pkg://fortune-mod-1.99.1-4.fc3.src.rpm:1990556/fortune-mod-1.99.1.tar.gz
info downloads
fortune-mod-1.99.1/ 0040755 0001750 0001750 00000000000 10022100361 012475 5 ustar pasc pasc fortune-mod-1.99.1/datfiles/ 0040755 0001750 0001750 00000000000 10022100356 014274 5 ustar pasc pasc fortune-mod-1.99.1/datfiles/html/ 0040755 0001750 0001750 00000000000 10022100356 015240 5 ustar pasc pasc fortune-mod-1.99.1/datfiles/html/Makefile 0100644 0001750 0001750 00000000545 10022100324 016674 0 ustar pasc pasc
WCOOKIES=
STRFILE=../util/strfile
all: wcookies-stamp
wcookies-stamp:
rm -f *.dat
for i in $(WCOOKIES) ; do $(STRFILE) $$i || exit $$? ; done
touch cookies-stamp
install: wcookies-stamp
install -m 0755 -d $(WCOOKIEDIR)
for i in $(WCOOKIES) ; do \
install -m 0644 $$i $$i.dat $(WCOOKIEDIR) || exit $$? ; done
clean:
rm -f wcookies-stamp *.dat
fortune-mod-1.99.1/datfiles/off/ 0040755 0001750 0001750 00000000000 10022100356 015046 5 ustar pasc pasc fortune-mod-1.99.1/datfiles/off/unrotated/ 0040755 0001750 0001750 00000000000 10022100356 017053 5 ustar pasc pasc fortune-mod-1.99.1/datfiles/off/unrotated/atheism 0100644 0001750 0001750 00002577264 10022100324 020447 0 ustar pasc pasc I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through my trials and tribulations
And my travels through the nations
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far
Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
I'm afraid he'll have to go
His magnets ruin my radio
And if I have a wreck He'll leave a scar
Riding down a thoroughfare
With his nose up in the air
A wreck may be ahead but he don't mind
Trouble coming He don't see
He just keeps his eye on me
And any other thing that lies behind
Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Though the sunshine on His back
Make Him peel, chip and crack
A little patching keeps Him up to par
When pedestrians try to cross
I let them know who's boss
I never blow the horn or give them warning
I ride all over town
trying to run them down
And it's seldom that they live to see the morning
Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
His halo fits just right
And I use it for a sight
And they'll scatter or they'll splatter near and far
When I'm in a traffic jam
He don't care if I say "damn"
I can let all sorts of curses roll
Plastic Jesus doesn't hear
For he has a plastic ear
The man who invented plastic saved my soul
Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Once His robe was snowy white
Now it isn't quite bright
Stained by the smoke of my cigar
If I weave around at night
And the police think I'm tight
They'll never find my bottle though they ask
Plastic Jesus shelters me
For his head comes off you see
He's hollow and I use Him for a flask
Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Ride with me and have a dram
Of the blood of the Lamb
Plastic Jesus is a holy bar.
["Plastic Jesus", circa 1969, sign-on
song of disk jockey Don Imis]
%
I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I've got my plastic jesus
Sitting on the dashboard of my car
Comes in colors pink and pleasant
Glows in the dark cause it's iridescent
Take it with you when you travel far.
Get yourself a sweet madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell
Going ninety I aint scary
Cause I've got the virgin mary
Telling me that I won't go to hell.
[Paul Newman, in "Cool Hand Luke"]
%
Frisbeetarianism, n.:
The belief that when you die, your soul goes up
on the roof and gets stuck.
%%
God is real, unless declared integer.
%
God is love
Love is blind
Ray Charles is blind
Therefore, Ray Charles is God
%
Hindu speaking to a "Born again" christian:
"Of course I am born again. And again and again and again."
%
A preacher's wife proofread his Sunday sermon and wrote next
to one paragraph: "Weak point--shout loud".
%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
%
"Never join a religion that has a water slide."
%
"...but when you come to Heritage USA, remember to bring your Bible
and your VISA card - because the Bible is the Holy Truth, and God
doesn't take American Express."
%
At a recent PTL convention, the hotel reported that over 80% of the
conventionites watched at least one x-rated movie on the hotel's ppv cable...
%
"There are no saints, only unrecognized villains."
%
"For god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son,
that whosoever would believe in him would believe in anything."
%
"I don't mind those who are born again, just as long as
they don't think that they get twice as many rights."
%
And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"
They replied,"You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of
our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very
selfhood revealed."
And Jesus replied, "What?"
%
"The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler
is that God is more proficient at genocide."
%
: #...
: #
:#####:
# :
# :
...# :
%
"Jesus died to take our wibbles away,
so now we can go to zonk."
%
Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt.
%
Why be born again, when you can just grow up?
%
What a f iend we have in Jesus!
%
Blasphemy is a blast for me.
%
If you ask the wrong questions you
get answers like '42' or 'God'.
%
Keep Christ out of Christmas
%
Any belief worth having must survive doubt.
%
Traveller: God has been mighty good to your fields, Mr. Farmer.
Farmer: You should have seen how he treated them when I wasn't around.
%
Explaining the unknown by means of the unobservable
is always a perilous business.
%
It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature
and affect to despise it are among its worst and least pleasant examples.
%
Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own.
You may both be wrong.
%
"I think I'll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don't
believe in Gosh too, you'll be darned to heck."
%
B
R
DEATH
I
N
!
%
Jesus -- The other white meat!
%
I love Jesus, Yes I do. Baked or broiled or in a stew...
%
Bend over for the rod and staff of Jesus!
%
The Pope has just declared that Jesus is now
an infinitly long tube of white paste.
%
Obey Psalms 137:9!
%
Jesus is coming! Wear your rubbers!
%
The only mortals who ever entered Barad-dur and came back unharmed in body and
soul were a pair of Iluvatar's Witnesses. Only days after their visit Sauron
realized that the "Minas Tirith" he had bought from them was only a pamphlet.
%
Jesus was adopted.
%
Trinity -- a three for one sale on deities
%
Surgeon General's Warning: Quitting Religion Now
Greatly Increases the Chances of World Peace.
%
Jesus rose from the dead and the apostles
came unto him saying "How's Elvis?"
%
If "he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword" holds true, then
jesus the carpenter met his end properly. After all, he was nailed to a
piece of wood, wasn't he?
%
Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity
you don't realise how irritating it was 'til it's gone.
%
Waco, Pensacola, The World Trade Center, Hebron, The Spanish
Inquisition, "Eat my flesh, and drink my blood" . . .
Don't the Religiously-Correct just wanna' kill ya'?
%
Archeologists near mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to
be a missing page from the Bible and is believed to read 'To my
darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitous
and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental'.
%
They found Noah's ark, but there was a sign on it:
'Made in Hong Kong' "
%
Jesus is real! I saw him at a party last week, he was
playing quarters with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny
%
Religious reasons do not excuse violence: they accuse religion.
%
Evolution is both fact and theory.
Creationism is neither.
%
Power corrupts;
Absolute power corrupts absolutely;
God is all-powerful.
Draw your own conclusions
%
Atheism makes sense for America
%
Theists think all gods but theirs are false.
Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one.
%
I went to church to confess my sins to God
And then I realized there was no God and I had no sins.
%
Jesus Christ: Imaginary Playmate to Millions of Adults!
%
It seems odd that those who scoff at sun worshippers
are apt to worship a vacuum.
%
Organized religion is responsible for the brainwashing of millions of
young children too young to know the difference between reality and the
fantasies of millions.
Save Yourself. Drop Christianity.
%
FAITH -
An attitude fostered by individuals in high places in
order to ensure the subservience of those in their charge.
%
A zealot's stones will break my bones, but gods will never hurt me.
%
Nine out of ten priests who have tried Camels, prefer young boys.
%
Autumn wind: Where there are humans
gods, Buddha-- you'll find flies,
lies, lies, lies and Buddhas.
--Shiki --Issa
%
nullifidian n. & a. (Person) having no religious faith or belief,
f. med. L nullifidius fr L nullus none + fides faith; see IAN
%
freethinker n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of
reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief.
%
On the sixth day God created man
On the seventh day, man returned the favor.
%
A society without religion is like a crazed psychopath without a loaded .45
%
Fundamentalism means never having to say "I'm wrong."
%
Christianity: The understanding that "God" is the name we give to the
answer (which we do not know) to the question, "Why is there anything at
all?" - and that Christ is the self-expression of God; the view that -
against the appearances - we are loved in the universe.
%
"Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich"
%
"Try new Post Jesus (tm) breakfast cereal! Chock full of bland,
tasteless little bread wafers made from 100% Jesus for that
full-body of Christ taste. Goes great with a little red wine."
%
Wouldn't it be funny if Elvis came back instead of Jesus?
%
Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day;
Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish
%
May theists be shaved with Ockham's Razor!
%
Two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer
%
Why does the Vatican have lightning rods?
%
Some have for fundies then evangelists passed
Turned preachers next and proved plain fools at last.
%
___/|__ _
\ \_/ / Have you forgotten about Jesus?
<JESUS>< >LOGIC _ < Isn't it about time you did?
/_____/ \_\
%
If Jesus loves me, why doesn't he ever send me flowers?
%
It's your god.
They're your rules.
*You* go to hell.
%
I once believed in god. I got better.
%
Faith - the ability to believe the ridiculous for the sublime.
%
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
The Wise Man Says it to the World.
%
Christ died for my sins, descended into Hell, and rose again
On the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures...
And all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
%
If a member of McDonalds' staff was God:
"OK, one Universe. Uh, you want fries with that?"
%
Bumper sticker seen:
Geez if you believe in Honkus.
%
**********************************************************
* WARNING: To prevent the risk of insanity, do not *
* open the bible's cover. No user understandable *
* material inside. Please refer counseling to *
* qualified mental health personnel. *
**********************************************************
%
Garbage In -- Gospel Out
%
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster - it is an opportunity.
%
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
%
Vique's Law:
A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
%
Man created God in his own image.
%
God did not create the world in 7 days.
He screwed around for 6 days and then pulled an all-nighter.
%
Jesus loves the Ku Klux Klanners,
Jesus loves the KKK,
Pointy hats and flowing robes,
Burning crosses, homophobes!
Jesus loves the Klanners of the world!
%
Moses: the self-proclaimed meekest of all men even though he allegedly
spoke face to face with God and gave us the so-called Ten Commandments
(though they aren't really ten in number); the man who wrote (or
edited) the account of his own death and burial; the man who --
according to himself -- was God's spokesperson in the same way that
Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, -- and a parcel of others --
claim to speak for God.
%
In Ottawa the xians put up an "abortion stills a beating heart"
poster outside the local abortion clinic. Someone wrote over it:
"A christian with a gun stills a beating heart."
%
"Faith is deciding to allow yourself to believe
something your intellect would otherwise cause
you to reject -- otherwise there's no need for faith."
%
A slippery day in the Bible:
When Balam went through
Jerusalem on his ass.
%
Theology: The study of elaborate verbal disguises for non-ideas.
%
God: The Immutable Chameleon; whenever the need is felt by one of his
followers, He obligingly recreates himself to suit the occasion.
%
The mind of the fundamentalist is like the pupil of the eye:
the more light you pour on it, the more it will contract.
%
Q: Jesus was renowned for his ability to heal. What was the
one affliction that proved to malignant for his cure?
A: Christianity
%
Jesus loves you all, and can't wait to
control you like a small household pet
%
Religion is the work of the Devil
%
Never make a god of your religion
%
You Go Yahweh - and I'll go Mine!
%
God hated the world so much that he sent his only
son so that whoever does not believe in him will
perish and be denied eternal life.
%
Christianity is not a religion; it's an industry.
%
=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Goofy and Mickey are going to burn in eternal
Hellfire for sharing an insurance policy!. Details
this Sunday at you local Southern Baptist Church.
Witch burning and pot luck supper to follow the services.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
%
"Belief in heaven is very difficult without
a greedy desire for it: All scams need a hook."
%
"Humanity sees its reflection in the mirrors that surround it,
and thus gratified, calls this image perfect, good, merciful,
omniscient, omnipresent, holy, just, and above all, love. So
enchanted are these hairless apes with this, that they invent
a special word for it: 'God'."
%
I have to go take a christian. I need to find some apostle to wipe
my god with, first. I hope I don't get any jesus on my fingers.
%
All jesus could do was turn water into wine.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers - could JC do that?
%
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
|_____|_____|_____| Let Us Keep a _|_____|_____|_____|
|__|_____|_____|__ Wall of Separation _|_____|_____|__|
|_____|_____|_____|____ Between ____|_____|_____|_____|
|__|_____|_____|___ Church and State __|_____|_____|__|
|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
|__|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|__|
%
The scientist yearns to find and eventually know the truth;
The religious man wants the truth to fit his preconceived mold.
So, as a result...
The scientist alters his perception to conform to the facts;
The religious man tries to change the facts to conform to his beliefs.
%
INRI: Idiots Need Reassuring Ideologies
%
Religions are what dreams are made of.
%
All Gods were immortal.
%
For many, faith is a suitable substitute for
knowledge, as death is for a difficult life.
%
In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the
instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible
one. In that case we believe the former as part of the latter.
%
Christian humility is preached by the clergy,
but practiced only by the lower classes.
%
The Christian lives in a nightmare and thinks it is a pleasant dream.
%
Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God:
this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.
%
Reason is, of all things in the world, the most hurtful to a reasoning
human being. God only allows it to remain with those he intends to
damn, and his goodness takes it away from those he intends to save or
render useful in the Church . . . If reason had any part in religion,
what then would become of faith?
%
To the philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy
are far less dangerous than their virtues.
%
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
%
It's a happy bishop who hasn't got a saint in his diocese.
%
It is no accident that the symbol of a bishop is a crook,
and the sign of an archbishop is a double-cross.
%
Consider the ignorance of the average fundamentalist. Then realize that
by definition fully half of them must be even dumber than that.
%
SUNDAY SERMON
A technician, wrapped in a stiff, white smock,
takes an albino rat from the big crate
delivered just that morning, puts it in
the God Model Box, leaves and locks the room.
The box, with random corners and angles,
is monitored by a ceiling mounted
video camera.
A switch mounted in one corner is well
protected by spring wire traps, barriers
and rat repellent.
The switch delivers an electric shock
when touched by the rat.
The experiment lasts 24 hours
or so, depending on the whim and will
of the technician.
If during that time, the rat sits on the
switch for thirty or forty seconds,
the technician will set it free in the
field behind the fence.
Otherwise, he will restrain the rat in
a vice and slowly pull off its tail and
its legs, one by one, then skin it and leave
it to die
slowly.
Little is learned in this experiment
either by the rat or the technician
who is not at all surprised that none of
rats ever perform the required task.
But the technician does get to skin a
lot of rats, and he likes to hear them squeal.
%
JESUS IS COMING!
Are you going to spit or swallow?
%
"We preach peace, forgiveness, tolerance and love. We practice vengeance,
persecution, hatred and domination. My personal beliefs are supported and
validated by my convictions.
Oh, and never forget .... my religion is truth, yours is a lie."
[Religion, paraphrased (unknown)]
%
JWs: "If we were to tell you that there is an army of angels waiting
in Heaven, and on the Day of Judgement they will be unleashed upon
the world to slay all the unbelievers, what would your response be?"
Response: "Pre-emptive nuclear strike."
%
The Religious Right aren't, and Scientific Creationism isn't.
%
There is no God but our God
The humble Christians say.
There is no God but our God.
To Him alone we pray.
What of the others by the score,
Gods just as great and mighty.
Of Allah, Odin, Jove and Thor,
Venus and Aphrodite.
If to the one alone we pray,
And He is just a faker (fakir?),
There surely will be Hell to pay
When we meet our maker.
So, good Christians take my advice.
Don't be so egotistic.
And on occasion in your prayers
Address some other mystic.
Remember there have been a score,
A hundred, thousands, maybe more.
To say there is but one God
Might make the others sore.
Good Christians believe in one God.
Myself, I must confess,
Am not so very different.
I believe in just one less.
%
"If the Bible proves that God exists then
comic books prove the existence of Superman."
[Seen on the #Atheism IRC]
%
A Humanist or an Athiest can't tell you to
go to hell but a Christian can and will.
%
Out of convicted rapists, 57% admitted to reading
pornography. 95% admitted to reading the Bible.
%
You'll never find a dead Christian
in a foxhole who didn't pray.
%
The Holy Father is neither
%
If the baby goes to heaven
And the doctor goes to hell
If the woman gets forgiveness
What's the problem pray tell!?
%
Read the Buy-Bull
%
Although it is said that faith can move mountains,
experience has shown that dynamite works better.
%
><DARWIN>
L L
%
Religion is to rationality as bullshit is to horsepower.
%
The greater your ignorance, the more evidence
you have for the existence of God!
%
__________
/ _______ \
/ \ \ _ \ \
| / \ \ | | |
| | _\ \|__ | |
| ||__\ \__|| |
| | |\ \ | |
| | | \ \ | |
| | | |\ \| |
| | |_| \ \ |
\ \_______\ /
\__________/
%
"Mysticism is a disease of the mind."
%
"As long as Baptists can stagger to the polls, there
will never be liquor by the drink in this town."
%
"If God had wanted us to make sense,
He would have existed."
%
Several thousand years ago, a small tribe of ignorant near-savages wrote
various collections of myths, wild tales, lies, and gibberish. Over the
centuries, these stories were embroidered, garbled, mutilated, and torn
into small pieces that were then repeatedly shuffled. Finally, this material
was badly translated into several languages successively. The resultant text,
creationists feel, is the best guide to this complex and technical subject.
%
The last time we mixed
religion and government
people were burned at the stake.
-- bumper sticker
%
Find God? Why, is God missing?
%
Freedom is the Distance Between Church and State
%
To Hell With the Baptists, I'm Going to Disney Land
%
Focus on Your Own Damn Family
%
Wise Men Still Seek Him...Apparently, He's lost.
%
Jesus Loves Me, Yes I Know /
For the Voices Tell Me So.
%
When The Religious Right Takes Over, We'll All Live In Iran
%
Welcome to Burger God: Have it YAHWEH!
%
Want to know what happens after death?
Go look at some dead things.
%
Public prayer...Don't Stand for it!
%
A mystic is someone who wants to understand
the universe, but is too lazy to study physics
%
I am a demo religious meme which has been replicated here.
You will be blessed if you copy me and pass me on to infect
the next mind. And damned if you don't.
%
Jesus - Myth or Legend?
%
Re: God...
1) The emperor has no clothes.
2) There is no emperor.
%
Christians believe that the most wonderful thing that can happen to them
is to go to Heaven, but few of them are in a hurry to make the trip.
%
Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
%
Help preserve your child's belief in Santa Claus. Tell him or her
that Santa will send them to hell if they don't believe in him.
%
There are none more ignorant and useless,
than they that seek answers on their knees,
with their eyes closed.
%
God inspires men to preach what sounds like bullshit.
Men who preach the bullshit admit it sounds like bullshit.
God punishes those who hear the bullshit and characterize it as
bullshit. If God has a problem with that, it's His own damn fault.
%
"If, as they say, God spanked this town
For being much too frisky,
Why did He burn His churches down
And save Hotaling's Whiskey?"
[Poem on 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, in which
the city's largest whiskey distillery was left unscathed]
%
"If god doesn't like the way I live,
Let him tell me, not you."
[As seen on a button]
%
Person 1: Solomon had many horses, he had many wives; he did
exactly the opposite of what the bible says...
Person 2: He was the wisest of men..."
[transcript of actual talk show]
%
God wanted to have a holiday, so He asked St. Peter for suggestions on
where to go.
"Why not go to Jupiter?" asked St. Peter.
"No, too much gravity, too much stomping around," said God.
"Well, how about Mercury?"
"No, it's too hot there."
"Okay," said St. Peter, "What about Earth?"
"No," said God, "They're such horrible gossips. When I was
there 2000 years ago, I had an affair with a Jewish woman, and they're
still talking about it."
%
Christianity: Safer than a lobotomy, but just as effective.
%
Once purged of the insanity, plagiarisms, illegalities,
contradictions, and the perverse, the Bible could be
printed on match book covers while increasing it's usefulness.
%
A metaphysician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat
that isn't there, and a theologian is one who finds the cat.
%
The Christians have fathers who aren't fathers, mothers who aren't mothers,
brothers who aren't brothers, and sisters who aren't sisters, they swear
off sex, and then try to explain "family values" to the rest of us.
%
Atheism and truth, 2 words 1 meaning.
%
Cogito, ergo non credo.
%
Exploring the universe through meditation is like
studying human relationships through masturbation.
%
A god's primary function is to confirm for us deeply held beliefs that
we can't let go of, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. When
you are totally and absolutely convinced of something fundamentally
unreasonable, it helps to believe you have divine guidance.
%
At one point in time, many of us actually had Jesus as
our personal lord and saviour. Unfortunately, we later
had to dismiss him for incompetence, gross negligence,
misconduct and consistent failure to show up for work.
%
The Fundamentalist
== Knows no greater joy than the sound of his own voice.
== Knows no greater terror than the god he creates in his own image.
== Knows no greater evil than an unfettered mind.
== Knows no greater blasphemy than being told "NO."
%
religion is a socio-political institution for the control
of people's thoughts, lives, and actions; based on
ancient myths and superstitions perpetrated through
generations of subtle yet pervasive brainwashing."
%
"Probably get his dumb ass nailed to a cross..."
[Response to WWJD (What Would
Jesus Do) paraphernalia]
%
"When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated,
and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove
as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense."
[Edward Abbey (from Voice Crying in the Wilderness)]
%
"The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages--
as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already."
[Edward Abbey]
%
"Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require
unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions.
Thus the fear and hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the
gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward."
[Edward Abbey]
%
"Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination."
[Edward Abbey]
%
"We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government
can constitutionally force a person 'to profess a belief or disbelief in any
religion.' Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements
which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can aid those
religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those
religions founded on different beliefs."
[School District of Abington TP. PA. v. Schempp/Murray v. Curlett, 1963]
%
"The world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men
without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
[Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri (973-1057; Syrian poet)]
%
"Who made who?"
[AC/DC]
%
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
That unalterable rule applies both to God and man."
[John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (Lord Acton) in
a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5,1887]
%
"Thought is one of the manifestations of human energy, and among
the earlier and simpler phases of thought, two stand conspicuous
-- Fear and Greed. Fear, which, by stimulating the imagination,
creates a belief in an invisible world, and ultimately develops a
priesthood; and Greed, which dissipates energy in war and trade."
[Brooks Adams (1848-1927), The Law of Civilization and Decay]
%
"The power of the priesthood lies in the submission to a creed.
In their onslaughts on rebellion they have exhausted human torments;
nor, in their lust for earthly dominion, have they felt remorse,
but rather joy, when slaying Christ's enemies and their own."
[Brooks Adams, The Emancipation of Massachusetts]
%
"If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!"
[Clark Adams]
%
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having
to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
[Douglas Adams]
%
"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies
faith, and without faith, I am nothing."
"Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't
it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D."
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that." says God, who promptly vanishes
in a puff of logic.
[Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"]
%
"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do
irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs.
This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion."
[Scott Adams, "The Dilbert Principle"]
%
"Eat a big plate of jambalya, head off to the can, and meditate
on this, "defecating is more productive than praying."
[Todd Adamson]
%
"Walking on water is easy. It is what we do for a
living. You just have to know where the rocks are.
Step from rock to rock, and those on the shore will
think you are performing a miracle."
[advice from professional prophets]
%
"A spokesman for the Lyon Group, producers of _Barney and
Friends_, denied that Barney is an instrument of Satan."
[the Advocate, spring 1994]
%
"The truth which makes men free is for the most
part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
[Herbert Agar, "A Time for Greatness" 1942]
%
"When you see a cross sticking in the ground, that usually means that
someone is buried there, or someone got killed there. Perhaps, by
wearing that cross around their neck, what they're saying is that
they're dead from the neck up? That would explain a *lot* of things."
[Wayne Aiken, on AACHAT]
%
"Faith in God and seventy-five cents will get you a cup of coffee."
[Wayne Aiken]
%
"The so-called religious right of the Republican Party- the Christian
right, they call themselves, although in my view they are neither
Christian nor right- is after a totalitarian state."
[Edward Albee, interview in Progressive August 1996 issue]
%
"Had I been present at the creation of the world,
I would have proposed some improvements."
[Alfonso X (Alfonso the Wise;
1226-1284; King of Castile)]
%
"Sensible men no longer belive in miracles; they
were invented by priests to humbug the peasants."
[King Alfonso]
%
"Goodnight, thank you, and may your god go with you"
[Dave Allen, Irish Comedian,
at the end of all of his shows]
%
"Most of us spend the first 6 days of each week sowing wild oats,
then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure."
[Fred Allen]
%
"Religions change; beer and wine remain"
[Harvey Allen]
%
"...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers. No matter how assured
we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions. This is true in religion as
it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive.
As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be
advised to leave them to heaven. They will not, unfortunately, do us the
same courtesy. They attack us and each other, and whatever their
protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear
that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword. My own belief in
God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge. My respect
for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the
most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth. But even well-educated Christians
are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.
Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every
recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it. Some Christians, alas,
resort to formal lying to obscure such reality."
[Steve Allen]
%
"As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject
of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction
in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless
conversions -- to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and
has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. The
problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to
a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy
is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and
irrational -- the powers of reason are suprisingly ineffective in
changing the believer's mind."
[Steve Allen]
%
"One social evil for which the New Testament is
clearly in part responsible is anti-Semitism."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
%
"There is not the slightest question but that the God of the Old
Testament is a jealous, vengeful God, inflicting not only on the
sinful pagans but even on his Chosen People fire, lighting,
hideous plagues and diseases, brimstone, and other curses."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
%
"There are hundreds of millions who believe the Messiah has come.
If he did, then it is unfortunately the case that his heroic
sacrifice and death have had no effect whatsoever on the very
problem his coming might have been expected to address, for
history demonstrates, beyond question, that we Christians have
been just as dangerous, singly and en masse, as non-Christians."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
%
"The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for
example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders
of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of
offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals. It has been used to encourage
belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching
of scientific truths. We must never forget that both good and evil flow
from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
%
"Ideas have consequences, and totally erroneous
ideas are likely to have destructive consequences."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen,
on the Bible Religion & Morality"]
%
"God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it
would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith,
then, is built upon ignorance and hope."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen,
on the Bible Religion & Morality"]
%
"No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of
one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities
attributed to the Deity in the Bible."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen,
on the Bible Religion & Morality"]
%
"If...we assume that there is no God, it follows that morality is even
more important than if there is a Deity. If God exists, his unlimited
power can certainly redress imbalances in the scale of human justice.
But if there is no God, then it is up to man to be as moral as he can."
[Steve Allen]
%
"It is not hardness of heart or evil passions that drive certain
individuals to atheism, but rather a scrupulous intellectual honesty."
[Steve Allen, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
%
"If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall.
If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do.
The same happens in the absence of prayers."
[Steve Allen, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
%
"To those who wish to punish others--or at least to see them punished, if
the avengers are too cowardly to take matters in to their own hands-- the
belief in a fiery, hideous hell appears to be a great source of comfort."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen, on
the Bible Religion & Morality"]
%
"An all-powerful being would have the power to punish a sinner, by any means
he might choose to employ. However, the Scriptures not only attribute to
God a horrible vengefulness but also suggest that God is incredibly stupid.
It would be stupid if an individual, intent on punishing a sinner or group
of them, expended his destructive energy not only on those who it might be
said deserved such punishment but also on enormous numbers of innocent people
who simply had the bad luck to be in the physical proximity of evildoers.
To argue that God works in this way is to put him precisely on the same moral
plane as those modern terrorists who, to kill a particular individual or
small group, will place a bomb on an airplane in the full knowledge that in
addition to the five or six intended victims all the other occupants, in whom
the terrorists have no particular interest, will be killed."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen on
the Bible Religion, & Morality"]
%
"Believing that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God, certain human
beings are prepared to suspend not only reason but even common sense about
any and all passages found within, no matter how vile or bloodthirsty."
[Steve Allen, "More Steve Allen on
the Bible Religion, & Morality"]
%
"Another philosopher suggests that saying prayers is equivalent
to believing that the universe is governed by a Being who changes
his mind if you ask him to."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen On the
Bible, Religion and Morality," 1990]
%
"In every single instance where churchmen placed themselves squarely
athwart the path of science, as regards a particular knotty question,
the religious forces were eventually defeated for the very sound
reason that they were wrong."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen On the
Bible, Religion and Morality," 1990]
%
"In less than an hour, the Parliament of Toulouse, France publicly burned
400 unfortunate women, having convicted them of crimes that existed only in
the deluded minds of their sentences. Five hundred women were burned at the
stake in the city of Geneva in one month, and approximately a thousand were
murdered in the Italian province of Como. A French judge, over the course of
16 years, could boast that he had sentenced some 800 women to the stake.
This entire vast atrocity was said to be "justified" by the Bible. In
reality, it is the Bible that is blackened by such crimes."
[Steve Allen, "Steve Allen On the
Bible, Religion and Morality," 1990]
%
"Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends."
[Woody Allen]
%
"As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably
because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on."
[Woody Allen]
%
"How can I believe in God when just last week I got my
tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"
[Woody Allen]
%
"I do not believe in an afterlife, although
I am bringing a change of underwear."
[Woody Allen]
%
"We face the nineties with a Court that relegates First Amendment
rights to the level of any law, a Justice Department quite willing
to establish first- and second-class citizenship determined by
religious belief....a Christian arrogance and exclusivism reminiscent
of earlier centures of religious persecution."
[Robert S. Alley, "Christian Exclusivism and
Second-Class Citizenship", in Free Inquiry]
%
"If we encounter in a personality fear of divine punishment as the sole
sanction for right doing, we can be sure we are dealing with a childish
conscience, with a case of arrested development."
[Gordon W. Allport, "Becoming"]
%
"Imagine encouraging [a child] to participate in such 'twisted' rituals
and worshiping of tortuous crucifixes and such like this from birth.
No wonder we have so many hateful and sadistic people in our society."
[Brent Allsop 10-27-95 (news:alt.atheism)]
%
"Immaculate deceptions going on every day, still you
follow the clowns who give the circus away"
[The Almighty]
%
"Is God something that exists 'out there," beyond, and independent of us?
Or is God merely the product of an inherited human perception, the
manifestation of an evolutionary adaptation, a coping mechanism that
emerged in our species in order to enable us to survive our unique and
otherwise debilitating awareness of death?"
[Matthew Alper, "The God Part of the Brain", Rogue
Press, Brooklyn NY, 1999, on the back cover]
%
"Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam.....it is right
that he whom that woman induced to sin should assume the
role of guide lest he fall again through feminine instability."
[St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, letter 63, 396]
%
"More than half the world is hungry and the environment of the world is
deteriorating rapidly because of over-population. Any action which impedes
efforts to halt the world population perpetuates the misery in which millions
now live and promotes death by starvation of millions this year and many more
millions in the next few decades.
It has been stated by Roman Catholics that the Pope is not evil, but
simply unenlightened, and we must agree. But, whatever the motives, the evil
consequences of his encyclical are manifest...
(conclusion) The world must quickly come to realize that Pope Paul VI has
sanctioned the deaths of countless numbers of human beings with his misguided
and immoral encyclical. The fact that this incredible document was put forth
in the name of a religious figure whose teachings embodies the highest respect
for the value of human dignity and life should serve to make the situation
even more repugnant to mankind."
[American Association for the Advancement of Science,
Signed by about 2000 Scientists, Dallas, 1968,
on Pope Paul VI's "Humanae Vitae" encyclical]
%
"Prayer won't cure AIDS. Research will."
[Public service advertisement of the American
Foundation for AIDS Research, dropped because
of complaints by religionists, from
Freethought Today, March 1997]
%
"In order to see Christianity, one
must forget almost all Christians."
[Henri F. Amiel]
%
"A belief is not true because it is useful."
[Henri Frederic Amiel]
%
"I acted alone on God's orders."
[Yigal Amir, assassin of
Yitzak Rabin, Israeli PM]
%
"Father says bow your head,
Like the Good Book says.
I think the Good Book is
missing some pages..."
[Tori Amos]
%
"This whole Christian theology thing is that god came down to experience
life through his son. Well, how's he experiencing life if he doesn't get
laid? Give me a break. And why would he not get laid, as he created the
apparatus in the first place?"
[Tori Amos, interview in _Vox_, May, 1994, by Steve Maline]
%
"I got enough guilt to start my own religion"
[Tori Amos]
%
"I always thought I'd make a good girlfriend for Jesus"
[Tori Amos]
%
"I used to get really pissed off that my life was so dictated by when this
Jesus guy was born and when he was dying every year. I felt really resentful
that I couldn't get on with my own life because I was so busy with his."
[Tori Amos]
%
"God sometimes you just don't come through
God sometimes you just don't come through
Do you need a woman to look after you?
God sometimes you just don't come through
You make pretty daisies pretty daisies love
I gotta find what you're doing about things here
A few witches burning
Get a little toasty here
Gotta find why you always go when the wind blows
Tell me you're crazy maybe then I'll understand
You got your 9 iron in the back seat just in case
Heard you've gone south
Well babe you love your new 4 wheel
I gotta find why you always go when the wind blows
Will you even tell her if you decide to make the sky fall
Will you even tell her if you decide to make the sky"
[Tori Amos, "God" from the "Under the Pink" album]
%
"that kind of god is always man-made
they made him up then wrote a book
to keep you on your knees"
[Skunk Anansie, "Selling Jesus"]
%
"Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is
not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock."
[Anaxagorus, ca. 475 BC]
%
"No, no, no -- you don't argue with concepts. You have to claim
Dogma, and therefore leave no room for rational thought."
[Kevin J. Anderson, _Flashback_]
%
"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered.
Religion is answers that may never be questioned."
[Anemones]
%
"People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction
considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able
to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest
existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human being become more
affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material
scale, God descends the scale of respectability at a commensurate speed."
[Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", p. 101]
%
"Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is."
[Jean Anouilh (1910-87) French dramatist, playwright]
%
"Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and
the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on."
[Anonymous]
%
"There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction."
[Anonymous]
%
"A good rule for interpretation is: 'If the literal sense makes good
sense, seek no other sense lest you come up with nonsense'"
[Anonymous]
%
"Since the Bible and the church are obviously mistaken in telling us
where we came from, how can we trust them to tell us where we are going?"
[Anonymous]
%
"Unfalsifiable propositions are not amenable to any method at all.
If they were, then religions would be able to find a way to resolve
internal conflicts over differing versions of their unfalsifiables
without resorting to schism, excommunication, torture, or jihad.
In science, however, there are no permanent schisms, because there
is a recognized final court of appeal, namely the universe itself."
[Anonymous]
%
"I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God and God is
matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or no."
[Anon., "The Unbeliever's Creed," 1754]
%
"A cardinal doctrine in the Christian faith is total depravity."
[Letter to the editor, Antelope Valley
Press, Lancaster CA, June 20, 1998]
%
"I distrust those people who know so well what
God wants them to do because I notice it always
coincides with their own desires."
[Susan B. Anthony]
%
"To no form of religion is woman
indebted for one impulse of freedom..."
[Susan B. Anthony]
%
"I was born a heretic. I always distrust people who know
so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."
[Susan B. Anthony]
%
"Stating the 'The Constitution guarantess that government may not coerce
anyone to support or participate in religious exercises,' the court held
the First Amendment is violated by including clerical members who offer
prayer as part of an official school graduation ceremony, even though
attendance was supposedly voluntary. The court concluding that attendance
was in a real sense obligatory with the students indiced to conform."
[Lee v. Weisman (1992, U S) 120 L Ed 2d 467, 112 S Ct 2649, from
the 1996 pocket part for the book "Modern Constitutional Law,
Vol. I: The Individual And The Government", by Chester J. Antieau]
%
"...our constitutional tradition, from the Declaration of Independence and
the first inaugural address of Washington... down to the present day, has,
with a few aberrations, see Church of Holy Trinity v. United States,
143 U.S. 457, 12 S.Ct. 511, 36 L.Ed. 226 (1892), ruled out of order
government-sponsored endorsement of religion--even when no legal coercion
is present, and indeed even when no ersatz, "peer-pressure" psycho-coercion
is present--where the endorsement is sectarian, in the sense of specifying
details upon which men and women who believe in a benevolent, omnipotent
Creator and Ruler of the world are known to differ (for example, the
divinity of Christ)."
[Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia,
_Lee v. Weisman_, 505 U.S. 577, 641 (1992)]
%
"We are asked to recognize the existence of a practice of nonsectarian prayer,
prayer within the embrace of what is known as the Judeo-Christian tradition,
prayer which is more acceptable than one which, for example, makes explicit
references to the God of Israel, or to Jesus Christ, or to a patron saint.
There may be some support, as an empirical observation, to the statement of
the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, picked up by Judge Campbell's
dissent in the Court of Appeals in this case, that there has emerged in this
country a civic religion, one which is tolerated when sectarian exercises are
not. Stein, 822 F.2d at 1409; 908 F.2d 1090, 1098-1099 (CA1 1990)
(Campbell, J., dissenting) (case below); see also Note, Civil Religion and
the Establishment Clause, 95 Yale L.J. 1237 (1986). If common ground can be
defined which permits once conflicting faiths to express the shared conviction
that there is an ethic and a morality which transcend human invention, the
sense of community and purpose sought by all decent societies might be
advanced. But though the First Amendment does not allow the government to
stifle prayers which aspire to these ends, neither does it permit the
government to undertake that task for itself."
[Supreme Court, Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992)]
%
"The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority
is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of
the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven
days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from
the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the
Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one
1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ...
The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat
lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e.,
Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the
Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E) temperature of the earth (-300K),
gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed...
(However) Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall
have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake
of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the
boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than
Hell at 445C."
[From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972]
%
"For it is a much more serious matter to corrupt faith, through which comes the
soul's life, than to forge money, through which temporal life is supported.
Hence if forgers of money or other malefactors are straightway justly put to
death by secular princes, with much more justice can heretics, immediately
upon conviction, be not only excommunicated but also put to death."
[Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologica]
%
"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten,
for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a
perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman
comes from defect in the active power...."
[Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica,Q92, art. 1, Reply Obj. 1]
%
"I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless infirmity
of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is largely responsible
for the calamities the world is at present enduring"
[William Archer (1856-1924), _Theology and War_]
%
"To me it seems that mankind can never achieve its highest potentialities
till it has thrown off the incubus of historic (and prehistoric) religion..."
[William Archer (1856-1924), "Is the Battle,Won?"]
%
"'Theocracy' has always been the synonym for a bleak and
narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained tyranny."
[William Archer (1667-1735)]
%
"If you were taught that elves caused rain, every
time it rained, you'd see the proof of elves."
[Ariex]
%
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.
Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom
they consider godfearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less
easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
[Aristotle (384-322 BCE), "Politics"]
%
"Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard
to their form but with regard to their mode of life."
[Aristotle, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
%
"(R)eligious teaching has had effects the precise opposite
of those commonly held to be its prerogative - the advocacy
of truth and high conduct."
[Dr. Henry Edward Armstrong, "The Outlook for Reason"]
%
"In a pluralistic society, no group, no matter how numerous or powerful,
has a right to prescribe a set of beliefs or a code of ethics for all."
[Bishop James Armstrong, United Methodist Church, Address,
Phoenix, Arizona February 4, 1975, from Menendez and Doerr,
The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom]
%
"Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an
insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover
that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same
care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature
whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion
arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit."
[Rudolf Arnheim]
%
"All the biblical miracles will at last
disappear with the progress of science."
[Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)]
%
"Miracles do not happen."
[Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma,
last words of preface to 1883 edition]
%
"It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind
to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence."
[Matthew Arnold, "Literature and Dogma"]
%
"We are only fabulous
beasts, after all."
[John Ashbery]
%
"Whatever the Life-Goddess Eve was originally like, she appears in
Genesis as a Hebrew Pandora, the villainess in a story about the origin
of human misfortune....She has dwindled to being merely the first woman,
a troublemaker, created from a rib of the senior and dominant first man."
[Geoffrey Ashe, "The Virgin," 1976]
%
"I've come to the conclusion that there can be little or no dialogue
between 'proclaimers of truth' (religious and secular ideologues)
and 'discoverers of truth' (empiricists). The former tend to debate,
the latter tend to discuss."
[Edward H. Ashment]
%
"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to
be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition."
[Isaac Asimov]
%
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always
been premature, and it remains premature today."
[Isaac Asimov]
%
"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore,
totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries
since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most
uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would
make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their
feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries
and homes. I personally resent it bitterly and warn the people of Canada..."
[Isaac Asimov, Canadian Atheists Newsletter, 1994]
%
"To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social
establishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps,
as part of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however,
is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously
brave, without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who
believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do
than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close
a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about
the bilge when a group of astronomers denounces it."
[Isaac Asimov]
%
"...if I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose
to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the
pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous
atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose
every deed is foul, foul, foul."
[Isaac Asimov, _I. Asimov: A Memoir_]
%
"As it happens, Josephus, who mentions John the Baptist, does not mention
Jesus. There is, to be sure, a paragraph in his history of the Jews which
is devoted to Jesus, but it interrupts the flow of the discourse and seems
suspiciously like an afterthought. Scholars generally believe this to
have been an insertion by some early Christian editor who, scandalized
that Joesphus should talk of the period without mentioning the Messiah,
felt the insertion to be a pious act."
[Isaac Asimov, _Asimov's Guide To The Bible_ ISBN 0-517-34582-X]
%
"Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying
and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the
popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for
removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism."
[Isaac Asimov, "On Religiosity", Free Inquiry]
%
"We owe it to ourselves as respectable human beings, as thinking human
beings, to do what we can to make humanity more rational...Humanists
recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves,
using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing
values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests."
[Isaac Asimov]
%
"It is rather remarkable that such a deed would be overlooked when
many more far less wicked deeds of Herod were carefully described."
[Isaac Asimov, "Guide to the Bible", on Herod's allegedly
killing all young male children to prevent the messiah]
%
"No other country has as diverse religious groups as the U.S., which
has at least 52 major denominations with memberships exceeding 100,000.
The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches lists 223 sects, cults,
and denominations, not counting groups such as the First Church of
Christ, Scientist, which provide no membership statistics."
[Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts]
%
"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is
something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
[Isaac Asimov]
%
"I certainly don't believe in the mythologies of our society, in heaven and
hell, in God and angels, in Satan and demons. I've thought of myself as an
'atheist,' but that simply described what I didn't believe in, not what I
did. Gradually, though, I became aware there was a movement called 'humanism,'
which used that name because, to put it most simply, humanists believe that
human beings produced the progressive advance of human society and also the
ills that plague it. They believe that if the ills are to be alleviated, it
is humanity that will have to do the job. They disbelieve in the influence
of the supernatural on either the good or the bad of society."
[Isaac Asimov, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
%
"The fundamentalists deny that evolution has taken place; they deny that
the earth and the universe as a whole are more than a few thousand years
old, and so on. There is ample scientific evidence that the fundamentalists
are wrong in these matters, and that their notions of cosmogony have about
as much basis in fact as the Tooth Fairy has."
[Isaac Asimov, quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief,
Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by
James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
%
"I am not responsible for what other people think. I am responsible only
for what I myself think, and I know what that is. No idea I've ever come
up with has ever struck me as a divine revelation. Nothing I have ever
observed leads me to think there is a God watching over me."
[Isaac Asimov, "Religiosity", from Isaac
Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Jan. 1992]
%
"The bible must be seen in a cultural context. It didn't just
happen. These stories are retreads. But, tell a Christian that
-- No, No! What makes it doubly sad is that they hardly know
the book, much less its origins."
[Isaac Asimov]
%
"I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole
life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the
tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse."
[Isaac Asimov]
%
"Naturally, since [the Sumerians] didn't know what caused the flood
anymore than we do, they blamed the gods. (That's the advantage of
religion. You're never short an explanation for anything.)"
[Isaac Asimov, in essay "The Last Man on Earth",
1982, reprinted in his essay collection "The
Tyrannosaurus Prescription"]
%
"...anger is the common substitute for logic among those who
have no evidence for what they desperately want to believe."
[Isaac Asimov, in essay "Hobgoblin", 1980, reprinted in
his essay collection "The Tyrannosaurus Prescription"]
%
"Every religion seems like a fantasy to outsiders,
but as holy truth to those of the faith."
[Isaac Asimov, in essay "Is Fantasy Forever",
1982, reprinted in his essay collection
"The Tyrannosaurus Prescription"]
%
"Properly read, the Bible is the most
potent force for atheism ever conceived."
[Isaac Asimov]
%
"So the universe is not quite as you thought it was.
You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then.
Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe."
[Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg _Nightfall_]
%
"It seems to me that it's insulting to human beings to imply that
only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent
human being...I have a conscience. It doesn't depend on religion."
[Isaac Asimov]
%
"It's rather a shame. Now that the creationists are deprived of their
chance of burning people at the stake, their best argument is gone."
[Isaac Asimov, "Life and Time," 1979]
%
"It is precisely because it is fashionable for Americans to know no science,
even though they may be well educated otherwise, that they so easily fall
prey to nonsense. They thus become part of the armies of the night, the
purveyors of nitwittery, the retailers of intellectual junk food, the
feeders on mental cardboard, for their ignorance keeps them from
distinguishing nectar from sewage."
[Isaac Asimov, "The Armies of the Night"]
%
"Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight
for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued
defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the
rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual
we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand
who hug superstition to their breasts."
[Isaac Asimov, when asked why he fights religion with no hope for victory]
%
"In medieval times, church bells were often consecrated to ward off
evil spirits. Because thunderstorms were attributed to the work
of demons, the bells would be rung in an attempt to stop the storms.
Lots of bellringers were killed by lightning."
["Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts" © 1979]
%
"We will inevitably recede into the backwater of civilization, and
those nations that retain opened scientific thought will take over the
leadership of the world and the cutting edge of human advancement. I
don't suppose that the creationists really plan the decline of the
United States, but their loudly expressed patriotism is as
simpleminded as their "science." If they succeed, they will, in their
folly, achieve the opposite of what they say they wish."
[Isaac Asimov, 'The "Threat" of Creationism',
essay in "Science and Creationism," 1984
http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/azimov_creationism.html]
%
"My aim is to argue that the universe can come into existence without
intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a
Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations."
[Peter William Atkins, preface to _The Creation_]
%
"Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and
environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful
reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of
understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as
sentimental wishful thinking. Would not that same uncluttered mind also
see the attempts to reconcile science and religion by disparaging the
reduction of the complex to the simple as attempts guided by
muddle-headed sentiment and intellectually dishonest emotion?"
[P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science" essay in "Nature's
Imagination", John Cornwell, ed.; 1995 Oxford University Press, p.123]
%
"Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to
dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to
comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny. Through fear of
being shown to be vacuous, religion denies the awesome power of human
comprehension. It seeks to thwart, by encouraging awe in things unseen,
the disclosure of the emptiness of faith. Religion, in contrast to
science, deploys the repugnant view that the world is too big for our
understanding. Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great
questions of being to rational discussion, to discussion with the
prospect of resolution and elucidation. Science, above all, respects the
power of the human intellect. Science is the apotheosis of the intellect
and the consummation of the Rennaissance. Science respects more deeply
the potential of humanity than religion ever can."
[P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science" essay in "Nature's
Imagination", John Cornwell, ed.; 1995 Oxford University Press, p.125]
%
"It's a vacuous answer . . . To say that 'God made the world' is
simply a more or less sophisticated way of saying that we don't
understand how the universe originated. A god, in so far as it
is anything, is an admission of ignorance."
[Peter Atkins, British Association
for the Advancement of Science]
%
"I enjoy a little christian-bashing, now and then."
[Atlanta Freethought Society member survey]
%
"People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are
not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves
and taking responsibility for what they know."
[Brook Atkinson, "Once Around the Sun"]
%
"Atheists!? I bet you're feeling a right bunch of charlies.....
And Christians!? Over here please. Yes, you see, I'm afraid
that the jews were right after all."
[Rowan Atkinson as The Devil (or 'Toby')
welcoming new arrivals to Hell]
%
"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make
empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made
a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the
bonds of Hell."
[Saint Augustine]
%
"Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and
the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and
even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with
certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful
for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things,
claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all
that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as
ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn."
[St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim"
(The Literal Meaning of Genesis)]
%
"I feel that nothing so casts down the manly mind from
it's height as the fondling of women and those bodily
contacts which belong to the married state."
[St. Augustine, De Trinitate 7.7]
%
"All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons;
chiefly do they torment freshly-baptized Christians,
yea, even the guiltless new-born infants."
[Saint Augustine (354-430)]
%
"It is indeed better (as no one ever could deny) that men should be led to
worship God by teaching, than that they should be driven to it by fear of
punishment or pain; but it does not follow that because the former course
produces the better men, therefore those who do not yield to it should be
neglected. For many have found advantage (as we have proved, and are daily
proving by actual experiment), in being first compelled by fear or pain, so
that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching, or might follow
out in act what they had already learned in word."
[St. Augustine, Treatise on the
Correction of the Donatists (417), p.214]
%
"Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations."
[St. Augustine (354-430), "Soliloquies"]
%
"Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way.
They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause
of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men."
[St. Augustine]
%
"This then is not God, if thou has comprehended it;
but if this be God, thou hast not comprehended it."
[St. Augustine, "Sermo LII"]
%
"It is impossible that there should be inhabitants on the
opposite side of the Earth, since no such race is recorded
by Scripture among the descendants of Adam."
[St. Augustine, from "The Dark Side of Christian
History" by Linda Ellerbe, 1995, Morningstar Books]
%
"Any woman who does not give birth to as many
children as she is capable is guilty of murder."
[St. Augustine]
%
"If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in
thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth,
which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in
self-delusion and ignorance which does harm."
[Marcus Aurelius]
%
"God loves all his children, by gum.
That don't mean he won't incinerate some.
Can't you feel those hot flames licking you..."
[Austin Lounge Lizards, "Jesus Loves Me"]
%
"A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an after-life would
also be a proof of the existence of a deity. This is far from being the case.
If - as I hold -there is no good reason to believe that a god either created
or presides over this world, there is equally no good reason to believe that
a god created or presides over the next world, on the unlikely supposition
that such a thing exists."
[Sir A.J. Ayer, in the Sunday Telegraph, Aug. 28, 1988, pg. 5]
%
"The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from
the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that
there is such a thing as religious knowledge...Unless he can formulate
his "knowldege" in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we
may be sure that he is deceiving himself."
[A.J. Ayer, "Language, Truth and Logic"]
%
"Religious Cult: The church down the street from yours."
[_B.C._ cartoon, 30 April 1994]
%
"The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim
is an atheist who deserves to be punished."
[Muslim religious edict, 1993
Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz
Supreme religious authority, Saudi Arabia]
%
"For they heard that command of our Creator, if they truly listened to
His instructions to be responsible stewards, then their entire framework
of human rationalizations for tearing apart Act comes to naught"
[U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, using
religious arguments to defend the 1973 Endangered Species
Act from conservatives who wish to limit or abolish it]
%
"The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and
not when they miss and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other."
[Sir Francis Bacon]
%
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to
laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral
virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all
these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men...the
master of superstition is the people; and arguments are fitted to
practice, in a reverse order."
[Sir Francis Bacon "Of Superstition"]
%
"A bad man is worse when he pretends to be a saint."
[Francis Bacon]
%
"The trinitarian believes a virgin to be
the mother of a son who is her maker."
[Sir Francis Bacon, quoted in "2000 Years of
Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to
Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
%
"People prefer to believe what they prefer to be true."
[Francis Bacon]
%
"Hey Brother Christian with your high and mighty errand
Your actions speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying(...)
Hey Moral Soldier you've got righteous proclamations
And precious tomes to fuel your pulpy conflagrations"
[Bad Religion, "I want to conquer the world"]
%
"I don't know what stopped Jesus Christ
from turning every hungry stone into bread,
And I don't remember hearing how Moses reacted
when the innocent first born sons lay dead,
Well I guess God was a bit more demonstrative
back when he flamboyantly parted the sea,
Now everybody's praying, Don't prey on me."
[Bad Religion, "Don't Pray on Me",
on the Recipe for Hate album]
%
"And I want to conquer the world,
Give all the idiots a brand new religion..."
[Bad Religion]
%
"Life ever-after is what they're in business for
See them brandish the key to their kingdom's door
It's persuasive upon a part of you and me
But not overwhelming as they wish it to be
If no one believed in faery tales
There's nothing they could do but fail"
[Bad Religion, "Operation Rescue"]
%
"No one really knows why we die
No one gets a break, so we try
Ignoring mortality, we worship mediocrity
And wait to see what happens up on high"
[Bad Religion, "In so Many Ways"]
%
"Speak of Truth with a mighty voice
But politics are your real choice
Hire men to change the Law
Protect and serve with one small flaw
The Voice of God is government!"
[Bad Religion]
%
"So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will
always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them
it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong."
[Walter Bagehot, Literary Studies]
%
"When someone comes and proselytizes for another god or another final authority
(and by the way, that god may be man)--when someone tries to undermine the
commitment to Jehovah which is fundamental to the civil order of a godly
state--then that person needs to be restrained by the magistrate. However,
this does not mean that individuals should be punished for holding heretical
views, the views that Baptists think are heretical or Lutherans think are
heretical and so forth. It simply means that those who will not acknowledge
Jehovah as the ultimate authority behind the civil law code which the
magistrate is enforcing would be punished and repressed. You would, therefore,
be open, I believe, to hold Muslim views or Hindu views in the privacy of your
own home, provided it was not a Christian home that you've now come into to
subvert and draw away from Jehovah. You would be able to hold these views as a
private conviction. But you would not be allowed to proselytize and undermine
the order of the state. Before people who are non-theonomists get too terribly
upset about this view, I would at least ask them to reflect on this fact:
every civil order protects its foundations."
[Greg Bahnsen, Christian Reconstructionist, in "An Interview
with Greg L. Bahnsen," Calvinism Today, Jan. 1994, p. 23]
%
"On the other hand, in a theonomic society the civil government would
promote virtues that it often works against today. It would reinstitute
laws protecting the observance of the Sabbath."
[Greg Bahnsen, God and Politics, ed. by Gary Scott Smith,
(New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1989), p. 263]
%
"For Christianity, the world must be regarded as the "creation" of a
kind of Superman, a person possessing all the human excellences to an
infinite degree and none of the human weaknesses, Who has made man in His
image, a feeble, mortal, foolish copy of Himself. In creating the universe,
God acts as a sort of playwright-cum-legislator-cum-judge-cum-executioner."
[Kurt E. M. Baier, "The Meaning of Life"]
%
"...Jesus was almost certainly not 'of Nazareth'. An overwhelming
body of evidence indicates that Nazareth did not exist in biblical
times. The town is unlikely to have appeared before the third century."
[Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, _The Messianic Legacy_]
%
"Why is it that Christianity more than any other of the
world's religions has succumbed to the racist disease?"
[John Austin Baker, the former Bishop of Salisbury UK,
Theology and Racism, quoted by Edward Patey, Dean of
Liverpool Cathedral in "Questions for Today", 1986, p81]
%
"It's not listed in the Bible, but my spiritual gift, my specific
calling from God, is to be a television talk-show host."
[James Bakker]
%
"I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim."
[Tammy Fae Bakker]
%
"...and now we're down to our last $37,000."
"But just last week you said you were down to your last $50,000,
what happened to $13,000 since then?"
"Uh...um...I don't know."
[Tammy Fae Bakker]
%
"You can educate yourself right out of a relationship with God."
[Tammy Faye Bakker (1942-), U.S. television evangelist,
former co-host of PTL TV ministry and wife of Jim Bakker
who was imprisoned for defrauding his followers.
From "Observer" (London), 28 Feb. 1988]
%
"There's times when I just have to quit thinking... and
the only way I can quit thinking is by shopping."
[Tammy Faye Bakker, in "And I Quote,"
by Ashton Applewhite, 1992]
%
"I take Him shopping with me. I say, "OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain."
[Tammy Faye Bakker, from "Food for Thought,"
internet collection by Jack Tourette]
%
"You don't have to be dowdy to be a Christian."
[Tammy Faye Bakker, "Newsweek," 8 Jun. 1987]
%
"I always say shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist."
[Tammy Faye Bakker, in "And I Quote,"
by Ashton Applewhite, 1992]
%
"A Boss in Heavan is the best excuse for a boss on earth,
therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished."
[Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876) Russian
anarchist, atheist author, and founder of Nihilism,
from "God and the State", 1874]
%
"The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice;
it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily
ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice. He
who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about
the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity."
[Mikhail Bakunin, from "Federalism,
Socialism, and Anti-Theologism"]
%
"All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs
and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men
who have not yet reached the full development and complete
personality of their intellectual powers."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, "God and the State" (Dieu et l'etat)
1874, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
%
"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and
emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and
obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and
humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge."
[Bakunin, _God and the State_ (1874)]
%
"A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute
condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I
reverse the phrase of Voltaire and say, 'if God really
existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.'"
[Mikhail Bakunin, "God and the State", 1874]
%
"If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and
must be free; then, God does not exist."
I defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle;
now, therefore, let all choose."
[Mikhail Bakunin, "God and the State", 1874]
%
"They [religious idealists] say in a single breath: "God and the liberty
of man," "God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity
of men" -- regardless of the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God
exists, all these things are condemned to nonexistence. For, if God is,
he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master, and, if such a
master exists, man is a slave. Now, if he is a slave, neither justice,
nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity are possible for him. In
vain, flying in the face of good sense and all the teachings of history,
do they represent their God as animated by the tenderest love of human
liberty. A master, whoever he may be and however liberal he may desire
to show himself, remains none the less always a master."
[Mikhail Bakunin, "God and the State", 1874]
%
"With the name of God they imagine that they can establish fraternity among
men, and on the contrary, they create pride, contempt; they sow discord,
hatred, war; they establish slavery. For with God came the different
degrees of divine inspiration; humanity is divided into men highly inspired,
less inspired, uninspired. All are equally insignificant before God, it is
true; but compared with each other, some are greater than others; not only
in fact- which would be of no consequence, because inequality in fact is
lost in the collectivity when it cannot cling to some legal fiction or
institution- but by the divine right of inspiration, which immediately
establishes a fixed, constant, petrifying inequality. The highly inspired
must be listened to and obeyed by the less inspired, and the less inspired
by the uninspired. Thus we have the principle of authority well established,
and with it the two fundamental institutions of slavery: Church and State."
[Mikhail Bakunin, "Church and State", 1872, p. 53]
%
"For ten centuries Christianity, armed with the omnipotence of the Church
and State and opposed by no competition, was able to deprave, debase, and
falsify the mind of Europe. It had no competitors, because outside the
Church there was neither thinkers nor educated persons. It along taught,
it alone spoke and wrote, it alone taught."
[Mikhail Bakunin, "Church and State", 1872, p. 78]
%
"The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology,
of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven,
we will be slaves on earth."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, "God and the State," from
James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
%
"Christianity is the complete negation of common sense and sound reason."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, God and the State, from
James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
%
"All temporal or human authority proceeds directly from spiritual authority.
But authority is the negation of liberty. God, or rather the fiction of God,
is thus the sanction and the intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery
on earth, and the liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will
have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master."
[Mikhail A. Bakunin, Oeuvres, Vol. I, p. 283]
%
"Replacing the cult of God by respect and love of humanity, we
proclaim human reason as the only criterion of truth; human
conscience as the basis of justice; individual and collective
freedom as the only source of order in society."
[Bakunin, "Revolutionary Catechism" in _Bakunin on Anarchy_]
%
"...the Bible as we have it contains elements that are scientifically
incorrect or even morally repugnant. No amount of "explaining away"
can convince us that such passages are the product of Divine Wisdom."
[Bernard J. Bamberger, _The Story of Judaism_]
%
"Love your drag, honey, but did you know your purse is on fire?"
[Tallulah Bankhead, to the censer preceding
the bishop up the aisle at Catholic service]
%
"Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present."
[Iain M Banks]
%
"The very concept of sin comes from the bible. Christianity offers to
solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person
who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"How happy can you be when you think every action and
thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost?"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a
bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say
"God is love," they will claim that *you* are taking things out of context!"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never
again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and
suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity.
Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal
torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules.
Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love
that iscontingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is
respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a
healthy, unafraid human being."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say
anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is
valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe,
deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently
evil--you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential
to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind.
Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling--absolutely essential
to mental health and happiness."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"It's not easy to change world views. Faith has its own momentum and belief
is comfortable. To restructure reality is traumatic and scary. That is why
many intelligent people continue to believe: unbelief is an unknown."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"For my money, I'll bet on reason and humanistic kindness. Even if I am wrong
I will have enjoyed my life, the existence of which is under little dispute."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed
I am that I ever believed Christian notions."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"Not thinking critically, I assumed that the "successful" prayers
were proof that God answers prayer while the failures were proof
that there was something wrong with me."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance
and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"Without "The Law of Moses" would we all be wandering around like little gods,
stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended?"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday,
singing, "yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I
believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down.
Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it."
[ex-preacher Dan Barker]
%
"Just say NO to religion."
[Dan Barker]
%
"You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time,
But I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime."
[Dan Barker]
%
"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches,
demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people
walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive
stories, and you say that _we_ are the ones that need help?"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith"]
%
"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the
only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then
you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits."
[Dan Barker Former evangelist, author, critic]
%
"I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God.
That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief."
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist"]
%
"If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?"
[Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist"]
%
"We were blood brothers, pals forever. He was my very best friend.
Nobody else could see him. I now know he was just pretend."
[Dan Barker]
%
"I threw out all the bath water, and there was no baby there."
[Dan Barker, referring to the Bible in a debate, 1989]
%
"God is the anthropomorphized Aesop character who represents the
culmination of all the guilt (i.e. vulnerability) we feel whenever
our own megalomaniacal self-support structure (sense of internal reality
control) fails to distract us from the dread of our imminent demise."
[Br0d Barkett]
%
"If there were a god, there would be no need for religion.
If there were not a god, there would be no need for religion."
[Ron Barrier, Rbargodnow@aol.com]
%
"There is no such thing as a god. If such a creature existed,
belief would be rendered unnecessary, and the entire system
of organized religion would collapse."
[Ron Barrier, Rbargodnow@aol.com]
%
"Atheism - Your Gain, No Pain!"
[Ron Barrier]
%
"God is a placebo for your own mortality."
[Robert Barron]
%
"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka"
and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
[Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"]
%
"In fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation
Man came up with for *anything* until about 1926 was stupid."
[Dave Barry]
%
"Pretty rowdy behavior for Jesus. He'd get a buzz off
the beer and go squealing out of the parking lot."
[Bartender in Waco, TX]
%
"If you have seen me cross myself, it was to Science, Art and Nature."
[Bela Bartok]
%
"There should be absolutely no 'Separation of Church and State' in America."
[David Barton, president of Wallbuilders and a close ally of
the Christian Coalition, 1994 Anti-Defamation League Report]
%
"After all, any religion that can get numerous Christians to ignore a simple
and direct command from jesus in the name of "context" obviously is going
to have a hard time with teaching better morality to everybody else.
Maybe this explains the widespread explosion of religion in America and
the widespread rise in hatefulness, racism, right winged savagery, and
widespread lack of honesty."
[William Barwell, wbarwell@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM]
%
"If a man achieves or suffers change in premises which are deeply
embedded in his mind, he will surely find that the results of that
change will ramify throughout his whole universe."
[Gegory Bateson]
%
"We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There's a lot of talk
in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody's values will
prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe."
[Gary Bauer, religious-right Family Research Council]
%
"Do you want 'Transvestite Coming Out Week?' 'Sado-masochist Coming
Out Week?' People can do all sorts of things in the privacy of their
bedrooms, and they will bear the consequences of what they do. But I
don't understand this insistence in putting it in our face."
[Gary Bauer, Pres., Family Research Council and 2000 US
Presidential candiate, from USA Today Oct. 15, 1999]
%
"Cockroach: An ugly, greasy, universally reviled, six-legged freeloader
with a fondness for procreation and leftovers. One of nature's
all-time success stories, suggesting that God must love an obscene joke."
[adapted from Rick Bayan's The Cynic's Dictionary Hearst Books, N.Y., 1992]
%
"All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in
point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have
it in his power to destroy them."
[Simone de Beauvoir, "The Second Sex", 1949]
%
"Man enjoys the great advantage of having a god endorse the code he writes;
and since man exercises a sovereign authority over women it is especially
fortunate that this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being.
For the Jews, Mohammedans and Christians among others, man is master by
divine right; the fear of God will therefore repress any impulse towards
revolt in the downtrodden female."
[Simone de Beauvoir, "The Second Sex", 1949]
%
"I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe."
[Simone de Beauvoir, from James A.
Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief]
%
"Hey Butt-Head check this book out! There's a talking snake,
a naked chick, then some guy puts a leaf on his SCHLONG!!"
[Beavis and Butt-Head Do America]
%
"Christ came, and Christianity arose...But originating in Judaism, which
knew woman only as a being bereft of all rights, and biased by the Biblical
conception which saw in her the source of all evil, Christianity preached
contempt for women."
[August Bebel, "Woman and Socialism", 1893]
%
"We aim in the domain of politics at republicanism; in the
domain of economics at socialism; in the domain of what
is today called religion, at atheism."
[August Bebel, Summary of Views]
%
"Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under
a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the
kind of life he led there before joining the family circle."
[Samuel Beckett]
%
"There was never such a gigantic lie told as the fable of the Garden of Eden."
[Henry Ward Beecher, early American preacher, from
"What Great Men Think Of Religion" by Ira Cardiff]
%
"Applaud, friends, the comedy is over."
[Beethoven's sarcastic remarks after a priest's last rites as he
lay dying in 1827; the priest had been summoned by religious
friends. Fellow composer Joseph Haydn considered Beethoven an
atheist. As quoted in "2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with
the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996]
%
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all."
[Francis Bellamy, 1892]
%
"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous
as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin."
[Cardinal Bellarmino 1615, during the trial of Galileo]
%
"To affirm that the Sun ... is at the centre of the universe and only rotates
on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and
one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians
but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures"
[Cardinal Bellarmino, 17th Century Church Master Collegio Romano,
who imprisoned and tortured Galileo for his astronomical works]
%
"We are told by the church that we have accomplished nothing... Is it a
small thing to make men truly free, to destroy the dogmas of ignorance,
prejudice and power, the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive from
the beautiful face of earth the fiend of fear?"
[D.M. Bennett, _Champions of the Church_]
%
"Faith - the ability to believe the ridiculous for the sublime."
[Rich Bennett]
%
"No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to
establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion."
[Jeremy Bentham, Constitutional Code from George
Seldes, The Great Quotations 1967, p. 813]
%
"Miracles happen to those who believe in them. Otherwise
why does not the Virgin Mary appear to Lamaists, Mohammedans,
or Hindus who have never heard of her."
[Bernard Berenson (1865-1959),
New York Times Book Review]
%
"Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also
the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable."
[Henri Bergson, "Two Sources
of Morality and Religion," 1935]
%
"For what is it but an exquisite and priceless chance of salvation
due to God alone, that the omnipotent should deign to summon to
His service, as though they were innocent, murderers, ravishers,
adulterers, perjurers, and those guilty of every crime?"
[St. Bernard, appeal for recruits for the Second Crusade,
quoted by Brooks Adams, _The Law of Civilization and
Decay_ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1943), p. 144]
%
"The Christian glories in the death of a pagan,
because thereby Christ himself is glorified."
[Saint Bernard of Clairvaux]
%
"Culture is powerfully conservative. It enforces obedience to authority,
the authority of parents, of history, of custom, of superstition."
[Richard Bernstein, "Dictatorship of Virtue"]
%
"The proper place for the study of religious beliefs is in a church or temple,
at home, or in a course on comparative religions, but not in a biology
class. There is no place in our world for an ideology that seeks to close
minds, force obedience, and return the world to a paradise that never was.
Students should learn that the universe can be confronted and understood,
that ideas and authority should be questioned, that an open mind is a good
thing. Education does not exist to confirm people's superstitions, and
children do not learn to think when they are fed only dogma."
[Tim Berra, "Evolution and the Myth of Creationism"]
%
"Fundamentalists long for the return of a more moral America, an America
that may never have been. All around them they see what they perceive as
declining morality and spirituality. They reason that if humans share
ancestry with the other animals, we have no reason to behave as anything
other than animals. This view neglects the fact that humans are the only
known animals with the ability to contemplate the consequences of their own
actions. It also fails to recognize that there is a great deal of good in
the world, the nightly news notwithstanding. Crime existed long before the
theory of evolution, even before the writing of the Bible, and biologists
do not like crime any more than the creationists do. Evolutionary theory is
not a license to run amok, and neither is a belief in the literal
interpretation of the Bible a guarantor of moral behavior."
[Tim Berra, "Evolution and the Myth of Creationism"]
%
"About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had
earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican
hill ... Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis
(the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He
was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was
reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday
and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection."
[Gerald L. Berry, "Religions of the World"]
%
"Modern societies march towards morality in
proportion as they leave religion behind."
[Paul Bert]
%
"[N]o philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a
message to the world as this good news of Atheism."
[Annie Besant, "The Gospel of Atheism"]
%
"I do not believe in God. My mind finds no grounds on which to build up a
reasonable faith. My heart revolts against the spectre of an Almighty
Indifference to the pain of sentient beings. My conscience rebels against
the injustice, the cruelty, the inequality, which surround me on every
side. But I believe in Man. In man's redeeming power; in man's remoulding
energy; in man's approaching triumph, through knowledge, love and work."
[Annie Besant (1847-1933)]
%
"Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not palpably
self-contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God been described
so that a concept of Him was made possible to human thought."
[Annie Besant]
%
"I think it was Whitehead who said that religion is whatever a
person does when alone. I'd say that religion is whatever a
person does with their life. In either case, the national
religion of America is television and jacking off."
[Carl Bettis]
%
"While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession,
conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge,
we must ask how one differentiates "real transcendence" from neuropathies
that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense
of cosmic unity. When accounts of sudden religious conversions in TLEs
(temporal-lobe epileptics) are laid alongside the epiphanous revelations of
the religious tradition, the parallels are striking. The same is true of
the recent spate of alleged UFO abductees. Parsimony alone argues against
invoking spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will
suffice."
[Barry L. Beyerstein, "Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual
Possession", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255]
%
"As a man can drink water from any side of a full tank, so the skilled
theologian can wrest from any scripture that which will serve his purpose."
[Bhagavad Gita [The Lord's Song] (250 B.C.-A.D. 250)]
%
"If you love god, burn a church"
[Jello Biafra]
%
"...balance the budget? Tax religion."
[Jello Biafra]
%
"Can God fill teeth?"
[Jello Biafra]
%
"Christianity is like tying a rubber hose around
your common sense and shooting up with God."
[Jello Biafra]
%
"See god? That is the easiest thing in the world. He always
appears to me in the bottom of the tenth glass of beer... and
sometimes as a beautiful, young, female nude."
[theologian Franz Bibfeldt on the reality of visions]
%
"It is of course always best to be led by god, and have him
personally whisper into your ear. Only, when it is the devil
talking he will tell you he is god, for the devil is a crafty
liar. So you never know who is talking to you."
[German-born Theologian Franz Bibfeldt
in his magnum opus "Vielleicht"]
%
"Any idiot can believe in Jesus H. Christ. To truly understand all
that confusion in the gospels takes a real contortionist scholar."
[Franz Bibfeldt, German theologian]
%
"What, me worry about the historical Jesus? The gospel writers made up their
story; the church fathers invented the virgin birth on the winter solstice;
the pope thought up the immaculate conception; so I can imagine any damn
thing I please about Jesus, or the Spook, or about the big guy himself."
[Theologian Franz Bibfeldt, on how to write religious history]
%
"Christianity:
An invisible and all-knowing friend of mine made our male ancestor out of
dirt, and made our female ancestor out of his rib, but our ancestors were
tempted by a snake which was actually an enemy of my invisible friend and
they ate a forbidden apple, so now all of us go to burn forever after we
die unless we believe that my friend's son's blood is on us and in us and
that this son died and rose zombie-like from the dead and floated up to
heaven and sent his ghost to live inside of us. He is coming soon!"
[Biblical Errancy list]
%
Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of
a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
"Religions are conclusions for which the
facts of nature supply no major premises."
[Ambrose Bierce, "Collected Works" (1912)]
%
Evangelist, n.,
A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as
assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbours.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
Scriptures: The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished
from the false and profane writings on which all other
faiths are based.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
Religion, n: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to
Ignorance the Nature of the Unknowable.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
Christian, n.:
One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired
book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who
follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent
with a life of sin.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks
without knowledge, of things without parallel.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
Infidel: In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian
religion; in Constantinople, one who does.
[Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American author]
%
"Ocean: A body of water occupying 2/3 of a world made
for man -- who has no gills."
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while
you expound on yours.
[Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) American author]
%
Clergyman, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual
affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to
meditate upon the sin of idleness.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary]
%
Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
Irreligion. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
"The pig is taught by sermons and epistles,
To think the god of swine has snout and bristles."
[Ambrose Bierce, "The Devils Dictionary"]
%
"Immortality, A toy which people cry for,
And on their knees apply for,
Dispute, contend and lie for,
And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for."
[Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)]
%
"Funeral: a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by
enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an
expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears."
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
"Mammon: the god of the world's leading religion."
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
"Prophecy: the art and practice of selling one's
credibility for future delivery."
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
"Revelation: a famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed
all that he knew. The revealing is done by the
commentators, who know nothing."
[Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911]
%
"Take not God's name in vain -- select
A time when it will have effect."
[Ambrose Bierce, "The
Devil's Dictionary"]
%
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
[First Amendment, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution]
%
"The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on
behalf of some superpersonal force: the Race, the Party, History, the
proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence
he may safely do anything in their service.
[Lloyd Billingsley. "Religion's Rebel
Son: Fanaticism in Our Time"]
%
"Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against
the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice."
[Georges Bizet, letter to Edmond Galabert, 1866]
%
"None of the people who claim to have found God have given us any reason
to accept that they have, indeed, found anything but their own delusions."
[Kelsey Bjarnason]
%
"One would no more join Christianity to show love and acceptance
than one would become a Nazi to show racial tolerance."
[Kelsey Bjarnason]
%
"Never before have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded
perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church?"
[Black Adder II]
%
Witchsmeller: "You are a witch."
Edmund: "You are a quack."
Witchsmeller: "A what?"
Edmund: "Quack, QUACK".
Witchsmeller: [turning to crowd] "BEHOLD how the evil spirit
of the duck speaks through him. He is indeed a witch"
Crowd: "Burn him, burn him!"
[Black Adder, starring Rowan Atkinson as Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh,
accused of being a witch by the Witchsmeller Pursuivant]
%
"Babble about 'The wages of sin' serves to cover up 'the sin of wages'. We
want rights, not rites -- sex, not sects. Only Eros and Eris belong in our
pantheon. Surely the Nazarene necrophile has had his revenge by now.
Remember, pain is just God's way of hurting you."
[Bob Black, "The Abolition of Work"]
%
"The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at
least this: neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church.
Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer
one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go
to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a
belief or disbelief in any religion."
[U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Majority opinion
Everson v. Board of Education 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]
%
"No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious
beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or nonattendance."
[U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, Majority opinion
Everson v. Board of Education 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]
%
"No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any
religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called,
or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion."
[Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion
in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]
%
"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly,
participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups
and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against
establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of
separation between church and state.'"
[Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion
in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]
%
"The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and
state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We
could not approve the slightest breach."
[Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice,
majority opinion in Everson v. Board of
Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947),last words]
%
"Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of
government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."
[Justice Black, US Supreme Court Justice, on the 1st Amendment]
%
"[The First Amendment] requires the state to be a neutral in
its relations with groups of believers and non-believers."
[Justice Black, lead opinion, Everson v.
Board of Education, 330 US 1 (1947)]
%
"The manifest object of the men who framed the institutions of this country,
was to have a _State without religion_, and a _Church without politics_ --
that is to say, they meant that one should never be used as an engine for
any purpose of the other, and that no man's rights in one should be tested
by his opinions about the other. As the Church takes no note of men's
political differences, so the State looks with equal eye on all the modes
of religious faith. ... Our fathers seem to have been perfectly sincere in
their belief that the members of the Church would be more patriotic, and the
citizens of the State more religious, by keeping their respective functions
entirely separate."
[Chief Justice of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Jeremiah S. Black, from "Essays and Speeches," 1885, p. 53]
%
"Well I don't want no preacher telling me about the god in the sky
No I don't want no one to tell me where I'm gonna go when I die
I wanna live my life with no people telling me what to do
I just believe in myself, 'cause no one else is true"
[O. Osbourne/T. Iommi/W. Ward/T. Butler, From "Under the Sun/
Every Day Comes and Goes" Black Sabbath. _Sabbath Vol 4_]
%
"It's hard for me to believe that in the year 2000 I am walking
into court to defend my daughter against charges of witchcraft."
[Tim Blackbear, in Tulsa World 10/28/2000, whose
daughter was expelled from Oklahoma public school
and forbidden to wear Wiccan symbols amid charges
that she had cast "spells" on teachers]
%
"The Bible doesn't forbid suicide. It's Catholic directive,
intended to slow down their loss of martyrs."
[Ellen Blackstone]
%
"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."
[Edmund Blake (1729-1797)]
%
"Whenever I think of how religion started, I picture some frustrated
old man making out a list of all the ways he could gain power, until
he finally came up with the great solution of constant fear and guilt,
then he leaped up and started planning a new wardrobe."
[Steve Blake]
%
"The ancient poets animated all objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them
by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers,
mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous
senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each
city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed,
which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize
or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood;
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things.
Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast."
[William Blake, from "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"]
%
"As the caterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs
on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys."
[William Blake, from "Proverbs of Hell"]
%
THE GARDEN OF LOVE
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore;
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joy and desires.
[William Blake, from "Songs of Experience"]
%
A LITTLE BOY LOST
"Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know:
"And Father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door."
The Priest sat by and heard the child,
In trembling zeal he seiz'd his hair:
He led him by his little coat,
And all admir'd the priestly care.
And standing on the altar high,
"Lo! what a fiend is here!" said he,
"One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy Mystery."
The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents were in vain;
They strip'd him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain;
And burn'd him in a holy place,
Where many had been burn'd before:
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such things done on Albion's shore? / england's
[William Blake, from "Songs of Experience"]
%
"Prisons are built with stones of Law,
Brothels with bricks of Religion."
[William Blake, "The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell"]
%
"Religions are not revealed: they are evolved. If a religion were revealed
by God, that religion would be perfect in whole and in part, and would be as
perfect at the first moment of its revelation as after ten thousand years of
practice. There has never been a religion which fulfills those conditions."
[Robert Blatchford, "God and My Neighbor," 1903]
%
"The Christians were the first to make the existence of Satan a dogma
of the church. What is the use in a Pope if there is no Devil?"
[Elena Blavatsky]
%
"There has never been a religion in the annals of the
world with such a bloody record as Christianity."
[Elena Blavatsky]
%
"Religion is like chemotherapy, it may solve one
problem, but it can cause a million more."
[John Bledsoe]
%
"Anti-intellectualism among millenarians and Bible Literalists is a
recurrent phenomenon, but no other religious movement in America ever
has been as programatically set against its intellect as are Jehovah's
Witnesses. The Fundamentalist majority wing of the Southern Baptist
Convention are devotees of pure reason compared to Jehovah's Witnesses."
[Harold Bloom, The American Religion, pg. 162]
%
"Sure, there's still war in the Balkans, but the Supreme Being
of the universe seems to have become shallow and spends all his
time intervening in sporting events."
[John Bloom (aka Joe Bob Briggs),
comment after the Super Bowl]
%
"Though there are a number of rather savage apocalyptic scenarios current
among American Fundamentalists, I am aware of none quite so inhumane as the
Jehovah's Witnesses' accounts of the End of our Time. There is something
peculiarly childish in these Watchtower yearnings: they remind me of why very
small children cannot be left alone with wounded and suffering household pets."
[Harold Bloom, The American Religion, pg. 169-170]
%
"There is a God, but He drinks"
[Blore]
%
"At the first evidence of the onset of cyclic events
pertaining to seventeen for the first, then obviously
we reserve green hurt sliding down the billiard house
on the second corner after dinner. Other than that,
blue interspersed with flying bats..........
The above is an example of what bleater-logic sounds
like to me."
[bob <abilene@intercomm.com>]
%
"Gilles de Rais supposedly sodomized, mutilated, and murdered more
than 700 children. At his trial he told of his usual procedure of
sexually assaulting boys, cutting open their chests and burying his face
in their lungs, and opening their abdomens and handling their intestines.
He also confessed to necrophilia with the dismembered bodies and to
attempted intercourse with a fetus he cut out of a pregnant woman.
At his trial de Rais REPENTED, and the bishop of Nantes WAS FORCED
TO RECEIVE HIM BACK INTO THE CHURCH."
[_Bodies_Under_Siege_ p.9-10]
%
"Considering all the evil that exists in the world, the fact that all
of religion's condemnation is focused on expressing disapproval of
two people loving each other proves just how evil religion is."
[Jan deBoer]
%
"Everything is more or less organized matter. To think
so is against religion, but I think so just the same."
[Napoleon Bonapart]
%
"If I had to choose a religion, the sun as
the universal giver of life would be my god."
[Napoleon Bonaparte]
%
"How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when
one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit,
he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an
authority which declares 'God wills it thus.' Religion is
excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."
[Napoleon Bonaparte]
%
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
[Napoleon 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."
[Napoleon Bonaparte]
%
"Religion divides us, while it is our human
characteristics that bind us to each other."
[Sir Hermann Bondi, interview
in Free Inquiry magazine]
%
"...I will never understand why the advent of tourists and beer is
considered damaging to the culture [of the Bahinemo people in Papua
New Guinea] while introducing Jesus is not. These people have survived
centuries with their own beliefs, invoking their own gods."
[Richard A. Boni of Budapest, Hungary, in letter
to the editor, National Geographic, June 1994]
%
"I want to boldly affirm Uncle Tom. The black community
must stop criticizing Uncle Tom. He is a role model."
[Wellington Boone, editorial board member of New Man, the
Promise Keepers' official magazine, in Breaking Through, p. 77]
%
"All women have been sexually abused by the Bible teachings, and institutions
set on set on its fundamentalist interpretations. There would be no need
for the women's movement if the church and Bible hadn't abused them."
[Father Leo Booth]
%
"One must keep in mind that religious liberty did not come easily. It
did not simply ripen and fall to nonChristians as a gift. It had to be
fought for in the legislative halls, in constitutional conventions and
in the courts. What has been achieved, easily can be lost."
[Morton Borden, Reason magazine June, 1987, from Menendez
Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom]
%
"'Believing' cannot tip the scales in making a historical judgment about
whether something really happened. I can choose to believe that George
Washington threw
