"..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."