.E-
H
E
Umberto Eco (born,
1932) ~ Italian semiologist, novelist
A dream is a scripture, and many
scriptures are nothing but dreams.
Fear prophets ... and those prepared
to die for the truth, as a rule make many others die with them, often before
them, and at times instead of them.
Sir Arthur Eddington
We are bits of stellar matter that
got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.
Thomas Edison (1847–1931) ~ American
Inventor
I do not believe that any type
of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United
States.
The great trouble is that the preachers get the children
from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything
with them.
My mind is incapable of conceiving
such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul;
but I simply do not believe it.
All Bibles are man-made.
So far as religion of the day is
concerned, it is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk.
I have never seen the slightest
scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future
life for individuals, or of a personal God.
Faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built
on facts, not fiction— faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.
I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No,
all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave
is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life... our desire to go on living...
our dread of coming to an end.
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid
the real labor of thinking.
Albert Einstein
The
word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human
weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends
which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how
subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly
manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the
original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an
incarnation of the most childish superstitions. LETTER(Einstein
wrote the letter in German on January 3, 1954, on Princeton University
letterhead to philosopher Erik Gutkind after he read Gutkind's book "Choose
Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.")
It was, of course, a lie what you
read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically
repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this
but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
world so far as our science can reveal it. ~ Albert Einstein, 1954
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever....
This is a somewhat new kind of religion.
The minority, the ruling class at
present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its
thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses,
and make its tool of them.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards
and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after
our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither
can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although
feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
It seems to me that the idea of
a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously.
I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere...Science
has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A
man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education,
and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in
a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of
reward after death. If people are good only because they fear punishment,
and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. ~ “Religion
and Science,” New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930
It was, of course, a lie what you
read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically
repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this
but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
world so far as our science can reveal it. - Albert Einstein, The Human
Side
A man's ethical behavior should
be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious
basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained
by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals
himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns
himself with the fates and actions of human beings.
Strange is our situation here on
Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes
seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however,
there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men
-- above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness
depends.
Scientific research is based on
the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature,
and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research
scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced
by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion.
It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering
both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense
arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful
unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that
could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.
I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or
anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature
is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly,
and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is
a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.
I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to
stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate
senses to appreciate it.
The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems
even naive.
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and
I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman
authority behind it.
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we
can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person
with a feeling of “humility.” This is a genuinely religious feeling that
has nothing to do with mysticism.
The word god is for me nothing more than the expression
and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but
still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation
no matter how subtle can change this [for me]. ~ Jan. 3, 1954 letter written
as a response to the philosopher Eric Gutkind.
Einstein was educated at a Roman Catholic primary school,
but given private tuition in Judaism. He later wrote that the "religious
paradise of youth" -- when he believed what he was told -- was crushed
when he started questioning religion at the age of 12. "The consequence
was a positively fanatic freethinking coupled with the impression that
youth is being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression."
Religion is an attempt to find an out where there is no
door.
Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure of the former.
A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually
on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is
necessary. If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope
for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
I came-- though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish)
parents -- to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end
at the age of twelve.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances,
the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does
not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith,
but through striving after rational knowledge.
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards
and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious
in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also
beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for
the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of
the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality,
together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be
it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature." –Albert
Einstein, 1935
In a 1947 letter to a U.S. Army lieutenant who inquired
about his religious beliefs, Einstein explicitly stated that from the perspective
of any religious faith, he would be viewed as an atheist.
Steve Eley
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical
power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the
same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns
is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we
logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (1819-1880)
~ British novelist
My childhood was full of deep sorrows -- colic, whooping-cough,
dread of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when
I ate too much plumcake.
Subtract from the New Testament the miraculous and highly
impossible, and what will be the remainder?
Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human
nature is stronger and wider, and though dogmas may hamper they cannot
absolutely repress its growth.
T S [Thomas Stearns] Eliot (1888-1965)
~ American-British critic and poet
To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation
of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from
the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.
Helen Ellerbe
As the Church assumed leadership, activity in the fields
of medicine, technology, science, education, history, art and commerce
all but collapsed. Europe entered the Dark Ages.
Albert Ellis
For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially
is: childish dependency.
Havelock Ellis
The whole religious complexion of the modern world is
due to the absence from [ancient] Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
There is a very intimate connection between hypnotic phenomena
and religion.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) ~ American
essayist and poet
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment
of the next.
As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their
creeds a disease of the intellect
The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and
commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole
of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empire
but it is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism,
of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing
a diseased religion and making way for truth.
Epicurus
(341–270 B.C.) ~ Greek philosopher
Is God willing to prevent evil,
but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then
he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; Or he can,
but does not want to; Or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to,
but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked.
But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come evil is in
the world?
If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly
have perished; for they are forever praying for evil against one another.
Rocco A. Errico, Ph.D. ~
Lecturer, author, Bible scholar, ordained minister
God found out about the Trinity in 325 A.D.
Susan Ertz (1894-1985)
~ British-American fiction writer and novelist
Millions long for immortality who
don't know whaat to do on a rainy afternoon.
Parsons always seem to be specially horrified about things
like sunbathing and naked bodies. They don't mind poverty and misery and
cruelty to animals nearly as much.
Greg Erwin
Nearly every human group has created something in the
way of a religion, no two of which are the same. When something is based
on reality, like mathematics or scientific medicine, groups of people independently
arrive at the same answers. This is a good way to tell the difference between
shit and shinola.
The kind of things that religious people offer as evidence
for their brand of religion, they do not accept as evidence when proferred
by adherents of other religions. Religions do not accept each others' miracles,
revelations, prophets, or holy books. In the absence of any convincing
reason to accept one set of claims while rejecting the rest, the simplest
conclusion is that they are all ****.
Euripides (484-406 BC)
He was a wise man who originated the idea of gods.
Simon Ewins
God is a perfect example of the kind of aberration that
can result from an untrained intellect combining with an unrestrained imagination.
F
Catherine Fahringer
We would be 1,500 years ahead if
it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and
burning our best minds at the stake.
Dan Fake
You can go off and delude yourself
all you want, but when you start threatening nonbelievers, when you start
damaging the education systems, when you start considering the evil and
horror bestowed upon humankind by your religious beliefs in the past and
you refuse to accept any responsibility for them, that's when things get
a bit scary in the real world of which you and I are a part.
Oriana
Fallaci
The Muslims refuse our culture
and try to impose their culture on us. I reject them, and this is not only
my duty toward my culture - it is toward my values, my principles, my civilization.
The struggle for freedom does not include the submission to a religion
which, like the Muslim religion, wants to annihilate other religions.
The West reveals a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered
pathological; it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive.
James Feibleman
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
Minucius Felix ~ (Christian author,
circa 200 A.D.)
We Christians neither want nor worship crosses as the
pagans do.
Ludwig Feuerbach
It is not as in the Bible, that God created man in his
own image. But, on the contrary, man created God in his own image.
My purpose is to transform theologians into anthropologists,
lovers of God into lovers of man, candidates for the next world into students
of this world ... I negate the fantastic hypocracy of theology and religion
only in order to affirm the true nature of man
Henry Fielding
No man has ever sat down calmly
unbiased to reason out his religion, and not ended by rejecting it.
There are a set of religions, or rather moral writings,
which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery,
in this world. A very wholdwome and comfortable doctirine, and to which
we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
Emmett F. Fields
Atheism has one doctrine: To Question | Atheism
has one dogma: To Doubt | The Atheist Bible has but one word: THINK.
Nothing changes history like the Christian Historian
Harvey
Fierstein
The Catholic Church is the only
organization on record to dispense money from a slush fund set up solely
for the paying off of abused children's families. So always remember you
cannot judge a man by his collar.
First Amendment, Bill of Rights,
U.S. Constitution
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Camille Flammarion
(1842–1925) ~ French astronomer
Men have had the vanity to pretend
that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole creation
does not suspect their existence.
The supernatural does not exist.
Gustave Flaubert
My kingdom is as wide as the universe and my wants have
no limits. I go forward always, freeing spirits and weighing worlds, wthout
fear, without compassion, without love, without God. I am called Science.
Dr. E. Florenza ~ The Holocaust
as Interruption
Christian biblical theology must recognise that its articulation
of anti-Judaism in the New Testament ... generated the unspeakable sufferings
of the Holocaust.
George W. Foote 1850
- 1915
It will yet be the proud boast
of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible.
There are two things in the world that can never
get together- religion and common sense.
Gerald Ford ~ US President
I believe that prayer in public schools should be voluntary.
It is difficult for me to see how religious exercises can be a requirement
in public schools, given our Constitutional requirement of separation of
church and state. I feel that the highly desirable goal of religious
education must be principally the responsibility of church and home.
I do not believe that public education should show any hostility toward
religion, and neither should it inhibit voluntary participation, if it
does not interfere with the educational process.
E. M. (Edward Morgan)
Forster
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of
mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike
the stuff. My motto is: "Lord, I disbelieve -- help thou my unbelief.
I do not believe in belief.
Diane Fortune
A religion without a goddess is half-way to atheism.
Don Fouts
I'm a polyatheist - there are many
gods I don't believe in.
Robin Lane Fox ~ Historian
~ Fellow, New College, Oxford
The process of creating new scripture
by constructive abuse of the old reaches its climax in the letters
ascribed to Paul.
It is an unusual book which begins with two contradictory
stories and with a narrative whose time and place are false. [Yet] for
centuries that book [the Bible] has been read as the source of truth.
The Pope should be reminded that if God wanted us to pray
outdoors, he wouldn’t have given us multi-million dollar cathedrals.
Anatole
France
My humble friend, we know not how
to live this life which is so short yet seek one that never ends.
We thank God for having created
this world, and praise Him for having made another, quite different one,
where the wrongs of this one are corrected.
The impotence of God is infinite.
Ben Franklin (1706-1790)
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible.
Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself;
and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support
it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power,
'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
The way to see by faith is to shut
the eye of reason: The Morning Daylight appears plainer when you
put out your Candle. - Poor Richard's Almanack,
1758
Those who knew Benjamin Franklin
will recollect that his mind was forever young, his temper ever serene;
science, that never grows grey, was always his mistress. He was never without
an object, for when we cease to have an object, we become like an invalid
in a hospital waiting for death. ~ Thomas Paine
Lighthouses are more helpful then churches.
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
How many observe Christ's birthday! How few his precepts!
O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.
Frederick the Great (1712-1786) Prussian
king
Religion is the idol of the mob; they adore everything
they do not understand.
There are so many things to be said against religion that
I wonder they don't not occur to everyone.
Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939)
The idea of God was not a lie but
a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A
personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for
such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective
father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is
simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings
out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy
of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from
childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential
to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left
behind.
The more the fruits of knowledge
become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious
belief.
When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance
to live a normal and wholesome life.
Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from
the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I
ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.
Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only
the products of the psychic activity of man.
The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to
reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful
to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise
above this view of life.
Erich Fromm
Once a doctirne, however irrational, has gained power
in a society, millions of people will believe it rather than feel ostracised
and isolated.
If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking,
it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of
culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are
intelligible and can be validated.
Herman Northrop Frye
(1912-91)
~ Canadian literary critic
The Bible should be taught so early
and so thoroughly that it sinks straight to the bottom of the mind where
everything that comes along can settle on it.
Mike Fuhrman
I refuse to believe in a god who
is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism,
homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to Hell if I’m ‘bad’.
R Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
~ American inventor, engineer, architect, philosopher
Here is God's purpose -- for God,
to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper.
Faith is much better than belief.
Belief is when someone else does the thinking.
G
Yuri Gagarin
(1934-1968) Cosmonaut - first
man in space
I don't see any god up here.
Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898)
~ US Suffragist
The careful student of history will discover that Christianity
has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has
done a great deal toward retarding it.
The Christian theory of the sacredness of the Bible
has been at the cost of the world's civilization.
John Kenneth Galbraith
(b.
1908) ~ Canadian-born US economist
Had the Bible been in clear straightforward language,
had the ambiguities and contradictions been edited out, and had the language
been constantly modernised to accord with contemporary taste it would almost
certainly have been, or become, a work of lesser influence.
Ernest Gaines
Why is it that, as a culture, we
are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?
Galileo
Galilei
I do not feel obliged to believe
that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, had
intended for us to forgo their use, giving us by some other means the information
that we could gain through them.
In the discussion of natural problems
we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.
They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby
a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they
have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and
heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit.
It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe
what is proved.
The doctrine that the earth is neither
the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation,
is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the
least an error of faith. ~ Catholic Church's decision against Galileo Galilei
John Galsworthy (1867-1933) ~ English
novelist, playwright
Humanism is the creed of those who believe that in the
circle of enwrapping mystery men's fates are in their own hands -- a faith
that for modern man is becoming the only possible faith.
Indira Gandhi (1917-1984)
There exists no politician in India daring enough to
attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten.
Mohandas K Gandhi
The most henious and the must cruel
crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover
of religion or equally noble motives. ~ Young India, July 7, 1950,
quoted from Laird Wilcox, ed., “The Degeneration of Belief”
I like your Christ, I do not like
your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics
do not know what religion is.
Guillermo Garcia
You are a good person because you
fear damnation. I am a good person without obligation.
Helen
H. Gardener (1853-1925) Suffragette
Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women
in a Christian country has been "authorized by the Bible" and riveted and
perpetuated by the pulpit.
There is no book which tells of a more infamous monster
than the Old Testament, with its Jehovah of murder and cruelty and revenge,
unless it be the New Testament, which arms its God with hell, and extends
his outrages
throughout all eternity!
This religion and the Bible require of woman everything,
and give her nothing. They ask her support and her love, and repay her
with contempt and oppression.
That she [woman] does not crouch today where St Paul tried
to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore
St Paul, and rise superior to his God.
Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women
in a Christian country has been "authorized by the Bible" and riveted and
perpetuated by the pulpit.
Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914
– May 22, 2010) ~ American mathematician and skeptic
When reputable scientists correct flaws in an experiment
that produced fantastic results, then fail to get those results when they
repeat the test with flaws corrected, they withdraw their original claims.
They do not defend them by arguing irrelevantly that the failed replication
was successful in some other way, or by making intemperate attacks on whomever
dares to criticize their competence.
James Abram Garfield (1831-1881)
~ The 20th President of the United States
The divorce between church and state should be absolute.
It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state,
or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt
the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax
upon the whole community.
Bill Gates ~ Co-Founder of
Microsoft
Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion
is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday
morning.
Anne Nicol Gaylor ~ American Separationist,
co-founder, Freedom From Religion Foundation
There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or
hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition
that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.
Henry George (1839-1897) American
writer, politician and political economist
No theory is too false, no fable too absurd for acceptance
when embedded in common belief. Men will submit to torture and death, mothers
will immolate their children [for] beliefs they accept.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
American novelist, publisher, and lecturer
What would have been the effect upon religion if it had
come to us through the minds of women?
We grovel and "worship" and pray to God to do what we
ourselves ought to have done a thousand years ago, and can do now, as soon
as we choose.
Jean Giraudoux
(1882-1944) ~ French writer
In times of death and famine, reason
is on the side of the priests -- who have their own kind of logic which
cries for miracles and, on occasion, sometimes invents them.
John Stuart Glennie ~ English
writer
In ancient Osirianism,
as in modern Christianism, we find the worship of a divine mother and child.
In ancient Osirianism as in modern
Christianism, there is a doctrine of atonement.
In ancient Osirianism, as
in modern Christianism, we find the vision of a last judgment, and resurrection
of the body.
And finally, in ancient Osirianism,
as in modern Christianism, the sanctions of morality are a lake of
fire and torturing demons on the one hand, and on the other, eternal life
in the presence of God.
~ Christ and Osiris, quoted from
John E Remsberg, The Christ, noting analogies between the religion
of Osiris and the religion of Christ
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832) ~ German writer and scientist
I would be well pleased if after
the close of this life we should be blessed with another, but I would beg
not to have there for companions any who have believed it here.
We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible
things: and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who
would endeavor to erase them.
The happy do not believe in miracles.
Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.
Vincent van Gogh
~ Dutch painter
I can very well do without God both in my life
and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something
which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) ~ Russian-American
anarchist, writer, and publisher
The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life
without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept
of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying
possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles,
and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.
I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever
his mistakes, man has for thousands of years past been working to undo
the botched job your God has made.
Edmond de Goncourt
(1822-1896)
French writer
If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of
an insult than religion.
Mikhail Gorbachev
I believe in the cosmos. All of
us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred.
Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature.
Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) ~
U.S.
President and Civil War General
Leave the matter of religion to
the family altar, the church, and the private schools, supported entirely
by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separated.
I would like to call your attention
to ... an evil that, if allowed to continue, will probably lead to great
trouble. It is the accumulation of vast amounts of untaxed church
property.
I would suggest the taxation of
all property equally whether church or corporation.
Robert Graves (1895-1985)
British novelist
By Jesus's time the Law of Moses, originally established
for the government of a semi-barbarous nation of herdsmen and hill-farmers,
resembled a petulant great-grandfather who tries to govern a family business
from his sick-bed. . . unaware of the changes that have taken place in
the world since he was able to get about.
Horace Greeley
(1811-1872)
~ American newspaper editor
There is no doctrine of Christianity
but what has been anticipated by the Vedas.
~ Comparing
the Christ myth with the religious writings from ancient India
Ruth Hurmence Green (1915-1981)
~ Skeptic
It is possible to pull out justification
for imposing your will on others, simply by calling your will God's will.
If the concept of a father who plots
to have his own son put to death is presented to children as beautiful
and as worthy of society's admiration, what types of human behaviour can
be presented to them as reprehensible?
There was a time when religion ruled
the world. It is known as The Dark Ages.
The plan was for Jesus to come to Earth two thousand years
ago with a pocketful of miracles and souls for the people who were then
alive. After his return to heaven from Earth (it is about twelve
septillion miles from Earth to the edge of our galaxy with four hundred
billion suns to dodge) he is going to build those mansions, come
back before his generation dies out, finally put an end to the world
which has been such a rotten disappointment, and deposit most of these
souls in hell. No wonder heaven is only 12,000 furlongs wide, long,
and high.
I am pleased as punch no longer to believe in a god who
declares reason a sin, who will not choose many noble and great and
wise things but has chosen the base things of the world, the foolish
things, the weak things and the things which are not. A god who can choose
his companions in eternity and prefers Jerry Falwell and Tammy Bakker
over Albert Einstein and Marie Curie. I am no longer a fool for Christ's
sake. And I have no more desire to be a sheep than to be a fool. It is
possible to pull out justification for imposing your will on others, simply
by calling your will God's will.
I am fond of saying that reading the Bible turned me into
an atheist.
Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) ~
English painter and illustrator of children's books
It is strange beyond anything I can think to be able
to believe in any of the known religions.
Graham Greene
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
Bryan Emmanuel Gutierrez
God should be executed for crimes against humanity.
H
Ernst Haeckel
Convinced that there is no eternal
life awaiting him man will strive all the more to brighten his life on
earth and rationally improve his condition in harmony with that of his
fellows.
J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964) British scientist
I believe that the scientist is
trying to express absolute truth and the artist absolute beauty, so that
I find in scinece and art, and in an attempt to lead a good life, all teh
religion that I want.
E. Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951) American
publisher
The influences that have lifted
the race to a higher moral level are education, freedom, leisure, the humanizing
tendency of a better-supplied and more interesting life. In a word, science
and liberalism have accomplshed the very things for which religion claims
the credit.
Don't take our word for it. Read
the Bible itself. Read the statements of preachers. And you will
understand that God is the most desperate character, the worst villain
in all fiction.
The Bible was a collection of books written at different
times by different men -- a strange mixture of diverse human documents
-- and a tissue of irreconcilable notions. Inspired? The Bible is
not even intelligent. It is not even good craftsmanship, but is full of
absurdities and contradictions.
Why should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church
which he despises should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can
the apologists for the church exemption answer it?
Jack Handey ~ Deep Thoughts
My young son asked me what happens after we die. I told
him we get buried under a bunch of dirt and worms eat our bodies. I guess
I should have told him the truth--that most of us go to Hell and burn eternally--but
I didn't want to upset him.
Ken Harding
Why did god bother creating all the generations between
Adam and Noah? I mean, if he was going to kill everyone off, all
the humans (men, women, innocent children and babies), guiltless animals,
and all the plants too, and HE KNEW IT IN ADVANCE, why in the hell didn’t
he just start with Noah in the first place?
Thomas
Hardy
We enter church, and we have to
say, 'We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep,' when what
we want to say is, 'Why are we made to err and stray like lost sheep?'
I have been looking for god for
fifty years and I think if he had existed I should have discovered
him.
Georgia Harkness ~ Christian theologian
The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands
makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.
The sooner [the doctrine of original sin] disappears,
the better it is for theology.
Edward Michael Harrington (1928-1989)
~ American political activist, writer, and educator
I left the Catholic Church almost thirty years ago. It
is relevant to my present attitudes that even though I rejected the Church
... I clearly remain a "cultural Catholic," much as an atheist Jew is culturally
Jewish.... I am, then, what Georg Simmel called a "religious nature without
religion," a pious man of deep faith, but not in the supernatural.
Sam Harris in The End of Faith
Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people
make when in the presence of religious dogma.
In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist.
No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist."
Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence
of unjustified religious beliefs.
The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise
normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.
Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions
need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is
still besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing
ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so
tragically absurd could be possible.
Because most religions offer no valid mechanism by which
their core beliefs can be tested and revised, each new generation of believers
is condemned to inherit the superstitions and tribal hatreds of its predecessors.
Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants
murder each other over riva interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98.
Could anything - anything - be more ridicuous? And yet, this would be no
more ridiculous that the world we are living in.
That so much . . . suffering can be directly attributed
to religion - to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious taboos, and
religious diversions of scarce resources - is what makes the honest criticism
of religious faith a moral and intellectual necessity.
The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a
sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance
of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a
monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents
so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind
of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational
discourse proves impossible.
In science, we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. In
religion, we pull ourselves down by them.
10
Myths and 10 Truths About Atheism
Francis Bret Harte (1836-1902)
~ American short-story writer; US consul in Glasgow, Scotland
The creator who could put a cancer
in a believer's stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.
John Hattan
I understand prayer quite well.
It's a masturbatory exercise that gives catharsis to the pray-er
and a placebo effect to the pray-ee, but only if the pray-ee knows he's
being prayed for.
Everyone who converts to theism
does it within an enormous supportive community. Everyone who deconverts
to atheism does it alone and is often met with nothing but hostility.
A god's responsibilities are basically
the same as those a political party. He takes the credit for everything
good, refuses to accept blame for anything bad, and ultimately doesn't
do a damn thing.
James A. Haught ~ Holy Horrors
1990
In another area of human rights,
many Christian clergymen advocated slavery. Historian Larry Hise notes
in his book 'Pro-Slavery' that ministers 'wrote almost half of all defenses
of slavery published in America.' He lists 275 men of the cloth who used
the Bible to prove that white people were entitled to own black people
as work animals.
The advance of Western civilization has been partly a
story of gradual victory over oppressive religion. The rise of humanism
slowly shifted society’s focus away from obedience to bishops and kings,
onto individual rights and improved living conditions.
Obviously, religion has a Jekyll-and-Hyde
nature-- with Dr. Jekyll always in the spotlight, and Mr. Hyde little
noticed.
In the year 415, the woman scientist
Hypatia, head of the legendary Alexandria library, was beaten to death
by Christian monks who considered her a pagan. The leader of the
monks, Cyril, was canonized a saint.
Stephen Hawking
I do not believe in a personal
God.
Black holes would seem to suggest that God not only plays
dice, but also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.~ NATURE,
1975
What I have done is to show that it is possible for the
way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In
that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the
universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God
is not necessary.
So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose
it had a creator. But if the universe is completely self-contained,
having no boundary or edge, it would neither be created nor destroyed…
it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?
We could call order by the name of God, but it would be
an impersonal God. There’s not much personal about the laws of physics.
Judith Hayes
If we are going to teach 'creation
science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the
stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction.
The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps
the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example,
while loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine?
If judged only by the results that challenge the laws
of probabilities, then the power of prayer is nil.
Life can be beautiful, profound, and awe-inspiring, even
without an irate god threatening us with eternal torment.
Peace on Earth? Not as long as there are religions.
If a plane crashes and 99 people die while 1 survives,
it is called a miracle. Should the families of the 99 think so?
Brian Hayward
Religion is a result of primal urges, and I hope that
it, like murder and septic personal hygiene, becomes unfashionable.
There is no sin. It is an invention to shame people into
believing fantasies. We are the only animals known to desire to act differently
(often better) than we do. This is a glorious quality, and provides
optimism that we will will eventually improve ourselves. We should
be proud of it, not ashamed.
Ben Hecht (1894-1964) ~ American
writer
That God has managed to survive the inanities of
the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
Georg W F Hegel (1770-1831) ~ German philosopher
God is, as it were, the sewer into which all contradictions
flow.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German
poet
In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in
pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide. . . . When daylight comes,
however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.
Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human
beings too.
Robert Heinlein
What a queer thing is Christian salvation! Believing
in firemen will not save a burning house; believing in doctors will not
make one well, but believing in a savior saves men. Fudge!
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All
other 'sins' are invented nonsense.
History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion
that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong
enough to stand up to the unkonwn without help. But, like dandruff, most
people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive
considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark
cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.
Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion
is a monotheism can believe anything ... just give him time to rationalize
it.
The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever
dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the
Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed
by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery.
Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays
all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry
in all history.
Ernest Hemingway
All thinking men are atheists.
Thomas Wentworth Storrow Higginson
(1823–1911) ~ American clergyman, writer and soldier
When they tell me that Jesus taught a gospel of love,
I say I believe it. Plato taught a gospel of love before him, and you deny
it. If they say, Jesus taught that it is better to bear an injury than
to retaliate, I say, yes, but so did Aristotle before Jesus was born. I
will accept it as the statement of Jesus if you will admit that Aristotle
said it too. I am willing that any man should come before us and say, Jesus
taught that you must love your enemies, it is written in the Bible; but,
if he will open the old manuscript of Diogenes Laertus, he may there read
in texts that have never been disputed, that the Greek philosophers, half
a dozen of them, said the same before Jesus was born.
Hippocrates (460-377
BC)
Men think epilepsy divine, merely
because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes
it, and then ceast to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the
universe.
Where prayer, amulets and incantations
work it is only a manifestation of the patient's belief.
Don Hirschberg
Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair
color.
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield
Religion drove those planes into
those buildings, it's amazing how good religion is at mobilizing people
to do awful, murderous things. There is this dark side to it, and anyone
who loves religious experience, including me, better begin to own that
there is a serious shadow side to this thing.
Christopher Hitchens
I would say that if you don’t believe
that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again
from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really
not in any meaningful sense a Christian.
I am not even an atheist so much
as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions
of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the
effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims
of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to
wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved
to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable
if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case.
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed
without proof.
Why do people keep saying, 'God is in the details'? He
isn't in ours, unless his yokel creationist fans wish to take credit for
his clumsiness, failure and incompetence.
Religion comes from the terrified infancy of our species.
... [It] is innately coercive as well as innately incoherent. Because it's
man-made, there's an infinite variety of it for them all, and these sects
proceed to quarrel among themselves, religious warfare having being one
of the great retardances of civilization of the time we've been alive and
very much to this day.
Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends
and chemistry begins and astrology ends, and astronomy begins.
Those of us who disbelieve in the heavenly dictatorship
also reject many of its immoral teachings, which have at different times
included the slaughter of other “tribes,” the enslavement of the survivors,
the mutilation of the genitalia of children, the burning of witches, the
condemnation of sexual “deviants” and the eating of certain foods, the
opposition to innovations in science and medicine, the mad doctrine of
predestination, the deranged accusation against all Jews of the crime of
“deicide,” the absurdity of “Limbo,” the horror of suicide-bombing and
jihad, and the ethically dubious notion of vicarious redemption by human
sacrifice.
There [are] four irreducible objections to religious faith:
that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because
of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with
the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous
sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.
...monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism
of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all
the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents. ~ God Is Not Great
Religion does not, and in the long run cannot, be
content with its own marvelous claims and sublime assurances. It must seek
to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents
of other faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it
wants power in this one.
[If religion were true] you would be permanently supervised
from the moment you were born until forever after you were dead. You'd
always be someone else's creature. And the only duty you would owe him,
he having done nothing but casually create you, would be constant adoration
that would lead to eventual bliss and the dissolution of the personality.
Well, I can't imagine anything more horrible. It's a really ghastly idea.
It's worse than hell.
I think it's an expression of terrible weakness
of character on their part, but if they must become groveling, abandoned
serfs, let them do it. But don't let them tell me that I must teach
it to my children. Because then it stops being a disagreement and it becomes
a quarrel. A fight. I'm not going to let them do that. They may not influence
my government. They may not have their nonsense taught in the schools my
children go to. They may not raise my taxes to spend on their places of
worship. None of this. Surely they've got a direct line to the supernatural.
What the hell more do they want? I keep asking, "Why aren't they happy?"
They're in possession of the most wonderful secret that must make them
hug themselves with delight. Isn't that enough for them? No, it isn't!
I think for good reason.
Twentieth-century Germany was not, in the main,
an atheist state. Hitler never renounced the Catholic Church. He was happy
to receive the prayers of the Catholic bishops in every town in Germany
on his birthday, as ordered by the pope—the concordat with whom pretty
much allowed him to consolidate power in the first place. He undoubtedly
had the hope of replacing Christianity with a state religion based partly
on paganism and partly on worship of himself. But to say that he was an
atheist is utterly false. Fascism and communism—the roots of the totalitarian
impulse are in faith, not in skepticism. Because [the totalitarian
impulse] claims to be a total solution. And to make essentially no difference
between the civic and the private life, and to arbitrate on everything
from sex to diet.
The impulse to worship, the impulse to take things
on faith, the impulse to believe in miracles, the impulse to adore and
to believe in incarnate good and evil. All these things have dire consequences.
The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant.
Religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to
racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to
free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.
Gullibility and credulity are considered undesirable qualities
in every department of human life -- except religion.... Why are we praised
by godly men for surrendering our "godly gift" of reason when we cross
their mental thresholds? ... Atheism strikes me as morally superior, as
well as intellectually superior, to religion. Since it is obviously inconceivable
that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that
they are all wrong. Does this leave us shorn of hope? Not a bit of it.
Atheism. and the related conviction that we have just one life to live,
is the only sure way to regard all our fellow creatures as brothers and
sisters.... Even the compromise of agnosticism is better than faith. It
minimizes the totalitarian temptation, the witless worship of the absolute
and the surrender of reason.
Just consider for a moment what their heaven looks like.
Endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self;
a celestial North Korea.
Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist.
They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious
of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare
and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies.
Love your enemy?! No philosophy is more suicidal than
this. We must destroy our enemy! Love your own enemies, don't go
loving mine.
If religious instruction were not allowed until the child
had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different
world.
Almost every week, I go and debate with spokesmen of religious
faith. Invariably and without exception, they inform me that without a
belief in supernatural authority I would have no basis for my morality.
Yet here is an ancient Christian church that deals in awful certainties
when it comes to outright condemnation of sins like divorce, abortion,
contraception, and homosexuality between consenting adults. For these offenses
there is no forgiveness, and moral absolutism is invoked. Yet let the subject
be the rape and torture of defenseless children, and at once every kind
of wiggle room and excuse-making is invoked. What can one say of a church
that finds so much latitude for a crime so ghastly that no morally normal
person can even think of it without shuddering?
[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was
a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent
her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment
of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory
reproduction.
Organised religion is violent, irrational, intolerant,
allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile
to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.
One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period
of human prehistory where nobody – not even the mighty Democritus who concluded
that all matter was made from atoms – had the smallest idea what was going
on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is
a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well
as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least
educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any
of the founders of religion . . .
The taming and domestication of religion is one of the
unceasing chores of civilization.
William Ernest
Hocking
Man is the only animal that contemplates
death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality.
John
B. Hodges
One does not become an atheist
to gain emotional comfort or popularity. One becomes an atheist because
honesty compels.
Eric
Hoffer
The opposite of the religious fanatic
is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether
there is a god or not.
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely
as absolute power.
Dr. Bruce Hoffman ~ Director
of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St.
Andrews University, Scotland
Whenever religion is involved,
terrorists kill more people.
In some sects members are told to commit violent acts
because the only way they can hasten redemption or achieve salvation is
to eliminate the nonbelievers.
Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach
(1723-1789) ~ French philosopher
If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance
and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or
disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves
them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make
the blindness of men serve its own interests.
If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge
of nature is calculated to destroy them.
All religions are ancient monuments to superstitions,
ignorance, ferocity; and modern religions are only ancient follies rejuvenated.
All children are atheists -- they have no idea of God.
Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes
to religious fanaticism.
Oliver Wendell
Holmes
Science is a first-rate piece of
furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground
floor.
The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul
would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.
You never need think you can turn over any old falsehoods
without a terrible squirming of the horrid little population that dwells
under it.
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of
our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot
educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted
in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.
George Jacob Holyoake
Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and
compels Theism to reason for its existence.
Elmer Homrighausen ~ Professor of
Christian Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary
Few intelligent Christians can still hold to the idea
that the Bible is an infallible Book, that it contains no linguistic errors,
no historical discrepancies, no antiquated scientific assumptions, not
even bad ethical standards. Historical investigation and literary criticism
have taken the magic out of the Bible and have made it a composite human
book, written by many hands in different ages. The existence of thousands
of variations of texts makes it impossible to hold the doctrine of a book
verbally infallible. Some might claim for the original copies of the Bible
an infallible character, but this view only begs the question and makes
such Christian apologetics more ridiculous in the eyes of the sincere man.
David Horton
So atheism is a religion? No, I`m afraid not, no more
than being completely healthy is just another kind of disease.
Sir Fred Hoyle (b. 1915) ~ English
astronomer and mathematician
Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape
from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are
in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our
existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel
the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder
that they become very angry with people like me who say that this is illusory.
Huang Po
The foolish reject what they see
and not what they think; the wise reject what they think and not what they
see.
Elbert Hubbard (1857-1915)
Theology: An attempt to explain
a subject by men who do not understand it. The intent is not to tell the
truth but to satisfy the questioner.
Organized religion, being founded on superstition, is,
perforce, not scientific. And all that which is not scientific -- that
is, truthful -- must be bolstered up by force, fear and falsehood. Thus
we always find slavery and organized religion going hand in hand.
Theology, by diverting the attention of men from this
life to another, and by endeavoring to coerce all men into one religion,
constantly preaching that this world is full of misery, but the next world
would be beautiful -- or not, as the case may be -- has forced on men the
thought of fear where otherwise there might have been the happy abandon
of nature.
Martyrs and persecutors are the same type of man. As to
which is the persecutor and which the martyr, this is only a question of
transient power.
Faith is the effort to believe what your common sense
tells you is not true.
A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious,
but who understands the nonexistent.
Theology is Classified Superstition.
Victor Hugo
Hell is an outrage on humanity.
When you tell me that your Deity made you in his own image, I reply
that he must have been very ugly.
Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up the substance
for the shadow.
There is in every village a torch: the schoolmaster --
and an extinguisher: the parson.
Humanism
Humanism is the view that we can make sense of the world
using reason, experience and shared human values and that we can live good
lives without religious or superstitious beliefs. Humanists seek to make
the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves.
We choose to take responsibility for our actions and work with others for
the common good.
David Hume
(1711-1776) Scottish philosopher
If there is a designer he must take credit for the flaws
in his creation. Flaws in the creation directly reflect flaws in the creator.
If there is a flaw in the creator then he cannot be all powerful.
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
Dave Hunt
Almost their [the Crusaders'] first act upon taking Jerusalem
"for Holy Mother Church" was to herd all of the Jews into the synagogue
and set it ablaze. The Secretary to the Inquisition in Madrid from 1790-1792
estimated that in Spain alone the number of condemned exceeded 3 million,
with about 300,000 burned at the stake. Nor have the descendants of Aztecs,
Incas, and Mayas forgotten that Roman Catholic priests, backed by the secular
sword, gave their ancestors the choice of conversion (which often meant
slavery) or death.
Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963) ~ English novelist, essayist, critic, and poet
Facts do not cease to exist because
they are ignored.
You never see animals going through the absurd and often
horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate
in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses
do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence
from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man
behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being
intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things
without evidence.
Maybe this world is another planet's hell. - Point
Counter Point
If we must play the theological game, let us never forget
that it is a game. Religion, it seems to me, can survive only as
a consciously accepted system of make believe.
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley ~ English
biologist and author (1887-1975)
"We should be agnostic about those things for which there
is no evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify
our desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc." From Religion
without Revelation by Julian Huxley
Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler
but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat
The sense of spiritual relief which
comes from rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous.
- Sir Julian Huxley, Religion Without Revelation
How unfortunate for mankind that the Lord is reported
by Holy Writ as having said "Vengeance is mine!"
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically
tenable ... and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. Many
people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment
of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it
does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological
furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place.
Thomas Henry Huxley ~ English biologist
(1825-1895)
The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more
self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.
The Bible account of the creation of Eve is a preposterous
fable.
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned
errors.
Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows
or believes
that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
The foundation of morality is to... give up pretending
to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible
propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
The only question which a wise man can ask himself is
whether a doctrine is true or false. Consequences will take care of themselves.
