are reason, morality, creativeness joy - all the cardinal values of his existence." [Ayn Rand] ------- "[T]he only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of the contradictory, the impossible, the irrational, and thus shake the concept of rationality in his victim." [Ayn Rand] ------- "An error made on your own is safer than the ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error." [Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"] ------- "Religion is the original pseudoscience." [David Rand of Montreal, Quebec, letter to editor, Skeptical Inquirer, July-August 1998] ------- "I know another preacher who, along with his church, prayed that the LORD would help a pot of noodles last through a social dinner, not only did they last, not only did several take home a container full of noodles, but the containers always stayed full. Finally, they had to throw them out, after thanking the LORD of course." [Jerry Randall, net.fundie.idiot] ------- "To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage" [James Randi, "The Faith Healers"] ------- "To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place -- not to mention the "ethnic cleansing" presently being performed by Christians in our world -- and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women." [James Randi, challenging blasphemy laws in several US states] ------- "There exists in society a very special class of persons that I have always referred to as the Believers. These are folks who have chosen to accept a certain religion, philosophy, theory, idea or notion and cling to that belief regardless of any evidence that might, for anyone else, bring it into doubt. They are the ones who encourage and support the fanatics and the frauds of any given age. No amount of evidence, no matter how strong, will bring them any enlightenment. They are the sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered, and who will battle fiercely to preserve their right to be victimized... the U.S. Patent Office handles an endless succession of inventors who still produce perpetual-motion machines that don't work, but no number of idle flywheels will convince these zealots of their folly; dozens of these patent applications flow in every year. In ashrams all over the world, hopping devotees of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi will never abandon their goal of blissful levitation of their bodies by mind power, despite bruises and sprains aplenty suffered as they bounce about on gym mats like demented (though smiling) frogs, trying to get airborne. Absolutely nothing will discourage them." ["The Mask of Nostradamus", James Randi, Prometheus Books, Amherst NY, 1993, pp140-142] ------- "It's a very dangerous thing to believe in nonsense." [James Randi] ------- "Fanatics are not easily discouraged by facts or the truth." [James Randi] ------- "The very fact of there being more than one revelation is sufficient to raise doubts in the minds of reasoning people as to the validity of any of them." [Rationalist's Manual, Aletheia, M.D.] ------- "I don't want someone else teaching my child religion. That's my job as a parent. Creationism is not science. It is not based on science. It is based on faith." [Rev. Karl Rattan, rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC] ------- "I'm an evolutionist because I judge the evidence for the unity of life by common descent over billions of years to be overwhelming, not so that I can cheat on my wife or kick the cat with impunity. I live in no hope of heaven or fear of hell, but like most of my fellow Americans of all religious persuasions, I try to live a decent life. Folks like Tom DeLay just can't get it through their heads that a person can choose to live ethically because civilized life requires doing unto others as you would have them do unto you." [Chet Raymo, science columnist for The Boston Globe, Sept. 5 1999 article on the anti-evolution decision by Kansas School Board] ------- "There should be no deceit in matters of religion. In my future assaults on Christianity I shall use the clearest language that I am able to command. Ridicule is a destructive instrument, and it is my intention to destroy. If a man is cutting down a tree, it is useless asking him not to strike so hard." [Winwood Reade, "The Martyrdom of Man", 1872] ------- "Christianity, we allow, is human in its origin, erroneous in its theories, delusive in its threats and its rewards. Jesus Christ was a man with all the faults and imperfections of the prophetic character." [Winwood Reade, "The Martyrdom of Man", 1872] ------- "Christianity is not in accordance with the cultivated mind; it can only be accepted by suppressing doubts, and by denouncing inquiry as sinful. It is therefore a superstition, and ought to be destroyed." [W. Winwood Reade, "The Martyrdom of Man," 1872] ------- "What a state of society is this in which freethinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as a sin!" [W. Winwood Reade, "The Martyrdom of Man," 1872] ------- "You know, I turn back to our ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs fortelling Armageddon, and I find myself considering if we're the generation that is going to see that come about. I don't know if you've noted any of those prophesies lately but, believe me, they certainly describe the times we're going through." [US President Ronald Reagan] ------- "The only difference between Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and bin Laden is the theological schools which they attended." [seen on usenet's rec.food.cooking] ------- I was not created In the likeness of a fraud Your hell is something scary I prefer a loving god We are not the center Of this funny universe And what is something worse I do not serve In fear of such as curse Shallow be thy game 2000 years look in the mirror You play the game of shame And tell your people live in fear A rival to the way you see The bible let him be I'm a threat to your survival And your control company You'll never burn me You'll never burn me I'll be your heretic You can't contain me I am the rower free Truth belongs to everybody To anyone who's listenin' You're not born into sin The guilt they try to give you Puke it in the nearest bin Missionary madness Sweep up culture w/ a broom Trashing ancient ways Is par for the course It's fucking rude To think you're above The laws of nature is a joke Purple feeding masses Smoke on which to choke I might be a monkey When it comes to being holy Fundamental hatred Get down on your knees and... [Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Shallow Be Thy Game"] ------- "You say there is but one way to worship the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?" [Red Jacket, Seneca Indian Chief] ------- "I honesty believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once again governed by Christians . . . and Christian values. What Christians have got to do is take back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time, and one state at a time." [Ralph Reed, Executive Director of the Christian Coalition, May 1, 1990, Religious News Service] ------- "We've learned how to move under radar in the cover of the night with shrubbery strapped to our helmets," [Ralph Reed, executive director of Christian Coalition] ------- "They call them extremists. We have our own names. We call them senators, congressman, governors, mayors, state legislators" [Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition Executive Director] ------- "I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night." [Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition Exec. Director, from the Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star, 11/9/91] ------- "It's like guerrilla warfare....It's better to move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night. You've got two choices: You can wear cammies and shimmy along on your belly or you can put on a red coat and stand up for everyone to see. It comes down to whether you want to be the British army in the Revolutionary War or the Viet Cong. History tells us which tactic is more effective." [Ralph Reed, The Los Angeles Times, reprinted in The Religious Right: The Assault of Tolerance & Pluralism in America, produced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)] ------- "Reed said coalition members will be active in Virginia's first school board elections in May, and he predicted that 40 or more seats in Congress could change hands in the November 1994 national elections. He said his organization will become for 'people of faith' what labor unions are for workers and chambers of commerce are for business leaders. 'We want to be a permanent part of the political landscape,' he said." [Ralph Reed, in Richmond Times-Dispatch, Nov. 26, 1993] ------- "The old faiths light their candles all about, but burly Truth comes by and puts them out." [Lizette Reese] ------- "The `wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned." [Chief Justice William Rehnquist] ------- "...full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean the end of mystical feelings of any kind, that, in other words, natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion. The church, by making the fight over sexuality the center of its dogmas and of its influence over the masses, confirms this concept." [Wilhelm Reich] ------- "Brother can't you see those birds, they don't look to heaven, they don't need religion, they can see." ["Undertow", REM] ------- "The supernatural Christ of the New Testament, the god of orthodox Christianity, is dead. But priestcraft lives and conjures up the ghost of this dead god to frighten and enslave the masses of mankind. The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars, and miseries than any other name has caused. The darkest wrongs are still inspired by it. The wails of anguish that went up from Kishenev, Odessa, and Bialystok still vibrate in our ears." [John E. Remsburg, The Christ (1909)] ------- "No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe them." [Ernest Renan, "The Life of Jesus" (Vie de Jesus), 1863] ------- "No theologian could ever be a historian. History is essentially disinterested. The historian has only one concern: art and truth, ...whereas the theologian has something else at stake- his dogma." [Ernest Renan] ------- "People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization." [Anges Repplier, "In Pursuit of Laughter"] ------- "My girlfriend says that I'm going to hell because I don't go to church, but that's okay, because from what I've been able to figure out, they don't have church there either." [Kirk W. Reuter] ------- "I DO want your money, because god wants your money!" [Reverend Larry, from _Repo_Man_] ------- "He's the type of guy that has to talk to God because nobody else will listen to him." [Atheist comedian Rick Reynolds] ------- "I believe to this day what I believed when I was eight -- science." [Rick Reynolds] ------- "I might have become a Catholic if the Church were a little hipper. Like if the host were fudge, I'd be there for that. Body of Christ, with or without nuts." [Rick Reynolds, atheist comedian, on religion] ------- "They [the Creationists] have been getting away with this nonsense [Creation Science] for some time now, even to the extent of getting legislation passed to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side with evolution. The true scientific community has largely remained within its hallowed halls rather than storming out into the quadrangle to do battle with what it knows to be pure nonsense. Scientists, unlike religionists, are political neophytes and generally remain oblivious to the issue of religion. Average Americans are not willing, nor intellectually mature enough, to handle such heady stuff as questioning any religion except upon tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee issues. Undoubtedly, this results from living under a Constitution which, in its consummate fairness in not favoring one religion above another, has made attacks on religion nearly needless and obsolete. But in the First Amendment's success lies a great danger to our liberties. If we never question our religions or their motives, they will ultimately destroy our freedom to do so." [William H. Reynolds, "Creationism: The Fossil Record and the Flood"] ------- "God is dead and no one cares. If there is a hell, I'll see you there." [Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails)] ------- "Incest is a voluntary act on the woman's part." [Charles Rice, Professor of Law, Notre Dame University, in a pamphlet published by the American Life League] ------- "It is ironic as all get-out that it is up to the atheists, Pagans, and Jews to educate Christians about Christianity and the Bible." [David Rice] ------- "I'd take Aphrodite over Jesus any day." [David Rice] ------- "Pssss! Jesus is dead. Pass it on." [David Rice] ------- "The 'baby' doesn't exist in Christanity. It was a myth designed to justify the bath water." [Fredric Rice] ------- "A 'meaning of life' removes the overriding fear that existance is useless -- while denying the fact that living is its own greatest reward." [Fredric Rice, HolySmoke, December 1996] ------- "And all the good you've done will soon be swept away, You've begun to matter more than the things you say" [Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Weber, _Jesus Christ Superstar_] ------- "Nazareth, your famous son should have stayed a great unknown Like his father carving wood, he'd have made good Tables, chairs and oaken chests would have suited Jesus best He'd have caused nobody harm, no one alarm." [Tim Rice, _Jesus Christ Superstar_] ------- "To be forced by desire into any unwarrantable belief is a calamity." [I.A. Richards] ------- "Take a piece of shit - wrap it in gold foil - call it the most valuble thing in existence - install it in a beautiful building crafted by the most talented artisans in the world - make it so beautiful it makes men weep for joy upon seeing it - and these atheists still say "something smells bad!" - they have no respect for even the most venerated of turds." [Mark Richardson] ------- "There are ten commandments, right? Well, it's like an exam. You get eight out of ten, you're just about top of the class." [Mordecai Richler] ------- "If you must believe in anything, believe in yourselves, in your senses and in your minds. To accept a religious creed is to accept another's mind in place of your own, and generally contrary to your own. When religious belief comes in brains go out. Man has asked for the truth and the Church has given him miracles. He has asked for knowledge, and the Church has given him theology. He has asked for facts, and the Church has given him the Bible. This foolishness should stop. The Church has nothing to give man that has not been in cold storage for two thousand years. Anything would become stale in that time." [Marilla Young Ricker, "Science Against Creeds," I Am Not Afraid Are You?] ------- "We are called "infidels" and denounced as "unbelievers" because we will not march in the ranks of hypocrisy and dance to the music of Orthodoxy. We believe no statement which our reason cannot approve; we accept no doctrine which is contrary to commonsense; we have confidence in human nature; we believe in truth, justice, and love; we accept life as a blessing, and try to make it so; we believe in taking care of ourselves, in helping others and in being just and kind to all, and we say to the Christian Church, "If this be Infidelity, make the most of it!" [Marilla Young Ricker] ------- "In 1127, the Norse farmers of Greenland sent the King of Norway a live polar bear. He sent them back a bishop. By 1500, the only people living in Greenland were the Inuit seal hunters. All that remained of the Norse settlements were the ruins of their churches. Faced with a sudden cooling of the climate, the Norse people were more concerned with building churches and providing for bishops than changing their way of life to take account of the harsher climate. While they continued to graze their cattle on increasingly poor land, the Inuit remained flexible and adjusted their life style to suit the shifting conditions." [_'Rigid' cultures caught out by climate change_, article in the 5 March 1994 edition of _New Scientist_] ------- "In the Middle East, the Bronze Age people of Canaan--the ancient region between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean that roughly corresponds to Israel--also failed to adapt to the drying out of their lands around 2200 BC(E). In their case, says Arlene Rosen of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, it was their beliefs that were their undoing. 'In Canaan, people believed that environmental disasters were caused by a deity unhappy with the people," she says. Like the Mayans, the Canaanites could have coped with the new conditions by introducing new irrigation systems for their crops. Instead, they attributed the shift in climate to the wrath of the gods, built more temples and prayed for better times. Within a short time, the cities and towns were abandoned and the people became nomadic hearders." [_'Rigid' cultures caught out by climate change_, article in the 5 March 1994 edition of _New Scientist_] ------- "The only good I can find in fundamentalists consumed by the afterlife, is they will make better dead people than live ones." [Jack Rite] ------- "Fundamentalism kills more brain cells than drugs." [Jack Rite] ------- "Have you ever thought that if God exited, there would be no need to prove his existence?" [Rius] ------- "Religion is an invention useful to pursuade men to murder each other for conveniently located lands without having to pay them what the job is worth." [Michael Rivero] ------- "a sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised" [Tom Robbins, _Jitterbug Perfume_] ------- "Christianity,... the enemy of the teeth, as well as the clitoris and the brain... Dentistry was already a fairly sophisticated science in ancient Egypt. There're mummies with fillings in their teeth, with root canals and bridgework, for crying out loud... Jews considered such practices a form of mutilation, and our European Christian ancestors believed it was blasphemous to mess with the Almighty's handiwork, we being created in his own image, overbite and all. Never mind that their molars ached - that was the result of sin, or the mischief of demons. By the time the King James version of the Bible hit the stands in sixteen-whatever-it-was, dentistry in the English- speaking world was a rustic joke, which is why, four thousand years after Imhotep got his cavities filled, the President of the United States was forced to replace _his_ troubled teeth with blunt objects carved out of a fallen log. The Christians crucified dental science, just like they nailed up astronomy - you know what happened to Copernicus and Galileo - and the rest of the human race's intellectual and artistic progress. Yes, indeed. It was a bishop of the Church of Rome who burned the great library at Alexandria because he was uncomfortable with the reminder on such a grand scale that there were successful human enterprises that pre-dated Jesus. You have any appreciation of what was lost in that fire? The science, the records, the scholarship, the wisdom, the literature? Our understanding of the past and what it may portend for the future was irreparably sabotaged by arrogant Christian firebugs. The second greatest library in the world happened to be in Timbuktu, and _it_ was torched by Islamic revisionists for the very same reason. Let history begin with Muhammed! If these religious assholes are really convinced of the power and the truth of their big boohoos, why are they so scared by historical fact, by thought, by knowledge?" [Tom Robbins, "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas", pp. 206-7. (later, he points out that Washington's false teeth were actually made of ivory and other bones..)] ------- "Unlike the average American, she has an attention span longer than a Mormon's orgasm." [Tom Robbins, "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas", pg. 189] ------- "We care not about rights. We spread our beliefs according to what our God tells us to. Simple as that. We don't struggle for rights." [Chris Roberts (cnr1@erc.msstate.edu) on alt.atheism] ------- "...I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." [Stephen F. Roberts] ------- "At the time of its Founding, the United States seemed to be an infertile ground for religion. Many of the nation's leaders - include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin - were not Christians, did not accept the authority of the Bible, and were hostile to organized religion. The attitude of the general public was one of apathy: in 1776, only 5 percent of the population were participating members of churches." [Ian Robertson, _Sociology_, 3rd editions, Worth Publishing Inc.: New York, 1987, page 410] ------- "The best argument for the use of the name Agnostic is simply that the word Atheist has been so long covered with all manner of ignorant calumny, that it is expedient to use a new term, which though in some respects faulty, has a fair start, and will in time have a recognized meaning. The case so stated is reasonable; but there is a per contra that whatever the motive with which the name is used, it is now tacked to half a dozen conflicting forms of doctrine, varying loosely between Theism and Pantheism. The name of Atheism escapes that drawback. Its unpopularity has saved it from a half-hearted and half-minded patronage." [John M. Robertson] ------- "The theory that religion is not only hostile to magic but quite separate from it is as fallacious as the distinction between religion and superstition." [J.M. Robertson, _Pagan Christs_, 1903] ------- "There is no trace that the Protestant clergy of Scotland ever raised a voice against the slavery which grew up before their eyes. And it was not until 1799, after republican and irreligious France had set the example, that it was legally abolished." [J.M. Robertson, "Perversion of Scotland" p. 197] ------- "The people seem to have passed from cruelty to cruelty precisely as they became more and more fanatical, more and more devoted to their Church, till after many generations the slow spread of human science began to counteract the ravages of superstition, the clergy resisting reason and humanity to the last." [J.M. Robertson] ------- "All through the Third Century there is repeated mention of this (Apollonius' teachings). But it was not until Hierocles in the beginning of the Fourth Century boldly charged upon the Christian priesthood their plagiarism of the teachings and works of Apollonius, that the latter found it necessary to set every means at work that could in any way help to conceal the great truth that Hierocles proclaimed with such portentous force. It was true that no one knows exactly what it was that Hierocles wrote, for Eusebius, who took upon himself the task of destroying the testimony of Hierocles, took precious good care to destroy the work of his formidable opponent, and give his own version of the matter instead. The reply of Eusebius to Hierocles has come down to us. Why has not Hierocles' arraignments of the Christian priesthood also come down to us? Let that priesthood answer." [J. M. Roberts, "Antiquity Unveiled", on the suppression of Hierocles' "Lover of Truth", accusing christian authors of plagiarism] ------- "I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on out, it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors." [Pat Robertson, on a telecast of the 700 Club] ------- "[The] feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." [Fundraising letter from Pat Robertson that was an in- kind contribution to the Iowa Committee to Stop ERA, as reported in The Washington Post, August 23, 1993] ------- "There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that sanctifies the separation of church and state." [Pat Robertson] ------- "God showed me...that he was going to bless the Christian Coalition beyond our wildest expectations. Before the year 2000, the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful organization in America. We'll be back in 1993. We'll be back in 1994. We'll be back in 1995...We'll be back until we win it all." [Pat Robertson] ------- "Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals--the two things seem to go together." [Pat Robertson, "The 700 Club," 1/21/93, ADL report on Religious Right, page 131] ------- "It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-biased media and the homosexuals who want to destroy all Christians" [Pat Robertson, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 14, 1993] ------- "Before the year 2000, the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful organization in America." [Pat Robertson] ------- "Modern experience has shown that usury inevitably leads to subservience. And God did not want his that for his people but rather intend for them to rule... He directed very fifty years that all debt would be cancelled, all property be redistributed, and the cycle begin again... Not withstanding the sneers of many in the banking community, it may be that God's way is the only one open to us - a year of jubillee to straighten us out." [Pat Robertson, The Secret Kingdom, 1992] ------- "I have known few homosexuals who did not practice their tendencies. Such people are sinning against God and will lead to the ultimate destruction of the family and our nation. I am unalterably opposed to such things, and will do everything I can to restrict the freedom of these people to spread their contagious infection to the youth of this nation." [Pat Robertson] ------- "I know one man who was impotent who gave AIDS to his wife and the only thing they did was kiss." [Pat Robertson] ------- "They have kept us in submission because they have talked about separation of church and state. There is no such thing in the Constitution. It's a lie of the Left, and we're not going to take it anymore." [Pat Robertson, address to American Center for Law & Justice, reported in The State, Columbia, South Carolina, Nov. 14, 1993] ------- "That [separation of church and state] was never in the Constitution, however much the liberals laugh at me for saying it, they know good and well it was never in the Constitution! Such language only appeared in the constitution of the communist Soviet Union" [Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, Jan. 22, 1995] ------- "These are actually chunks of lung itself being coughed up. I don't understand exactly what it is, but God has healed you right now. Amen." [Pat Robertson, during a "faith healing" session] ------- "For this cause shall a man leave his mother and father and cleave to his flesh.... I mean, cleave to his wife." [Pat Robertson, on "Larry King Live" August 17, 1992] ------- "In the 1990s and beyond, the battle is not going to be fought much longer between Christianity and atheistic humanism, but between Christianity and satanic-inspired Eastern religions." [Pat Robertson, The Secret Kingdom, 1992] ------- "Sickness and disease will be a part of life of this planet until Jesus comes back." [Pat Robertson] ------- "A lasting peace will never be built upon man's efforts, because man is sinful, vicious, and wicked." [Pat Robertson] ------- "I know there are some Christians who believe that war and their participation in it are morally wrong. While I respect their views and must allow them to follow their consciences, I do not believe the Bible teaches pacifism." [Pat Robertson] ------- "Those who have not lived for Him will be in a place of torment and punishment." [Pat Robertson] ------- "Whenever the civil government forbids the practice of things that God has commanded us to do, or tells us to do things He has commanded us not to do then we are on solid ground in disobeying the government and rebelling against it." [Pat Robertson] ------- "Government was instituted by God to bring His laws to people and to carry out His will and purposes." [Pat Robertson] ------- "When any civil government steps outside the mandate authorized by God Almighty, then that government does not have any further claim over its citizens." [Pat Robertson] ------- "I believe that he [Jesus] is Lord of the government, and the church, and business and education, and, hopefully, one day, Lord of the press. I see him involved in everything. And that's why I don't want to stay just in the church, as such. I want the church to move into the world." [Pat Robertson] ------- "Satan is a tool of God's love in the sense that he forces us to see God's loving patience." [Pat Robertson] ------- "If you go all the way back to the days just following creation, men lived nine hundred years or more." [Pat Robertson] ------- "Therefore the spiritual standard for America would be the gospel of Jesus and everything in the Old and New Testaments." [Pat Robertson] ------- "My personal feeling is that oral sex is against nature." [Pat Robertson] ------- "The strategy aginst the American radical left should be the same as General Douglas MacArthur employed against the Japanese in the Pacific... bypass their strongholds, then surround them, isolate them bombard them, then blast the individuals out of their power bunkers with hand-to-hand combat. The battle for Iwo Jima was not pleasant, but our troops won it. The battle to regain the soul of America won't be pleasant either, but we will win it." [Pat Robertson, in "Pat Robertson's Perspective," April-May 1992] ------- "There will never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world. How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy moneychangers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?" [Pat Robertson, "The New World Order", 1991, P. 227, Word Publishing] ------- "The key in terms of mental ability is chess. There's never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get one, then I'll buy some of the feminism..." [Pat Robertson (According to the Chess Federation of the U.S. there were already two women Grand Masters at that time, both from Georgia. Since Robertson's gaffe, three more women became Grand Masters)] ------- "Popular television is flooded with filth and violence; MTV, VH-1, and pop radio stations are sewers of obscenity, rebellion and violence; pop magazines promote the vilest forms of pornography and a form of materialism, selfishness, and greed that has fallen to the lowest levels in human history." [Pat Robertson, "The New World Order"] ------- "Students at Regent University are obligated to be concerned for the conduct of their peers in accordance with Luke 17:3, 'If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him'. A student accused by another of violating the Guidelines for Community Life will be dealt with in accordance with the Student Discipline Procedure, which follows the biblical teaching in Matthew 18:15 - 17 '...and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector'." [Regent University Graduate Catalog 1994-1996, p. 28, Pat Robertson, Chancellor] ------- "The courts are merely a ruse, if you will, for humanist, atheistic educators to beat up on Christians." [Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, Oct. 2,1990] ------- "I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period." [Pat Robertson, newsletter as quoted by Federal News Service, Sept. 11, 1992] ------- "Why are so many marriages falling apart? Why is the divorce rate so high? ...Why is there such a tragedy in marriage?...Now the basic answer to the basic problem of marriages today is a question of leadership. The wife actually makes the husband the head of the household and she looks to him and she says 'now you pray, and I'm going to pray for you that the Lord will speak to you." [Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, May 22, 1986] ------- "Communism was the brain-child of German-Jewish intellectuals." [Pat Robertson, in The New World Order, (1991), p.17] ------- "It sure does, Ben, it definitely does...this is definite...it specifically clearly, unequivocally says that Russia and other countries will enter into war and God will destroy Russia through earthquakes, volcanoes..." [Pat Robertson when asked the question "Does the Bible specifically tell us what is going to happen in the future", "700 Club" December 2, 1981] ------- "The mission of the Christian Coalition is simple, to mobilize Christians-- one precinct at a time, one community at a time -- until once again we are the head and not the tail, and at the top rather than the bottom of our political system....the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful political force in America by the end of this decade.. We have enough votes to run this country...and when the people say, 'We've had enough,' we're going to take over!" [Pat Robertson] ------- "We want...as soon as possible to see a majority of the Republican Party in the hands of pro-family Christians by 1996." [Pat Robertson, Denver Post, 10/26/92] ------- "People have immortal spirits with incredible power over elemental things. The way to deal with inanimate matter is to talk to it." [Rev. Pat Robertson, quoted in San Francisco Examiner] ------- "We are not one nation, we are two nations entirely separate (Christian and non-Christian)." [Pat Robertson] ------- "There is no way that a United Nations, a League of Nations, peace treaties, disarmament treaties, or any other human instrument can bring about peace. Such things mean nothing when one nation desires the land and resources of another. A lasting peace will never be built upon man's efforts, because man is sinful, vicious, and wicked. Until men are changed and Satan's power is removed, there will not be peace on earth." [Pat Robertson, "Answers to 200 of Life's Most Probing Questions"] ------- "God in his great mercy has blessed America, and made this a haven for Christians and Jews alike. But we've gone away from our Christian heritage. And God has little obligation at the present time to spare America, because we are polluting the world with our television programs, our movies and so forth, our books. We are polluting the whole world. We've made the world drunk, if you will, with the wine of our fornication. The whole world has been affected by Hollywood." [Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, December 7, 1995] ------- "[on the September 11 terrorist attacks] We have allowed rampant secularism and occult, etc. to be broadcast on television. We have permitted somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 to 40 million unborn babies to be slaughtered in our society. We have a court that has essentially stuck its finger in God's eye and said we're going to legislate you out of the schools. We're going to take your commandments from off the courthouse steps in various states. We're not going to let little children read the commandments of God. We're not going to let the Bible be read, no prayer in our schools. We have insulted God at the highest levels of our government. And, then we say 'why does this happen?' It is happening because God Almighty is lifting His protection from us. [Pat Robertson, "The 700 Club," 9/13/2001] ------- "[on abortion providers] The word I got is that if the judges appointed by man will not deal with those who take innocent human life, then the Lord is going to enter in and bring justice. And when that happens many of the innocent will suffer along with the guilty." [Pat Robertson, "The 700 Club," January 1, 1996] ------- "[on Gay Day at Disney World] "I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you, This is not a message of hate; this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor." [Pat Robertson, "The 700 Club" June 6, 1998] ------- "Well, as missionaries possibly to spread the doctrine of Islam....is not a peaceful religion that wants to coexist. They want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then, if need be, destroy." [Pat Robertson, on the 700 Club] ------- "We are the Christian Coalition. You will be assimilated. Your culture will adapt to service us. We will add your biological and financial distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile." [Robertsonus of Borg] ------- "We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened. We are by nature stubbornly pledged to defend our own from attack, whether it be our person,our family, our property, or our opinion." [James Harvey Robinson, "The Mind in the Making"] ------- "To the candid historical student the evil workings of religion are, to say the least, far more conspicuous and far more readily demonstrated than its good results." [James Harvey Robinson, American historian] ------- "The Baptist missionary is ready enough to see that the Buddhist is not such because his doctrines would bear close inspection, but because he happened to be born in a Buddhist family in Tokyo. But it would be treason to his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality to certain doctrines is due to the fact that his mother was a member of the First Baptist Church of Oak Ridge." [James Harvey Robinson, "Four Kinds of Thinking"] ------- "Religious persons often consider gambling to be a bad thing. It certainly causes a great deal of misery. But much of the badness of gambling consists in its refusal to face the odds and be guided by them; and in the matter of refusing to face the odds religion is a worse offender than gambling, and does more harm to the habits of reason. Religious belief is, in fact, a form of gambling, as Pascal saw. It does more harm to reason than ordinary gambling does, however, because it is more in earnest." [Richard Robinson (1902-1996), Professor at Cornell and Oxford wrote in 'An Atheist's Values'] ------- "It follows that, far from its being wicked to undermine faith, it is a duty to do so. We ought to do what we can towards eradicating the evil habit of believing without regard to evidence." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values", 1964] ------- "This doctrine of the happy survival of death is the chief attraction of the Christian religion to most of its adherents; and their first profound religious belief comes to them as a reassurance after their first realization that they are going to die. It is an easy defensive reaction against this terrible discovery." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "Christian faith is not merely believing that there is a god. It is believing that there is a god no matter what the evidence on the question may be. "Have faith," in the Christian sense, means "make yourself believe that there is a god without regard to evidence." Christian faith is a habit of flouting reason in the forming and maintaining one's answer to the question whether there is a god. Its essence is the determination to believe that there is a god no matter what the evidence may be." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "Faith is a great vice, an example of obstinately refusing to listen to reason, something irrational and undesirable, a form of self-hypnotism." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "A god who wished us to decide certain questions without regard to the evidence would definitely not be a perfectly good god." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "In religion it is particularly easy for intellectual dishonesty to escape notice, because of the common assumption that all honesty flows from religion and religion is necessarily honest whatever it does." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "Any case of a man getting his wish after praying for it, or being struck by lightning after doing something mean, is taken as good evidence that there is a god who gives and punishes. Contrary cases are not looked for; and if they obtrude themselves they are dealt with by further hypothesis that "God's ways are inscrutable." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "It seems to me that religion buys its benefits at too high a price, namely at the price of abandoning the ideal of truth and shackling and perverting man's reason. The religious man refuses to be guided by reason and evidence in a certain field, the theory of gods, theology. He does not say: "I believe that there is a god, but I am willing to listen to arguments that I am mistaken, and I shall be glad to learn better." He does not seek to find and adopt the more probable of the two contradictories, "there is a god" and "there is no god." On the contrary, he makes his choice between those two propositions once for all. He is determined never to revise his choice, but to believe that there is a god no matter what the evidence." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "The only alternatives to thinking with reason are thinking unreasonably and not thinking." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "If theology were a part of reasonable inquiry, there would be no objection to an atheist's being a professor of theology. That a man's being an atheist is an absolute bar to his occupying a chair of theology proves that theology is not an open-minded and reasonable inquiry." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "The main irrationality of religion is preferring comfort to truth; and it is this that makes religion a very harmful thing on balance, a sort of endemic disease that has so far prevented human life from reaching its full stature." [Richard Robinson, "An Atheist's Values," 1964] ------- "They said God was on high and he controlled the world and therefore we must pray against Satan. Well, if God controls the world, he controls Satan. For me, religion was full of misstatements and reaches of logic that I just couldn't agree with." [Gene Roddenberry] ------- "I've always thought that, if we did not have supernatural explanations for all the things we might not understand right away, this is the way we would be, like the people on that planet. (ST:TNG "Who Watches the Watchers") I was born into a supernatural world in which all my people -my family- usually said "That is because God willed it," or gave other supernatural explanations for whatever happened. When you confront those statements on their own, they just don't make sense. They are clearly wrong. You need a certain amount of proof to accept anything, and that proof was not forthcoming to support those statements." [Gene Roddenberry] ------- "We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." [Gene Roddenberry] ------- "As the human race moves into adolescence and adulthood, it can no longer afford to guide its affairs via those simple myths. Our human ancestors thought long and hard on who and what they were and came up with the best explanations they could make. The frightening thing is that we-- almost at the end of the 20th century, entering the space age, becoming a society based on knowledge--are still hanging onto those explanations, which date back to our Stone Age. I think we need a more fruitful way to analyze these questions. We need exciting philosophical thought." [Gene Roddenberry] ------- "We don't have to worry about convincing a majority of Americans to agree with us...Most of them are staying home and watching 'Falcon Crest.'" [Guy Rodgers, then-national field coordinator for the Christian Coalition, from The Religious Right: The Assault of Tolerance & Pluralism in America, produced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)] ------- "The old faiths light their candles all about, but burly Truth comes by and puts them out." [Lizette Reese] ------- "I was driving home early Sunday morning, through Bakersfield Listening to gospel music on the public radio station When the preacher said "You'll always have the Lord by your side." I was so pleased to be informed of this That I ran twenty red lights in his honor. Thank you Jesus. Thank you Lord." [The Rolling Stones, "Faraway Eyes"] ------- "A long acquaintance with the literature of the Witnesses leads one to the conclusion that they live in the intellectual `twilight zone'.... Whenever their literature strays onto the fields of philosophy, academic theology, science or any severe mental discipline their ideas at best mirror popular misconceptions, at worst they are completely nonsensical." [Alan Rogerson, _Millions Now Living Will Never Die: A Study of Jehovah's Witnesses_, 1969, p. 116] ------- "Every man is free to adopt and profess any religion, which, under the guidance of reason, he believes to be true." [Rome's "Syllabus of Condemned Opinions"] ------- "Only a brave person is able honestly to accept, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers." [Rodan of Alexandria] ------- "Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money." [Eleanor Roosevelt] ------- "Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church." [Eleanor Roosevelt] ------- "If there is one thing for which we stand in this country, it is for complete religious freedom, and it is an emphatic negation of this right to cross-examine a man on his religion before being willing to support him for office." [Theodore Roosevelt] ------- "Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character," [W.T. Root, Prof. of Psychology at Univ. of Pittsburg, after examining 1,916 prisoners] ------- "It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so." [Ernestine Rose, in the speech, "A Defense of Atheism"] ------- "If the belief in god were natural, there would be no need to teach it. Children would possess it as well as adults, the layman as the priest, the heathen as much as the missionary. We don't have to teach the general elements of human nature; the five senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. They are universal; so would religion be were it natural, but it is not. On the contrary, it is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are Atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds they would remain so. Even as it is, they are great sceptics, until made sensible of the potent weapon by which religion has ever been propagated, namely, fear -- fear of the lash of public opinion here, and of jealous, vindictive God hereafter. No; there is no religion in human nature, nor human nature in religion. It is purely artificial, the result of education, while Atheism is natural, and, were the human mind not perverted and bewildered by the mysteries and follies of superstition, would be universal." [Ernestine L. Rose, "A Defense of Atheism"] ------- "Convicted pedophiles are highly Victorian and rigid in their sexual attitudes. They generally believe in the double standard and, are, quite surprisingly, highly religious. They see themselves as devout, read the Bible regularly, and pray often for cure of their pedophilia." [Rosenhan and Seligman, "Abnormal Psychology, Second Edition",p. 435] ------- "Thinking to a cult member is like being stabbed in the heart with a dagger. It's very painful because they've been told that the mind is Satan and thinking is the machinery of the Devil." [Rick Ross, from his website on destrutive cults at http://www.rickross.com] ------- "Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother's side." [Stanley Ralph Ross] ------- "The most extraordinary Roman soldiers that Rome ever heard of were those soldiers that were set to watch the tomb of Jesus. They managed to fall asleep simultaneously in order to allow Jesus to pass unseen, and when they awoke, for a bribe they deliberately committed suicide by admitting that they had slept -- an admission that meant instant execution. Was ever invention so stupidly desperate and mendacity so recklessly absurd as that invention and that mendacity upon which rests the story of the Resurrection, upon which the whole fabric of the Christian faith has elected to stand or fall? The basis is too puerile to support a story told by an idiot for the purpose of imposing upon a fool." [W.S. Ross] ------- "The twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man." [Clinton Rossiter, American historian] ------- "Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill all and you are God." [Jean Rostand] ------- "We live in an age of Reason and yet lunacy walks among us still - often on stilts." [Theodore Roszak, "The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein", pg 77] ------- "But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not mind; this short life counts for too little in their eyes." [Jean Jacques Rousseau, Contrat Social (The Social Contract)] ------- "What the pagans had feared came to pass. Then everything changed its aspect; the humble Christians altered their tone, and soon this pretended kingdom of the other world became, under a visible chief, the most violent despotism in this world." [Jean-Jacques Rousseau] ------- "If Christ does not appear to meet his 144,000 faithful shortly after midnight on February 6th or 7th, it means that my calculations, based on the Bible, must be revised." [Margaret Rowen, Church of the Advanced Adventists, 1925] ------- "That's the problem with religion: you beat your way past the clerics, fight your way through the demons, stand before the holy of holies, and when you rip away the veil, there's nothing there but a mirror." [Owen Rowley] ------- "And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky, Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help Rolls impotently on as Thou or I." [from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam trans. Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883)] ------- "Why do you think you're God?" "Because when I pray, I find I'm talking to myself." [from The Ruling Class] ------- "Creationism is wrong; totally, utterly, and absolutely wrong. I would go further. There are degrees of being wrong. The creationists are at the bottom of the scale. They pull every trick in the book to justify their position. Indeed, at times they verge right over into the downright dishonest. Scientific Creationism in not just wrong, it is ludicrously implausible. It is a grotesque parody of human thought, and a downright misuse of human intelligence. In short, to the believer, it is an insult to god." [Michael Rusel, "Darwinism Defended"] ------- They say there are strangers, who threaten us In our immigrants and infidels They say there is strangeness, too dangerous In our theatres and bookstore shelves Those who know what's best for us- Must rise and save us from ourselves Quick to judge ... Quick to anger ... Slow to understand... Ignorance and prejudice and fear [all] Walk hand in hand. [RUSH] ------- "Faith is cold as ice- Why are little ones born only to suffer For the want of immunity Or a bowl of rice? Well, who would hold a price On the heads of the innocent children If there's some immortal power To control the dice?" [Rush, "Roll The Bones"] ------- "You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill; I will choose a path that's clear- I will choose Free Will." [Rush, "Free Will"] ------- "I don't believe in destiny or the guiding hand of fate, I don't believe in forever or love as a mystical state, I don't believe in the stars or the planets or angels watching from above, But I believe there's a ghost of a chance we can find someone to love and make it last" [Rush, "Ghost of a Chance"] ------- I've got twelve disciples and a buddha smile The Garden of Allah-Viking Valhalla A miracle once in a while I've got a pantheon of animals in a pagan soul Vishnu and Gaia-Aztec and Maya Dance around my totem pole I believe in what I see I believe in what I hear I believe that what I'm feeling Changes how the world appears Angels and demons dancing in my head Lunatics and monsters underneath my bed Media messiahs preying on my fears Pop culture prophets playing in my ears I've got celestial mechanics to synchronize my stars Seasonal migrations-daily variations World of the unlikely and bizarre I've got idols and icons, unspoken holy vows Thoughts to keep well hidden- sacred and forbidden Free to browse among the holy cows That's why I believe Angels and demons inside of me Saviors and satans all around me Sweet chariot, swing low, coming for me [Neil Peart (RUSH), "Totem"] ------- "[My] mind is not for rent to any god or government" [Rush, "Tom Sawyer"] ------- "To put it as simply as possible: *I am not a Muslim*.[...] I do not accept the charge of apostacy, because I have never in my adult life affirmed any belief, and what one has not affirmed one can not be said to have apostasized from. The Islam I know states clearly that 'there can be no coercion in matters of religion'. The many Muslims I respect would be horrified by the idea that they belong to their faith *purely by virtue of birth*, and that a person who freely chose not to be a Muslim could therefore be put to death." [Salman Rushdie, "In Good Faith", 1990] ------- "God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. [...]and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. [...] From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person." [Salman Rushdie, "In God We Trust", 1985] ------- "I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in." [Salman Rushdie, on David Frost show] ------- "The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas -- uncertainty, progress, change -- into crimes." [Salman Rushdie, Herbert Reade Memorial Lecture, Feb. 6, 1990, written in hiding a year after Shi'ite mullahs offered a two-million-dollar reward for Rushdie's murder for blasphemy, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief] ------- "To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him... If dissent is now also to be thought of as a form of 'dissing,' then we have indeed succumbed to the thought police." [Salman Rushdie, to Reuters News Service, 4/17/96] ------- "If I were asked for a one-sentence soundbite on religion, I would say I was against it." [Salman Rushdie, to Reuters News Service, 4/17/96] ------- "Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power." [Salman Rushdie] ------- "If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern [world] is based" [Salman Rushdie, editorial in NY Times, reprinted in Soldier of Fortune magazine, February 2002] ------- "God in His law requires the death penalty for homosexuals." [R.J. Rushdoony, Reconstructionist theologian, in a letter to Mel White] ------- "Democracy is the great love of the failures and cowards of life." [R.J. Rushdoony, _Thy Kingdom Come_,1978] ------- "The state is a bankrupt institution. The only alternative to this bankrupt 'humanistic' system is a God-centered government." [R.J. Rushdoony, Reconstructionist theologian, from _The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism In America_, published by ADL] ------- "Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is committed to spiritual aristrocracy." [R.J. Rushdoony, Reconstructionist theologian, from _The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism In America_, published by ADL] ------- "Segregation or separation is thus a basic principle of Biblical law with respect to religion and morality. Every attempt to destroy this principle is an effort to reduce society to its lowest common denominator. Toleration is the excuse under which this levelling is undertaken, but the concept of toleration conceals a radical intolerance. In the name of toleration, the believer is asked to associate on a common level of total acceptance with the atheist, the pervert, the criminal, and the adherents of other religions as though no differences existed." [R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 294] ------- "All who are content with a humanistic law system and do not strive to replace it with Biblical law are guilty of idolatry. They have forsaken the covenant of their God, and they are asking us to serve other gods. They are thus idolaters, and are, in our generation, when our world is idolatrous and our states also, to be objects of missionary activity. They must be called out of their idolatry into the service of the living God. "Christian" man is thus doubly a sinner when he is antinomian and despises God's law: he has denied the law in Adam, and now, with consummate profanity, he denies it in the name of Christ. He thus doubly denies the everlasting covenant, and doubly transgresses the laws." [R.J. Rushdoony, Law and Society: Volume II of the Institutes of Biblical Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1982), pp. 468, 316] ------- "St. Paul, in reminding the Corinthian Christians of their destiny, said, "Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?" (I Cor. 6:2). Moffatt renders this, "Do you not know that the saints are to manage the world?," a meaning we do not need to remind ourselves of. Church government is a prelude to world government, not by the church but by "the saints." In trying to establish the necessary church government towards this end, Paul's constant appeal was, not to the form of church government or to the members, but to the law of God and the growth of the saints in terms of it (I Cor. 6:15-9:27). ....Judging, governing, or managing of the world is in terms of God's law. Because the saints were called to manage or govern the world, very quickly it became their purpose to move into positions of authority and power." [R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 773,742] ------- "The goal is the developed Kingdom of God, the New Jerusalem, a world order under God's law." [R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 357] ------- "1. God's covenant with Adam required him to exercise dominion over the earth and to subdue it (Gen. 1:26 ff) under God according to God's law-word. 2. The restoration of that covenant relationship was the work of Christ, His grace to His elect people. 3. The fulfillment of that covenant is their great commission: to subdue all things and all nations to Christ and His law-word." [R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ:Craig Press, 1973)] ------- "Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.' ... What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite." [Bertrand Russell, _Skeptical_Essays_, 1928] ------- "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 Am Not a Christian", 1957] ------- "It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no reason whatsoever for supposing it to be true." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather then by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless and will therefore result to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education"." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "There is something feeble and a little contemptable about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not real, he becomes furious when they are disputed." [Bertrand Russell, "Human Society in Ethics and Politics"] ------- "Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating the wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often." [Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian"] ------- "So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "There has been a rumor in recent years to the effect that I have become less opposed to religious orthodoxy than I formerly was. This rumor is totally without foundation. I think all the great religions of the world- Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism- both untrue and harmful." [Bertrand Russell, 1957] ------- "I think that in philosophical strictness at the level where one doubts the existence of material objects and holds that the world may have existed for only five minutes, I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptic orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "The conquering of fear is the beginning of wisdom" [Bertrand Russell] ------- "The splendour of human life, I feel sure, is greater to those who are not dazzled by the divine radiance." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown, and partly the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand" [Bertrand Russell, 6/3/27] ------- "... when people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid." [Bertrand Russell in "Theory of Knowledge"] ------- "To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true." [Bertrand Russell, "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization"] ------- "Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "I was told that the Chinese said that they would would bury me by the Western lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very _chic_ for an atheist." [Bertrand Russell, Autobiography] ------- "The question of the truth of a religion is one thing, but the question of its usefullness is another. I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue." [Bertrand Russell, _Why I Am Not A Christian_, 1957] ------- "Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones." [Bertrand Russell, "Unpopular Essays"] ------- "At the age of eighteen ... I read Mill's Autobiography, where I found a sentence to the effect that his father taught him that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question 'Who made God?'. This led me to abandon the 'First Cause' argument, and to become an atheist. Throughout the long period of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject." [Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, chap. 2] ------- "I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must of course admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it." [Bertrand Russell, "On the Value of Skepticism" in _Sceptical Essays_] ------- "The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave." [Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian"] ------- "I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting." [Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)] ------- "Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation or creed." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them. The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible." [Bertrand Russell, _A History of Western Philosophy_, 1945 also quoted in "The Quotable Bertrand Russell", p. 138] ------- "We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it." [Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not A Christian"] ------- "Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it." [Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not A Christian"] ------- "The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic." [Bertrand Russell, "Unpopular Essays"] ------- "Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life." [Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"] ------- "The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, If so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion." [Bertrand Russell, "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?," 1930] ------- "Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "With very few exceptions, the religion which a man accepts is that of the community in which he lives, which makes it obvious that the influence of environment is what has led him to accept the religion in question." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own." [Bertrand Russell, "What I believe"] ------- "I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good....I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are outgrowing." [Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays," 1928] ------- "Religion is based... mainly on fear....fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand.... My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." [Bertrand Russell, quoted in "Holy Horrors"] ------- "A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "The most dangerous features of Communism are reminiscent of the medieval Church. They consist of fanatical acceptance of doctrines embodied in a sacred book, unwillingness to examine these doctrines critically, and savage persecution of those who reject them." [Bertrand Russell, "Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?", 1954; published in a Swedish newspaper during the height of Sen. Joe McCarthy's anti-communist hysteria] ------- "The Communist, like the Christian, believes that his doctrine is essential to salvation, and it is this belief which makes salvation possible for him. It is the similarities between Christianity and Communism that make them incompatible with each other." [Bertrand Russell, "Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?", 1954; published in a Swedish newspaper during the height of Sen. Joe McCarthy's anti-communist hysteria] ------- "It is customary among Christian apologists to regard Communism as something very different from Christianity, and to contrast its evils with the supposed blessings enjoyed by Christian nations. This seems to me a profound mistake. The evils of Communism are the same as those that existed in Christianity during the Ages Of Faith. The OGPU differs only quantitatively from the Inquisition. Its cruelties are of the same sort, and the damage that it does to the intellectual and moral life of Russians is of the same sort as that which was done by the Inquisitors wherever they prevailed. The Communists falsify history, and the church did the same until the Renaissance. If the Church is not now as bad as the Soviet government, that is due to the influence of those who attacked the church; from the Council of Trent until the present day, whatever improvements it has effected have been due to its enemies." [Bertrand Russell, "Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?", 1954; published in a Swedish newspaper during the height of Sen. Joe McCarthy's anti-communist hysteria] ------- "Nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking Mother." [Bertrand Russell, "A Free Man's Worship," 1903] ------- "It is the things for which there is no evidence that are believed with passion. Nobody feels any passion about the multiplication table or about the existence of Cape Horn, because these matters are not doubtful. But in matters of theology or political theory, where a rational man will hold that at best there is a slight balance of probablity on one side or the other, people argue with passion and support their opinions by physical slavery imposed by armies and mental slavery imposed by schools." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem." [Bertrand Russell, 1944] ------- "Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti, and Mr. Winston Churchill? Really I am not much impressed with the people who say: Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must have been design in the universe. I am not very impressed by the splendor of those people. Therefore I think that this argument of design is really a very poor argument indeed." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "At one time the most influential text in the Bible was: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Nowadays, people pass over this text, in silence if possible; if not, with an apology. And so, even when we have a sacred book, we still choose as truth whatever suits our own prejudices. [Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"] ------- "Those who know that their beliefs are founded in reason are willing to argue their way to victory and are willing to renounce opinions that do not survive such argument. Those who are aware that their beliefs are founded in faith, on the other hand, are unwilling to submit their beliefs to dispassionate discussion and do not expect to change their own beliefs ever. They are perfectly willing, if pressed, to resort to force to change other people's beliefs by brainwashing children, persecuting heretics, and warring with "unenlightened" adversaries. Religious instruction manipulates the vulnerable psyches of young children before they are able to think for themselves, endeavoring to prevent them from ever acquiring this ability. They never attain an intellectual resistance sufficient to counter the influence of dogmatic precepts, to grow up as free individuals." [Bertrand Russell, "Human Society in Ethics and Politics"] ------- "Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many forms of certainty that have afflicted the human race. Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." [Bertrand Russell, "Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind"] ------- "If a conquering dogmatic Marxism were to replace Christianity, it might be as great an obstacle to scientific progress as Christianity has been." [Bertrand Russell, "Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind"] ------- "We read in the Old Testament that it was a religious duty to exterminate conquered races completely, and that to spare even their cattle and sheep was an impiety. Dark terrors and misfortunes in the life to come oppressed the Egyptians and Etruscans, but never reached their full development until the victory of Christianity." [Bertrand Russell, "Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind"] ------- "God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralist. That is why they invented Hell." [Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays"] ------- "The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. This is the way opinions are held in science, as opposed to the way in which they are held in theology." [Bertrand Russell, "Unpopular Essays"] ------- "Men tend to have the beliefs that suit their passions. Cruel men believe in a cruel God and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case" [Bertrand Russell, "The Faith of a Rationalist"] ------- "That is the idea--that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion." [Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian"] ------- "The whole contention that Christianity has had an elevating moral influence can only be maintained by wholesale ignoring or falsification of the historical evidence." [Bertrand Russell, "Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?," 1954] ------- "It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one may say, is to give an air of respectability to these passions, provided they run in certain channels. It is because these passions make, on the whole, for human misery that religion is a force for evil, since it permits men to indulge these passions without restraint, where but for its sanction they might, at least to a certain degree, control them." [Bertrand Russell, "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?," 1930] ------- "From a scientific point of view we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes. Each is an abnormal physical condition, and therefore has abnormal perceptions." [Bertrand Russell, "Mysticism"] ------- "When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men." [Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian," 1927] ------- "Dogmatists the world over believe that although the truth is known to them, others will be led into false beliefs provided they are allowed to hear the arguments of others." [Bertrand Russell, "The Functions of a Teacher"] ------- "The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men." [Bertrand Russell] ------- "Since evolution became fashionable, the glorification of Man has taken a new form. We are told that evolution has been guided by one great Purpose: through the millions of years when there were only slime, or trilobites, throughout the ages of dinosaurs and giant ferns, of bees and wild flowers, God was preparing the Great Climax. At last, in the fullness of time, He produced Man, including such specimens as Nero and Caligula, Hitler and Mussolini, whose transcendent glory justified the long painful process. For my part, I find even eternal damnation less incredible, certainly less ridiculous, than this lame and impotent conclusion which we are asked to admire as the supreme effort of Omnipotence." [Bertrand Russell, "Unpopular Essays", p. 95] ------- "The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtues' on grounds that nothing to do with their social consequences." [Bertrand Russell, "Education and the Modern World"] ------- "The deliverance of the saints must take place some time before 1914." [Charles Taze Russell, American religious leader and founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Studies in the Scripture, Volume 3, 1910 edition] ------- "The deliverance of the saints must take place some time after 1914." [Charles Taze Russell, American religious leader and founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Studies in the Scripture, Volume 3, 1923 edition] ------- "Our Father or Mother, who are either in heaven, nirvana, Mecca or Salt Lake City, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, providing thy will is that America is always the big winner over foreign heathen. Give us this day our daily white bread, black bread, Italian bread, Jewish rye, English muffins, or tacos, and a quarter-pounder with cheese and large fries to go. And lead us not into temptation, or into school buses that take us to neighborhoods where the kids are different. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, especially for people who still use words like "thine." [Mark Russell, humorist] ------- "The [First] Amendment's purpose was not to strike merely at the official establishment of a single sect, creed, or religion, outlawing only a formal relation such as had prevailed in England and some of the colonies. Necessarily, it was to uproot all such relationships. But the object was broader than separating church and state in this narrow sense. It was to create a complete and permanent separation of the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every from of public support for religion." [Justice Wiley Rutledge, in dissent in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing TP., 330 U.S. 1 (1947) at 31,32] ------- "Christian soldiers armed with virtue- hearts afire with blind obsession, cannot see the difference 'twixt compassion and oppression." [Sabbat, "The Clerical Conspiracy"] ------- "It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women." [Marquis de Sade] ------- "...Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the 2, in the 1st instance I should be mad to believe in him, and in the 2nd a fool." [Marquis de Sade] ------- "The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." [Marquis de Sade] ------- "Let us condemn the first of those blessed charlatans who comes to us to say a few more words either of god or of religion, let us condemn him to be jeered at, ridiculed, covered with filth in all the public squares and marketplaces...Let the most insulting blasphemy, the most atheistic works next be fully and openly authorized, in order to complete the extirpation from the human heart of those appalling pastimes of our childhood." [Marquis de Sade, "Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans"] ------- "There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author." [Marquis de Sade] ------- "If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it ... from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real ... what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finis, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another." [Marquis de Sade, "Philosophy in the Bedroom"] ------- "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." [Carl Sagan] ------- "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)" [Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"] ------- "Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along." [Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"] ------- "I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true." [Carl Sagan, "The Burden Of Skepticism"] ------- "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, Keynote address at 1987 CSICOP conference "Controversies in Science and Fringe Science", Pasadena CA] ------- "The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." [Carl Sagan] ------- "You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." [Carl Sagan] ------- "You see, the religious people -- most of them -- really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods let well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would have listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition." [Carl Sagan, character Sol Hadden in _Contact_, 1985] ------- "(When asked merely if they accept evolution, 45 percent of Americans say yes. The figure is 70 percent in China.) When the movie "Jurassic Park" was shown in Israel, it was condemned by some Orthodox rabbis because it accepted evolution and because it taught that dinosaurs lived a hundred million years ago--when, as is plainly stated at every Rosh Hashonhan and every Jewish wedding ceremony, the Universe is less than 6,000 years old." [Carl Sagan, _The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark_, p. 325] ------- "I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides." [Carl Sagan, 1996 in his article "In the Valley of the Shadow" Parade Magazine Also, "Billions and Billions" p. 215] ------- "The politicians and the religious leaders and the weapons scientists have been at it for a long time and they've made a thorough mess of it. I mean, we're in deep trouble." [Carl Sagan, A&E Biography interview] ------- "I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. "The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"] ------- "Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy." [Carl Sagan] ------- "If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?....For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"] ------- "At the extremes it is difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from rigid, doctrinaire religion." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"] ------- "Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our own ignorance about ourselves." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"] ------- "Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?" [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark", p. 30] ------- "Is it fair to be suspicious of an entire profession because of a few bad apples? There are at least two important differences, it seems to me. First, no one doubts that science actually works, whatever mistaken and fraudulent claim may from time to time be offered. But whether there are *any* miraculous cures from faith-healing, beyond the body's own ability to cure itself, is very much at issue. Secondly, the expose' of fraud and error in science is made almost exclusively by science. But the exposure of fraud and error in faith-healing is almost never done by other faith-healers." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark"] ------- "In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from? And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?" [Carl Sagan, "Cosmos", page 257] ------- "Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense." [Carl Sagan] ------- "Many statements about God are confidently made by theologians on grounds that today at least sound specious. Thomas Aquinas claimed to prove that God cannot make another God, or commit suicide, or make a man without a soul, or even make a triangle whose interior angles do not equal 180 degrees. But Bolyai and Lobachevsky were able to accomplish this last feat (on a curved surface) in the nineteenth century, and they were not even approximately gods." [Carl Sagan, _Broca's Brain_] ------- "It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand." [Carl Sagan] ------- "If we're capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn't some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?" [Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World, p. 109] ------- "In a democracy, opinions that upset everyone are sometimes exactly what we need. We should be teaching our children the scientific method and the Bill of Rights." [Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan] ------- "If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World," p. 204 quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996] ------- "If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate....Try science." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World," p. 30, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996] ------- "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." [Carl Sagan, on secular morality] ------- "One prominent American religion confidently predicted that the world would end in 1914. Well, 1914 has come and gone, and - whole the events of that year were certainly of some importance - the world did not, at least so far as I can see, seem to have ended. There are at least three responses that an organized religion can make in the face of such a failed and fundamental prophecy. They could have said, "Oh, did we say '1914'? So sorry, we meant '2014'. A slight error in calculation. Hope you weren't inconvinenced in any way." But they did not. They could have said, "Well, the would *would* have ended, except we prayed very hard and interceded with God so He spared the Earth." But they did not. Instead, the did something much more ingenious. They announced that the world *had* in fact ended in 1914, and if the rest of us hadn't noticed, that was our lookout. It is astonishing in the fact of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all. But religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough- mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration was needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry." [Carl Sagan, "Broca's Brain"] ------- "A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism." [Carl Sagan, "Contact", pg 244] ------- "Since World War II, Japan has spawned enormous numbers of new religions featuring the supernatural.... In Thailand, diseases are treated with pills manufactured from pulverized sacred Scripture. Witches are today being burned in South Africa.... The worldwide TM [Transcendental Meditation] organization has an estimated valuation of $3 billion. For a fee, they promise to make you invisible, to enable you to fly." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World," p. 16, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief] ------- "The last execution for witchcraft in Holland, cradle of the Enlightenment, was in 1610; in Englandl, 1684; America, 1692; France, 1745; Germany, 1775; and Poland, 1793. In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World," p. 413, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief] ------- "Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works." [Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World"] ------- "There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny." [Carl Sagan, "Cosmos" television series, PBS] ------- "The last scientist who worked in the Library (at Alexandria) was a mathematician, astronomer, Physicist and the head of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy--an extraordinary range of accomplishments for any individual in any age. Her name was Hypatia. She was born in Alexandria in 370. At a time when women had few options and were treated as property, Hypatia moved freely and unselfconsciously through traditional male domains. By all accounts she was a great beauty. She had many suitors but rejected all offers of marriage. The Alexandria of Hypatia's time--by then long under Roman rule- -was a city under grave strain. Slavery had sapped classical civilization of its vitality. The growing Christian Church was consolidating its power and attempting to eradicate pagan influence and culture. Hypatia stood at the epicenter of these mighty social forces. Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, despised her because of her close friendship with the Roman governor, and because she was a symbol of learning and science, which were largely identified by the early Church with paganism. In great personal danger, she continued to teach and publish, until, in the year 415, on her way to work she was set upon by a fanatical mob of Cyril's parishioners. They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and, armed with abalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Here remains were burned, her works obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a saint." [Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980. The murder of Hypatia and the destruction of the Alexandria Library marked the onset of the "Dark Ages."] ------- "It was a Christian university dedicated to the Christian education of Christians, and this purpose still dominated the campus. It was there like a dense fog shrouding low-lying land on still summer mornings - never a real hindrance to progress but frequently a nuisance to vision. It seemed to be heaviest around the Administration Building." [Ferrol Sams, "The Whisper Of The River"] ------- "Without doubt the greatest injury of all was done by basing morals on myth. For, sooner or later, myth is recognized for what it is, and disappears. Then morality loses the foundation on which it has been built." [Lord Herbert Louis Samuel] ------- "The New York Times reports that evangelist Pat Robertson, who will announce in two weeks whether he will run for the presidency, claims he can pray away bad weather. ... Robertson said in a recent interview that his prayers to keep Hurricane Gloria away from Virginia Beach last June had been successful, which was 'extremely important because I felt, interestingly enough, that if I couldn't move a hurricane, I could hardly move a nation.' ... Robertson said that if the hurricane had come ashore, he would have seen it as a sign from above to abandon his presidential ambitions." [Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 September 1986] ------- "Bound by a common theology and the spreading sensation that their number is great and their time and leader have come, the Rev. Pat Robertson's fellow Pentecostal and charismatic evangelists are stirring to his still-unannounced quest for the Republican nomination for the presidency. ... Robertson is the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and a regular commentator on its '700 Club.' ... It is a quickening that the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who is supporting Vice President George Bush, said was the beginning of 'a mighty army.' ... No preacher has ever tried to summon this latent religious army to his own political cause. ... In the last two weeks, however, Robertson has persuaded two evangelists, [Jimmy] Swaggert of Louisiana and Oral Roberts of Oklahoma, both of whom are Pentacostals, to give him emotional public endorsements. The evangelist Rex Humbard sat on stage with him at Constitution Hall in Washington last week, and the camera picked him out as Robertson announced to a national audience on a satellite telecast that 3 million signatures on a petition would persuade him to declare for the nomination. Evangelist Jim Bakker of North Carolina, in response to a reporter's inquiry, gave a mild reply: 'I would have no problems standing with him. My feeling is that our viewers would welcome his candidacy.' ... Robertson, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, is a charismatic. Unlike other evangelicals who also believe that the Bible is true and that one must be reborn to experience salvation, Pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies of God and charismatic Christians of any denomination share an additional theology. It is a belief in the 'gifts' of the spirit, the abilities to heal and work other miracles through faith, to speak in tongues, to discern the will of God." [Dudley Clendinen, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 October 1986] ------- "Television preacher Pat Robertson, who plans to officially announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next month, said he would not tolerate atheists in his administration, Time magazine reported yesterday. ... Although Robertson firmly denied a quote attributed to him that only born-again Christians and Jews should hold government jobs, he told Time that nonbelievers would have no place in his administration if he were elected." [San Francisco Chronicle, 21 September 1987 (UPI)] ------- "The Washington newsletter Roll Call reports that a 1981 tape of candidate Pat Robertson, who used to be an evangelical faith healer, has been distributed to several political reporters. The tape shows Robertson at a 1981 faith healing session in Philadelphia, claiming to cure members of the audience of cancer, hemorrhoids and bad teeth. Later, he shouts that God has just fixed a hernia." [Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 October 1987] ------- "Republican presidential hopeful Pat Robertson said yesterday that a quarter of America's autoworkers use illegal drugs, contributing to declining productivity. The remark was criticized by a labor leader as 'stupid'." [San Francisco Chronicle, 4 November 1987 (AP)] ------- "Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson, a former TV evangelist, once said he believed only devout Christians and Jews were qualified to lead the government, the New York Times reported yesterday. Robertson also maintained that government is subservient to the will of God and that democracy is 'next best' to 'government controlled by God,' the newspaper said.... The Times story cited several articles written by Robertson in which he said God had spoken to him, directed his actions or heeded his prayer to steer away a hurricane. The article also said Robertson had a conversation with Satan in 1960 at the time of his religious conversion. 'I heard Satan say, "Jesus is playing you for a sucker, Robertson."'" [San Francisco Chronicle, 28 December 1987 (UPI)] ------- "Pat Robertson, who once claimed to have diverted a hurricane from its path, yesterday had his presidential campaign disrupted by a second-rate snowstorm. A dark-horse contender for the Republican nomination, Robertson was forced to cancel several stops on a scheduled 18-city barnstorming tour of southern Iowa when weather grounded the helicopter he had planned to use." [Jerry Roberts, San Francisco Chronicle, 5 February 1988] ------- "Now that he did so well in Iowa, The Reverend Pat Robertson doesn't want to be called a 'former television evangelist' anymore. He told NBC's Tom Brokaw in no uncertain terms that such a 'slur' was the height of 'religious bigotry. And he's right. Who'd want their sister to marry a television evangelist? But how shall we ace newsmen describe him instead? I've given the matter a great deal of thought, and I think the fairest to all concerned is 'former hemorrhoid healer.' This refers, of course, to the former hemorrhoid healer's celebrated, videotaped sermon to his congregation back in 1981, when he cried: 'Satan has gone! God has just healed somebody! A hernia has been healed! Several people are being healed of hemorrhoids and varicose veins! People with flat feet! God is doing just great things to you!' ... 'Former hurricane deflector' struck me as macho, and most voters would probably like a president who could deflect hurricanes. But Hurricane Gloria, which he deflected back in 1985 to save his broadcasting station in Virginia Beach, slammed into Long Island and Boston instead, doing $320 million worth of damage." [Arthur Hoppe, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 February 1988] ------- "Allegations by U.S. presidential candidate Pat Robertson that the Soviet Union has placed nuclear missiles in Cuba are 'wild fantasy,' the official Soviet news agency Tass said yesterday. 'Of course it is up to the Americans themselves to decide who will be the next occupant of the White House. But in this case we are dealing with problems concerning international security, concerning all,' Tass said. 'That is why Robertson's wild fantasy gives rise to a legitimate question: How is it that such an irresponsible politician could at all become a candidate for the presidency in such a country as the United States?'" [San Francisco Chronicle, 17 February 1988 (Chronicle Wire Services)] ------- "It's all very well to say he [Pat Robertson] can't be nominated or elected, though even that remains to be seen. What does it say, meanwhile, about the American people and the system by which they choose their leaders, that a former faith healer, a man who boasted that his religious appeals could change the course of hurricanes, should have become perhaps a decisive factor in the presidential nomination of a major party?" [Tom Wicker, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, 18 February 1988] ------- "According to a story in the New Republic magazine, Pat Robertson paid former football star Roosevelt Grier a $3,000 'honorarium' for appearing at a rally in a Brooklyn ghetto to express his support for the candidate. ... He introduced the candidate as Pat Robinson. ... The magazine also reported that Robertson paid singer and Christian Pat Boone $5,000 for his endorsement." [Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 31 March 1988] ------- "Nearly 25 percent of the nation's 1,411 television stations now have full- time religious programming, according to the 1989 Directory of Religious Broadcasting. That reflects a 30 percent jump over 1988. This doesn't count the three religious television networks, including Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, or the hundreds of stations that carry some religious programming. Of the nation's 10,546 radio stations, 1,485 or 14 percent, are Christian stations -- a 7 percent increase over 1988. Dwarfing the impact of U.S. radio stations is the worldwide network of evangelical ministries that preaches to Third World countries via shortwave radio. From high in the Andes mountains in Quito, Ecuador, HCJB World Radio -- which stands for Heralding Christ Jesus' Blessings -- uses its combined 1-million-watt shortwave power of several transmitter stations to broadcast 24 hours a day to 80 percent of the globe." [Annie Nakao, San Francisco Examiner, 23 July 1989] ------- "Houston. The Rev. Pat Robertson may have lost his political battle for the presidential nomination four years ago, but he's won some impressive victories at the onset of this week's Republican convention here. The party platform contains some of the most conservative language in modern history about abortion, education and homosexuality, and Robertson's Christian Coalition had a lot to do with that. In 1988, Robertson could only muster about 200 delegates and had almost no influence on the platform. The number of Coalition members among delegates this year has risen to about 750, out of a total of 2,210 delegates." [Carl Irving, San Francisco Examiner, 16 August 1992] ------- "The entertainment company headed by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson agreed yesterday to buy Dorothy Hamill's Ice Capades, the skating road show rescued last year by the Olympic gold medalist. International Family Entertainment Inc., which owns the Family Channel cable network, declined to disclose how much it paid for the show and related assets owned by the figure skater and her husband, physician Kenneth Forsythe. The deal expands International Family's interests in live entertainment while providing a new source of material for programs that can be shown on broadcast or cable television here or abroad and on home video. International Family launched a live entertainment division last year with its purchase of three theaters in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where it produces live musical variety shows. 'This agreement will add another facet to our company's philosophy of supplying high-quality, family-oriented entertainment and programming to America and the world,' said Tim Robertson, chief executive and president. His father Pat is chairman of International Family Entertainment." [San Francisco Chronicle, 9 June 1994 (AP)] ------- "Rescue teams battled yesterday to answer the desperate screams of mud-caked survivors of a volcano that killed as many as 20,000 people. ...A man stood buried up to his neck by mud and water, his legs pinned down by a body four feet below the surface. ...Another man, his foot crushed by rubble, lay for more than 24 hours on top of the bodies of his three children -- but he survived along with his pregnant wife. 'It was a miracle,' Jose Martinez, a 49-year-old truck driver, said from his hospital bed in Bogota. 'For those of us who survived, it was a miracle.'" [San Francisco Chronicle, 16 November 1985 (Reuters)] ------- "Father Junipero Serra moved closer to sainthood when a miracle attributed to the Spanish friar was 'confirmed' by Pope John Paul II yesterday. ...The miracle was reported by a Franciscan nun, Sister Bonafice Dyrda, who said she was cured in 1960 of a skin disease, diagnosed as lupus, after praying to Serra. ...A group of Indians held a two-day prayer vigil in Carmel to protest the pope's visit to Serra's grave at Carmel Mission. The group charged that Serra set the policies for the Spanish priests and soldiers that led to the death of 80 percent of the local Indian population." [Michael McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 December 1987] ------- "He [Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci] talked about Father Junipero Serra's qualifications for sainthood: 'They say he cured a nun's lupus. A miracle. Now I'm not a doctor, but I know lupus goes into remission. It's not always fatal. Have Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder play ping-pong together. That's a miracle.'" [Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 February 1989] ------- "Colfax, Placer County. Yesterday's crowd of pilgrims, some of whom arrived at midnight, saw a blue-gray light form over the right shoulder of a five- foot statue of Jesus near the altar of the 40-year-old Catholic church. For some, the shimmering light that turned green-pink bore the shape of a shawl covering a woman's head and shoulders. Sometimes the image was sharp; other times it was fuzzy. The eerie image appeared about 9:30 a.m., as it has every day since Thanksgiving, and remained for about an hour. At one point, a second light gold in color and resembling the shape of a crown or halo briefly appeared directly above the first image. At the moment the gold light appeared, many people in the line outside said they spotted a rainbow over the church. Inside the 200-seat church, pilgrims gasped, prayed, wept and stared at the image. ...According to James Phelps, a physics professor at Sacramento State University, the image is a phenomenon caused by natural light refracting through a stained-glass window and then bouncing off a light fixture and onto the wall. 'There's nothing exotic, nothing esoteric about it,' said the optics expert, who observed the image at the request of a local newspaper." [Martin Halstuk, San Francisco Chronicle, 8 December 1990] ------- "Colfax. A bishop joined throngs of people packing a Placer County church to see a shining image on the wall that devout Catholics claim is an apparition of the Virgin Mary. ... 'It could be the image of the Blessed Mary in a silhouette pose,' Bishop Francis Quinn of the Sacramento Diocese said Tuesday. ... The image has been appearing for about an hour each morning since Thanksgiving, bringing throngs of the devout and curious to the 40- year-old church along Interstate 80 northeast of Auburn. ... Some viewers say the image, which also resembles the profile of a rabbit head, could be a reflection from a stained glass window. ... 'For those who believe, no explanation is necessary,' Quinn said. 'And for those who not believe, no explanation is possible.'" [Press Democrat, 6 December 1990 (AP)] ------- "Colfax. The day before the shining apparition that some believe represents the Virgin Mary began appearing at St. Dominic's church, the hanging light fixtures in the sanctuary were stabilized with wire -- perhaps setting the stage for a reflection that could create the image. ... 'It might explain it,' said parishioner Edmund 'Mick' Molloy, whose father Ed Molloy is the parish coordinator. ... Molloy said the work was done Wednesday afternoon just before Thanksgiving. ... 'So on Thanksgiving morning we have this reflection,' Molloy said." [Press Democrat, 7 December 1990 (McClatchy News Service)] ------- "Colfax, Placer County. A mysterious light on a church wall that many believed was a divinely inspired image of the Virgin Mary did not appear yesterday amid heavy clouds, seeming to confirm the theory it was merely sunlight shining through stained-glass window. ... When the image failed to appear at its customary time, however, the worshipers trooped out, some in dismay. ... Church officials had been considering an investigation to determine whether the appearance of the image, which looked like the outline of the top half of a figure, was a miracle." [San Francisco Chronicle, 11 December 1990 (Chronicle Wire Services)] ------- "McDonald's has announced plans to open a restaurant at Lourdes, the French grotto that Catholics believe is a site of miraculous healing. The fast- food restaurant will open in November or December. The grotto of Lourdes, visited by 5.5 million people a year, is said to be where St. Bernardette had a vision of the Virgin Mary in the middle of the 19th century." [Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 March 1991] ------- "A mystery dating from medieval times -- the ability of the reputed clotted blood of a saint to turn liquid when handled in a religious ceremony -- may be just ordinary chemistry, researchers say. The scientists say they created a dark brown gel that turns easily to liquid when disturbed and then thickens back into a gel. Such a mixture may be in the vial that is said to hold the blood of St. Januarius, also called San Gennaro, in the Roman Catholic cathedral of Naples, Italy, the researchers propose in today's issue of the journal Nature. In a ceremony performed since the 14th century, the hermetically sealed, four-inch glass container is repeatedly turned upside down. Many Neapolitans believe that good luck will come if the vial's contents liquefy, but that disasters such as earthquakes may await if the contents remain solid. ...The gel was made with substances available in the 14th century, including table salt, water, calcium carbonate and ferric chloride hydrate, the researchers wrote." [San Francisco Chronicle, 10 October 1991 (AP)] ------- "A boy missing for 15 hours in a partly flooded cave where six others drowned was pulled out of the cave alive Saturday, providing a moment of light in the relentless gloom of the Midwest flood. ...'It was God that was with him and brought him back,' said his grandmother. The bodies of a 21-year-old female school counselor and another 12-year-old boy were discovered in the cave, raising the total number of victims in the tragedy to six." [Bob Burgdorfer, Reuters, San Francisco Examiner, 25 July 1993] ------- "I think the thing to remember, though, the next time you hear someone who is really certain that he is on the side of the angels, is that the idea of angels was created by human beings, who are famous for being frequently untrustworthy and occasionally crazy." [Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle, 10 June 1994] ------- "Watsonville. In this sleepy farm town where thousands are still feeling the effects of the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, people take their signs of hope where they can find them. ... About a month ago, an elderly woman praying in a shaded grove at Pinto Lake County Park found one in the bark of a tree. ... An estimated 4,000 people have flocked every day this week to see what many claim is the outline of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the limb of an oak tree, and park officials have cordoned off part of the tree because pilgrims are carving gashes and dents in it to take bark home as souvenirs. ... She is said to appear on the Watsonville tree as the outline of a cloaked woman. Some visitors claim they see two other Virgins on the same tree. Skeptics see little more than a garden-variety growth on an unremarkable oak." [Dan Turner, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 July 1992] ------- "Chalma, Mexico. At least 41 Indian pilgrims, most of them elderly women and children, were trampled to death yesterday in a crush of worshipers heading through a narrow marketplace to church for this town's Ash Wednesday celebration. ... Chalma, about 35 miles southwest of Mexico City, is famous for its gold-trimmed church and the Father of Chalma image of Christ that is said to perform miracles." [San Francisco Chronicle, 14 February 1991 (Los Angeles Times)] ------- "Dozens of motorists on Memorial Drive say they have seen Jesus shrouded in pasta and tomato sauce on a pizza chain's billboard. ... The billboard overlooks a Jiffy Lube and a Texaco gas station in DeKalb County, Ga. ... According to those who say they see it, the face, with deep-set eyes, beard and crown of thorns, is on a billboard advertising Pizza Hut spaghetti. It shows a forkful of steaming, hot spaghetti and the words 'Spaghetti Junction.' ... Austin Kelly Advertising Inc., which handles the Pizza Hut account locally, used a stock photograph from the food chain, the agency said. ... Nowak, who expressed surprise that people have been seeing the image, said Pizza Hut had used the photograph before, and that she had a difficult time seeing anything unusual in the spaghetti. ... 'I'm looking at it right now,' she said. 'Unless Jesus looks like a Muppet...'" [San Francisco Chronicle, 24 May 1991 (Cox News Service)] ------- "With the Virgin Mary's image appearing in churches and auto parts stores all over the country this holiday season, it was bound to happen. Now Dan Quayle has turned up in the bathroom sink of Horschmeyer's Philly Cheesesteak Parlor in El Cerrito. ... The eerie manifestation was first spotted last Tuesday by Elvira Banks, 35, the establishment's pickled tomato slicer. 'I recognized him right away,' Miss Banks, a past president of the El Cerrito Dan Quayle Fan Club, told reporters. ... The mysterious image in the sink bowl looks like a large brown stain. It surrounds the drain, which Miss Banks insists is 'the vice president's mouth opened in a call to all Americans to support the president in the current Middle East crisis.' ... So far, there has been no scientific explanation of the phenomenon. The closest anyone has come was the admission by janitor 'Foggy' Phelps that he had poured a cup of the parlor's coffee in the sink the night before the image was first seen. 'I guess I forgot to rinse it down,' he said." [Arthur Hoppe, San Francisco Chronicle, 24 December 1990] ------- "The Roman Catholic Church announced yesterday that the Shroud of Turin, venerated by millions of Christians over the centuries as the burial cloth of Jesus, cannot be authentic because new scientific tests show that it dates from the Middle Ages. ... Nevertheless, Catholics were encouraged to continue their veneration of the shroud as a pictorial image of Christ, still capable of performing miracles, even though it cannot be accepted as a genuine historic relic, and no one knows how the image was produced. ... At a news conference yesterday, the shroud's custodian, Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero, revealed that radiocarbon tests conducted independently by three laboratories this year have concluded that the shroud cloth was created between 1260 and 1390. ... The shroud's authenticity has been debated since it was first put on display in the mid-14th century. ... In the Middle Ages, many objects appeared in Europe that were said to be the shroud of Jesus, fragments of his cross or other relics, but most were discarded as fakes long ago, and few others maintain a devoted following as does the Shroud of Turin. ... The shroud, which belongs to the pope, has been kept for the last 410 years at the Cathedral of Turin, where it lies folded inside a silver casket. It is rarely put on public display. ... An estimated 3 million visitors came to see it when it was last exhibited in 1978." [Roberto Suro, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 October 1988] ------- "Progreso, Texas. Hundreds of people a day have visited an auto parts store to view what they believe is the Virgin Mary's image on a bathroom floor. ... The image -- varying shades of gray that store owner Reynaldo Trevino said were once one color -- appeared December 3 on the cement floor of the shower stall in the rear of his Progreso Auto Supply. ... Some days more than 1,000 visit. About 100 per hour stopped at the store Tuesday morning. ... Some knelt to pray by the shower stall, next to a toilet. Others made the sign of the cross or touched the image they saw. ... They see the Virgin's image in the varying shades of gray cement." [San Francisco Chronicle, 20 December 1990 (AP)] ------- "Louisiana's [1981] creationism law, which requires creationism to be taught wherever the theory of evolution is explained, is unconstitutional, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.... 'The act's intended effect is to discredit evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of creationism, a religious belief,' the U.S. Court of Appeals said." [San Francisco Chronicle, 9 July 1985 (AP)] ------- "Seventy-two American winners of the Nobel Prize in science urged the Supreme Court yesterday to strike down a Louisiana law requiring public schools teaching evolution to also teach creationism. ...Creation-science is linked closely to a literal interpretation of the biblical book of Genesis, teaching that Earth and most of its life forms came into existence suddenly about 6000 years ago. ...The case before the high court is Edwards v. Aguillard,85-1513." [San Francisco Chronicle, 19 August 1986 (AP)] ------- "More than half the college students polled in three states, including California, said they are creationists who believe that God created Adam and Eve, while about one-third believe in aliens, Big Foot and the lost city of Atlantis. ...The poll results, released yesterday by Texas researchers, also indicated that students who believe in creationism are less likely to read books, tend to be more politically conservative and have a lower grade-point average than students who dispute that God created Earth in six days. ...Last fall, about 1000 students attending colleges in Texas, Connecticut and California filled out detailed questionnaire on their beliefs. ...In Texas, 71 percent of students said they believe in the story of Adam and Eve, while 51 percent in Connecticut and 47 percent in California said they believed in the biblical first couple. An average of 44 percent of the students in the three states said the story of Noah's Ark is true. About one-third of all the students surveyed believed that Big Foot, a hairy man- like creature reputed to live in the mountains of northwest America, actually exists. An equal number believed in the lost city of Atlantis, a legendary island of advanced civilization that supposedly sank into the ocean. Thirty percent of the students responding to the survey said aliens from outer space visited Earth in ancient times. Overall, 37 percent said they believed in ghosts, and 39 percent said it is possible to communicate with the dead." [San Francisco Chronicle, 3 November 1986 (UPI)] ------- "On a June day nearly 300 years ago, two young women were hanged in Salem village, and by the end of the summer, colonists had executed 13 women and seven men convicted of being witches." [San Francisco Chronicle, 13 April 1988 (AP)] ------- "A woman suspected of being a witch was dragged from her hut, tied to a tree and then axed to death by her neighbors in an eastern India village, police said yesterday. Sonamoni Kisku was killed Sunday by Ganesh Soren and his brother, Meghraj, in Goaljoi, about 155 miles northwest of Calcutta, police said. ...It was the latest in several killings of women suspected of being witches in the predominantly tribal region of the state." [San Francisco Chronicle, 26 April 1989 (AP)] ------- "Now the religious right is joining the war against children, saying Halloween is a satanic plot. A Costa Mesa Christian group, Citizens for Excellence in Education, says the witch's broomstick is a phallic symbol of pagan worship. Yet another reason not to clean the house. The group says a 'spiritual battle' is raging on this night as covens of witches and other pagan religions call forth their demon spirits.' Even kids know demons are make-believe. It's unreal adults you have to worry about." [Rob Morse, San Francisco Chronicle, 31 October 1993] ------- "[The U.S. Supreme Court] Declined, without comment, to hear a challenge to the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Religious groups challenged the establishment of diplomatic relations, saying the ties would violate the First Amendment's requirements for separation of church and state. American Baptist Churches vs. Reagan, 86-113, said that religious groups did not have legal standing to try to block the administration's decision." [San Francisco Chronicle, 21 October 1986] ------- "Manila. Cardinal Jaime Sin yesterday ordered Roman Catholics who vote in next month's Philippine national elections to reject Communists and candidates who advocate divorce or abortion. ...Sin, who distributed copies of the letter at a press conference, insisted that church and state are separate in the Philippines." [San Francisco Chronicle, 23 April 1987 (Los Angeles Times)] ------- "President Bush, saying faith has fostered democratic change around the world, told the National Religious Broadcasters yesterday that 'one cannot be America's president without a belief in God.'" [San Francisco Chronicle, 30 January 1990 (UPI)] ------- "Exhausted, dehydrated, yet spiritually uplifted, some 350,000 Catholic pilgrims packed themselves onto a hot and dusty field yesterday to say good-by to Pope John Paul II. ... More than 10,000 people were treated at field hospitals for mostly minor problems. Leading the list of maladies were dehydration, severe asthma, altitude-caused dizziness, and twisted ankles suffered by pilgrims tripped up by prairie-dog holes. ...The 73-year-old pontiff made two visits to the site by Marine helicopter." [Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 August 1993] ------- "Montgomery, Alabama. A white Republican state senator running for Congress wrote a speech in which he argued that slavery is justified by the Bible and was good for African Americans. ... 'People who are bitter and hateful about slavery are obviously bitter and hateful against God and his word, because they reject what God says and embrace what mere humans say concerning slavery,' Charles Davidson wrote." [San Francisco Chronicle, 10 May 1996 (Associated Press)] ------- "Yekaterinburg, Russia. Three-quarters of a century after Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by Bolsheviks in this Ural Mountain city, people are flocking to the site of the killings, drawn by reports of miraculous cures... A drive is under way to build an imposing cathedral in an empty field near the execution site, where a second cross and a small wooden chapel already have been constructed." [James P. Gallagher, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Examiner, 29 August 1993] ------- "Phnom Penh. A Texas evangelist fled Cambodia on Saturday [26 November] after a mob, angry over his failure to perform faith-healing miracles, rioted outside his hotel. ...Only the arrival of 20 armed police on Friday night kept the crowd from storming the luxury Hotel Cambodiana, where the Rev. Mike Evans and his entourage were staying after arriving for a scheduled five-day visit here Wednesday. ...The preacher's appearance had been heralded on radio and television stations. 'Blind eyes will open, the paralyzed will walk,' promised the promotional announcements. Thousands of Cambodians, including sick, blind and paralyzed people from remote areas, came to the capital to attend his meetings. ...Evans, 47, is pastor of Church on the Move in Euless, Texas, and is head of Mike Evans Ministries Inc., a Euless- based group that organizes Christian crusades in developing countries and inner-city neighborhoods. Evans sought unsuccessfully in 1987 to replace Jim Bakker as host of the PTL, a popular televised ministry, after Bakker was involved in a sex scandal." [San Francisco Examiner, 27 November 1994 (AP)] ------- "Two recent surveys rate the United States at the top among Western nations in belief in God and at the bottom among six major countries in school kids' understanding of science and math. This could be dismissed as chance, but it shouldn't be. While our economic competitors' schools are teaching students advanced math and science, many of our schools are wasting energy debating whether to teach evolution or creationism, which maintains that God created the universe over a six-day period about 6,000 years ago." [Bill Mandel, San Francisco Examiner, 12 February 1989] ------- "Walnut Creek. The movement to grant California families credit toward private tuition just got some unexpected support -- a coven of witches who plan to open their own school if the program passes. ...Proponents say a school based on their religion is as valid as any church school." [San Francisco Examiner, 18 July 1993] ------- "Jesus was mentioned in Josephus' _Antiquities of the Jews_....The Jewish historian certainly knew something about Jesus, and there is a paragraph on him in the _Antiquities_. But Josephus' works were preserved by Christian scribes, who could not resist the temptation to revise the text and thus make Josephus proclaim that Jesus was 'the Messiah'; that he taught 'the truth'; and that after death he was 'restored to life'. Failing a fluke discovery, we shall never know what Josephus actually wrote." [E.P. Sanders, _The Historical Figure of Jesus_ ISBN 0-713-99059-7] ------- "A Christian Reconstructionist is a Dominionist. He takes seriously the Bible's commands to the godly to take dominion in the earth. This is the goal of the gospel and the Great Commission. The Christian Reconstructionist believes the earth and all its fullness is the Lord's: that every area dominated by sin must be "reconstructed" in terms of the Bible. This includes, first, the individual; second, the family; third, the church; and fourth, the wider society, including the state." ["The Creed of Christian Reconstruction" by Rev. Andrew Sandlin] ------- "Reason itself is not an objective `given' but is itself a divinely created instrument employed by the unregenerate to further their attack on God... if man is permitted autonomy in one sphere he will soon claim autonomy in all spheres....We therefore deny every expression of human autonomy--liberal, conservative or libertarian." [Andrew Sandlin, January 1998 Chalcedon Report] ------- "Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of to-day arises." [Margaret Sanger, "Shall We Break This Law?", The Birth Control Review, vol. 1 no. 1, Feb. 1917] ------- "My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interest; and that even in this denial I am no rude iconoclast, but full of secret sympathy with the impulse of idolaters." [George Santayana, "Soliloquies in England"] ------- "The true contrast between science and myth is more nearly touched when we say that science alone is capable of verification." [George Santayana, "The Life of Reason" (1905-1906)] ------- "The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it." [George Santayana] ------- "People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another." [George Santayana] ------- "One real world is enough." [George Santayana] ------- "Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself." [George Santayana, "Reason in Religion"] ------- "What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak." [George Santayana, "Reason in Religion"] ------- "For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing." [George Santayana, "The Absence of Religion in Shakespeare"] ------- "The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality." [George Santayana, "The Life of Reason"] ------- "Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience." [George Santayana] ------- "God is the greatest character in all fiction." [George Santayana] ------- "Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous." [George Santayana. "Little Essays"] ------- "In spite of centuries wasted in preaching God's omnipotence, his omnipotence is contradicted by every Christian judgment and every Christian prayer." [George Santayana] ------- "Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy, It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedanism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only to peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God." [George Santayana, "Reason and Science"] ------- "That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as any thing so brief could be on so great a subject." [George Santayana, "The Life of Reason"] ------- "If the argument is rather that these beliefs, whether true or false, make life better in this world, the thing is simply false. To be boosted by an illusion is not to live better than to live in harmony with the truth; it is not nearly so safe, not nearly so sweet, and not nearly so fruitful. These refusals to part with a decayed illusion are really an infection to the mind. Believe, certainly; we cannot help believing; but believe rationally, holding what seems certain for certain, what seems probable for probable, and what seems desirable for desirable, and what seems false for false." [George Santayana] ------- "It is not worldly ecclesiastics that kindle the fires of persecution, but mystics who think they hear the voice of God." [George Santayana, New Republic, January 15, 1916] ------- "To attempt to be religious without a specific religion is like attempting to speak without a specific language." [George Santayana] ------- "Couples who are not childless by choice are of course not culpable. But something is wrong if a couple refuses to have children without a very good reason." [Bishop Santer, addressing the Birmingham (England) Diocesan Synod, Daily Telegraph, June 26 1995 pg 8] ------- "Shelley was familiar with tyranny and intolerance. In 1811, while yet an undergraduate, he'd had the 'The Necessity of Atheism' published at Worthing in Sussex. It appeared for sale in the bookshop window of Munday and Slater's for just twenty minutes. The brevity of the sale was due, unfortunately, not to an exhaustion of the edition, but the appearance upon the scene of a clerical wowser yclept John Walker. The good Rev., strolling by the bookstore, saw the essay upon display, and exhibiting correct Christian indignation, upbraided the two miserable sinners. The pamphlets were removed and burned in true Hitlerian fashion - except for one that Slater kept, and which is the surviving copy." [Joseph Sapere] ------- Interviewer: "How can a man without god be good?" Jose Saramago: "How can men with god be so bad?" [Jose Saramago, Portuguese writer & Literature Nobel prize winner, interview in Brazil] ------- "I do not attend church regularly because I already found "God." But "God" isn't what you think it is. "God" is a screaming child in Ethiopia whose kidneys have shut down and is about to die from starvation. "God" is a dumpster in Vatican City where urchins (just as in every city in the world) feed on refuse, while the wealthiest and most powerful social organization in the world decadently spends its money just a few blocks away on big hats, gold crosses and silver chalices and continues to exploit the poorest people in the world in "God's" name. "God" is hate, "God" is stupidity, "God" is the scum on the bottom of your shoe. "God" is not pretty and "God" does not care. I found my "God," then I killed it. I, an atheist, know more about "God" than any Christian will ever know." ["Sarcen", Atheist Quote of the Month winer, July 1999] ------- "Belief is an obsolete Aristotelian category." [Dr. Jack Sarfatti, physicist] ------- "GARCIN: "Open the door! Open, blast you! I'll endure anything, your red-hot tongs and molten lead, your racks and prongs and garrotes - all your fiendish gadgets, everything that burns and flays and tears - I'll put up with any torture you impose. Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough." [Jean-Paul Sartre, from "No Exit"] ------- "God is dead. Let us not understand by this that he does not exist or even that he no longer exists. He is dead. He spoke to us and is silent. We no longer have anything but his cadaver. Perhaps he slipped out of the world, somewhere else like the soul of a dead man. Perhaps he was only a dream...God is dead." [Sartre] ------- "You are free, therefore choose--that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics will reply, 'Oh but there are!' Very well; still, it is I myself, in every case, who have to interpret the signs." [Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism"] ------- "Existentialism is nothing less than an attempt to draw all the consequences of a coherent atheistic position. It isn't trying to plunge man into despair at all. But if one calls every attitude of unbelief despair, like the Christians, then the word is not being used in its original sense. Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing. There you've got our point of view. Not that we believe that God exists, but we think that the problem of His existence is not the issue. In this sense existentialism is optimistic, a doctrine of action, and it is plain dishonesty for Christians to make no distinction between their own despair and ours and then call us despairing." [Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism," 1947] ------- "The rational man seeks the truth gropingly, he knows that his reasoning is only probable, that other considerations will arise to make it doubtful; ...he is "open." He may even appear hesitant. But there are people who are attracted by the durability of stone. They want to be massive and impenetrable, they do not want to change: where would change lead them? This is an original fear of oneself and a fear of truth. And what frightens them is not the content of truth which they do not even suspect, but the very form of the true--that thing of indefinite approximation...They want to exist all at once and right away. They do not want acquired opinions, they want them to be innate; since they are afraid of reasoning, they want to adopt a mode of life in which reasoning and research play but a subordinate role, in which one never seeks but that which one has already found..." [Jean-Paul Sartre, "Portrait of the Anti-Semite"] ------- "We have lost religion, but we have gained humanism. The ideal now is to liberate and to help emancipate mankind, with the result that man becomes really an absolute for man." [Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in Life magazine, 1964] ------- "Religion is an attempt to escape responsibility" [Jean Paul Sartre] ------- "This (Aum sect Tokyo nerve gas attack) was done not by people with a political ideal but by a lunatic religious group whose idea of a happy death is mass suicide." [Atsuyuki Sassas, Japanese expert on terrorism] ------- "I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the "laws" of man and of "God"! I request reasons for your golden rule and ask the why and wherefore of your ten commands. Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence, and he who saith "thou shalt" to me is my mortal foe!" [Infernal Diatribe I:3-5, Satanic Bible] ------- "Whatever alleged "truth" is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!" [Infernal Diatribe II:12, Satanic Bible] ------- "Anti-abortionists believe that life begins at the moment you agree with them." [Saturday Night Live] ------- "The basic Creationist strategy is thus: If Evolutionists point out uncountable examples in nature, claim it isn't science because it can't be reproduced in a lab. If Evolutionists conduct successful experiments in a lab, claim it is irrelevant because it wasn't in a natural environment." ["satyr", alt.atheism] ------- "HUMANISM: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society." [John Ralston Saul, "The Doubter's Companion"] ------- "A reasonable list of human qualities might include: Ethics, common sense, imagination or creativity, memory or history or experience, intuition and reason. The humanist tries to use all of these. ... The moment one quality is cut free from the others and given precedence over them, this imbalance will bring out the winner's negative aspects. Thus ethics in power quickly turn into a religious dictatorship. Common sense couldn't help but subside into pessimistc confusion, as if wallowing in the mud. Creativity into anarchy. Memory into the worst sort of monarchical dictatorship. Intuition into the rule of base superstition. And reason, as we have seen over the last half-century, into a directionless, amoral dictatorship of structure." [John Ralston Saul, "The Doubter's Companion"] ------- "MORAL CRUSADE: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those who are seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god. In military terms, a diversionary tactic." [John Ralston Saul, "The Doubter's Companion"] ------- "It would be good for religion if many books that seem useful were destroyed. When there were not so many books and not so many arguments and disputes, religion grew more quickly than it has since." [Girolamo Savonarola] ------- "...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)] ------- "A healthy nature needs no God or immortality." [Johann Schiller] ------- "It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain- damage [sic] baby even ten years later when she may be happily married." [Phyllis Schlafly] ------- "We are starting a movement in the state legislatures...to forbid the installation of clinics that dispense contraceptives." [Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum] ------- "Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like the way we're made you've got to take it up with God." [Phyllis Schlafly, hypocrite who has had a successful business career and run for public office, who would apparently deny that to other women] ------- "Sex education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions." [Phyllis Schlafly] ------- "Many years ago Christian pioneers had to fight savage Indians. Today missionaries of these former cultures are being sent via the public schools to heathenize our children." [Phylis Schlafly's Eagle Forum] ------- "Religion is the feeling of total dependence" [Friedrich Schleiermacher] ------- "Human rights is not a religious idea. It is a secular idea, the product of the last four centuries of Western history. Tocqueville persuasively attributed the humanitarian ethic to the rise of the idea of equality... It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake, the abolition of torture and of public executions, the emancipation of the slaves... The basic human rights documents - the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man - were written by political, not by religious, leaders." [Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., speech at Brown University, 1989] ------- "If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color." [Mark Schnitzius on alt.atheism] ------- "The initial word does not lie within the province of the theologian, but of the historian and the psychologist. [Hugh J. Schonfield, _The_Passover_Plot_] ------- "Theism is incompatible with the responsibility of a moral being because in theism responsibility always falls back on the Creator of that being....If our will is free it is also original being, and vice versa." [Arthur Schopenhauer] ------- "Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all lands and in all ages, in splendour and vastness, testify to the metaphysical need of man, which, strong and ineradicable, follows close upon his physical need. Certainly whoever is satirically inclined might add that this metaphysical need is a modest fellow who is content with poor fare. It sometimes allows itself to be satisfied with clumsy fables and insipid tales. If only imprinted early enough, they are for a man adequate explanations of his existence and supports of his morality. Consider, for example, the Koran. This wretched book was sufficient to found a religion of the world, to satisfy the metaphysical need of innumerable millions of men for twelve hundred years, to become the foundation of their morality, and of no small contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and most extended conquests. We find in it the saddest and the poorest form of Theism. Much may be lost through translation; but I have not been able to discover one single valuable thought in it. Such things show that metaphysical capacity does not go hand in hand with the metaphysical need. Yet it will appear that in the early ages of the present surface of the earth this was not the case, and that those who stood considerably nearer than we do to the beginning of the human race and the source of organic nature, had also both greater energy of the intuitive faculty of knowledge, and a truer disposition of mind, so that they were capable of a purer, more direct comprehension of the inner being of nature, and were thus in a position to satify the metaphysical need in a more worthy manner. Thus originated in the primitive ancestors of the Brahmans, the Rishis, the almost superhuman conceptions which were afterwards set down in the Upanishads of the Vedas." [Schopenhauer, "World as Will and Idea"] ------- "Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think." [Arthur Schopenhauer] ------- "The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place." [Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher] ------- "Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine." [Arthur Schopenhauer] ------- "Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge." [Arthur Schopenhauer, "Religion: A Dialogue," 1890] ------- "The majority of men...are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and...are not accessible to reason, but only to authority." [Arthur Schopenhauer, Supplements to the "World as Will and Idea"] ------- "No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruction in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of serious error, such as philosophy or religion, for wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to arrive at maturity." [Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Education," 1851] ------- "There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if only you begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity." [Arthur Schopenhauer] ------- "Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism." [Arthur Schopenhauer] ------- "All religions promise a reward...for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding." [Arthur Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Idea"] ------- "You may always observe that faith and knowledge are related as the scales of a balance; when one goes up, the other goes down." [Arthur Schopenhauer. "Religion - A Dialogue"] ------- "To many people, secularism is a cultural anarchy to say nothing of cultural pollution, and cultural pollutions are invading the consciousness of people through television. Up until the advent of satellites, religious establishments and hierarchies could establish boundaries, indoctrinate their people and pretty well protect them from being tempted to think otherwise. But today, we can flip on a TV set anywhere in the world and hear ideologies or interpretations of religion that would never be tolerated in a closed society that's trying to protect people from what they consider erroneous invasions." [Televangelist Robert H. Schuller, pastor of the Hour of Power TV program, from a newspaper article titled "Secularism is 'anarchy'" The Hamilton Spectator, April 2000] ------- "Aristotle once said, "Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth." So we say, "The Bible is dear, but dearer still is truth." [J. Frank Schulman, in UU pamphlet "UU views of the Bible."] ------- "The term that best describes me now is 'secular humanist... I despise those shallow religious comics, Dennis the Menace, for instance, is the most shallow. When they show him praying--I just can't stand that sort of thing, talking to God about some cutesy thing that he'd done during the day. I don't think Hank Ketcham [Dennis' creator] has any deep knowledge of things like that." [Charles Schultz, creator of "Peanuts" comic, interview in the Dec. 30, 1999-January 5, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent. http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/12.30.99/schulz2-9952.html] ------- "Without cultural sanction, most or all our religious beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance" [John F. Schumaker, "Corruption of Reality, Unified Theory of Religion, Hypnosis and Psychotherapy"] ------- "There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of God upon earth, and died to give his work its final consecration, never had any existence. His image has not been destroyed from without, it has fallen to pieces, cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which come to the surface one after another.... He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in a historical garb." [Dr Albert Schweitzer, _The Quest for the Historical Jesus_] ------- "It is, therefore, our unequivocal conclusion that creationism, with its accounts of the origin of life by supernatural means, is not science." ["Science and Creationism", National Academy Press, 1984] ------- "If you're looking for a little background reading on scientific creationism, it's best not to take the word scientific too seriously. A three-year database search of 4,000 scientific publications -- focusing on the names of people associated with the Institute for Creation Research and on phrases and keywords such as 'creationism' -- didn't turn up a single paper. A follow-up study of 68 journals found that only 18 of 135,000 total manuscript submissions concerned scientific creationism, and all 18 were rejected. Reasons cited included 'flawed arguments,' 'ramblings,' and 'a high-school theme quality'." [Science 85 6(7):11, September 1985] ------- "The reader, who is required to admit the belief of supernatural interference, understands precisely what is demanded of him; and, if he be a gentle reader, throws his mind into the attitude best adapted to humour the deceit which is presented for his entertainment, and grants, for the time of perusal, the premises on which the fable depends. But if the author voluntarily binds himself to account for all the wondrous occurrences which he introduces, we are entitled to exact that the explanation shall be natural, easy, ingenious, and complete." [Sir Walter Scott, "Introduction," in Horac Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto", pg 124] ------- "Religion is a cancer of the mind." [Eric scranton] ------- "Nothing happens in contradiction to nature; only in contradiction to what we know of it." [Agent Sculley, "X-Files"] ------- "Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to." [George Seaton] ------- "..that freedom of the press is one of the greatest evils threatening modern society. Freedom of the press was universally one of the most pernicious of the evils of the day." [Cardinal Pedro Segura, NY Herald Tribune, 12/5/52] ------- "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." [Seneca the Younger (4? B.C. - 65 A.D.)] ------- "It is the characteristic of a weak and diseased mind to fear the unfamiliar." [Seneca] ------- "Suffer for sex.... Crucifixions for everyone... A baby a year 'til you drop..." [Jim Senyszyn, as "The Pope", 11/12/89 Pro-Choice Rally in DC] ------- "Same religion that saves - Damns You" [Sepultura] ------- "The Christians, Today They Still Cry But The Bastards Adore Images Remembrances From The Past, From The Crucifixion Rotting Christ, Nailed To The Cross" [Sepultura, "Morbid Visions"] ------- We Deny God And His Rule We Defy His Supreme Force Crucified By The Dark Power His Death Was A Glory Forgotten By Our Mind Forever He's Left The Churches To Torment Us We'll Destroy The High Altar Until We See The Ashes Of Pain Crucifixion We'll Show To The World Our Hate The Priests Will Have Their Final Torment We'll Spit On The Churches, E Have An Ideal Black Tortures You'll Feel The Mankind Goes To Suicide They Have Faith In Gods As False As Their Name Christ, Preacher Of Goodness And Beauty Gods, Preachers Of Lies And Destruction The God's Grave Doors Is Below His Brain's Rottenness And Dirtiness Go Out By A Simple Prayer Of Mercy The Treason Of His Death Will Be Your Blame Your Master Is Buried In The Abyss The Dead, They Already Celebrate His Arrival In The Altar Of Fallen Gods, Throne Of His Own Existence [Sepultura, "Crucifixion"] ------- "To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man." [Michael Servetus] ------- "My Father Christmas passed away When I was barely seven. At twenty-one, alack-a-day, I lost my hope of heaven. Yet not in either lies the curse: The hell of it's because I don't know which loss hurt the worse My God or Santa Claus." ["The Sceptic" By Robert W. Service] ------- "Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books." [Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel), 1904-1991] ------- "What is really happening is that the religious right, as usual, wants to force their will upon the world. It's been happening since Christianity spawned the Crusades and as long as we as a species cling to our monotheistic tenets then it will never ever stop. Anyone with an iota of intelligence understands that a mandated moment of silence is a moment when the religionist can say to the rest of the world, "Look at me. I'm praying to my god. Maybe you should be praying also." [sgtcyber@datanet.ab.ca (SgtCyber)] ------- "Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian." [Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night," 1601] ------- GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep! HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? [Shakespeare, Henry IV Part I: Act 3, Scene 1] ------- "In religion what damned error but some sober brow will bless it, and approve it with a text." [Shakespeare] ------- "A hundred pronouncements of the Scripture cannot render the fire cold." [Shankara (8th c.)] ------- "The Copernican revolution placed the hegemony of the Church in peril. Christendom was obliged to deal with the dangerous notion that man was competent, by reason and the evidence provided by his senses, to discover his own truth, and again and again that truth appeared to contradict Holy Writ." [Arthur M. Shapiro, "God and Science," Creation/Evolution #32] ------- "Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!" [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense!" [Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"] ------- "All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "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"] ------- "There are scores of thousands of sects who are ready at a moment's notice to reveal the Will of God on every possible subject." [George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)] ------- "No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "Common people do not pray, my lord: they only beg." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition then Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it is belief." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "Beware of the man whose God is in the skies." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "What God hath joined together no man shall put asunder: God will take care of that." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "All great truths begin as blasphemies." [George Bernard Shaw, "Annajanska" (1919)] ------- "Martyrdom is the only way in which a person with no ability can become great." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe." [George Bernard Shaw, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996] ------- "Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside." [George Bernard Shaw, "Misalliance," Preface] ------- "We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies." [George Bernard Shaw, Ellie, in" Heartbreak House," act 2] ------- "What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say "I know" instead of "I am learning," and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for scepticism and activity." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?" [George Bernard Shaw, letter, 14 Feb. 1910, to Count Leo Tolstoy (published in Collected Letters, vol. 2, 1972). Tolstoy had criticized Shaw for his facetious tone in "Arms and the Man," saying that one "should not speak jestingly of such a subject as the purpose of human life, the causes of its perversion, and the evil that fills the life of humanity today."] ------- "The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it." [George Bernard Shaw, "Androcles and the Lion," Preface (first published in Prefaces, 1916)] ------- "The Bible is hopelessly pre-evolutionary; its descriptions of the origin of life and morals are obviously fairy tales; its astronomy is terracentric; its notions of the starry universe are childish; its history is epical and legendary; in short, people whose education in these departments is derived from the Bible are so absurdly misinformed as to be unfit for public employment, parental responsibility, or the franchise." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "Creeds must become intellectually honest. At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "The [British] national anthem belongs to the eighteenth century. In it you find us ordering God about to do our political dirty work." [George Bernard Shaw] ------- "I got a religion that wants to take heaven out of the clouds and plant it right here on earth where most of us can get a slice of it." [Irwin Shaw, "Bury the Dead"] ------- "An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support." [Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)] ------- "I'm one of those cliff-hanging Catholics. I don't believe in God, but I do believe Mary was his mother." [Martin Sheen] ------- "The same means that have supported every other popular belief, have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, assassination, and falsehood: deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is." [Percy Bysshe Shelley, notes to "Queen Mab", 1813] ------- "Christianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating the Deity. Prayer may be considered under two points of view; -as an endeavor to change the intentions of God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. But the former case supposes that the caprices of a limited intelligence can occasionally instruct the Creator of the world how to regulate the universe; and the latter, a certain degree of servility analogous to the loyalty demanded by earthly tyrants. Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something better than reason." [Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Queen Mab", 1813] ------- "If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced." [Percy Bysshe Shelley] ------- "It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it." [Percy Bysshe Shelley] ------- "Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that a man inherits vice and misery, when force and falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe, stifling with rudest grasp all natural good." [Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Queen Mab", 1813] ------- "Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, who peopleth earth with demons, hell with men, and heaven with slaves!" [Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Queen Mab", 1813] ------- "One came forth, of gentle worth Smiling on the sanguine earth. His words outlived him, like swift poison Withering up truth, and peace, and pity. Look where round the wide horizon Many a million-peopled city Vomits smoke in the black air. Hark that outcry of despair: 'Tis his mild and gentle ghost Wailing for the faith he kindled. Look again: the flames almost To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled. The few survivors, round the embers, Tremble in dread ..." [Percy Bysshe Shelley, from "Prometheus Unbound"] ------- "Here I swear, and as I break my oath may ... eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge.... Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon; to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again- I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry." [Percy Bysshe Shelley] ------- "The Galilean is not a favourite of mine. So far from owing him any thanks for his favour, I cannot avoid confessing that I owe a secret grudge to his carpentership." [Percy Bysshe Shelley] ------- "... as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief; ..." [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811] ------- "If we wish to explain our ideas of the Divinity we shall be obliged to admit that, by the word God, man has never been able to designate but the most hidden, the most distant and the most unknown cause of the effects which he saw; he has made use of his word only when the play of natural and known causes ceased to be visible to him; as soon as he lost the thread of these causes, or when his mind could no longer follow the chain, he cut the difficulty and ended his researches by calling God the last of the causes, that is to say, that which is beyond all causes that he knew; thus he but assigned a vague denomination to an unknown cause, at which his laziness or the limits of his knowledge forced him to stop. Every time we say that God is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was able to operate by the aid of forces or causes that we know in nature. It is thus that the generality of mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attributes to the Divinity, not only the unusual effects which strike them, but moreover the most simple events, of which the causes are the most simple to understand by whomever is able to study them. In a word, man has always respected unknown causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the imaginary colossus of the Divinity." [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811] ------- "If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction." [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811] ------- "It is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from generation to generation) that whole peoples adore the God of their fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and custom with them take the place of conviction or of proofs: they prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers taught them to prostrate themselves and pray: but why did their fathers fall on their knees?" [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811] ------- "A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man." [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811] ------- "In fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interests of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced by the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing the greatest follies." [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811] ------- "If God wishes to be known, cherished, thanked, why does he not show himself under his favorable features to all these intelligent beings by whom he wishes to be loved and adored? Why not manifest himself to the whole earth in an unequivocal manner, much more capable of convincing us than these private revelations which seem to accuse the Divinity of an annoying partiality for some of his creatures?" [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811] ------- "By dint of contradictory qualities and hazarded assertions it has, that is to say, so handicapped its God that it has made it impossible for him to act." [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811] ------- "If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?" [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811, quoting Baron d'Holbach, "Systame de la Nature," London 1781] ------- "Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher." [Percy Byssche Shelley, "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811, criticizing "Academical Questions" by Sir William Drummond] ------- "When you can discover where the fresh colors of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to himself." [Percy Bysshe Shelley, "On A Future State" in "The Necessity of Atheism", 1811] ------- "Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality." [Percy Bysshe Shelley. Even Love is Sold, a Note from Queen Mab (1813)] ------- "Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors." [Percy Bysshe Shelley. A Defence of Poetry (written 1821; published 1840)] ------- "Prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, Hell with men, And Heaven with slaves." [Percy B. Shelley, "Queen Mab," 1813] ------- "Our reason can never admit the testimony of men who not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of miracles, but that the Deity was irrational; for He commanded that He should be believed, He proposed the highest rewards for faith, eternal punishment for disbelief." [Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Queen Mab," 1813] ------- "Priests dare babble of a God of peace, Even whilst their hand are red with guiltless blood, Murdering the while, uprooting every germ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, Making the earth a slaughterhouse." [Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Queen Mab," vii, 1813] ------- "A believer is not a thinker and a thinker is not a believer." [Marian Noel Sherman, M.D. Interview, Daily Colonist, c. 1969] ------- "There is no evidence at all for the existence of a supernatural Supreme Being. Some people say they know God exists because they feel him in their hearts. Again that is just childhood conditioning. Others are fond of saying that there had to be someone, or something to act as a First Cause, but even a child can see through that argument. If you tell a child "God made the world" he will usually ask "Then who made God?" If we reply, as the catechism states, "No one made God. He always was," then why couldn't we just say that about the world in the first place?. . . No, man is the measure of all things. It's only fear of death and egotism that makes us invent a God who will give us everlasting life. Religious people often accuse atheists of being arrogant