Quotes About Religion
by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products“Religion has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is ‘Here is an idea or notion that you are not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not.’ If somebody votes for a party you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument, but nobody feels agrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or or down, you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand, if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on Saturday’ you say, ‘I respect that.’Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, MacIntosh instead of Windows — but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe… no, that’s holy?… We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much a furor Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you are not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is not reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be. ”
~ Douglas Adams, (1952-03-11— 2001-05-11), author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Last Chance to See
“The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.”
~ Treaty of Tripoli(1797) signed by John Adams
“Oh my Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, send me there;
Oh my Lord, if I worship Thee from desire for Paradise, exclude me thence;
But if I worship Thee for Thine Own sake, hide not from me Thine Eternal Beauty.”
~ Rabi’a al-Adawiyya
“Believing would be easier if God would show himself by depositing a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in my name.”
~ Woody Allen born 1935-12-01
“Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.”
~ Anonymous
“Dear Jesus
Please save me from your followers.”
~ Anonymous
“For some reason, whenever people think about God they get a pained expression as if someone had poked a broom up their ass.”
~ Anonymous
“Joseph and Mary should have know better they would not be able to find accommodation. After all, its always busy near Christmas.”
~ Anonymous
“I once heard the voice of God. It said ‘Vrrrrmmmmm.’ Unless it was just a lawn mower.”
~ Age 11
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
~ Susan B. Anthony, 1896
“Beware the man of one book.”
~ St. Thomas Aquinas
“In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful and that they may give to God more copious thanks for it, they are permitted perfectly to behold the sufferings of the damned… The saints will rejoice in the punishment of the damned.”
~ St. Thomas Aquinas
“And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
~ Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
~ Isaac Asimov (1920—1992), Russian-born American scientist and prolific writer
“There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing, which man should not wish to learn.”
~ St. Augustine
“The deluding passions are inexhaustible.
I vow to extinguish them all.
Sentient beings are numberless.
I vow to save them all.
The truth is impossible to expound.
I vow to expound it.
The way of the Buddha is unattainable.
I vow to attain it.”
~ vow of the Bodhisattvas
“There is no place in a fanatic’s head where reason can enter.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.”
~ Gautama Buddha
“I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”
~ George Herbert Walker Bush, aka Bush-41, Bush Sr.
“The secret is surrender. Commitment to Christ involves surrender of the intellect, the emotions and the will — the total person.”
~ Bill Bright, Jesus and the Intellectual
“Environmental policies are driven by a kind of emotional spiritualism that threatens the very foundation of our society. There is increasing evidence of a government-sponsored religion in America. This religion, a cloudy mixture of new-age mysticism, Native American folklore, and primitive Earth worship, is being promoted and enforced by the Clinton administration in violation of our rights and freedoms.”
~ Helen Chenoweth-Hage, Rep, R-Idaho, testifying to congress about her delusions.
“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
~ Winston Churchill
“The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.”
~ Arthur C. Clarke (1917-12-16— 2008-03-19)
“Cruel persecution and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essense of religion, namely, its absolute claims.”
~ Morris Raphael Cohen
“I want to say to all you Scribes, Pharisees, heresy hunters, all of you that are going around pickin' little bits of doctrinal error out of everybody’s eyes and dividin' the Body of Christ… get out of God’s way, stop blockin' God’s bridges, or God’s goin' to shoot you if I don’t… let Him sort out all this doctrinal doodoo!… I refuse to argue any longer with any of you out there! Don’t even call me if you want to argue… Get out of my life! I don’t want to talk to you… I don’t want to see your ugly face!”
~ Paul Crouch, President, Trinity Broadcasting Network
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous, proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
~ Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion chapter 2, page 31
“Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful theologians such as [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer is that gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide. What worries scientists is something else. It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests… Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason; it gives them something to do… One of the truly bad effects of religion that it teaches us it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.”
~ Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion page 125
“A good example of the colouring of religious agendas is the whole heart-warming legend of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, followed by Herod’s massacre of the innocents. When the gospels were written many years after Jesus’ death, nobody knew where he was born. But an Old Testament prophesy (Micah 5:2) had led Jews to expect that the long-awaited Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. In the light of this prophesy, John’s gospel specifically remarks that his followers were surprised that he was not born in Bethlehem; ‘Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galiliee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh out of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?’Matthew and Luke handle the problem differently, by deciding that Jesus must have been born in Bethlehem after all. But they get him there by different routes.”
~ Richard Dawkins,The God Delusion page 93.
“Luke screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius — a local census, not one decreed by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole — but it happened too late in 6 AD, long after Herod’s death.”
~ Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion page 94. In other words Luke’s story is historically impossible and internally incoherent. He lied to fudge the fulfillment of Micah’s prophesy and to provide a villain to play off Jesus is his fictitious drama.
“There are clues from the distribution of DNA codes throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, of protein sequences, of morphological characters that have been analyzed in great detail. Everything fits with the idea that we have here a simple branching tree. The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you’d expect if evolution were a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.”
~ Richard Dawkins
“The point is well known to biblical scholars and not disputed by them. The Hebrew word in Isaiah is almah, which undisputedly means 'young woman', with no implication of virginity. If virgin had been intended, bethulah could have been used instead (the ambiguous English word 'maiden' illustrates how easy it can be to slide between the two meanings). The translation occurred with the pre-Christian Greek translation known as the Septuagint rendered almah into παρθενος (parthenos), which really does mean virgin. Matthew (not of course the apostle and contemporary of Jesus, but the gospel-maker writing long afterwards), quoted Isaiah in what seems to be a derivative of the Septuagint version (all but two of the fifteen Greek words are identical) when he said 'Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his same Emmanuel' (Authorised English translation). It is widely accepted among Christian scholars that the story of the virgin birth of Jesus was a late interpolation, put in presumably by Greek-speaking disciples in order that the (mistranslated) prophesy should be seen to be fulfilled. Modern versions of the New English Bible correctly give young woman in Isaiah. They equally correctly leave 'virgin' in Matthew, since they are translating from his Greek.”
~ Richard Dawkins, The The Selfish Gene, endnotes on chapter 2
“A delusion that encourages belief where there is no evidence is asking for trouble. Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle. Instead, disagreements are settled by other means which, in extreme cases, inevitably become violent. Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.”
~ Richard Dawkins, 2005-04-25, Salon
“From a biological point of view, there are lots of different theories about why we have this extraordinary predisposition to believe in supernatural things. One suggestion is that the child mind is, for very good Darwinian reasons, susceptible to infection the same way a computer is. In order to be useful, a computer has to be programmable, to obey whatever it’s told to do. That automatically makes it vulnerable to computer viruses, which are programs that say, ‘Spread me, copy me, pass me on.’ Once a viral program gets started, there is nothing to stop it.Similarly, the child brain is preprogrammed by natural selection to obey and believe what parents and other adults tell it. In general, it’s a good thing that child brains should be susceptible to being taught what to do and what to believe by adults. But this necessarily carries the down side that bad ideas, useless ideas, waste of time ideas like rain dances and other religious customs, will also be passed down the generations. The child brain is very susceptible to this kind of infection. And it also spreads sideways by cross infection when a charismatic preacher goes around infecting new minds that were previously uninfected.”
~ Richard Dawkins, 2005-04-25, Salon
“I have a feeling that not that many people actually believe in God. Many people believe in belief in God. That is, they think it is a good thing, and they try to believe in God, they hope to believe in God, they wish they could believe in God, they go through all the motions, they try very hard to be devout. Sometimes they succeed, and for some periods of their life they actually do, in some sense, believe there is a God, and they think they are the better for it. Otherwise, they behave like people who probably don’t believe in God. Very few people behave as if they really believe in God. A lot of people behave as if they believe they should believe in god. How would you behave if you believed in God? You would, perhaps — and some people do this — be prepared to take what other people would consider suicidal risks because you believe God is going to be there to save you. You would be prepared to give away everything you owned because God commanded you to do it, and so forth.”
~ Daniel Dennett
“Reality is that which doesn’t go away when you change your mind.”
~ Phillip K. Dick
“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
~ Denis Diderot, French philosopher 1713— 1784
“One of the problems with sex education… is that it also strips kids — especially girls — of their modesty to have every detail of anatomy, physiology and condom usage made explicit.”
~ James Dobson, Focus on the Family
“Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.”
~ James Dobson, Focus on the Family
“In every classroom in the state [of California, students are] being taught homosexual propaganda and these other politically correct, postmodern views.”
~ James Dobson, Focus on the Family, recommending that parents remove their children from California’s public schools.
“State Universities are breeding grounds, quite literally, for sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV), homosexual behavior, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, alcoholism, and drug abuse.”
~ James Dobson, Focus on the Family
“Religion is all bunk.”
~ Thomas Edison.
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there’s any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism.”
~ Albert Einstein
“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 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. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the priviliege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.
Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, ie in our evalutations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual ‘props’ and ‘rationalisation’ in Freud’s language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.
With friendly thanks and best wishes.
~ Albert Einstein from a letter to Eric Gutkind, translated from German.
“Death is absolutely safe. It is like taking off an old shoe.”
~ Emmanuel
The Riddle of Epicurus
“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?”
~ Epicurus
“Let us pray it is not so, or if it is, that it will not become widely known.”
~ Wife of the Bishop of Exeter on hearing of Darwin’s theory of the common descent of humans and apes.
“On the perfection of Jesus:
Yes, Jesus masturbated, but he didn’t come.”
~ N. Errantiste 1911— 1897
“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”
~ Ezekiel 16:49
“Homosexuality is Satan’s diabolical attack upon the family that will not only have a corrupting influence upon our next generation, but it will also bring down the wrath of God upon America.”
~ Jerry Falwell
“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
~ Jerry Falwell
“I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One’s misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status.”
~ Jerry Falwell, USA Today Chat, quoted from The Religious Freedom Coalition, “The Two faces of Jerry Falwell”
“AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh’s chariotters .”
~ Jerry Falwell
“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”
~ Jerry Falwell
“The Bible is the inerrant… word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.”
~ Jerry Falwell, Finding Inner Peace and Strength
“I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things; by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.”
~ Richard Feynman
“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.”
~ Camille Flammarion (1842— 1925) French astronomer
“Jesus made a special point of discouraging the laying of emphasis on outer observances, and, indeed upon hard-and-fast rules and regulations of every kind. What he insisted upon was a certain spirit in one’s conduct, knowing that when the spirit is right, the details will take care of themselves. Yet, in spite of this, the history of orthodox Christianity is largely made up of attempts to enforce all sorts of external observances on people.”
~ Emmet Fox, American evangelist.
“I seem to be a verb —
an evolutionary process —
an integral function of the universe,
and so are you.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller 1895-07-12— 1983-07-01
“Everything you read signed ‘God’ is just somebody putting their words in My mouth.”
~ God
“Mutation is utterly random, but selection is extremely choosy!”
~ Ursula Goodenough, Mind and Life conference 2002
“Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage — good teaching — than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?”
~ Stephen Jay Gould
“Pseudoscience known by its supporters as ‘scientific creationism’ is strict Genesis literalism masquerading as science in a cynical attempt to bypass the First Amendment and win legislatively mandated inclusion of particular (and minority) religious views into public school curricula… Intense debates about how evolution occurs display science at its most exciting, but provide no solace (only phony ammunition by willful distortion) to strict fundamentalists.”
~ Stephen Jay Gould
“But we all recognise the primary foible of frail humanity — our propensity for embracing hope and shunning logic, our tendency to believe what we desire rather than what we observe.”
~ Steven J. Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life
“We long to situate ourselves on a benevolent, warm, furry, encompassing planet, created to provide our material needs, and constructed for our dominion and delectation. Unfortunately, this pipedream of succor from the realm of meaning (and therefore the magisterium of religion), imposes definite and unrealistic demands upon the factual construction of nature (under the magisterium of science). But nature, who is as she is, and who existed in earthly form for 4.5 billion years before we arrived to impose our interpretations upon her, greets us with sublime indifference and no preference for accommodating our yearnings.”
~ Steven J. Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life
“The world longs for authority, finality and conclusiveness. It is weary of theological floundering and uncertainty. Belief exhilarates the human spirit; doubt depresses.”
~ Billy Graham
“Christians are afraid atheism is the real truth. They hate the non-believers (a form of fear) for this reason. Atheism is the wake-up call they don’t want.”
~ Stan Grimes
“You’ll get pie in the sky when you die” — that’s a lie!”
~ Joe Hill, IWW folk song performed by Woody Guthrie.
“I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
~ J.B.S. Haldane
“Faith is the permission religious people give one another to believe ridiculous things.”
~ Sam Harris
“How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?”
~ Joseph Heller
“I think it’s interesting how people act on their beliefs. A lot of Christians, for instance, wear crosses around their necks. Nice sentiment, but do you think when Jesus comes back, he’s really going to want to look at a cross?”
~ Bill Hicks
“Most gods have the morals of a spoiled child.”
~ Robert A. Heinlein
“You’ll get pie in the sky when you die” — that’s a lie!”
~ Joe Hill, IWW folk song performed by Woody Guthrie.
“Calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair colour.”
~ Don Hirschberg
“The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.”
~ Adolf Hitler
“People pray to God so he won’t crush them like bugs.”
~ Gregory House, TV MD
“If you talk to God you’re religious. If God talks to you, you’re psychotic.”
~ Gregory House, TV MD
“You know it’s all nice when people start to dig these holes, but then they start to live in these holes and get angry when someone pushes dirt into those holes. Come out of your holes people!!!”
~ Gregory House, TV MD, referring to faith
“Isn’t it interesting… religious behavior is so close to being crazy that we can’t tell them apart.”
~ Gregory House, TV MD
“Just because it is inexplained, does not mean it is inexplicable.”
~ Gregory House, TV MD
“Miracle: An event described by those to whom it was told by men who did not see it.”
~ Elbert Hubbard (1856— 1915)
“I’d like to start a religion. That’s where the money is.”
~ L. Ron Hubbard to Lloyd Eshbach, in 1949; quoted by Eshbach in Over My Shoulder: Reflections on a Science Fiction Era, Donald M. Grant Publisher. 1983
“A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.”
~ Aldous Huxley
“We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year’s fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.”
~ Robert Green Ingersoll (1833— 1899)
“The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness.”
~ Robert Green Ingersoll (1833— 1899)
“The Christian god is a being of terrific character — cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.”
~ Thomas Jefferson
“But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee:
Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.”
~ Job 12:7
“Reading books everyone died, none became any wise.
One who reads the word of Love, only becomes wise.”
~ Kabir, mystic Hindi poet.
“Human life without death would be something other that human; consciousness of mortality gives rise to out deepest longings and greatest accomplishments.”
~ Leon Kass
“A man is walking across a bridge, when he sees another guy about to jump off. ‘Hey, man’ he says, ‘you don’t have to do that.’~ Garrison Keillor
‘Why not?’ the other guy says, ‘I’ve got nothing to live for. I lost my job, I’m bankrupt, my wife left me and took the kids, my car threw a rod, and my dog just died. My life totally sucks.‘
‘But God still loves you,’ the man says, ‘you believe in God, don’t you?’
‘Well, I guess so,’ the guy says.
‘Tell me, are you a Christian?’
‘Yes’ the guy answers.
‘Well, so am I!’ the man says. ‘Catholic or Protestant?’
‘I’m Protestant’
‘Well, so am I!’. Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian?‘
‘I’m Baptist.’
‘Well, so am I. Northern or Southern Baptist?’
‘Northern Baptist.’
‘Well so am I!. Northern fundamentalist, liberal, or reformed?’
‘Northern fundamentalist.’
‘Well, so am I!. Northern fundamentalist eastern region, or Great Lakes region?’
‘Northern fundamentalist, eastern region.’
‘Well, so am I!. Northern fundamentalist, eastern region conference of 1898, or conference of 1912?’
‘Northern fundamentalist, eastern region, conference of 1912.’
‘Die, heretic!’ the man says, and pushes him off the bridge.”
“What makes fantastic declarations believable is, in part, the vehemence with which they’re proffered. Again, in the world of spirituality as well as of pop psychology, intensity of personal belief is evidence of truth. It is considered very bad form — even abuse — to challenge the veracity of any personal testimony that might be offered in a twelve-step group or on a talk show, unless the testimony itself is equivocal.… Whatever sells, whatever many people believe strongly, must be true.”
~ Wendy Kaminer
“There is not one iota of history as we know it in the entire Bible!”
~ Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Biblical scholar
“The problem with relying on sacrifice to right wrongs in that no one tells you when you have sacrificed enough goats.”
~ Phil Laut
“The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals, and 362 to heterosexuals. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t love heterosexuals, it’s just that they need more supervision.”
~ Lynn Lavner, a lesbian comic
“There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.”
~ Richard Lederer
“Praying is like a rocking chair — it’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.”
~ Gypsy Rose Lee
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
~ Leviticus 20:13
(literal word for word translation)
And a man who will lie down the man the woman’s naps abomination he does both-of-them death he will die their blood in them.
“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 (1889—1968)
“What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church… a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.”
~ Martin Luther
“Stab, smite, throttle, slay these rabid mad dogs without mercy, with a good conscience to the last ounce of strength, for nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel. He that shall be slain on the side of law and order is a true martyr before God, earning eternal bliss; he that perishes on the side of rebellion is doomed eternally to hell. Such times are these that a prince shall win heaven by bloodshed sooner than others by prayer…”
~ Martin Luther
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
~ Martin Luther
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”
~ Martin Luther
“Reason is the enemy of faith.”
~ Martin Luther
“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”
~ James Madison, fourth president of the USA.
“The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.”
~ Ferdinand Magellan. Some claim it was Robert Green Ingersoll.
“And thus they come into Bethany, and a certain, woman whose brother had died, was there. And coming she prostrated herself before Jesus and sayeth unto him, ‘Son of David have mercy on me’. But the disciples rebuked her.And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb.
And going near, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand.
But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich.
And after six days, Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over nakedness. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. And thence arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.”
~ suppressed part of the Gospel according to Mark
“And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body ; and the young men laid hold on him:And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.”
~ Mark 14:51-52
“Religion is the opium of the people” translated from the German “Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes” sometimes misquoted as “opiate of the people.”
~ Karl Marx, Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
~ Matthew 7:15
“The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete sceptics in religion.”
~ John Stuart Mill
“Man is certainly stark mad. He can’t make a flea, but makes gods by the dozen.”
~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1588
“Society would not tolerate legislation declaring that the theory that the sun circles the earth be given equal time with the theory of a heliocentric solar system; it should not pay attention to the equally preposterous notions of ‘scientific creationism’”
~ Robert Ornstein
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
~ George Orwell
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
~ George Orwell
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called Religion.”
~ Robert M. Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance
“A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?”
~ Ronald Reagan
“And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.”
~ 11:18 warning the Robertsons that God will destroy them for destroying the earth.
“And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.
These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.”
~ 14:3-4
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
~ Stephen Roberts
“We have enough votes to run the country. And when the people say, 'We’ve had enough,' we are going to take over.”
~ Pat Robertson, speech given to the 1980-04 “Washington for Jesus” rally, quoted from Robert Boston, The Most Dangerous Man in America, p. 29.
“There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore.”
~ Pat Robertson, address to his American Center for Law and Justice, November, 1993. Let’s see, now: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' How could the prohibition against Congress making laws respecting an establishment of religion be anything but the separation of church and state?
“Individual Christians are the only ones really — and Jewish people, those who trust God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — are the only ones that are qualified to have the reign, because hopefully, they will be governed by God and submit to Him.”
~ Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, 1985-01-11, defending his stance that only Christians and Jews are fit to hold public office.
“You say you’re supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don’t have to be nice to them.”
~ Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, 1991-01-14.
“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”
~ Pat Robertson, fundraising letter, 1992
“Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals — the two things seem to go together.”
~ Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, 1993-01-21, ignoring the facts that the Nazis killed homosexuals as ruthlessly as they did Jews and that Satanism emerged with Anton Szandor LaVey.
“I think 'one man, one vote,' just unrestricted democracy, would not be wise. There needs to be some kind of protection for the minority which the white people represent now, a minority, and they need and have a right to demand a protection of their rights.”
~ Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, 1992-04-18, suggesting that South African white people’s votes ought to count more than other votes because they are in the minority.
“There will never be peace until God’s house and God’s people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world. How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top…there is absolutely no way that government can operate successfully unless led by godly men and women operating under the laws of the God of Jacob.”
~ Pat Robertson in his 1991 book The New World Order.
“The strategy against the American radical left should be the same as General Douglas MacArthur employed against the Japanese in the Pacific… bypass their strongholds, then surround them, isolate them bombard them, then blast the individuals out of their power bunkers with hand-to-hand combat. The battle for Iwo Jima was not pleasant, but our troops won it. The battle to regain the soul of America won’t be pleasant either, but we will win it.”
~ Pat Robertson, Pat Robertson’s Perspective, 1992-04
“What divides humanity? Lies and untruths. What is the biggest source of lies and untruth? Religion. If the world is ever going to work together, it will require dismantling the worst lies and untruths of each religion especially those use to justify stealing resources from or killing people of a different religion.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“A vitamin A capsule, costing $0.02, will overnight cure a child in the third world of blindness. Another, every six months, will keep it at bay and also give substantial protection against other diseases. Even the poorest Christian could single-handedly afford to bring sight to more people than Jesus reputedly healed, but instead they choose to send these blind children useless bibles.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“To lock in lifelong control, priests systematically abuse children to undermine their ability to think for themselves.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Children learn a fear both of god and of harmless garter snakes, the same way, by instintually aping their mothers who learned the fear in turn from their mothers. Adults are just as reluctant to give up their fear of god as their fear of snakes. It is extremely painful to confront any childhood phobia. It has nothing to with reason and everything to do with primal terror.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Deuteronomy says you are obligated to kill any child who strikes, disrespects or disobeys a parent. Why do Kristians feel so certain Deuteronomy was so wrong on childrearing, but so right on fair treatment of homosexuals?”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Kristians happily commit murder simply because someone told them the bible excused it or commanded it. They forget that there is zero evidence that any god had anything to do with writing the bible. That the one and only god is the author of the bible is merely a traditional unexamined presumption.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Kristianity causes insanity, in the legal sense of being unable to distinguish right from wrong. Most Kristians consider it more wicked to get a blowjob, masturbate, abort a fertilised egg or smoke a joint than to torture and kill a child in Iraq.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“The preposterousness of the Hindu religion is blatantly obvious to Christians, and the preposterousness of the Christian religion is blatantly obvious to Hindus. Yet each is blind to the absurdity of their own religion.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“‘Trust God’ is the Christian excuse for doing nothing.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“The bible is the ultimate blasphemy. It claims to speak for God, yet it was written by men.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Christians often go their whole lives without doubting the childhood stories of Santa Claus or his older brother Jesus, despite ample empirical evidence that praying for a pony does not work.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Doubt is truth’s best friend, faith its worst enemy.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Faith is pretending to believe an authority when you strongly suspect he is lying.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Humans are such cowards that they willingly allow themselves to be conned by those claiming death is not real and claiming to know the precise details of how the afterlife works.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Clearly governnment has no right to interfere in your right to practice your religion. To me, encouraging you to practice one of the officially-recognized religions with tax incentives counts as interference.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“If God had penned the bible, it would be as beautiful as a sunset. It is nowhere close.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Believing in God is like believing in imaginary seat belts. It gives you a false sense of security.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Even an atheist is tempted to lie to a bereaved child, that the loved person or animal is not really dead, just somewhere else healthy and happy. Soothing that pain is about the only legitimate function of religious lies.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Americans are far more outraged by violations to corpses than to the living. Personally, if I had to be tortured,dismembered or burned, I would far sooner it were done after I were dead.”
~ Roedy (1948-02-04—)
“Life is like stepping into a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.”
~ Sukzuki Roshi
“In winning a nation to the gospel, the sword as well as the pen must be used. Democracy is a heresy against God!”
~ R.J. Rushdooney, Director of the Rutherford Institute, founder of the Christian Reconstructionists
“So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.”
~ Bertrand Russell (1872-05-18— 1970-02-02)
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not entirely absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”
~ Bertrand Russell (1872-05-18— 1970-02-02)
“I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.”
~ Bertrand Russell (1872-05-18— 1970-02-02)
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
~ Bertrand Russell (1872-05-18— 1970-02-02)
“The immense majority of intellectually eminent men disbelieve in the Christian religion, but they conceal the fact in public, because they are afraid of losing their incomes.”
~ Bertrand Russell (1872-05-18— 1970-02-02)
“The misfortunes of human beings may be divided into two classes: First, those inflicted by the non-human environment and, second, those inflicted by other people. As mankind have progressed in knowledge and technique, the second class has become a continually increasing percentage of the total. In old times, famine, for example, was due to natural causes, and although people did their best to combat it, large numbers of them died of starvation. At the present moment large parts of the world are faced with the threat of famine, but although natural causes have contributed to the situation, the principal causes are human. For six years the civilized nations of the world devoted all their best energies to killing each other, and they find it difficult suddenly to switch over to keeping each other alive. Having destroyed harvests, dismantled agricultural machinery, and disorganized shipping, they find it no easy matter to relieve the shortage of crops in one place by means of a superabundance in another, as would easily be done if the economic system were in normal working order. As this illustration shows, it is now man that is man’s worst enemy. Nature, it is true, still sees to it that we are mortal, but with the progress in medicine it will become more and more common for people to live until they have had their fill of life. We are supposed to wish to live for ever and to look forward to the unending joys of heaven, of which, by miracle, the monotony will never grow stale. But in fact, if you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a 'new boy' in another. For the future, therefore, it may be taken that much the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both.”
~ Bertrand Russell (1872-05-18— 1970-02-02) Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind, from Unpopular Essays
“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.”
~ Bertrand Russell (1872-05-18— 1970-02-02)
“You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe.”
~ Carl Sagan (1934-11-09— 1996-12-20)
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way,’ A religion, old or new that stressed the magnificance of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
~ Carl Sagan, (1934-11-09— 1996-12-20) The Pale Blue Dot
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.”
~ Carl Sagan (1934-11-09— 1996-12-20)
“Devout Christians are destined to be regarded as fools in modern society. We are fools for Christ’s sake. We must pray for courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world.”
~ Antonin Scalia adding that the word cretin is derived from the French word for Christian, in a speech at the Mississippi College School of Law 1996-04-09, quoted from Dr. James Dobson, Was America a Christian Nation? 1996
“A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.”
~ Arthur Schopenhaur
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I must,
And the wisdom to know the difference.”
Modified Serenity Prayer
“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
“There cannot possibly be a god in heaven watching all of this calmly.”
~ Revi Shankar
“The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself.”
~ Joseph Sobran
“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good… Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”
~ Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue
The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana. 1993-08-16
“The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I so sparingly. By misuse I mean that people who have never evene glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction as if they knew what they were talking about. Or, they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying.”
~ Eckhard Tolle, The Power Of Now
“Faith is believing what you know isn’t so.”
~ Mark Twain
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain
“The great unmentionable evil at the centre of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are literally patriarchal, — God the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.”
~ Gore Vidal (1925-10-03—)
“The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn’t be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.”
~ Gore Vidal (1925-10-03—)
“Of all religions the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.”
~ Voltaire[François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire] (1694—1778)
“Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.”
~ Voltaire[François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire] (1694—1778)
“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
~ Voltaire [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire] (1694—1778)
“A left-wing cult dedicated to bringing down the type of government I believe in.”
~ Secretary of the Interior James Gaius Watt describing environmentalists
“I do not know how many future generations we can count of before the Lord returns.”
~ Secretary of the Interior James Gaius Watt, 1981-02-05
“We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
~ Secretary of the Interior James Gaius Watt, 1983-09-21
“If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved by the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.”
~ Secretary of the Interior James Gaius Watt
“I can understand why people believe in God, Jacob, I just can’t understand why they are not trying to kill the motherfucker.”
~ Spider Robinson, character Doc Webster, about to die of a brain tumor, Callahan’s Con.
“A priest is a man vowed, trained, and consecrated, a man belonging to a special corps, and necessarily with an intense esprit de corps. He has given up his life to his temple and his god. This is a very excellent thing for the internal vigour of his own priesthood, his own temple. He lives and dies for the honour of his particular god. But in the next town or village is another temple with another god. It is his constant preoccupation to keep his people from that god. Religious cults and priesthoods are sectarian by nature; they will convert, they will overcome, but they will never coalesce.”
~ H.G. Wells, The Outline of History page 215
“Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.”
~ H.G. Wells
“If oxen and lions had hands and could paint with their hands and produce works of art, as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods likes horses and oxen like oxen. Each would represent them with bodies according to the bodies of each. So the Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians give theirs red hair and blue eyes.”
~ Xenophanes of Kolophon, 530 BC.
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