Quotations page 3

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - - Stephen Roberts

"I think I'll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don't believe in Gosh too, you'll be darned to heck." - -

"Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer." - - anonymous

". . . once a person admits to not believing in God, this raises the question of whether or not that person believes in America . . ." - - [Chief spokesman for National office of the Boy Scouts]

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is

"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." - - Original wording to the pledge of allegiance - the way it should be!

The belief that when you die, your soul goes up

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

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."

"He's a born-again Christian. The trouble is,

he suffered brain damage during rebirth."

"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

"The only difference between God and Adolf Hitler

is that God is more proficient at genocide."

Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt.

Why be born again, when you can just grow up?

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

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.

"I think I'll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don't

believe in Gosh too, you'll be darned to heck."

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

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.

Trinity -- a three for one sale on deities

would have written a book about it by now.

Surgeon General's Warning: Quitting Religion Now

Greatly Increases the Chances of World Peace.

Jesus rose from the dead and the apostles

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

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:

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.

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

Organized religion is responsible for the brainwashing of millions of

young children too young to know the difference between reality and the

An attitude fostered by individuals in high places in

order to ensure the subservience of those in their charge.

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered.

Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

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.

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 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.

<JESUS>< >LOGIC _ < Isn't it about time you did?

If Jesus loves me, why doesn't he ever send me flowers?

Faith - the ability to believe the ridiculous for the sublime.

The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

Christ died for my sins, descended into Hell, and rose again

On the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures...

"OK, one Universe. Uh, you want fries with that?"

**********************************************************

* WARNING: To prevent the risk of insanity, do not *

* open the bible's cover. No user understandable *

* material inside. Please refer counseling to *

**********************************************************

A clash of doctrine is not a disaster - it is an opportunity.

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle.

He screwed around for 6 days and then pulled an all-nighter.

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 --

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."

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.

You are digging for the answers, Until your fingers bleed,

To satisfy the hunger, To satiate the need.

They feed you on the guilt, To keep you humble and low,

Some man and myth they made up, A thousand years ago.

Q: Jesus was renowned for his ability to heal. What was the

one affliction that proved to malignant for his cure?

God hated the world so much that he sent his only

son so that whoever does not believe in him will

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

"We preach peace, forgiveness, tolerance and love. We practice vengeance,

persecution, hatred and domination. My personal beliefs are supported and

Oh, and never forget .... my religion is truth, yours is a lie."

[Poem on 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, in which

the city's largest whiskey distillery was left unscathed]

"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."

"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."

"Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination."

"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)]

"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!"

"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?"

"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies

"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

[Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"]

"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

"A spokesman for the Lyon Group, producers of _Barney and

Friends_, denied that Barney is an instrument of Satan."

"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."

God wanted to have a holiday, so He asked St. Peter for suggestions on

"Why not go to Jupiter?" asked St. Peter.

"No, too much gravity, too much stomping around," said God.

"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

"Had I been present at the creation of the world,

I would have proposed some improvements."

"Sensible men no longer belive in miracles; they

were invented by priests to humbug the peasants."

"...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."

"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

"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like

making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank."

"Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends."

"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."

"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."

"How can I believe in God when just last week I got my

tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"

"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the

worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

"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

"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"

"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

[Tori Amos, interview in _Vox_, May, 1994, by Steve Maline]

"I got enough guilt to start my own religion"

"Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is

not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock."

"No, no, no -- you don't argue with concepts. You have to claim

Dogma, and therefore leave no room for rational thought."

"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."

"Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent and

the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on."

"There are ten church members by inheritance for every one by conviction."

"If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from,

how can we trust it to tell us where we're going?"

"A good rule for interpretation is: 'If the literal sense makes good

sense, seek no other sense lest you come up with nonsense'"

"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?"

"I distrust those people who know so well what

God wants them to do because I notice it always

"I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough

for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight

the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox

religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon."

[Susan B. Anthony, on the Women's Suffrage platform]

"What you should say to outsiders that a Christian has neither more

nor less rights in our Association than an atheist. When our platform

becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself

[Susan B. Anthony, _Susan B. Anthony: a Biography_,

by Kathleen Barry, New York University Press, 1988, p.310]

"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

_Lee v. Weisman_, 505 U.S. 577, 641 (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]

"Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible

guide will believe whatever the Church teaches."

[Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologica]

"That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more

abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell."

[Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologica]

"If forgers and malefactors are put to death by the secular

power, there is much more reason for excommunicating and

even putting to death one convicted of heresy."

[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"

"'Theocracy' has always been the synonym for a bleak and

narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained tyranny."

"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."

"A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered

with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a

world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from

its effect. "he" becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-

knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make

everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled.

An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified."

[Karen Armstrong, _A History of God_, pg. 383, speaking on Paul Tillich]

"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."

"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."

"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always

been premature, and it remains premature today."

"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."

"...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

"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,

[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]

"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]

"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

"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."

"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."

"All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons;

chiefly do they torment freshly-baptized Christians,

yea, even the guiltless new-born infants."

"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."

Correction of the Donatists (417), p.214]

"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."

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

[Sir A.J. Ayer, in the Sunday Telegraph, Aug. 28, 1988, pg. 5]

"Religious Cult: The church down the street from yours."

"The earth is flat, and anyone who disputes this claim

is an atheist who deserves to be punished."

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]

"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to

laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral

virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts

all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men."

"Hey brother christian with your high and mighty errand,

You're actions speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying..."

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."

Give all the idiots a brand new 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."

"...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_]

"It's not listed in the Bible, but my spiritual gift, my specific

calling from God, is to be a television talk-show host."

"I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim."

"...and now we're down to our last $37,000."

"But just last week you said you were down to your last $50,000,

"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 Bakunin (1814-1876) Russian anarchist,

"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."

"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."

"The divorce between church and state ought to be absolute. It ought

to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no church property

anywhere, in any state, or in any nation, should be exempt from taxation,

for if you exempt the church property of any church organization, to that

extent you impose tax upon the whole community."

[US Pres. James A. Garfield, address to Congress]

"The priest is the personification of falsehood."

"All in all, I can't say I believe in god. If, in fact, I ever find

out that he does indeed exist, I think I'll stay away from him,

because if he's responsible for half the things he gets credit for,

[Peter Gether, _A Cat Abroad_, pp. 89-90]

"The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity;

the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a

military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and

private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and

devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of

both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity."

[Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_]

"The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world

were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher

as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful."

"Of the three Popes, John the Twenty-third was the first victim; he fled and

was brought back a prisoner; the most scandalous charges were suppressed; the

Vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest."

[Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_]

"The Roman Catholic motto is ourselves alone for fellow Roman Catholics.

We must defeat all heretics (non-Roman Catholics) at the ballot box. The

holy father states that negative tactics are fatal. The demands of the

holy father (the pope) are that the public services should be 100% Roman

Catholic soon. Care must be taken that no suspicion may be raised when

Roman Catholics are secretly given more government jobs than Protestants,

"The activities engaged in by the Christian Coalition...were a vital

part of why we had a revolution at the polls on November 8, 1994."

"The notion of religious liberty is that you cannot be forced

to participate in a religious ceremony that's not of your

choosing simply because you're out-voted."

"Vaccination is a direct violation of the everlasting covenant that

God made with Noah after the flood.... Vaccination never saved

human life. It does not prevent smallpox."

[_The Golden Age_, (predecessor to _Awake!_),

"Religion is a superstition that originated in man's mental ability to solve

natural phenomena. The Church is an organized institution that has always

"However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise.

There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious

beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than

Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.

But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf

should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing

throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom.

They are trying to force government leaders into following their position

100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a

particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of

money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political

preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be

a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D." Just who do

they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the

right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as

a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who

thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll

call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every

step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all

"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."

"If there is a God, atheism must strike Him

"'God works in many ways his wonders to perform.' But He's not a

skillful mechanic. A man drives over a cliff and 'by a miracle'

he only breaks his back. It would be more divine if he were a

"i don't think evolution should be taught as a fact but as a theory that

some people believe in. i don't really know about this though, i haven't

thought about it really but there's no way it should be taught as the truth."

[Mark Goodwin, on talk.origins, 10/17/1994]

"What we have here is religious bigotry, and it represents the same insidious

type of exclusion that I experienced growing up black in Dixie."

[Morgan State prof. Stefan Goodwin, on religious convocation

ceremonies, Washington Post, August 17, 1994]

"I believe in serving God and trying to understand and obey God's will for

our lives. Cynics may wave the idea away, saying God is a myth, useful in

providing comfort to the ignorant and in keeping them obedient. I know in my

heart - beyond all arguing and beyond any doubt - that the cynics are wrong."

[Vice Pres. Al Gore's commencement address at Harvard, 1994]

"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple

and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and

because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be

more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our

entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing

honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment

to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any

general understanding of science as an enterprise?"

[Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer"]

"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science

collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke

miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into

the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to

abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all

fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion,

misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the

[Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",

The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186]

"In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that

it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that

apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not

"When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow

their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown."

"God is not all that exists. God is all that does not exist."

"I think when a person has been found guilty of rape

he should be castrated. That would stop him pretty quick."

"Nobody ever told us you had to be religious."

Troop 427, for his lack of religious belief]

"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church

and the private schools, supported entirely by private

contributions. Keep the church and state forever separated."

"I would suggest the taxation of all property

"Christs soldiers fight best on their knees"

"It is the position of some theists that their right to

freedom OF religion is abridged when they are not allowed

to violate the Rationalists right to freedom FROM religion."

[James T. Green, jgreen@trumpet.calpoly.edu]

"Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought."

"This is not an attack on the First Amendment rights of people who

believe in faith healing. We just don't believe the First Amendment

allows them to inflict their views upon their children and let them

die from such things as infections, when one quick trip to a doctor

would cure the problem. Children should not have to die to uphold

[Scott Greenwood, Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD)]

"When you arrive in a city, summon the bishops, clergy and people,

and preach a solemn sermon on faith; then select certain men of

good repute to help you in trying the heretics and suspects denounced

before your tribunal. All who on examination are found guilty or

suspected of heresy must promise to absolutely obey the commands of

the Church. If they refuse, you must prosecute them."

on their duties in the Inquisition, 1231]

"I don't care anything about the separation of church and state"

[Rev. Ron Griffin, pres. of Detroit Urban League, on Gov.

Engler's plan to use churches to deliver state services.

Oct 18, 1995, Detroit Free Press, article by Dawson Bell]

"In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like

Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm."

"When the temptation to masturbate is strong, yell "Stop!"

to those thoughts as loudly as you can in your mind. Then

recite a portion of the Bible or sing a hymn."

"I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed

because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do."

"School vouchers as proposed by Reagan and Bush do not represent free market

competition. The reason is fairly simple. The source of the money is not

the consumers. The vouchers are paid for by tax dollars. School vouchers

are an attempt to breach the separation of church and state by allowing

individuals who are not constrained by the prohibition against Congress

passing laws respecting religion to spend tax dollars for the benefit of

I have no objection to parents sending their children to the school of

their choice. The problem with public funding of schools is that it is an

inherently collectivist system. The restraints that have been placed on

what public schools must teach and what they are prohibited from teaching

protect us to a limited extend from the full magnitude of the damage that

they have the potential to do if used as a propaganda tool.

I have never granted that anyone else rightfully has the freedom to choose

how my money will be spent. The only difference between that and slavery is

that the masters do not have the authority to beat, sell, or kill me if I

choose not to work. Send your children to schools that brainwash them any

way that you wish. But do not insist on paying for it with money taken

"It is probably safe to say that since the late 1960s, nearly every

major religious group in the country has tried to get some offending

TV material altered or banned. So has every racial minority group and

almost every important national-ethnic group."

[Max Gunther, in _TV Guide_ article, February 9, 1974]

"We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't

stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected."

[Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, _Time_ April 11, 1988]

"I believe that at every level of society--familial, tribal, national and

international--the key to a happier and more succesful world is the growth

of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe

in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good

human qualities. I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives

me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the practice of compassion."

"As soon as you are willing to discard observational data because it conflicts

with religion, you are giving up any hope of ever really understanding the

universe. As soon as you pick religion as the touchstone of reality, then we

have to start discussing how one can demonstrate the correctness of one

religion over another when different *religions* disagree."

"The answer is simple: kill the heretics. History shows us that

this is the actual solution that competing religions apply -- trial

by combat or trial by ordeal. God is the final arbiter. What a sad

waste of human potential it has proven to be."

[Paul Hager (hagerp@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu)]

"Humans can find a pattern in just about anything, and we must find such

a pattern if we are to comprehend things. Mightn't people be mistaking

this order imposed by the human mind for order caused by God?"

[J J Hahn (hahn0009@gold.tc.umn.edu) on alt.atheism]

"Religion is still parasitic in the interstices of our knowledge which

have not yet been filled. Like bed-bugs in the cracks of walls and

furniture, miracles lurk in the lacunae of science. The scientist

plasters up these cracks in our knowledge; the more militant Rationalist

swats the bugs in the open. Both have their proper sphere and they

[John Haldane, "Science and Life: Essays of a Rationalist"]

"Scientific education and religious education are incompatible. The clergy

have ceased to interfere with education at the advanced state, with which

I am directly concerned, but they have still got control of that of

children. This means that the children have to learn about Adam and Noah

instead of about Evolution; about David who killed Goliath, instead of Koch

who killed cholera; about Christ's ascent into heaven instead of

Montgolfier's and Wright's. Worse than that, they are taught that it is

a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them

a prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and makes it very difficult

for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science."

"The influences that have lifted the race to a higher moral level are

education, freedom, leisure, the humanizing tendency of a better-supplied

and more interesting life. In a word, science and liberalism- the two

forces, fundamentally skeptical, that we have seen continuously at work

in human progress- have accomplished the very things for which religion

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Outline of Bunk"]

"After all, the principle objection which a thinking man has to

religion is that religion is not true -- and is not even sane."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"The fear of gods and devils is never anything but a pitiable

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"This question is put to Christians who believe that the Bible unerringly

describes God and reports the commands and the characteristics of God. If

there is a God, it is natural that we should wish to be quite correct in

our understanding of that God's nature. So, we ask: Can and does God lie?

Looking this point up in the mazes of Holy Writ, we discover confusion. In

Numbers xxiii, 19, we are told: "God is not a man, that he should lie."

This is put even mere strongly in Hebrews vi, 18, where we read: "It was

But do these citations settle the matter? Ah, no, we are upset in, our

calculations the moment we turn to 2 Thessalonians ii, 11, where we read:

"For this cause God shall send them strong delusions, that they should

believe a lie." And in I Kings xxii, 23, God is thus reported: "Now,

therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all

these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee."

Can God lie? Can the Bible lie? Anyway, there is a mistake

somewhere. The big mistake is in entertaining the idea of a God."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"When we read that some minor scientist (usually a skilled technical worker

but not a thinker in science) has "found God" somewhere, we are not excited.

We know this is only a form of words, meaning only that the scientific worker,

turning away from science, has rediscovered the stale old assumption of

theology, "There is a God." We find invariably (as we should expect) that

there is no satisfactory definition or description or identification or

location or proof of a God. "God" is merely a word, whether it is used by a

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"The fact that millions of people still believe in a hell of eternal punishment

for sinners and unbelievers is a drastic reminder of the need for persistent,

progressive education of the masses. We have as yet only begun to realize the

possibilities of progress. But science, rationalism and humanism have pointed

the way, they have taken the first great steps, and we must keep right

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Don't take our word for it. Read the Bible itself. Read the

statements of preachers. And you will understand that God is the

most desperate character, the worst villain in all fiction."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Commonly, those who have professed the strongest motives of love of a

God have demonstrated the deepest hatred toward human joy and liberty."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Theism tells men that they are the slaves of a God. Atheism

assures men that they are the investigators and users of nature."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Belief in gods and belief in ghosts is identical. God is taken

as a more respectable word than ghost, but it means no more."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Religion, throughout the greater part of its history, has been a form of

"holy" terrorism. It still aims its terrors at men, but modern realism

and the spread of popular enlightenment has progressively robbed those

terrors of their old-fashioned effectiveness. Wherever men take religion

very seriously -- wherever there is devout belief -- there is also the

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Christian theology has taught men that they should submit with

unintelligent resignation to the worst real evils of life and waste

their time in consideration of imaginary evils in "the life to come."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Priests and preachers have tricked, terrified and exploited

mankind. They have lied for glory of God." They have collected

immense financial tribute for "the glory of God." Whatever may be

said about the character of individuals among the clergy, the

character of the profession as a whole has been distinctly and

drastically anti-human. And of course the most sincere among the

clergy have been the most dangerous, for they have been willing to

go to the most extreme lengths of intolerance for "the glory of God."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Perhaps religion might be dismissed as unimportant if it were

merely theoretical. If it were merely theoretical. It is difficult,

however, if not impossible to separate theory and practice.

Religion, to be sure, is full of inconsistencies between theory and

practice; but there is and has always been sternly and largely a

disposition of religion to enforce its theory in the conduct of

life; religion has meant not simply dogmatism in abstract thinking

but intolerance in legal and social action. Religion interferes

with life and, being false, it necessarily interferes very much to

the detriment of the sound human interests of life."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"For centuries men have fought in the most unusual and devious

ways to prove the existence of a God. But evidently a God, if there

were a God, has been hiding out. He has never been discovered or

proved. One would think a God, if any, should have revealed himself

unmistakably. Isn't this non-appearance of a God (the non-

appearance of a God in the shape of a single bit of evidence for

his existence) a pretty, strong, sufficient proof of non-existence?"

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"A God of love, a God of wrath, a God of jealousy, a God of

bigotry, a God of vulgar tirades, a God of cheating and lying --

yes, the Christian God is given all of these characteristics, and

isn't it a wretched mess to be offered to men in this twentieth

century? The beginning of wisdom, the beginning of humanism, the

beginning of progress is the rejection of this absurd,

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Look at the God idea from any angle, and it is foolish, it doesn't make sense,

but extravagantly proposes more mysteries than it assumes to explain. For

instance, is it sensible that a real God would leave mankind in such confusion

and debate about his character and his laws?

There have been many alleged revelations of God. There have, indeed, been many

Gods as there have been many Bibles. And in different ages and different lands

an endless game of guessing and disputing has gone on. Men have argued blindly

about God. They still argue -- just as blindly.

And if there is a God, we must conclude that he has willfully left men in the

dark. He has not wanted men to know about him. Assuming his existence, then

it would follow that he would have perfect ability to give a complete and

universal explanation of himself, so that all men could see and know without

further uncertainty. A real God could exhibit himself clearly to all men and

have all men following his will to the last letter without a doubt or a slip.

But when we examine even cursorily the many contradictory revelations of God,

the many theories and arguments, the many and diverse principles of piety, we

perceive that all this talk about God his been merely the natural floundering

There has been no reality in the God idea which men could discover and agree

upon. The spectacle has been exactly what we should expect when men deal with

theories of something which does not exist.

Hidden Gods -- no Gods -- all we see is man's poor guesswork."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"... the Bible was a collection of books written at different times by

different men -- a strange mixture of diverse human documents -- and a

tissue of irreconcilable notions. Inspired? The Bible is not even

intelligent. It is not even good craftsmanship, but is full of

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"A sober, devout man will interpret "God's will" soberly and

devoutly. A fanatic, with bloodshot mind, will interpret "God's

will" fanatically. Men of extreme, illogical views will interpret

"God's will" in eccentric fashion. Kindly, charitable, generous men

will interpret "God's will" according to their character."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Remember that millions of Christians still base their belief in a God

upon the words of the Bible, which is a collection of the most

flabbergasting fictions ever imagined -- by men, too, who had lawless

but very poor and crude imagination. Ingersoll and numerous other

critics have shot the Christian holy book full of holes. It is worthless

and proves nothing concerning the existence of a God. The idea of a God

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Talk of God leads by a direct road to the conclusion of

atheism. The only sensible attitude is to dismiss the idea of God

-- to get it out of the way of more important ideas. The wide

dissemination of this intelligent atheistic attitude is one of the

leading features of any program of popular education which is

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"With its fears and superstitions and prejudices, religion

poisons the mind of any one who believes in it -- and even the best

man, under the influence of religion, cannot reason wholesomely.

Atheism, on the contrary, opens the mind to the clean winds of

truth and establishes a fresh-air sanity."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Nobody has ever taken notable pains to locate the legendary heaven; but

probably that is because nobody ever thought seriously of going to a heaven."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"A few weeks ago a hurricane struck the little religious community of Bethany,

Okla. A number of pious citizens of the little town were killed. Houses were

destroyed -- homes in which prayer and devotion reigned. A church was

Only a few miles away is the large, wicked city of Oklahoma City -- at least

we can certainly assume that, from the religious viewpoint, many sinners live

in Oklahoma City. Assuming also (which is a great deal riskier assumption)

that there is a God, why should he perpetrate this grim and sardonic joke?

The sinners in the big city were left untouched. The godly folk in the little

nearby village were punished by the evidences of God's wrath. How do the

religious people interpret this calamity? Often and often they explain such

calamities as flood, fire and storm by saying that God is angry at the sinful

people and is warning them or destroying them for their sins. Was the

hurricane in Bethany a sign of the love of God for his faithful worshipers?

And God missed an even better chance, if there were a God who wished to punish

rebels against his majesty and inscrutability. Just a few hundred miles north

and east of Bethany, Okla., is Girard -- the home of The American Freeman: and

The Debunker and The Joseph McCabe Magazine and the Little Blue Books -- the

center of American free thought where an enormous stream of atheistic

literature and. godless modern knowledge pours forth to enlighten the masses.

If there were a God directing hurricanes and he wanted to really "get" an

uncompromising foe, whom he has no chance of persuading in the ordinary way,

it would have been a devastating stroke for him to send his howling punitive

blasts through the town of Girard. It would be a more remarkable suggestion

of the avenging act of a God if only the Haldeman-Julius plant were destroyed

and the rest of the town left unhurt -- and, as good neighbors, we shouldn't

wish the Christian and respectable, people of Girard nor those who are

respectable and not so Christian nor those who are Christian and not exactly

respectable to suffer from our proximity and our propaganda of atheism.

Is God a joker? No -- let us whisper it -- the joke is that there is no God.

Hurricanes come upon the just and the unjust, the pious and the impious."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"To be true to the mythical conception of a God is to be false

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Credulity is not a crime for the individual -- but it is clearly a crime as

regards the race. Just look at the actual consequences of credulity. For

years men believed in the foul superstition of witchcraft and many poor

people suffered for this foolish belief. There was a general belief in angels

and demons, flying familiarly, yet skittishly through the air, and that belief

caused untold distress and pain and tragedy. The most holy Catholic church

(and, after it, the various Protestant sects) enforced the dogma that heresy

was terribly sinful and punishable by death. Imagine -- but all you need do

is to recount -- the suffering entailed by that belief.

When one surveys the causes and consequences of credulity, it is apparent

that this easy believer in the impossible, this readiness toward false and

fanatical notions, has been indeed a most serious and major crime against

humanity. The social life in any age, it may be said, is about what its extent

of credulity guarantees. In an extremely credulous age, social life will be

cruel and dark and treacherous. in a skeptical age, social life will be more

humane. We assert that the philosophy of humanity -- that the best interests

of the human race -- demand a strong statement and a repeated, enlightening

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Is God fair? The Christians say that God damns forever anyone who is skeptical

about truth of bunkistic religion as revealed unto the holy haranguers. What

this means is that a God, if any, punishes a man for using his reason.

If there is a God in existence, reasons should be available for his

existence. Assuming that such a precious thing as a man's eternal future

depends on his belief in a God, then the materials for that belief

should be overwhelming and not at all doubtful.

Yet here is a man whose reason makes it impossible for him to believe in

a God. He sees no evidence of such an entity. He finds all the arguments

weak and worthless. He doubts and he denies.

Then is a God fair in visiting upon such a skeptic the penalty for his

inevitable intellectual attitude? The intelligent man refuses to believe

fairy tales. Can a God blame him? If so, then a God is not as fair as an

ordinarily decent man. And fairness, we think, is more important than piety."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"Faith," said St. Paul, "is the evidence of things not seen." We should

elaborate this definition by adding that faith is the assertion of things for

which there is not a particle of evidence and of things which are incredible."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"]

"The church has contributed nothing to civilization. It has progressed

somewhat, and it has become a little more decent, in reflection of the

movements of civilization that have taken place outside of the church

and usually in the face of the strong opposition of the church. But the

church has always resisted the process of civilization. It has struggled

to the last ditch, by fair means and foul, to preserve as long as it

could the vestiges of ancient and medieval theology, with all the

puerile moralities and harsh customs and medieval styles of belief."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"Why should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church which he

despises should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can the

apologists for the church exemption answer it?

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"The churches beg -- and if we don't give them money, why, they

take it anyway, forcibly, by means of this unjust state tax exemption."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"The churches can well afford to pay fair taxation. But

supposing they couldn't. Would not that be a very significant

evidence that the churches were not really wanted?"

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"How can a preacher talk with a straight face about political graft?

He is, himself, profiting by one of the most notorious

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"Why should the residence of a preacher be untaxed? Useful citizens must pay

taxes on their homes. Yet the Preacher -- actually and notoriously the least

useful member of the community -- lives in a tax-free dwelling."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"Would you tax God?" asks a defender of church tax exemption. Well, if there

were a God he should be able to pay his own way and support his own business.

If not, then he should do like other business men and close up shop."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"Church tax exemption means that we all drop our money in the collection boxes,

whether we go to church or not and whether we are interested in the church or

not. It is systematic and complete robbery, from which none of us escapes."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"It is an absurd fiction that the churches are useful. They are

nothing more than propaganda centers for superstitious faiths and

doctrines. Church members have a right to believe in and propagate

their various doctrines. But they should pay every item of the

cost, of this propaganda, including fair taxation for all church property."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"There can be no perfect freedom unless the church and state are separated.

But the church and state are not separated in America so long as the state

grants a subsidy to the church in the form of tax exemption."

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"Is a church too small and too poor to pay taxes? That means

that not enough people want the church seriously enough to pay for

its upkeep. Then, why should such a church exist? Why should

atheists, agnostics and non-churchgoers be forced to maintain such

a useless, unwanted church by granting it tax exemption?"

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"Martyrs have been sincere. And so have tyrants. Wise men have

[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden,

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves

you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most

awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love."

"We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff

at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me."

"The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over

their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists

from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings."

[Garrett Hardin, in "Science and Creationism, ed. Ashley Montague]

"I have been looking for god for fifty years and I think

if he had existed I should have discovered him."

"The Puritan through Life's sweet garden goes

To pluck the thorn and cast away the rose."

"Nothing could be more anti-Biblical than letting women vote."

[Editorial, Harper's Magazine, November 1853]

"Religion; humanity's greatest folly, greatest curse."

"...Jesus was not as peaceful as commonly believed, and that his actual

teachings did not represent a fundamental break with the tradition of

Jewish military messianism. A strong pro-zealot-bandit and anti-Roman

bias probably pervaded his original ministry. The decisive break with the

Jewish messianic tradition probably came about only after the fall of

Jerusalem, when the original politico-military components in Jesus'

teachings were purged by Jewish Christians living in Rome and other

cities of the empire as an adaptive response to the Roman victory."

[Marvin Harris, anthropologist, _Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches_]

"Jesus is just a word I use to swear with"

"The barbaric religions of primitive worlds hold not a germ of scientific

fact, though they claim to explain all. Yet if one of these savages has

all the logical ground for his beliefs taken away, he doesn't stop

believing. He then calls his mistaken beliefs 'faith' because he knows

they are right. And he knows they are right because he has faith."

Deathworld, Berkeley Medallion Edition, 1976]

"Mark's declaration that Jesus came from the dispersion (nazareth), meaning

the worldwide community of Jews outside Judaea (equivalent to diaspora),

was misinterpreted by Matthew and Luke to mean that he came from a city

called Nazareth [to fulfill prophesy]. In fact the term nazarite, or

nazoraios, had nothing to do with any city of Nazareth, since no such place

existed until the fifth century CE when one was built by a Christian Emperor

to whom the nonexistence of Jesus' alleged hometown was an embarrassment.

(Although the site of Nazareth was occupied in the first century, there is

no evidence of any village named Nazareth earlier than the fifth century....)"

[William Harwood, _Mythology's Last Gods:

"Businesses may come and go, but religion will last forever, for in no

other endeavor does the consumer blame himself for product failure."

throws the dice where they cannot be seen."

"What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe

began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would

not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began.

This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary."

"My parents, though they had never formally left the ancestral Roman

Catholic church, held no religious beliefs. Though they were no longer

fiercely anti-religious (as I suspect my paternal grandfather was, along

with so many of the scientists of his generation), all positive dogma was

for them a superstition of the past. They never took me to church. And

though as part of my general education I was, soon after I had begun to

read for pleasure, given a child's Bible, it disappeared mysteriously when

By the age of fifteen, I had convinced myself that nobody could give a

reasonable explanation of what he meant by the word 'God' and that it was

therefore as meaningless to assert a belief as to assert a disbelief in God.

Though this, in a general way, has remained my position ever since, I

have always avoided unnecessarily to offend other people holding religious

belief by displaying my lack of such belief, or even stating my lack of

[From _Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue_, edited by Stephen

Kresge and Leif Wenar (University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 40-41. F.A.

Hayek is considered the foremost defender of capitalism in the 20th century]

"If judged only by the results that challenge the laws

of probabilities, then the power of prayer is nil."

"The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe

in it. Further, the lowest Rung in Hell is reserved for them that believe

in it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't."

[HBT, "The Gospel According to Fred" 3:1]

"I haven't heard anyone saying that she's blackmailing anyone. I think she

just wants to see if our freedom of religious expression is really protected

or is the court supposed to cater to the whims of the masses who want to

shop and open stores on Sunday or any other religious holiday."

"God is, as it were, the sewer into which all contradictions flow"

[G.W.F. Hegel,Lectures on the History of Philosophy]

"A disturbing fact continues to surface in sex abuse research. The first

best predictor of abuse is alcohol or drug addiction in the father. But

the second best predictor is conservative religiosity, accompanied by

parental belief in traditional male-female roles. This means that if you

want to know which children are most likely to be sexually abused by their

father, the second most significant clue is *whether or not the parents

belong to a conservative religious group with traditional role beliefs

and rigid sexual attitudes*. (Brown and Bohn, 1989; Finkelhor, 1986; Fortune,

1983; Goldstein et al, 1973; Van Leeuwen, 1990). (emphasis in original)

["Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches", by Carolyn

Holderread Heggen, Herald Press, Scotdale, PA, 1993 p. 73]

"God will forgive me; thats his business."

"What Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred."

"Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ."

"In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in

pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the

roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight

comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides."

[Heinrich Heine, Gedanken und Einfalle, Volume 10]

"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H.Sapiens is that the

Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine

adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and

becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous

notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to

found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history."

[Lazarus Long, from "Time Enough For Love" by R. Heinlein]

"A religion is sometime a source of happiness, and I would not deprive anyone

of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the

strong. The great trouble with religion - any religion - is that a

religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter

judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith

or choose to live in the bleak certainty of reason- but one cannot have both."

"History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational

basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the

unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and

spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from

[Robert Heinlein, "Notebooks of Lazarus Long"]

"One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."

[Robert Heinlein, "Notebooks of Lazarus Long"]

"Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves.

Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."

[Robert Heinlein, "Notebooks of Lazarus Long"]

"God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here

on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these

attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks,

[Robert Heinlein, "Notebooks of Lazarus Long"]

"Of all the strange "crimes" that humanity has legislated out of nothing,

"blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure"

fighting it out for second and third place."

[Robert Heinlein, "Notebooks of Lazarus Long"]

"Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily.

(Hurting yourself is not sinful--just stupid.)

"If you pray hard enough, you can make water run uphill. How

hard? Why, hard enough to make water run uphill, of course!"

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark

cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there."

[Robert A. Heinlein, "JOB: A Comedy of Justice"]

"Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a

monotheism can believe anything... just give him time to rationalize it."

[Robert A. Heinlein, "JOB: A Comedy of Justice"]

"There is an old, old story about a theologian who was asked to reconcile

the Doctrine of Divine Mercy with the doctrine of infant damnation. 'The

Almighty,' he explained, 'finds it necessary to do things in His official

and public capacity which in His private and personal capacity He deplores."

"God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends."

This may not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than

[Lazarus Long, _Time Enough for Love_ by Robert Heinlein]

"...little children who have begun to live in their mothers' womb

and have there died, or who, having just been born, have passed

away from the world without the sacrament of holy baptism...

must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire."

"What the hell are you getting so upset about? I thought that you

"I don't," she sobbed, bursting into tears, "but the God I don't

believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the

mean and stupid God you make him out to be."

"Don't tell me God works in mysterious ways. There's nothing so mysterious

about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all

about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about- a country bumpkin, a

clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much

reverance can you have for a Supreme being who finds it necessary to include

such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation?

What in the world was going through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of

His when He robbed old people of the ability to control their bowel

movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain....

Who created the dangers? Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He

gave us pain! Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or

one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of red and blue neon tubes right in

the middle of each person's forehead?....

They certainly look beautiful now, writhing in agony or stupified with

morphine, don't they? What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider

the opportunity and power He had to really do a job and then look at the

stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is

almost staggering. It's obvious He never met a payroll. Why,no self-respecting

businessman would hire a bungler like Him as even a shipping clerk!"

[Yossarian to Lt. Scheisskopf's wife, _Catch-22_, Joseph Heller]

"A man who believes that he eats his God we do not call mad;

yet, a many who says he is Jesus Christ, we call mad."

religions depend upon circumsized penises."

"Being unable to reason is not a positive character trait outside religion."

"Paris vaut une messe. [Paris is worth a mass]"

and renouncing his Protestant affiliations]

"I'm an atheist, and that's *it*. I belive there's nothing we

can know except that we should be kind to each other and do

"A blow to the head will confuse a man's thinking, a blow to the foot

has no such effect, this cannot be the result of an immaterial soul."

"The universal cosmic process was not created by any god or man;

it forever was, is, and forever will be, an Everliving Fire."

"When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is

suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed

in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them."

"Organized Religion is like Organized Crime; it preys on peoples'

weakness, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost

"We should do unto others as we would want them to do unto us. If I were

an unborn fetus I would want others to use force to protect me, therefore

using force against abortionists is *justifiable homocide*."

"Death opens her cavernous mouth before you. Thousands upon thousands of

children are consumed by her every day. You have the ability to save some

from being tossed into her gaping mouth. As hundreds are being rushed into

eternity, other questions shrink in comparison to the weighty question,

'Should we defend born and unborn children with force?'

[Rev. Paul J. Hill, abortion doctor murderer]

"Are there any heinous sins being committed today that could again fan the

flames of God's righteous anger to the scorching point? Is there any

need in today's world for men of the stamp of Phinehas? Could the bold

daring of Cozbi and Zimri in parading before Moses as he wept over sin

have any modern parallels? The righteous zeal of Phinehas did not permit

him to stay his hand long enough to even ask Moses or the church leaders

of the wisdom of his action. If any similar zeal be found among

us today, occasion to exercise it will not be lacking."

[Paul J. Hill, _Should We Defend Born And Unborn Children With

Force?_, 1993, Defensive Action, Pensacola, FL, p. 4]

"There is no question that deadly force should

"Saints fly only in the eyes of their disciples."

"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator.

By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."

"There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor,

Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and

[Message, signed Hitler, painted on walls of

concentration camps; Life, August 21, 1939]

"Woman's world is her husband, her family, her children and her home.

We do not find it right when she presses into the world of men."

[Adolph Hitler, quoted in Lucy Komisar, The New Feminism]

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious

instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation

is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be

derived from faith . . . we need believing people."

[Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during

negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933]

"I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of

unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the

Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was

formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism,

or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything

and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how

contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole,

so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it."

[Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40]

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter.

It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few

followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight

against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a

fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the

passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in his might and seized

the scourge to drive out of the temple the brood of vipers and adders. How

terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand

years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profpoundly than ever before that

it was for this that he had to shed his blood on the Cross. As a Christian I

have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a

[Adolf Hitler, speech, April 12 1922, published in "New Order"]

"And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly,

it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty

to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and

toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages

wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men

standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I

would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did

not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today

this poor people are plundered and exploited."

[Adolf Hitler, speech, April 12 1922, published in "New Order"]

"I believe today that my conduct is in accordance

"What we have to fight for...is the freedom and independence

of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill

the mission assigned to it by the Creator."

"This human world of ours would be inconceivable without

the practical existence of a religious belief."

"And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his

estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary,

He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God."

"Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another... while the

enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve."

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"

[Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941]

"Any violence which does not spring from a spiritual

base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the

stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook."

"An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some

of these eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them

"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his

own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for

his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."

[Eric Hoffer, _The True Believer_, 1951, section 9]

"Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths

are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice

if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth."

[Eric Hoffer, _The True Believer_, 1951, section 57]

"The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to

develop the strongest proselytizing impulse. It is doubtful whether

a movement which does not profess some preposterous and patently

irrational dogma can be possessed of that zealous drive which "must

either win men or destroy the world." It is also plausible that those

movements with the greatest inner contradiction between profession and

practice-that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt-are likely to be

the most fervent in imposing their faith on others."

[Eric Hoffer, _The True Believer_, 1951, section 88]

"Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger."

"Whenever religion is involved, terrorists kill more people."

[Dr. Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for

the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence

"In some sects members are told to commit violent acts

because the only way they can hasten redemption or

achieve salvation is to eliminate the nonbelievers."

[Dr. Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for

the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence

"perhaps as many as ninety percent of the Americans were unchurched in 1790"

[Richard Hofstadter, _Anti-Intellectualism in American

Life_, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974, p. 82]

"... mid-eighteenth century America had a smaller proportion of church

members than any other nation in Christendom...."in 1800 [only] one

of every fifteen Americans was a church member"

[Richard Hofstadter, _Anti-Intellectualism in American

Life_, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974, p. 89]

"Theology is but the ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system."

"When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some

phenomenon...does he, in fact, do anything more than substitute for

the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been

accustomed to listen with reverential awe?

[Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789) "Systeme de la Nature" (1770)]

"Nature tells man to consult reason, and to take it for his guide:

religion teaches him that his reason is corrupted, that it is only

a treacherous guide, given by a deceitful God to lead his creatures

astray. Nature tells man to enlighten himself, to search after

truth, to instruct himself in his duties: religion enjoins him

to examine nothing, to remain in ignorance, to fear truth."

[Paul Henry Thiry d'Holbach, "Systeme de la Nature" (1770)]

"People have suffered and become insane for centuries by the thought of eternal

punishment after death. Wouldn't it be better to depend on blind matter (...)

than by a god who puts out traps for people, invites them to sin, and allows

them to sin and commit crimes he could prevent. Only to finally get the

barbarian pleasure to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself,

without them changing their ways and without their example preventing others

[Baron d'Holbach, "Systeme de la Nature" (1770)]

"Jesus Christ never commanded toleration as a motive for His disciples,

and toleration is the antithesis of the Christian message."

"For narrowness and sectarianism, there is no equal to the Lord Jesus Christ"

"What seems so right in the interest of toleration and its

cousins-liberty, equality and fraternity-is actually one of the

"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper

chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor."

"On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirm the

worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it."

[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (U.S. Supreme

"I can't help an occasional semi-shudder as I remember that millions of

intelligent men think that I am barred from the face of God unless I

change. But how can one pretend to believe what seems to him childish

and devoid alike of historical and rational foundations?"

"The Pope put his foot on the neck of kings, but Calvin

and his cohorts crushed the whole human race under their

[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., address to the

Massachusetts Medical Society, May 30, 1860]

"Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth."

"The whole Bible was written by slave owners, and for slave owners. There

is no hint of criticism of slavery anywhere in that book. Jesus made no

objection to mistreatment of slaves. He indicated that selling of debtors

into slavery would be continued his forthcoming kingdom of heaven as well

as masters having the right to beat their slaves and put them to torture."

[Merrill Holste, "Slavery and the Bible", article in

the May 1986 issue of American Atheist Magazine]

"Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground,

& compels Theism to reason for its existence."

"The Questioning Spirit, whose curiosity has for its wholesome object the

verification of truth, is the most effectual instrument of knowledge

available to mankind. A well-directed question is like a pickaxe - it

liberates the gold from the superincumbent quartz. Whole systems of error

sometimes fall to the ground from the force of unanswerable questions.

All error has contradiction in it, which is revealed by a relevant inquiry,

when an artillery of counter assertions might not disclose it. Arguments

may be evaded, but a fair and pertinent question creates no animosity,

and must answered, since silence is a confession of error or of ignorance."

[George Jacob Holyoake, "Introduction" to

"Few intelligent Christians can still hold to the idea that the Bible is an

infallible Book, that it contains no linguistic errors, no historical

discrepancies, no antiquated scientific assumptions, not even bad ethical

standards. Historical investigation and literary criticism have taken the

magic out of the Bible and have made it a composite human book, written by

many hands in different ages. The existence of thousands of variations of

texts makes it impossible to hold the doctrine of a book verbally infallible.

Some might claim for the original copies of the Bible an infallible character,

but this view only begs the question and makes such Christian apologetics

more ridiculous in the eyes of the sincere man."

[_Christianity in America_, p. 121, Elmer Homrighausen,

former Dean of Princeton Theological Seminary]

"...it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the

existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great

systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative

hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability."

"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?"

"A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the

obvious but who understands the nonexistent"

"Heaven: The Coney Island of the Christian imagination."

"Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and

tears out any quicker than the Christmas spirit."

"The way to make money is to start your own religion."

"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to

make a million dolars, the best way would be to start his own religion."

[Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, 1949, then just a writer]

"If you hypothesize that there is a God, but that there is nothing sure

and definite you can point to as a reliable pattern of things that God

does, how does a state of affairs where a God does nothing, functions

in no way, differ from a state of affairs where there is no God? And,

if the situation is that there is a God, and this God does nothing that

humans can surely identify as God-action - in contradistinction from

other action, physical/chemical/biological/psychological/social -- then

how can any human being ever have warrant for affirming God?"

[C. Lee Hubbell, The American Rationalist, Oct '94]

"The primary tool of science is skepticism,

whose light shrivels unquestioning faith."

"No man has the right to have his own religion."

"Many good souls protest against a destructive criticism of Christianity and

demand a substitute. I do not feel any obligation to substitute a new god

for the old ones. I should gladly let them all go. I do not approve of

cancer, and yet I do not feel that I have no right to attack a quack who

promises a false cure until I have no real cure to propose. As someone

said: he who helps destroy the boll-weevil has done as constructive work

[Rupert Hughes, "Why I Quit Going to Church"]

"It is well said that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and I am

confirmed every day in my intense conviction that the church as the church is

the enemy of freedom. While protesting loudly its faith in the Truth with

a capital T, "the truth shall make us free," it fights at every step every

effort to learn the truth and publish it and be guided by it."

[Rupert Hughes. "Why I Quit Going to Church", 1924]

"John Wesley said that if you give up the witchcraft, you must

give up the Bible. He is right. The choice is easy for me."

"Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your Deity

made you in his own image, I reply that he must have been very ugly."

"There is in every village a torch - the teacher;

"No deity will save us, we must save ourselves. Promises of immortal

salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful."

[Humanist Manifesto II, Prometheus Books, 1973]

"...but I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men

are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most

extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit

of so signal a violation of the laws of nature."

["An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", David Hume, 10:2:30]

"There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a

sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education

and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves"

"The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but

even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one."

[David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748]

"In the infancy of new religions, the wise and learned commonly esteem the

matter too inconsiderable to deserve their attention or regard. And when

afterwards they would willingly detect the cheat, in order to undeceive the

deluded multitude, the season is now past, and the records and witnesses,

which might clear up the matter, have perished beyond recovery."

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous;

[David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739)]

"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the

testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more

miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."

[David Hume, "Of Miracles", from An Enquiry

"The weakness of the body and that of the mind in infancy are exactly

proportioned; their vigour in manhood, their sympathetic disorder in

sickness, their common gradual decay in old age. The step further

seems unavoidable; their common dissolution in death."

[David Hume (1771-1776) "Of the Immortality of the Soul"]

"All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance

and obscurity, is to be skeptical, or at least cautious; and not

to admit of any hypothesis, whatsoever; much less, of any which

is supported by no appearance of probability."

"The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural

events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence,

or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong

propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and marvellous, and ought

reasonably to begat a suspicion against all relations of this kind."

[David Hume, "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" 1748]

"The believer is happy; the doubter is wise."

"The Meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to

devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.

"One fails the Inverse-Meta-Turing test if one conceives of a Creator,

but does not attempt to devise an intelligence test for It/Him. One

also fails if the concept of the Creator remains unchanged as the

"Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science,

as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules."

"If we must play the theological game, let us never forget

that it is a game. Religion, it seems to me, can survive

only as a consciously accepted system of make believe."

"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible

fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous

folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not,

"God, in any but a purely philosophical, and one is almost

tempted to say Pickwickian sense, turns out to be a product

of the human mind. As an independent or unitary being

active in the affairs of the universe, he does not exist."

[Julian Huxley, Science, Religion and Human

"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler

but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat."

"The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting

the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous."

"...it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the

objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence

which logically justifies that certainty. This is what

Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is

essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny and

repudiate, as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are

propositions which men ought to believe, without logically

satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the

profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions."

"The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more

self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes."

"The Bible account of the creation of Eve is a preposterous fable."

"Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors."

[Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), English biologist and

advocate of Darwin's natural selection theory]

"Every great advance in natural knowledge has

involved the absolute rejection of authority."

"Nowhere is there an account or portrait of Christ laughing. . .he is always

stern, serious and as gloomy as a prison guard. Never does one see him

laughing until tears appear in his eyes like the roly-poly squint-eyed

"Call on God, but row away from the rocks."

"To become a popular religion, it is only necessary

for a superstition to enslave a philosophy."

"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our

distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were

able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

"We are not endeavoring to chain the future but to free the present. ... We are

the advocates of inquiry, investigation, and thought. ... It is grander to

think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. ... I look for the

day when *reason*, throned upon the world's brains, shall be the King of Kings

"I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes

of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey. I believe

it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts...

"An honest god is the noblest work of man. ... God has always resembled his

creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably

found on the side of those in power. ... Most of the gods were pleased with

sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine

"To hate man and worship god seems to be the sum of all the creeds."

"Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have

at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice."

"I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment

that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders."

"I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations.'"

"The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray."

"The Declaration of Independence "was a denial, and the first denial

of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon

his reason is like giving medicine to the dead."

"Nothing can exceed the mendacity of the religious press. I have had some

little experience with political editors, and am forced to say, that until

I read the religious papers, I did not know what malicious and slimy

falsehoods could be constructed from ordinary words. The ingenuity with

which the real and apparent meaning can be tortured out of language is

simply amazing. The average religious editor is intolerant and insolent...

and always accounts for the brave and generous actions of unbelievers by

["The Ghosts", Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p.260]

"It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon

the Bible, and that all who look upon that book as false or foolish are

destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is

not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our

Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but

the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people

for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have nothing to

do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemly

decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are

based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah."

"I combat those only who, knowing nothing of the future, prophesy an eternity

of pain- those who sow the seeds of fear in the hearts of men- those only

who poison all the springs of life, and seat a skeleton at every feast."

"I would rather live and love where death is king

than have eternal life where love is not."

"He who commends the brutalities of the past,

"A crime against god is a demonstrated impossibility."

"Orthodoxy cannot afford to put out the fires of hell."

"If we should put god in the Constitution

"Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit,

defending the justice of his own imprisonment."

"If priests had not been fond of mutton, lambs never would have been sacrified

to god. Nothing was ever carried to the temple that the priest could not use,

and it always happened that god wanted what his agents liked."

"We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave

thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers,

and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there

be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I

"If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament,

he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings

"The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often

he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth."

"We are not accountable for the sins of "Adam"

"If Christ, in fact, said "I came not to bring peace but a sword," it is

the only prophecy in the New Testament that has been literally fulfilled."

"Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat,

no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual

mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance

"We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess,

vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works

of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your

reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact.

We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our

hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact.

We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a

'this year's fact'. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your

miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two

thousand years. Their reputation for 'truth and veracity' in the neighborhood

where they resided is wholly unknown to us. Give us a new miracle, and

substantiate it by witnesses who still have the cheerful habit of living this

world. Do not send us to Jericho to hear the winding horns, nor put us in the

fire with Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego. Do not compel us to navigate the sea

with Captain Jonah, nor dine with Mr. Ezekiel. There is no sort of use in

sending us fox-hunting with Samson. We have positively lost all interest in

that little speech so eloquently delivered by Balaam's inspired donkey. It is

worse than useless to show us fishes with money in their mouths, and call our

attention to vast multitudes stuffing themselves with five crackers and two

sardines. We demand a new miracle, and we demand it now.

Let the church furnish at least one, or forever hold her peace."

"Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They

live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give."

"This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the

purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves."

"The real oppressor, enslaver, and corrupter of the people is the Bible."

[_Some Mistakes of Moses_, Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 2 p. 43]

"Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.

In order to increase our respect for the Bible, it became necessary for the

priests to exalt and extol that book, and at the same time to decry and

belittle the reasoning powers of man. The whole power of the pulpit has

been used for hundreds of years to destroy the confidence of man in himself--

to induce him to distrust his own powers of thought, to believe that he was

wholly unable to decide any question for himself, and that all human virtue

consists in faith and obedience. The church has said 'Believe and obey!'

If you reason you will become an unbeliever, and unbelievers will be lost.

If you disobey, you will do so through vain pride and curiosity, and will,

like Adam and Eve, be thrust from Paradise forver! For my part, I care

nothing for what the church says, except in so far as it accords with my

reason; and the Bible is nothing to me, only in so far as it agrees with

[_Some Mistakes of Moses_, Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 2 p. 53]

"Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense."

"Calvin founded a little theocracy, modeled after the Old Testament, and

succeeded in erecting the most detestable government that ever existed,

except the one from which it was copied."

["Heretics and Heresies",Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p. 226]

"That church [Catholic] teaches us that we can

make God happy by being miserable ourselves..."

"..if all the bones of all the victims of the Catholic Church could be

gathered together, a monument higher than all the pyramids would rise..."

"Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible,

the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing

"Give the church a place in the Constitution, let her touch once more the

sword of power, and the priceless fruit of all ages will turn to ashes

"By the efforts of these infidels, the name of God was left out of the

Constitution of the United States. They knew that if an infinite being

was put in, no room would be left for the people. They knew that if any

church was made the mistress of the state, that mistress, like all others,

"Suppose, however, that God did give this law to the Jews, and did tell them

that whenever a man preached a heresy, or proposed to worship any other God

that they should kill him; and suppose that afterward this same God took

upon himself flesh, and came to this very chosen people and taught a

different religion, and that thereupon the Jews crucified him; I ask you,

did he not reap exactly what he had sown? What right would this god have to

complain of a crucifixion suffered in accordance with his own command?"

"Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy a coffin."

"God so loved the world that he made up his mind

to damn a large majority of the human race."

"EACH nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators.

He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he was invariably found on

the side of those in power. Each god was intensely patriotic, and detested

all nations but his own. All these gods demanded praise, flattery, and

worship. Most of them were pleased with sacrifice, and the smell of innocent

blood has ever been considered a divine perfume. All these gods have insisted

upon having a vast number of priests, and the priests have always insisted

upon being supported by the people, and the principal business of these

priests has been to boast about their god, and to insist that he could easily

vanquish all the other gods put together."

"Most of these gods were revengeful, savage, lustful, and

ignorant. As they generally depended upon their priests for

information, their ignorance can hardly excite our astonishment."

"These gods did not even know the shape of the worlds they had created, but

supposed them perfectly flat. Some thought the day could be lengthened by

stopping the sun, that the blowing of horns could throw down the walls of

a city, and all knew so little of the real nature of the people they had

created, that they commanded the people to love them. Some were so ignorant

as to suppose that man could believe just as he might desire, or as they

might command, and that to be governed by observation, reason, and experience

was a most foul and damning sin. None of these gods could give a true account

of the creation of this little earth. All were woefully deficient in geology

and astronomy. As a rule, they were most miserable legislators, and as

executives, they were far inferior to the average of American presidents."

"These deities have demanded the most abject and degrading obedience.

In order to please them, man must lay his very face in the dust. Of

course, they have always been partial to the people who created them,

and have generally shown their partiality by assisting those people

to rob and destroy others, and to ravish their wives and daughters."

"Nothing is so pleasing to these gods as the butchery of unbelievers.

Nothing so enrages them, even now, as to have someone deny their existence."

"Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made

so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god

market was fairly glutted, and heaven crammed with these phantoms."

"When the people failed to worship one of these gods, or failed to feed and

clothe his priests, (which was much the same thing,) he generally visited

them with pestilence and famine. Sometimes he allowed some other nation to

drag them into slavery -- to sell their wives and children; but generally

he glutted his vengeance by murdering their firstborn. The priests always

did their whole duty, not only in predicting these calamities, but in

proving, when they did happen, that they were brought upon the people

because they had not given quite enough to them."

"We are asked to justify these frightful passages, these infamous laws of war,

because the Bible is the word of God. As a matter of fact, there never was,

and there never can be, an argument even tending to prove the inspiration of

any book whatever. In the absence of positive evidence, analogy and

experience, argument is simply impossible, and at the very best, can amount

only to a useless agitation of the air. The instant we admit that a book is

too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs. It is

infinitely absurd to suppose that a god would Address a communication to

intelligent beings, and yet make it a crime, to be punished in eternal

flames, for them to use their intelligence for the purpose of understanding

his communication. If we have the right to use our reason, we certainly have

the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the right to

"The book, called the Bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust

and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools in order to make our

children loving, kind and gentle! This is the book they wish to be recognized

in our Constitution as the source of all authority and justice!"

"And we are called upon to worship such a God; to get upon our knees and tell

him that he is good, that he is merciful, that he is just, that he is love.

We are asked to stifle every noble sentiment of the soul, and to trample

under foot all the sweet charities of the heart. Because we refuse to stultify

ourselves -- refuse to become liars -- we are denounced, hated, traduced and

ostracized here, and this same god threatens to torment us in eternal fire

the moment death allows him to fiercely clutch our naked helpless souls. Let

the people hate, let the god threaten -- we will educate them, and we will

"The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is

the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by

an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and

experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be

relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called

"faith." What man, who ever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God?

And yet, our entire system of religion is based upon that believe. The Jews

pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the Christian

system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little, and rendered

possible the salvation of a fortunate few. It is hard to conceive how the

human mind can give assent to such terrible ideas, or how any sane man can

read the Bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration."

"Whether the Bible is true or false, is of no consequence in

comparison with the mental freedom of the race."

"As long as man believes the Bible to be infallible, that book

is his master. The civilization of this century is not the child

of faith, but of unbelief -- the result of free thought."

"All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person

that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention -- of barbarian

invention -- is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of

it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes;

drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your

brain the coiled form of superstition -- then read the Holy Bible, and you

will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite

wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and

"The account shows, however, that the gods dreaded education and knowledge

then just as they do now. The church still faithfully guards the dangerous

tree of knowledge, and has exerted in all ages her utmost power to keep

mankind from eating the fruit thereof. The priests have never ceased

repeating the old falsehood and the old threat: "Ye shall not eat of it,

neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." From every pulpit comes the same

cry, born of the same fear: "Lest they eat and become as gods, knowing good

and evil." For this reason, religion hates science, faith detests reason,

theology is the sworn enemy of philosophy, and the church with its flaming

sword still guards the hated tree, and like its supposed founder, curses to

the lowest depths the brave thinkers who eat and become as gods."

"According to this account the promise of the devil was fulfilled

to the very letter, Adam and Eve did not die, and they did become

"If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to

thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of

learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears

the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of

inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization."

"Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead

calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first

let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!"

"There is but one way to demonstrate the existence of a power independent of

and superior to nature, and that is by breaking, if only for one moment, the

continuity of cause and effect. Pluck from the endless chain of existence one

little link; stop for one instant the grand procession and you have shown

beyond all contradiction that nature has a master. Change the fact, just for

one second, that matter attracts matter, and a god appears.

The rudest savage has always known this fact, and for that reason always

demanded the evidence of miracle. The founder of a religion must be able to

turn water into wine -- cure with a word the blind and lame, and raise with a

simple touch the dead to life. It was necessary for him to demonstrate to the

satisfaction of his barbarian disciple, that he was superior to nature. In

times of ignorance this was easy to do. The credulity of the savage was

almost boundless. To him the marvelous was the beautiful, the mysterious was

the sublime. Consequently, every religion has for its foundation a miracle --

that is to say, a violation of nature -- that is to say, a falsehood.

No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a

truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but

falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was

performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one

is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior

The church wishes us to believe. Let the church, or one of its

intellectual saints, perform a miracle, and we will believe. We are told

that nature has a superior. Let this superior, for one single instant,

control nature, and we will admit the truth of your assertions."

"In the olden times the church, by violating the order of nature, proved the

existence of her God. At that time miracles were performed with the most

astonishing ease. They became so common that the church ordered her priests

to desist. And now this same church -- the people having found some little

sense -- admits, not only, that she cannot perform a miracle but insists

that the absence of miracle, the steady, unbroken march of cause and effect,

proves the existence of a power superior to nature. The fact is, however,

that the indissoluble chain of cause and effect proves exactly the contrary."

"If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons

and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce. Age after age,

the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have

ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and nowhere, in all the

annals of mankind, has any god succored the oppressed."

"Man should cease to expect aid from on high. By this time he

should know that heaven has no ear to hear, and no hand to help.

The present is the necessary child of all the past. There has

been no chance, and there can be no interference."

"If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man

must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If

the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor

is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless

are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man.

The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone."

"Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not

protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires. and

clothing will. To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million

sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than

all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world."

"The thoughts of man, in order to be of any real worth, must be free. Under

the influence of fear the brain is paralyzed, and instead of bravely solving

a problem for itself, tremblingly adopts the solution of another. As long as

a majority of men will cringe to the very earth before some petty prince or

king, what must be the infinite abjectness of their little souls in the

presence of their supposed creator and God? Under such circumstances,

"The originality of repetition, and the mental vigor of acquiescence, are

all that we have any right to expect from the Christian world. As long as

every question is answered by the word "God," scientific inquiry is simply

impossible. As fast as phenomena are satisfactorily explained the domain of

the power, supposed to be superior to nature must decrease, while the

horizon of the known must as constantly continue to enlarge."

"According to the theologians, God prepared this globe expressly for the

habitation of his loved children, and yet he filled the forests with

ferocious beasts; placed serpents in every path; stuffed the world with

earthquakes, and adorned its surface with mountains of flame.

Notwithstanding all this, we are told that the world is perfect; that

it was created by a perfect being, and is therefore necessarily perfect.

The next moment, these same persons will tell us that the world was cursed;

covered with brambles, thistles and thorns, and that man was doomed to

disease and death, simply because our poor, dear mother ate an apple

contrary to the command of an arbitrary God."

"A very pious friend of mine, having heard that I had said the world

was full of imperfections, asked me if the report was true. Upon being

informed that it was, he expressed great surprise that any one could be

guilty of such presumption. He said that, in his judgement, it was

impossible to point out an imperfection "Be kind enough," said he, "to

name even one improvement that you could make, if you had the power."

"Well," said I, "I would make good health catching, instead of disease."

The truth is, it is impossible to harmonize all the ills, and pains, and

agonies of this world with the idea that we were created by, and are

watched over and protected by an infinitely wise, powerful and beneficent

God, who is superior to and independent of nature."

"The civilization of man has increased just to the same extent that religious

power has decreased. The intellectual advancement of man depends upon how

often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth. The church never

enabled a human being to make even one of these exchanges; on the contrary,

all her power has been used to prevent them. In spite, however, of the church,

man found that some of his religious conceptions were wrong. By reading his

Bible, he found that the ideas of his God were more cruel and brutal than

those of the most depraved savage. He also discovered that this holy book was

filled with ignorance, and that it must have been written by persons wholly

unacquainted with the nature of the phenomena by which we are surrounded; and

now and then, some man had the goodness and courage to speak his honest

thoughts. In every age some thinker, some doubter, some investigator, some

hater of hypocrisy, some despiser of sham, some brave lover of the right,

has gladly, proudly and heroically braved the ignorant fury of superstition

for the sake of man and truth. These divine men were generally torn in pieces

by the worshipers of the gods. Socrates was poisoned because he lacked

reverence for some of the deities. Christ was crucified by a religious rabble

for the crime of blasphemy. Nothing is more gratifying to a religionist than

to destroy his enemies at the command of God. Religious persecution springs

from a due admixture of love towards God and hatred towards man."

"The terrible religious wars that inundated the world with blood tended at

least to bring all religion into disgrace and hatred. Thoughtful people

began to question the divine origin of a religion that made its believers

hold the rights of others in absolute contempt. A few began to compare

Christianity with the religions of heathen people, and were forced to admit

that the difference was hardly worth dying for. They also found that other

nations were even happier and more prosperous than their own. They began to

suspect that their religion, after all, was not of much real value."

"For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women

of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious

mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have

appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to

happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear,

to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have

said, "Think!" The many have said, "Believe!"

"While utterly discarding all creeds, and denying the truth of all religions,

there is neither in my heart nor upon my lips a sneer for the hopeful, loving

and tender souls who believe that from all this discord will result a perfect

harmony; that every evil will in some mysterious way become a good, and that

above and over all there is a being who, in some way, will reclaim and

glorify every one of the children of men; but for those who heartlessly try

to prove that salvation is almost impossible; that damnation is almost

certain; that the highway of the universe leads to hell; who fill life with

fear and death with horror; who curse the cradle and mock the tomb, it is

impossible to entertain other than feelings of pity, contempt and scorn."

"Reason, Observation and Experience -- the Holy Trinity of Science -- have

taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now,

and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this

belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of

a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there

will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect."

"Science built the Academy, superstition the inquisition."

"Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt."

"Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is

in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the

imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological

certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself

to be the slave of God, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants, the

"When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing

to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure

eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides

the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and

unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will

"... I want it so that every minister will be not a parrot, not an owl

sitting upon a dead limb of the tree of knowledge and hooting the hoots

that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. But I want it so that

each one can be an investigator, a thinker; and I want to make his

congregation grand enough so that they will not only allow him to think,

but will demand that he shall think, and give to them the honest truth of

[Robert Ingersoll, "Some Mistakes of Moses"]

"There are some truths, however, that we should never forget: Superstition

has always been the relentless enemy of science; faith has been a hater of

demonstration; hypocrisy has been sincere only in its dread of truth, and

all religions are inconsistent with mental freedom."

"Fear believes -- courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and

prays -- courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism --

courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils

and in ghosts. Fear is religion, courage is science."

"If the book [the Bible] and my brain are both the work of the same

Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree?"

"Tell me there is a God in the serene heavens that will damn his children

for the expression of an honest belief! More men have died in their sins,

judged by your orthodox creeds, than there are leaves on all the forests

in the wide world ten thousand times over. Tell me these men are in hell;

that these men are in torment; that these children are in eternal pain,

and that they are to be punished forever and forever! I denounce this

"All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the

cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man

is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word, Hell."

"Is it not wonderful that the creator of all worlds, infinite in power and

wisdom, could not hold his own against the gods of wood and stone? Is it

not strange that after he had appeared to his chosen people, delivered

them from slavery, feed them by miracles, opened the sea for a path, led

them by cloud and fire, and overthrown their pursuers, they still preferred

a calf of their own making?" (Exod. 32:1-8) "...a God who gave his entire

time for 40 years to the work of converting three millions of people, and

succeeded in getting only two men, and not a single woman, decent enough

to enter the promised land?" (Num. 14:29-30)

"It has been contended for many years that the Ten Commandments are the

foundations of all ideas of justice and law. Nothing can be more stupidly

false. Thousands of years before Moses, the Egyptians had a code far better."

"One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests."

"In all ages hypocrites, called priests, have put

crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings."

"For many centuries the sword and cross were allies. Together

they attacked the rights of man. They defended each other."

"As long as woman regards the Bible as the charter of her rights, she

will be the slave of man. The bible was not written by a woman. Within

its leaves there is nothing but humiliation and shame for her."

"You have no right to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought."

"The infidels of one age have been the aureoled saints of the next.

The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new."

[Robert G. Ingersoll, _The Great Infidels_]

"The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels."

[Robert G. Ingersoll, speech,, New York City, May 1, 1881]

"It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough

and courage enough to stand by his own convictions. I believe it was Magellan

who said, "The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on

the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the Church."

On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success."

[Robert G. Ingersoll, quoted in _The Great Quotations_]

"I would rather live with the woman I love in a world full

of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody but men."

[Robert G. Ingersoll, _Liberty of Man, Woman and Child_]

"A believer is a bird in a cage, a free-thinker is

an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing."

"Consequently, in the name of God Almighty, by the authority of the

Apostles Saints Peter and Paul, and by our Own, We reprove and condemn

this Charter [the Magna Carta]; under pain of anathema We forbid the

King to observe it or the barons to demand its execution. We declare

the Charter null and of no effect, as well as all the obligations

contracted to confirm it. It is Our wish that in no case should it

"Use against heretics the spiritual sword of excommunication,

and if this does not prove effective, use the material sword."

"The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease

to be free for religion--except for the sect that can win political power."

[Supreme Court Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson, dissenting

opinion in Zorach v. Clauson (343 US 306 -- 1952)]

"If we concede to the State power and wisdom to single out

'duly constituted religious' bodies as exclusive alternatives

for compulsory secular instruction, it would be logical to

also uphold the power and wisdom to choose the true faith among

those 'duly constituted.' We start down a rough road when we

begin to mix compulsory public education with compulsory godliness."

[Supreme Court Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson, dissenting

opinion in Zorach v. Clauson (343 US 306 -- 1952)]

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is

that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox

in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or

force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

[Robert H. Jackson, Supreme Court opinion (West Virginia State

Board of Education v Barnette, 319 U.S. 624{1943})]

"The National Government will therefore regard as its first and supreme

task to restore to the German people unity of mind and will. It will

preserve and defend the foundations on which the strength of our nation

rests. It will take under its firm protection Christianity as the basis

of our morality, and the family as the nucleus of our nation and our State."

[_Nazism, A History in Documents & Eyewitness Accounts_.

(Original source listed in the bibliography: Jacobsen and

"Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."

[William James (1842-1910) American philosopher and psychologist]

"Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered

with comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself."

"In addition I think science has enjoyed an extraordinary success

because it has such a limited and narrow realm in which to focus its

"After the survivor of the Spanish conquest has told his life's story he is

"He posted no brief in defense or mitigation of his offenses, and

when he was most solemnly advised by the Court President of the dire

consequences he faced if found guilty, Juan Damasceno volunteered

'It will mean I do not go to the Christian heaven?'

He was told that that would indeed be the worst of his punishments:

that he would most assuredly not go to Heaven. At which, his smile

sent a thrill of horror through every soul of the Court."

"If it is good not to touch a woman, then it is

bad to touch a woman always and in every case."

"Holy virginity is a better thing than conjugal chastity.... A mother will

hold a lesser place in the Kingdom of heaven, because she has been married,

than the daughter, seeing that she is a virgin .... but if thy mother has

been humble and not proud, she will have some sort of place, but not thou..."

[Saint Jerome, Roman theologian, Sermon 354]

"We Catholics may lie and say we are Protestants when we are among the

Protestants or we may lie when we are among the Huguenots and say we are

Huguenots; and if we wish we can stoop so low as to say we are Jews when

we are among the Jews if our lying would benefit the Catholic Church."

[Jesuit oath from the Congressional Record]

"The Roman Catholic church, convinced that it is the only true church,

must demand the right to freedom for herself alone and the end of

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth;

"The belief that the soul continues its existence after the

dissolution of the body is a matter of philosophical or

theological speculation rather than of simple faith, and is

accordingly nowhere expressly taught in Holy Scripture."

[The Jewish Encyclopedia (1910), Vol. VI, p. 564]

"No one has an idea really of where we should draw the line. What about

the Bible? Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around. If

you're looking for violent rape imagery, the Bible's right there in your

hotel room. If you just want to look up ways to screw people up, there it

is, and you're justified because God told you to. You have Shakespeare and

you have Sophocles--what are we going to do, lose _Oedipus Rex_ if someone

"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints -

[Billy Joel, from "Only the Good Die Young"]

"It can therefore be said that, from the viewpoint of the doctrine of the

faith, there are no difficulites in explaining the origin of man, in regard

to the body, by means of the theory of evolution."

"One of my favorite fantasies is that next Sunday not one woman, in any

country of the world, will go to church. If women simply stop giving our

time and energy to the institutions that oppress, they cease to be."

"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe

political view or strange religion there exists a proponent on

the Net. The proof is left as an exercise for your kill-file."

"The rights of the people to be free to exercise their religious

and philosophical beliefs" includes *by necessity* the right to abstain

from the practise of any religious and philosophical beliefs. This right

cannot be guaranteed in any environment wherein a practice of this type

is enacted in a state funded context -- like a classroom -- and the

participation is all but complusory for those present in that they must

experience another's religious practice on their time and against their

will. School ground is not the issue. School TIME *is*. At that point, it

becomes STATE time, which makes it STATE religion. Say hello to theocracy."

[Timothy Jones <timelord@u.washington.edu>, on alt.atheism]

"'Twas only fear first in the world made gods."

"When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion;

but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!"

"Theologians consider that it was the sin of pride, the sinful thought

conceived in an instant: non serviam: I will not serve. That instant

[James Joyce,_A Portrait of the Artist as a YoungMan_]

"The idea of an incarnation of God is absurd: why should the human race

think itself so superior to bees, ants, and elephants as to be put in

this unique relation to its maker? . . Christians are like a council

of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking and

squeaking "for our sakes was the world created."

"Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a

pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city

until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is

ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe

because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical

"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because

it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain

Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of

philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.]

(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).

"Superstitions, cults and mysticism appear with surprising consistency

during a social crisis. Today it is ESP and UFOs, astrology and clairvoyance,

mystic cults and mesmeric healers. The growth of interest in such things is

a sure indicator of social unrest, personal uneasiness, frustration and loss

of purpose. These symptoms are also present in the West, particularly in the

U.S., where they are more chronic; in the Soviet Union, however, we have an

acute fever. ...Carl Sagan of Cornell University has told me that in the U.S.

there are 15,000 astrologers and only 1,500 astronomers. ...It is fascinating

that in the Soviet Union we are importing creationism from fundamentalists in

the U.S. ...The momentous changes happening now in the Soviet Union are the

reason for this current upsurge of the irrational. What is important is the

emerging extremism that they may signal."

[Sergei Kapitza, President of the Physical Society of the U.S.S.R.

and editor of the Russian edition of Scientific American, "Antiscience

Trends in the U.S.S.R.", Scientific American 265(2):32-38, August 1991]

"Convicts register their religious affiliation when they're processed into

prison. And about 99.5% of the huge U.S.A. prison population consists of

inmates who identified themselves as members of religious denominations."

"..it is high time that scholars of all godly religions united to confront

the forces of immorality in the present day under various names such as

secularism, human rights, freedom of speech."

[Tehran's Kayhan International newspaper urging cooperation with

the Vatican in opposing the U.N. population control document]

"Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!

One thing at least is certain--This life flies;

One thing is certain and the rest is lies;

The Flower that once has blown for ever dies."

"My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here

in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than

were permissible under English law at that time."

"It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If

they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men,

the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui."

religion is a euphemism for superstition."

"The court decided, based on its reading of our precedents, that the

effects test of Lemon is violated whenever government action "creates an

identification of the state with a religion, or with religion in general,"

...or when "the effect of the governmental action is to endorse one

religion over another, or to endorse religion in general."

[Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee vs. Weisman]

"The First Amendment's Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and

religious expression are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed

by the State. The design of the Constitution is that preservation and

transmission of religious beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a

choice committed to the private sphere, which itself is promised freedom

to pursue that mission. It must not be forgotten then, that while concern

must be given to define the protection granted to an objector or a dissenting

non-believer, these same Clauses exist to protect religion from government

interference. James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights,

did not rest his opposition to a religious establishment on the sole ground

of its effect on the minority. A principal ground for his view was:

"[E]xperience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of main-

taining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation."

[Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee vs. Weisman]

"In religious debate or expression the government is not a prime participant,

for the Framers deemed religious establishment antithetical to the freedom of

all. The Free Exercise Clause embraces a freedom of conscience and worship

that has close parallels in the speech provisions of the First Amendment,

but the Establishment Clause is a specific prohibition on forms of state

intervention in religious affairs with no precise counterpart in the speech

provisions. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 92-93, and n. 127 (1976) (per

curiam). The explanation lies in the lesson of history that was and is the

inspiration for the Establishment Clause, the lesson that in the hands of

government what might begin as a tolerant expression of religious views may

end in a policy to indoctrinate and coerce. A state-created orthodoxy puts

at grave risk that freedom of belief and conscience which are the sole

assurance that religious faith is real, not imposed."

[Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee v. Weisman]

"The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world

as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lession is that

if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the

State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of

inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people,"

[Supreme Court Justice Kennedy for majority, Lee v. Weisman, 1992]

"Priestesses should be burnt at the stake because they are assuming powers

they have no right to. In the medieval world that was called sorcery. The

way of dealing with sorcerers was to burn them at the stake. It's illegal

now but if I had my way that is what would happen to them. In medieval

[Church of England vicar Rev. Anthony Kennedy, March 9,1994

as reported in the Times, regarding female CofE priests]

"I would shoot the bastards if I was allowed, because a woman can't

represent Christ. Men and women are totally different, that's not

my fault, and Jesus chose men for his disciples."

[Church of England vicar Rev. Anthony Kennedy,

March 9,1994 regarding female CofE priests]

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute-

where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)

how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom

to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or

political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely

because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the

"Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view."

"The party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and Positive

Christianity IS National Socialism...National Socialism is the doing of

God's will...God's will reveals itself in German blood...Dr. Zoellner and

Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in

faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh...No, Christianity

is not dependent upon the Apostle's Creed...True Christianity is represented

by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and

especially by the Fuehrer to a real Christianity...The Fuehrer is the

[Dr. Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs]

"I can't believe in the God of my Fathers. If there is one Mind which

understands all things, it will comprehend me in my unbelief. I don't

know whose hand hung Hesperus in the sky, and fixed the Dog Star, and

scattered the shining dust of Heaven, and fired the sun, and froze

the darkness between the lonely worlds that spin in space."

[Gerald Kersh (1911-1968), British author, journalist]

"The Essenses are not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament, although

their numbers were at least as great as the Sadducees and Pharisees.

This would suggest an element of intentional secrecy regarding the

influence of the sect on the teachings and work of Jesus."

["The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About

the Resurrection" by Holger Kersten & Elmer R. Gruber p. 239]

"The Essenes had various communities in Palestine, with the main center

at Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. The sensational discovery of

numerous scrolls in a cave at Qumran in 1947 made it possible to gain

glimpses into a community which practised in a way, 'Christianity

before Christ'. As is well known, the translation of the material was

systematically boycotted and only very recently almost all the Qumran

texts have appeared in print. Similarities between the teaching of

Jesus and those of the Essenes are obvious..."

["The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About

the Resurrection" by Holger Kersten & Elmer R. Gruber p. 239]

"Qumran lies directly within the orbit of Jesus' early activity. His

first public appearance occurred in this region. It is a striking fact

that the place where Jesus received the ritual baptismal bath in the

Jordan at the hands of John, was only 5 km from the monastic settlement

of Qumran. There is of course a reason for this. John the Baptist was

a *schaliach*, an apostle of the sect of Qumran...John led a community

of Essene moderates. After his baptism one should similarly count

Jesus as a member of one of these communities, and refer to him as a

Nazarene. This later led to the falsely translated and irrational

description of him as 'Jesus of Nazareth', a place which was not even

in existence at the time of Jesus. Later a sign was said to have been

fixed to the Cross, giving charge against him as membership of this

sect: "Jesus, Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum--Jesus, Nazarene, King of the Jews."

["The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About

the Resurrection" by Holger Kersten & Elmer R. Gruber p. 239]

ROONEY: "Did you really seriously worry about going to prison?"

KEVORKIAN: "No! Never! Am I a criminal? The world knows I'm not a criminal!

What are they trying to put me in jail for? You've lost common sense in

this society because of religious fanaticism and dogma. You're basing your

laws, and your whole outlook on natural life, on mythology! It won't work!

That's why you have all these problems in the world. Name them -- India,

Pakistan, Ireland. Name them! All these problems -- they're all religious

[Dr. Jack Kevorkian, with Andy Rooney on "60 Minutes"]

"Politics must be founded on the solid faith of God almighty"

[Alan Keyes, Rep. presidential candidate, at

Christian Coalition "Road to Victory" convention]

"If we accept the logic of the Declaration, reverence for

God is not just a matter of religious faith, it is the

foundation of justice and citizenship in our republic."

[Alan Keyes, Rep. presidential candidate, 1995]

"The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in

the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever."

"Christendom has done away with Christianity

"...It was as if the interlopers had suggested to a bunch of

born-again Christians that they hunt up the Ark of the

Xtian (at crucifixion): "<snif> It's a shame he has to die"

Jesus (shouting from cross): "Well maybe I wouldn't have to

die if somebody would get a LADDER and a pair of PLIERS!!"

"And lo, Jesus did say unto the soldiers 'Not the OTHER hand.

"The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so! To my own Gods

I go. It may be they shall give me greater ease than your

[Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), British author, poet.

Plain Tales from the Hills, chapter heading to "Lispeth" (1888)]

"Obedience. A religion of slaves. A religion of intellectual death. I like

it. Don't ask questions, don't think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it

has been conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy Rolex

on his wrist. I like that job! Where can I sign up?"

"Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate."

"I have repeatedly stressed that the selfish impulses of man constitute a

much less historic danger than his integrative tendencies. To put it in

the simplest way: the individual who indulges in an excess of aggressive

self-assertiveness incurs the penalties of society-he outlaws himself,

he contracts out of the hierarchy. The true believer, on the other hand,

becomes more closely knit into it; he enters the womb of his church, or

party, or whatever the social holon to which he surrenders his identity."

[Arthur Koestler, "The Ghost in the Machine"]

"What...can we surmise about the likelihood of someone's being caring and

generous, loving and helpful, just from knowing that they are a believer?

Virtually nothing, say psychologists, sociologists, and others who have

"In the brain of every religious person there is a god shaped vacuum."

"The church lives on the fact that modern research

about Jesus is not known amongst the public."

"Illusions die hard and it is painful to yield to the

insight that a grown-up can be no man's disciple."

"When I was a kid in the ghetto, a gang started going around harassing

people, so some of the toughest kids formed a gang called The Sharks

to stop them. The other gang was called The Jehovah's Witnesses."

"Changes in the educational levels of the general population in recent years

appear to account for much of the variance in biblical beliefs over time.

The current proportion of biblical literalists is 32%, only half of what it

was in 1963, when 65% of Americans said they believed in the absolute truth

of all words in the Bible and that it represented the actual word of God.

Belief in inerrancy is most likely to be found among people who did not

complete high school (58%), and least likely among college graduates (29%)."

[One Nation Under God, (1993) Barry A. Kosmin

"Over the years I realized the god I prayed to was the god I invented. When

I was talking to him, I was talking to myself. He had no understanding or

qualities that I did not have. When I realized god was an extension of my

[Howard Kreisner, host of "The American Atheist Hour"]

"...your belief in God is merely an escape from

"There must be a Silicon Heaven. Where do all the calculators go?"

"To believe a myth is as easy a thing as breathing the air.

But holding one's breath for a lifetime -- that is difficult."

"It should be made clear that in order to live a Christian

life, any Christian must be able to discriminate and hate,

[Bernhard Kuiper, Colorado Springs pastor]

"It makes a big difference if we think of God as a person or as

a force. One way you get Christianity, the other you get Star Wars."

"Secular humanism does not have the essential attributes of a religion:

belief in a deity, the wish for some sort of afterlife, "sacred" dogma

or texts, or an absolutist moral creed. Instead, it expresses a

philosophical and ethical point of view, and it draws upon the

scientific method in formulationg its naturalistic view of the nature."

"I talk to God every day, and He's never mentioned you."

"If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed,

they will fall by the hands of the clergy."

"There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute

what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained."

"Perhaps God is not dead; perhaps God is himself mad."

"The Church doesn't believe in book-burning, but it believes in restricting

the use of dangerous books among those whose minds are unprepared for them."

[Francis J. Lally, American Roman Catholic Monsignor,

Mike Wallace Interview, Fund for the Republic, 1958]

"The Church has through the centuries, understood that ideas are really

more dangerous than other weapons. Their use should be restricted."

[Francis J. Lally, American Roman Catholic Monsignor,

Mike Wallace Interview, Fund for the Republic, 1958]

"We do not ask to be born; and we do not ask to die. But born we are and

die we must. We come into existence and we pass out of existence. And in

neither case does high-handed fate await our ratification of its decree.

[Corliss Lamont (1902-1995) "The Illusion of Immortality"]

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image

when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."

"We found a great number of books...and since they contained nothing

but superstitions and falsehoods of the Devil we burned them all."

[Catholic Bishop Diego De Landa, after burning priceless

books of Mayan history and science, July 1562]

"No one has the right to destroy another person's

"Even the weakest disputant is made so conceited by what he calls religion, as

to think himself wiser than the wisest who think differently from him."

[Walter Savage Landor, "Melancthon and Calvin"]

"We really have dinosaurs today, without any question. You just need the

right weather conditions, as I see it, to get huge creatures. And in the

ocean, of course,, we have huge creatures...This is where the pleisosauruses

seem to be today, and perhaps also this fire-breathing dragon is still down

there- very rare, but occasionally there."

[Rev. Walter Lang, Founder, Bible-Science Association]

"Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis."

[Astronomer Pierre Simon Laplace's response

to Napoleon's inquiry as to why he did not

mention God in his book _Mecanique celeste_

In 1995, Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay

for the _Natural History_ magazine where he

says that this story probably is not true]

"However incompatible the spirit of Jesus and armed force may be, and however

unpleasant it may be to acknowledge the fact, as a matter of plain history

the latter has often made it possible for the former to survive."

[Prof. Kenneth Scott Latourette, _A History of the Expansion of

Christianity_ (New York:Harper & Brothers, 1937) Vol. I, p.164]

"Every religion in the world that has destroyed people is based on love."

"Whatever alleged 'truth' is proven by results to be but an empty fiction,

let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods,

dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!"

"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments

to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals.

It's just that they need more supervision."

"radical antiabortion groups like Operation Rescue and Rescue America have

to be dealt with as domestic terrorists as deadly as the ones who blew up

the World Trade Center and as fanatic as the cultists in Waco. "

"One of the conditions (for escaping the stake) was that of

stating all they knew of other heretics and apostates, which

proved an exceedingly fruitful source of information as, under

the general terror, there was little hesitation in denouncing not

only friends and acquaintances, but the nearest and dearest

kindred -- parents and children, and brothers and sisters."

[Henry Charles Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain]

"For the church to say that abortion is not acceptable for a Catholic

is fine. To say directly or indirectly that on something that is a

church teaching that you must also vote according to that -- that's

not acceptable in a country based on the First Amendment."

"Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelics drugs is

like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did

it in the first century A.D., and besides, telescopes are unnatural."

[Timothy Leary, "The Politics of Ecstasy"]

"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's

children are, in fact, barely presentable."

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God

the things that are God's; and unto human beings, what?"

"There once was a time when all people beleived in God and

the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages."

"Would you sing 'Krishna bless America' or pledge allegience to 'One

nation under Allah'? If not, would that make you unpatriotic?"

"Praying is like a rocking chair-- it'll give you

something to do, but it won't get you anywhere.

"The principle that government may accommodate the free exercise of religion

does not supersede the fundamental limitations imposed by the Establishment

Clause, which guarantees at a minimum that a government may not coerce anyone

to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a

way which "establishes a [state] religion or religious faith, or tends to

do so." Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 678. Pp.7-8.

(b)State officials here direct the performance of a formal religious

exercise at secondary schools' promotional and graduation ceremonies.

Lee's decision that prayers should be given and his selection of the

religious participant are choices attributable to the State."

[Lee vs. Weisman, 1992, Supreme Court decision regarding

prayers at US high school graduation ceremonies]

"What is an anarchist? One who, choosing,

"God made the integers; all else is the work of Man."

"If you don't think that logic is a good method for determining

what to believe, make an attempt to convince me of that without

using logic. No one has even bothered to try yet."

"First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its

principle or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor

inhibits religion (citation omitted); finally, the statute must not

foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion."

[The "Lemon Test", from Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971]

"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about

that. I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than

Jesus now; I don't know which will go first--rock'n'roll or Christianity.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them

[John Lennon, London Evening Standard of March 4, 1966,

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

"It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom

of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many

[Pope Leo XIII, "Great Encyclical Letters",16]

"Hence from all we have hitherto said, it is clear beloved Catholics that

we cannot approve the opinions which some [Protestants, Jews, and other

heretics] comprise under the head of Americanism [freedom]."

[Pope Leo XIII, "Great Encyclical Letters",252]

"The equal toleration of all religions...is the same as atheism.

"When one creates phantoms for oneself, one puts vampires into

the world, and one must nourish these children of a voluntary

nightmare with one's blood, one's life, one's intellegence,

and one's reason, without ever satisfying them."

"One of the key figures of the Arab conquests is Khalid ibn al-Walid,

the chief general of Abu Bakr. After fulfilling orders by restoring

the status quo at the death of the Prophet, he decided for himself

the problem of what to do next by embarking on a programme of military

expansion. The real beginning of the Arab conquests is the Battle of

'Aqraba' in 633 in eastern Najd. The victory proved to the Arabs the

capacity of the Medinese Government and the advisability of submitting

to it. Thereafter a series of expeditions radiated in all directions"

"Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort

of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent

and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know)

to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and

who do not feel that they need forgiveness."

"... believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in

mere terrified flattery calling Him 'good' and worshipping him is a still

greater danger... The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the

goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of scripture is to prevail when

they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more

certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of

[C. S. Lewis, in letter to John Beversluis]

"The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man

is that in this department Christ did not come to teach any brand new

morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by)

is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right."

"When man comes to the realization that he is not the "favorite" of God; that

he was not specifically created, that the universe was not made for his

benefit, and that he is subject to the same laws of nature as all other forms

of life, then, and not until then, will he understand that he must rely upon

himself, and himself alone, for whatever benefits he is to enjoy; and devote

his time and energies to helping himself and his fellow men to meet the

exigencies of life and to set about to solve the difficult and intricate

"It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially

those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to

state clearly that evolution is a FACT, not theory, and that what

is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process

and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution."

[R. C. Lewontin "Evolution/Creation Debate: A Time for Truth"

Bioscience 31, 559 (1981) reprinted in EVOLUTION VERSUS CREATIONISM]

Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely

powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is

deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.

Christian Liberalism: The doctrine that there may be an absolutely

powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is

deeply and personally concerned about baby seals but doesn't give a damn

"There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are,

God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It

could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because

true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if

[G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99), German physicist, philosopher. Aphorisms,

"Notebook L," aph. 16 (written 1765-99; tr. by R. J. Hollingdale, 1990)]

"It belongs to American liberty to separate entirely from the

political government the institution which has its object the

[Prof. Francis Lieber (1802-1872), American constitutional

authorities, as quoted in Anson Phelps Stokes, Church And

State In The United States Vol I, p. 34-35]

"The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could

never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma."

"I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, and highest sense.

But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the pope and his followers, the

papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians,

and canon laws that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle

my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity."

"I see a very dark cloud on America's horizon, and

"My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and

the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with

advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."

[Abraham Lincoln, letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield,

"It will not do to investigate the subject of religion

too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity."

"My husband is not a Christian but is a religious man, I think."

[Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, in _Toward The Mystery_]

"I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by

religious men who are certain they represent the Divine will. ... I

hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that if it be probable

that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with

my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me."

[Abraham Lincoln. Chapter 14 of Part 5 of

*Six Historic Americans* by John Ramsburg]

"The churches used to win their arguments against atheism, agnosticism,

and other burning issues by burning the ismists, which is fine proof that

there is a devil but hardly evidence that there is a God."

[Ben N. Lindsey and Wainwright Evans, The Revolt of Modern Youth, 1925]

"God kills indiscriminately and so shall we. For no creatures

under God, are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves."

"Much of the discussion on the existence of race reminds me of the

obituary in _Time_ Magazine (January 11, 1963) of Arthur O. Lovejoy.

When the late Professor Lovejoy was asked at a government investigation

if he believed in God, he promptly rattled off thirty-three definitions

of God and asked the questioner which one he had in mind. But of course

it really didn't matter to the questioner. To avow a belief in the

existence of God simply assured one's participation in the socio-cultural

system, in which everyone knows that God exists out there but we humans

are just too ignorant to perceive or define Him accurately."

[pp. 55-56 of "On the Nonexistence of Human Races", Frank

B. Livingstone, in _The Concept of Race_, ed. by Ashley Montagu,

"I find every sect, as far as reason will help them,

make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they

cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason."

"It is possible to pay another man's debts on his behalf, but it is not

possible to make a guilty man innocent by suffering in his place."

"I have given myself a lot of trouble in this world with small result. I

took my own life and the Church seriously, and the consequence is that I

have wasted one and disturbed the other. The search for truth is not a

trade by which a man can support himself; for a priest it is a supreme

peril. For a long time now I have not really been a Catholic in the official

sense of the word. I have strewn my intelligence and my activity to the

four winds of an empty ideal...Roman Catholicism, as such, is bound to

[Alfred Loisy, "My Duel with the Vatican"]

"From all this the conclusion follows that what we have here is not a

historical tradition of a factual resurrection...but an assertion of faith.

The stories of imagined apparitions are, for the most part, apologetic

constructions for butressing belief by clothing it in material form. Whence

it follows in this crucial case, as in that of miracles in general, that the

only history we can glean from stories of supernatural magic is the

[Alfred Loisy, Catholic Modernist. bible scholar, Professor at the Institut

Catholique in France from 1889 until his excommunication from the Church

in 1908, writing on contradiction between various stories of the resurection]

"It seems obvious to me that the notion of God has never been

anything but a kind of ideal projection, a reflection upward

of the human personality, and that theology never has been and

never can be anything but a more and more purified mythology."

[Alfred F. Loisy, "My Duel with the Vatican"]

"Heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created

together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water. . . .

this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on the

twenty-third of October, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning."

"History has the relation to truth that theology

has to religion -- i.e. none to speak of."

"The fundamentalists leap up and down in apoplectic rage and joy. Their

worst fantasies are vindicated, and therefore (or so they like to think),

their entire theology and socio-political agenda is too. Meanwhile,

teen-age misanthropes and social misfits murder their enemies, classmates,

families, friends, even complete strangers, all because they read one of

Anton LaVey's books or listened to one too many AC/DC records. The born-

agains are ready to burn again, and not just books this time."

[excerpt from "Loompanics' Greatest Hits"]

"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-

bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief."

[James Russell Lowell, Literary Essays, Witchcraft]

"We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears

white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides."

[Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish founder of the Society

of Jesus [Jesuits], Exercitia spiritualia, 1541]

"I keep hearing that Jesus Christ is coming, but nobody knows his tour dates."

"The poor wretches have convinced themselves that they are going to be

immortal and live for all time, by worshipping that crucified sophist and

living under his laws...they receive these doctrines by tradition, without

any definite evidence. So if any charlatan or trickster comes among them,

he quickly acquires wealth by imposing upon these simple people."

"Even if I knew nothing of the atoms, I would venture to assert on the

evidence of the celestial phenomena themselves, supported by many other

arguments, that the universe was certainly not created for us by divine

[Lucretius, "On the Nature of the Universe"]

"If God can do anything he can make a stone so heavy

that even he can't lift it. Then there is something God cannot

do, he cannot lift the stone. Therefore God does not exist."

"Fear was the first thing on earth to make gods."

"How many evils have flowed from religion."

"All our experience with history should teach us, when we look

back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself."

[Martin Luther (1483-1546), German Protestant leader]

"People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth

revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon....This

fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred

scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand

[Martin Luther in one of his "Table Talks" in 1539]

"People give ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove

to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament,

the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise

some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best.

This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy."

[Martin Luther, Works, Volume 22, c. 1543]

"Their synagogues ... should be set on fire."

"Their homes should be broken down and destroyed.

They ought to be put under one roof or in a stable,

like Gypsies, in order that they may realize that

they ... are ... but miserable captives."

"They should be deprived of their prayerbooks and Talmuds."

"Their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death

"What shall we Christians do now with this depraved and damned people

of the Jews? ... I will give my faithful advice: First, that one should set

fire to their synagogues. . . . Then that one should also break down and

destroy their houses. . . . That one should drive them out the country."

"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid

of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles against

the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."

"The Jews are the most miserable people on earth. They are plagued

everywhere, and scattered about all countries, having no certain

resting place. They sit as on a wheelbarrow, without a country, people

or government... but they are rightly served, for seeing they refused

have Christ and his gospel, instead of freedom they must have servitude."

"Either God must be unjust, or you, Jews, wicked and ungodly. You have

been, about fifteen hundred years, a race rejected of God."

"Men have broad and large chests, and small narrow hips, and more

understanding than women, who have but small and narrow breasts,

and broad hips, to the end they should remain at home, sit still,

keep house, and bear and bring up children."

"God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoilt

all, when she persuaded him to set himself above God's will. 'Tis you

women, with your tricks and artifices, that lead men into error."

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason."

"Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is

a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore

eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed,

she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and

she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be

banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets."

[Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148]

"There is on earth among all dangers no more dangerous thing than a richly

endowed and adroit reason...Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed."

[Martin Luther, quoted by Walter Kaufmann, _The Faith

of a Heretic_, (Garden city, NY, doubleday, 1963), p. 75]

"[I]n a like manner we must endure the authority of the prince. If he

misuse or abuse his authority, we are not to entertain a grudge, seek

revenge or punishment. Obedience is to be rendered for God's sake, for

the ruler is God's representative. However they may tax or exact, we

[Martin Luther, "Tribute to Caesar" sermon, from _The Political Theories

of Martin Luther_, Luther Hess Waring (New York, Putnam's, 1910) p. 104]

"Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child-

bearing, it does not matter; let them go on bearing children

till they die, that is what they are there for."

"The word and works of God is quite clear, that

women were made either to be wives or prostitutes."

"I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them.

But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to

lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this

little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous

activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against

them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews

into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is

the god of the world, and wherever God's word is absent he has an easy task,

not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"He did not call them Abraham's children, but a "brood of vipers" [Matt. 3:7].

Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they

declared, "He has a demon' [Matt 11:18]. Our Lord also calls them a "brood of

vipers"; furthermore in John 8 [:39,44] he states: "If you were Abraham's

children ye would do what Abraham did.... You are of your father the devil."

It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the

devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Therefore the blind Jews are truly stupid fools..."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"...their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Learn from this, dear Christian, what you are doing if you permit the blind

Jews to mislead you. Then the saying will truly apply, "When a blind man

leads a blind man, both will fall into the pit" [cf. Luke 6:39]. You

cannot learn anything from them except how to misunderstand the divine

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they

have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer

self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men

are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel

and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from

us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day,

together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and

robbers, in the most impenitent security."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they

lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can

easily detect it. But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"If I had to refute all the other articles of the Jewish faith, I should be

obliged to write against them as much and for as long a time as they have

used for inventing their lies-- that is, longer than two thousand years."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"..Christ and his word can hardly be recognized because of the great

vermin of human ordinances. However, let this suffice for the time

being on their lies against doctrine or faith."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious

jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?"

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Alas, it cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God which permits

anyone to sink into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness,

envy, and arrogance. If I were to avenge myself on the devil himself I

should be unable to wish him such evil and misfortune as God's wrath

inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie and to blaspheme so

monstrously, in violation of their own conscience. Anyway, they have

their reward for constantly giving God the lie."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"...but then eject them forever from this country. For, as we have heard,

God's anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to

make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but

little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!"

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Over and above that we let them get rich on our sweat and blood,

while we remain poor and they such the marrow from our bones.

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"I brief, dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule--

if my counsel does not please your, find better advice, so that you and we

all can be rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become

guilty sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the

curses which the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the

person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all Christians, all

authority, and ourselves. Do not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or

communion with us.... With this faithful counsel and warning I wish to

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But

whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his

own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"However, we must avoid confirming them in their wanton lying, slandering,

cursing, and defaming. Nor dare we make ourselves partners in their

devilish ranting and raving by shielding and protecting them, by giving

them food, drink, and shelter, or by other neighborly acts..."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Therefore we Christians, in turn, are obliged not

to tolerate their wanton and conscious blasphemy."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most

serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews,

that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier,

First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able

toss sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some

Second, that all their books-- their prayer books, their Talmudic writings,

also the entire Bible-- be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and

that these be preserved for those who may be converted...

Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give

thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country...

Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing.

For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it..."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"He who hears this name [God] from a Jew must inform the authorities,

or else throw sow dung at him when he sees him and chase him away."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"But what will happen even if we do burn down the Jews' synagogues and forbid

them publicly to praise God, to pray, to teach, to utter God's name? They

will still keep doing it in secret. If we know that they are doing this in

secret, it is the same as if they were doing it publicly. for our knowledge

of their secret doings and our toleration of them implies that they are not

secret after all and thus our conscience is encumbered with it before God."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"If we wish to wash our hands of the Jews' blasphemy and not

share in their guilt, we have to part company with them.

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"...they remain our daily murderers and bloodthirsty foes in their hearts.

Their prayers and curses furnish evidence of that, as do the many stories

which relate their torturing of children and all sorts of crimes for

which they have often been burned at the stake or banished."

-Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"...that everyone would gladly be rid of them."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"Undoubtedly they do more and viler things than

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"If I had power over the Jews, as our princes and cities

have, I would deal severely with their lying mouth."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"They [rulers] must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in

proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow.

Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their

synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and

If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs."

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"My essay, I hope, will furnish a Christian (who in any case has no desire to

become a Jew) with enough material not only to defend himself against the

blind, venomous Jews, but also to become the foe of the Jews' malice, lying,

and cursing, and to understand not only that their belief is false but that

they are surely possessed by all devils. May Christ, our dear Lord, convert

them mercifully and preserve us steadfastly and immovably in the knowledge

[Martin Luther,"On the Jews and Their Lies",1543]

"God does not work salvation for ficticious sinners. Be a sinner and

sin vigorously.... Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the

abiding place of justice; sin must be committed."

"Sin cannot tear you away from him [Christ], even though you commit

adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders."

[Martin Luther, letter to Melanchton, Aug. 1, 1521]

"A large number of deaf, crippled and blind people are afflicted

solely through the malice of the demon. And one must in no wise

doubt that plagues, fevers and every sort of evil come from him."

"An eartly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons.

Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects."

"As for the demented, I hold it certain that all beings

deprived of reason are thus afflicted only by the Devil."

"As to the common people, ... one has to be hard with them and see that they

do their work and that under the threat of the sword and the law they comply

with the observance of piety, just as you chain up wild beasts."

"At Poltersberg, there is a lake similarly cursed. If you throw a stone into

it, a dreadful storm immediately arises, and the whole neighboring district

quakes to its centre. 'Tis the devils kept prisoner there."

"How often have not the demons called 'Nix,' drawn women and girls into

the water, and there had commerce with them, with fearful consequences."

"I myself saw and touched at Dessay, a child of this sort, which had

no human parents, but had proceeded from the Devil. He was twelve

years old, and, in outward form, exactly resembled ordinary children."

"I should have no compassion on these witches; I should burn them all."

"Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have

established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities,

as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads...."

"In many countries there are particular places to which devils more

especially resort. In Prussia there is an infinite number of evil spirits."

"In Switzerland, on a high mountain, not far from Lucerne, there is a

lake they call Pilate's Pond, which the Devil has fixed upon as one of

the chief residences of his evil spirits...."

"Many demons are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses,

and in dark poolly places ready to hurt...people."

"Many sweat to reconcile St. Paul and St. James, but in vain. 'Faith justifies'

and 'faith does not justify' contradict each other flatly. If any one can

harmonize them I will give him my doctor's hood and let him call me a fool."

"No gown worse becomes a woman than the desire to be wise."

"Our bodies are always exposed to Satan. The maladies

I suffer are not natural, but Devil's spells."

"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample

underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees

must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God."

"Snakes and monkeys are subjected to the demon more than

other animals. Satan lives in them and possesses them.

He uses them to deceive men and to injure them."

"Some [demons] are also in the thick black clouds, which cause hail,

lightning and thunder, and poison the air, the pastures and grounds."

"The best way to get rid of the Devil, if you cannot kill it with the

words of Holy Scripture, is to rail at and mock him. Music, too, is

very good; music is hateful to him, and drives him far away. "

"The Devil can so completely assume the human form, when he wants to

deceive us, that we may well lie with what seems to be a woman, of real

flesh and blood, and yet all the while 'tis only the Devil in the shape

of a woman. Tis the same with women, who may think that a man is in bed

with them, yet 'tis only the Devil; and...the result of this connection

is oftentimes an imp of darkness, half mortal, half devil...."

"The Devil...clutched hold of the miserable young man...and flew off with him

through the ceiling, since which time nothing has been heard of [him]."

"The Devil, too, sometimes steals human children; it is not infrequent

for him to carry away infants within the first six weeks after birth,

and to substitute in their place imps...."

"The winds are nothing else but good or bad spirits.

Hark! how the Devil is puffing and blowing...."

"There is no rustic so rude but that, if he dreams or fancies anything, it

must be the whisper of the Holy Ghost, and he himself a prophet."

"To be a Christian, you must "pluck out the eye of reason."

"We are at fault for not slaying them [the Jews]."

[Martin Luther, "On the Jews and Their Lies"]

"We know, on the authority of Moses, that longer

than six thousand years the world did not exist."

[Martin Luther (1483-1546) "Lectures on Genesis"]

"We need not invite the Devil to our table; he is too ready to come

without being asked. The air all about us is filled with demons...."

"What shall we do with...the Jews?...I advise that all their prayer

books and Talmudic writings...are to be taken from them."

"What shall we do with...the Jews?...I advise that safe-conduct on the

highways be abolished completely for the Jews."

"What shall we do with...the Jews? I advise that their rabbis

be forbidden to teach on pain of loss of life and limb."

"What shall we do with...the Jews?...set fire to their synagogues or

schools and bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that

no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them."

"What shall we do with...the Jews?...their homes

"When I was a child there were many witches, and they

bewitched both cattle and men, especially children."

"At Sussen, the Devil carried off, last Good Friday,

three grooms who had devoted themselves to him."

"I almost feel like throwing Jimmy into the

"I feel much freer now that I am certain the pope is the Antichrist."

"I maintain that some Jew wrote it [the Book of James] who probably

heard about Christian people but never encountered any."

"The Devil, it is true, is not exactly a doctor who has taken degrees,

but he is very learned, very expert for all that. He has not been

carrying on his business during thousands of years for nothing...."

"The fact that [the biblical book] Hebrews is not an epistle of St. Paul,

or of any other apostle, is proved by what it says in chapter two...."

"...two devils rose from the water, and flew off through the air, crying,

'Oh, oh, oh!' and turning one over another, in sportive mockery...."

"We may well lie with what seems to be a woman of flesh and blood,

and yet all the time it is only a devil in the shape of a woman."

"We should throw the Epistle of James out of this

school [the University of Wittenberg]...."

"In our sad condition, our only consolation is the expectancy

of another life. Here below all is incomprehensible."

"Heretics are not to be disputed with, but to be condemned unheard,

and whilst they perish by fire, the faithful ought to pursue the

evil to its source, and bathe their heads in the blood of the

Catholic bishops, and of the Pope, who is the devil in disguise."

[Martin Luther, Riffel, Kirchengeschichte]

"I confess that mankind has a free will, but it is to

milk kine, to build houses, etc., and no further."

"Jews and papists are ungodly wretches; they are

two stockings made of one piece of cloth."

"Antichrist is the pope and the Turk [Muslim] together. A

beast full of life must have a body and soul. The spirit

or soul of Antichrist is the pope, his flesh or body the Turk."

"When my heart is cold and I cannot pray as I should I scourge myself with

the thought of the impiety and ingratitude of my enemies, the Pope and his

accomplices and vermin, and Zwingli, so that my heart swells with the

righteous indignation and hatred and I can say with warmth and vehemence:

'Holy be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done!' And the hotter

I grow the more ardent do my prayers become."

[Martin Luther, Table Talk Number 2387 a-b, as quoted

in Frans Funck-Bretano, _Luther_, 1939, p.319]

"Whoever would like to cherish such adders and puny devils -- who are the

worst enemies of Christ and us all all -- to befriend them and to do them

honour simply in order to be cheated, plundered, robbed, disgraced, and

forced to howl and curse and suffer every kind of evil, to him I would

commend the Jews. And if this is not enough, let him tell the Jews to

use his mouth as a privy, or else crawl into the Jew's hind parts, and

there worship the holy thing, so as afterwards to be able to boast of

having been merciful, and of having helped the Devil and his progeny

[Martin Luther, "Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor" by

Peter F. Weiner (1985, Gustav Broukal Press)]

"If I had to baptise a Jew, I would take him to the bridge of

the Elbe, hang a stone around his neck and push him over with

the words 'I baptise thee in the name of Abraham'."

[Martin Luther, "Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor" by

Peter F. Weiner (1985, Gustav Broukal Press)]

"Beliefs, including religious ones, are learned. Which makes atheism a

normal state of affairs and religious beliefs a learned "abnormality".

No psychological theory is necessary to explain the causes of a normal

base state. Any psychological theory of learning, attitude change or

socialisation can explain the causes of religious belief."

[Rosemary Lyndall, clinical Neuro-psychologist]

"W. V. O. Quine has been one of the most ruthless of recent appliers of this

principle [Ockham's razor.] I recall an exchange in print (a fest-schrift,

around 1980) where someone quoted Shakespeare's "There are more things on

heaven and earth, than are dreamed of in your philosophy" at Quine. Quine

responded something like, "Possibly, but my concern is that there not be

more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth."

"God tells Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of

knowledge of good and evil. If this was the only way they could

understand the difference between good and evil, how could they

have known that it was wrong to disobey god and eat the fruit?"

[Laurie Lynn (sechum-l secular humanist discussion list)]

"Creeds made in Dark Ages are like drawings made in dark rooms"

[Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, 1929]

"The making of an Atheist implies a mental stimulation and training

which brings into play the primary factors of social progress."

"An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof

that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes

that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the

"What you are about to hear is God's word to the men of this nation.

We are going to war as of tonight. We have divine power -- that is our

weapon. We will not compromise. Wherever truth is at risk, in the

schools or legislature, we are going to contend for it. We will win."

[CU Football Coach Bill McCartney, CFV Board Member]

"The immortality of the soul ... was really an element foreign to

Hebrew belief and Hebrew psychology which was never assimilated

into the Old Testament or New Testament."

[Dictionary of the Bible, by Jesuit priest John L. McKenzie]

"Only by the most tortured exegesis and in the most tenuous theologizing

can anything resembling an anti-abortion position be ripped from the

scripture.... If there are good reasons for opposing abortion on

demand, and there may be, then these must be found outside the Bible."

"The Catholic textbooks go so far as to state that oaths of office taken

by the President, Congressmen, Governor, judge, etc. if the person be a

Catholic must be taken with the mental restriction that his upholding of

the Constitution and laws is subject to their non-conflict with the laws

[Emmet McLoughlins, "American Culture and Catholic Schools", p.56]

"The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the

bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators." ---

[Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England, 1848-1855]

"All Gaza's temples are torn down and burned and the city is cleansed of

every belief but the Christian faith. The most stubborn opponents, faute

de mieux, are tied up, marched away to the provincial capital, severely

tortured, and all killed mala morte, 'a great number.'"

[Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire",

p.89, from information from the Life of Porphyry.]

"Anyone who asserted wrong teachings, anyone serving the devil or his demons,

earned instead an equally remarkable antagonism. In their official high

meetings together, Christians thus could not keep their own disagreements

within the bounds of civil language; their continual quarrels required the

intervention of the civil authorities; and all this was well known and noted

[Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire", p.92]

"In the light of their doctrinal dualism and the intransigence, sometimes

amounting to ferocity, with which its spirit was applied, Christians might

have been expected to press their differences home with every device and

force available. Moreover, if they are measured by their bishops (and a better

yardstick is not easily thought of), close to half the population who called

themselves church members toward mid-century must have belonged to some

allegiance other than the one that ultimately prevailed: in other words, they

were Arian, donatist, or Meletian. Sectarian rivalry was thus a very real

thing, a spur to great exertions. Egypt especially, being split three ways,

echoed to the shouts of partisans, the din of violence, and laments for those

robbed, stripped naked, flogged, imprisoned, exiled, sent to the quarries and

coppermines, conscripted into the army, tortured, decapitated, strangled, or

stoned or beaten to death. The express object was to make converts."

[Ramsay MacMullen, "Christianizing the Roman Empire", p. 93]

"The Old Testament is tribal in its provinciality;

its god is a local god, and its village police and

sanitary regulations are erected into eternal laws."

[John Macy, "The Spirit of American Literature"]

"When I get down on my knees, it is not to pray."

"It is difficult to believe in a religion that places

such a high premium on chastity and virginity."

"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is

round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have

more faith in a shadow than in the church."

"If Jesus was a Jew, why did he have a Spanish name?"

"Jim Bakker spells his name with 2 k's because 3 would be too obvious."

[Bill Maher, host of Politically Incorrect]

"Man is a dog's ideal of what God should be."

"It is in the book of man, not the book of god, that we must look for

examples of heroism, love, pity, justice, truth, honor, humanity."

"The worst criminals are not half so immoral as the creators and

perpetrators of the unquestionable hell of Christian theology"

[M.M. Mangasarian _Morality Without God_, 1913]

"The religious part of easter is treated with solemnity, even the

resurrection, but the secular part is pure paganism with all the

heartiness drained out of it. Easter needs its Dickens."

"It is necessary for men to be deceived in religion."

"In some ways the case of Edward H. Winter is a prototypical miracle of

modern medicine. ... He would probably have died of a heart attack in May

1988, when he was 82, if a nurse at St. Francis-St. George Hospital had not

revived him through electric shock. ... A few months before his heart attack,

he watched the slow, agonizing death of his wife of 55 years, who had

suffered brain damage after shock resuscitation from a heart attack of her

own, and he resolved that nothing like that would happen to him. ... When

his time came, he told his children, they should simply let him die. He told

his doctor the same thing. ... Two days after he was revived, he suffered a

debilitating stroke. ... He is now partly paralyzed and largely confined to

his bed in a nursing home, and although he can still speak, he can utter only

a few words before he begins to cry, in despair. ... But for the hospital's

intervention, he has charged, he could have died, and in dignity. ... His

medical bills now total about $100,000 and are still rising, and his life

savings are just about depleted. ... His doctors see scant chance for

physical improvement. They say he could live for years. ... The hospital

argues any damages Winter has suffered resulted from 'an act of God' over

[David Margolick, New York Times, Press Democrat, 18 March 1990]

"[as for evolution]....cutting out the sections [on the subject] is preferrable

if the portions are not thick enough to cause damage to the spine of the book

as it is opened and closed in normal use. When the sections needing correction

are too thick, paste the pages together being careful not to smear portions of

[R.E. Martin, American creationist, in 'Reviewing and

Correcting Encyclopaedias' (1983: 205-7), instructing

followers to censor books that don't follow creation dogma]

"I believe in eight of the ten commandments; and I believe

in going to church every Sunday unless there's a game on."

"It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human

welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature."

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a

heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions.

[Karl Marx, Introduction, Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy

of Right, Deutsch-Franzoesische Yahrbuecher, 1844]

"Religion is the impotence of the human mind to

deal with occurences it cannot understand."

"The imaginary flowers of religion adorn man's chains.

Man must throw off the flowers, and also the chains."

"The first requisite for the happiness of

the people is the abolition of religion."

"If any person shall Blaspheme the name of God, the Father, Sonne or Holie

Ghost, with direct, expresse, Presumptious or high handed blasphemie, or

shall curse God in the like manner, he shall be put to death. Lev. 24:15,16"

[Massachusetts' "Body of Liberties" of 1641, Section 94]

"Immortality is not a gift, Immortality is an achievement;

And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it."

"...I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that

Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has

inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance,

must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers

that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that

has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow

on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as

[W. Somerset Maughman, "The Razor's Edge"]

"I do have a problem with separation of church and state. I don't think there's

anything wrong with the government having religious views and practices."

[Martin Mawyer, Pres. Christian Action Network]

"What you are about to hear is God's word to the men of this nation. We

are going to war as of tonight. We have divine power -- that is our weapon.

We will not compromise. Wherever truth is at risk, in the schools or

legislature, we are going to contend for it. We will win."

[Bill McCartney, head of Religious Right group "Promise Keepers"]

"On the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant

today, like Noah taking 40 days to find a place to park."

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."

"It is scandalous that any modern, intelligent, well-

educated person should believe in Christianity."

"The human mind treats a new idea the way the

body treats a strange protein. It rejects it."

"I was negotiating a contract to accept Jesus as my personal

savior, but he refused to recognize my free sex clause."

"The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-

four hours. But certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make

a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves; and they

maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves....Now, it

is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the

example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth

as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it."

"Without the intervention of the civil authority

what would our percepts become?- Platonic laws."

[Melanchthon, as quoted in Frans Funck-Brentan,

_Luther_ (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd. 1939) P. 260]

"Better sleep with a sober cannibal that a drunken Christian."

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the

occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply

one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and

realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill."

"There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,

however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.

Soon or later the laws governing the production of life itself will be

discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator

on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is

"Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States

ever produced was the Christian business man."

"Puritanism- The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

"The acting that one sees upon the stage does not show how human beings

comport themselves in crises, but how actors think they ought to. It is

thus, like poetry and religion, a device for gladdening the heart with

"The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads;

it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries

and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men

that doubt, after all, was safe--that the god in the sanctuary was finite in

his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.

It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent."

"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration- courage,

clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."

[H.L. Mencken, "Autobiographical Notes" (1925)]

"God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent the helpless, the miserable.

They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority,

soothing to their macetated egos; He will set them above their better."

"Christian theology is not only opposed to the scientific spirit;

it is opposed to every other form of rational thinking."

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in

the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory

that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

"A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than

he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men

favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter

facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.

"The major contribution of Protestant thought to the knowledge

of mankind is its massive proof that God is a bore."

"What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world?

Answer: he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can

"The cosmos is a gigantic fly wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute.

Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that

the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride."

"Men become civilized not in proportion to their willingness

to believe but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."

"Theology-An effort to explain the unknowable by

putting it into terms of the not worth knowing."

"There is no possibility whatsoever of reconciling science and

theology, at least in Christendom. Either Jesus arose from the

dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes

plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense. I defy any

genuine scientists to say that he believes in the Resurrection,

or indeed in any other cardinal dogma of the Christian system."

"Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove

the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible."

"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to

mankind--that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the

ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done

"There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that

entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get.

On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly."

"The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think

as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think."

"Archbishop: A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank

"Church: A place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven

brag about it to people who will never get there."

"Clergyman: A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven."

"Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time."

"Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them

"Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were

dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell."

"Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for

"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise

and free than Christianity has made them good."

"Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and

"I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries."

"One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing."

"The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as

the trouble with Christianity is the Christians."

"A man who is an agnostic by inheritance, so that he doesn't remember

any time that he wasn't, has almost no hatred for the religious."

"Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always

come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them."

"It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy

by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to

"It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or of the

American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent

"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent

God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a

board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation

"Clergyman. A ticket speculator outside the gates of Heaven."

"The man or country that fights priestcraft and priests is to

my mind striking deeper for freedom than can be struck anywhere."

[George Meredith, letter of Sept. 3,1874]

Make a contribution and you'll get a better seat..."

"The delegates of the annual conference are decidedly opposed to

modern abolitionism, and wholly disclaim any right, wish, or

intention to interfere in the civil and political relation between

master and slave in the slave-holding states of the union."

[Methodist Episcopal Church, Statement of the

General Conference, Cincinnati, May 1836]

"But might not one suppose as some have supposed, that the feeling

which is observed in animated bodies, might belong to a being distinct

from the matter of these bodies, to a substance of a different nature

united to them? Does the light of reason allow us in good faith to

admit such conjectures? We know in bodies only matter, and we observe

the faculty of feeling only in bodies: on what foundation then can we

erect an ideal being, disowned by all our knowledge?"

"The Natural History of the Soul" (1742)]

"For God so loved the world that He gave Man Free Will and then got

pissed when we didn't meet his arbitrary standards. Oh, and he had

his Son offed when he realized how impossible those standards were."

"Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us."

"I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply

that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can

sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go."

"The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty

of all to make their dissent from religion known."

"The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of

its brightest ornaments, of those most ditinguished even in popular

estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete skeptics in religion."

[John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) British philosopher]

"The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a

name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its

own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did

not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was

something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious."

"In regards to Oral Roberts' claim that God told him that he would die

unless he received $20 million by March, God's lawyers have stated that

their client has not spoken with Roberts for several years. Off the

record, God has stated that 'if I had wanted to ice the little toad, I

"Let me use their own terminology against them.

They aborted a child in the 200th trimester."

"I have my own God, and I think my God finds me incredibly

fucking funny. That's why I chose him as my God ... "

"If one is willing to make adjustments in the historical claims of the

Bible, they can be correlated with the archaeological evidence if one

is willing to take some liberties with the archaeological evidence."

[J. Maxwell Miller, Biblical archaeologist]

"The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism,

disbelief -- call it what you will -- than any book ever written."

they're making a bonnet of terminal guilt

the way to succeed and the way to suck eggs

"I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education."

"Science has proof without any certainty.

Creationists have certainty without any proof"

"How many things served us yesterday for articles

of faith, which today are fables for us!"

"O senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm

"Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself."

[Michel Eyquen Montaigne (1533-1592) "Essays" Book 1, Ch. 39]

"...I was suddenly inspired to describe the Judeo-Christian god

as a penis which has been endowed with cosmic significance."

"No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ."

"So you're a god, eh? Very nice, very nice.

But, you still don't have a reservation..."

"A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:

Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless

this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in

thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and

toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals...

Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must

count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number

of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt

thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right

out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached,

then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who,

being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."

[Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"]

"And there shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, and there

will be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will

really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work

base, that has an attachment they will not be there.

At this time a friend shall lose his friends's hammer and the young shall

not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their

fathers put there only just the night before ..."

[Prophet in Monty Python's, "Life of Brian"]

"...and sporteth twice they the camels, before the third hour. And so

the Millionites went forth, to Ramgilliad, in Kadesh-belgamesh, by

Shorethberagalion, to the house of Gashbillbethuelbasda, he who brought the

butterdish to Balshaza, and the tent-peg to the house of Rashamon. And

there, slew they the goats, yeah, and put they the bits, in little pots."

"There's nothing an agnostic can't do if he doesn't

know whether he believes in anything or not"

"Tonight, instead of discussing the existence or non-

existence of God, they have decided to fight for it."

"Out of all the Saints sent by God, I think I am the most successful one

already as it now stands. When it comes to our age, we must have an

automatic theocracy to rule the world. So, we cannot separate the political

field from the religious. My dream is to organize a Christian political

party including the Protestant denominations, Catholic and all the religious

sects. We can embrace the religious world in one arm and the political world

in the other. The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and

I have met many famous so-called famous Senators and Congressmen, but to

my eyes they are just nothing; they are weak and helpless before God.

If the U.S. continues its corruption, and we find among the Senators

and Congressmen no one really usable for our purposes we can make Senators

[Rev. Sun Myong Moon, in MASTER SPEAKS, 5/17/73,

detailing his anti-democratic plans for the USA]

"So telling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a

person, but if you tell a lie to do a good thing for him that is not a

sin. Even God tells lies very often; you can see this throughout history."

[Rev. Sun Myong Moon, in MASTER SPEAKS, 3/16/72--England,

revealing the extent of his respect for truth, i.e. none]

"The sentient may perceive and love the universe, but the universe may not

perceive and love the sentient. The universe sees no distinction between

the multitude of creatures and elements which comprise it. All are equal.

None is favored. The universe, equipped with nothing but the materials and

the power of creation, continues to create: something of this, something of

that. It cannot control what it creates and it cannot, it seems, be

controlled by its creations (though a few might deceive themselves

otherwise). Those who curse the workings of the universe curse that which

is deaf. Those who strike out at those workings fight that which is

inviolate. Those who shake their fists, shake their fists at blind stars."

[Michael Moorcock, from The Chronicles of Corum]

"Faith is an absolutely marvelous tool. With faith there

is no question too big for even the smallest mind."

[Rev. Donald Morgan (b. 1933), "Atheist theologian"]

"God: The Immutable One, though somewhat different for each person,

denomination, religion, society, and historical period. The

omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, all-wise, infinite mind who

-- for strictly personal reasons -- makes a point of seeming to

be an impotent, know-nothing, nowhere, bumbling oaf."

"If God is love, and if God is also omnipresent, then the Devil cannot

exist. If the Devil exists, God cannot be love and also be omnipresent.

Yet, an omnipresent God of love and the Devil are both said to exist. It

doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure that there is something wrong here!"

"Thank God" that the Bible cannot possibly be the word of God.

"If the Bible is telling the truth, then God is either

untruthful or incompetent. If God is truthful, then

the Bible is either untruthful or erroneous."

"Moral: A peerless maxim enumerated by God in his Holy Bible, such as

that of Deut. 23:1, if your testicles are crushed or your male member

missing, you must never enter a sanctuary of the Lord."

"A thorough reading and understanding of the

"Atheist: A person who believes in one less god than you do."

"Christians say that--without exception--their God answers all of their

prayers; it's just that He sometimes says "yes" and other times "no,"

"maybe," or "wait." Of course the same could be said of the rain-god,"Bob."

"If God existed as an all-powerful being, He would not need

the money that faithful believers donate to their churches."

"The certainty with which a religious belief is held

is usually in direct proportion to its absurdity."

"The effectiveness of any one of three prayers, each given

twice, is expressed mathematically as: ((3x2)-6)/((6+1)-7)]

"The treatment of prayer proposals by Congress seems, as much as anything,

a reflection of the state of the level of morale within the institution.

If congressional morale is high and much is going on, little attention

is paid to such hardy perennials. When, however, Congress begins to

feel excluded and ineffectual, the bad penny of a prayer amendment seems

to turn up and begins commanding attention again."

[Richard E. Morgan, "The Supreme Court and Religion"]

"All religions die of one disease - that of being found out."

"Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty

sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat."

"....Man can contemplate his own mortality and finds the thought intolerable.

Any animal will struggle to protect itself from a threat of death. Faced

with a predator, it flees, hides, fights or employs some other defensive

mechanism, such as death-feigning or the emission of stinking fluids. There

are many self-protection mechanisms, but they all occur as a response to an

immediate danger. When man contemplates his future death, it is as if, by

thinking of it, he renders it immediate. His defence is to deny it. He

cannot deny that his body will die and rot--the evidence is too strong for

that; so he solves the problem by the invention of an immortal soul--a soul

which is more 'him' than even his physical body is 'him.' If this soul can

survive in an afterlife, then he has successfully defended himself against

This gives the agents of the gods a powerful area of support. All they

need to do is to remind their followers constantly of their mortality and

to convince them that the afterlife itself is under the personal

management of the particular gods they are promoting. The self-protective

urges of their worshippers will do the rest."

[Desmond Morris, "Religious Displays," _Manwatching: A Field

Guide to Human Behaviour_, 1977, Abrams, New York, p. 149-51.]

"Religious Displays, as distinct from religious beliefs, are submissive acts

performed towards dominant individuals called gods. The acts themselves

include various forms of body-lowering, such as kneeling, bowing, kowtowing,

salaaming and prostrating; also chanting and rituals of debasement and

sacrifice; the offering of gifts to the gods and the making of symbolic

The function of these actions is to appease the super-dominant beings and

thereby obtains favours or avoid punishments. There is nothing unusual about

this behaviour in itself. Subordinates throughout the animal world subject

themselves to their most powerful companions in a similar way. But the

strange feature of these human submissive actions, as we encounter them today,

is that they are performed towards a dominant figure, or figures, who are

never present in person. Instead they are represented by images and artifacts

and operate entirely through agents called holy-men or priests. These

middle-men enjoy a position of social influence and respect because some of

the power of the gods rubs off on them. It is therefore extremely important

to the holy-men to keep the worshippers permanently obedient to the super-

dominant figures, and they do this in several ways."

[Desmond Morris, _Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human

Behaviour_, 1977, Abrams, New York, pages 148-9]

"One of the demands put upon the priests and holy-men is that they should

provide impressive rituals. Nearly all religions include ceremonial

procedures during which the followers of a particular deity can indulge

in complex group activities. This is essential as a demonstration of the

power of the gods--that they can dominate and command submissive

behaviour from large numbers of people at one and the same time--and it

is also a method of strengthening the social bonding in relation to the

common belief. Since the gods are super-parents and super-leaders, they

must necessarily have large houses in which to 'meet' with their followers.

Anyone flying low over human settlements in a spacecraft and ignorant of

our ways would notice immediately that in many of the villages and towns

and cities there were one or two homes much bigger than the rest. Towering

over the other houses, these large buildings must surely be the abodes

of some enormous individuals, many times the size of the rest of the

population. These--the houses of the gods--the temples, the churches and

the cathedrals--are buildings apparently made for giants, and a space

visitor would be surprised to find on closer examination that these giants

are never at home. Their followers repeatedly visit them and bow down before

them, but they themselves are invisible. Only their bell-like cries can be

heard across the land. Man is indeed an imaginative species."

[Desmond Morris, "Religious Displays," _Manwatching: A Field

Guide to Human Behaviour_, 1977, Abrams, New York, page 152.]

"No matter how old we become, we can still call them [i.e., the super-

dominant beings] 'Holy Mother' and 'Father' and put a child-like trust

in them (or their agents, who often adopt similar titles for themselves)."

[Desmond Morris, "Religious Displays," _Manwatching: A

Field Guide to Human Behaviour_, 1977, Abrams, New York]

"When science and the Bible differ, science has

"Evolution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behaviorism,

racism, economic imperialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism, and all

manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice."

[H. M. Morris, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth,

San Diego, Creation-Life Publishers, 1972]

"The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell

us what it is. And since He has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures

that it is several thousand years in age, and no more, that ought to settle

all basic questions of terrestrial chronology."

"The "stars" associated with the solar system, such as the planets and

asteroids (and it should be remembered that the term "star" in Biblical

usage applies to any heavenly body other than the sun and moon) would be

particularly likely to be involved, in the view of the heavy concentration

of angels, both bad and evil, around the planet Earth."

"The so-called geologic ages are essentially synonymous with the evolutionary

theory of origins. The latter is the anti-God conspiracy of Satan himself."

[Dr Henry Morris, President of the Institute for Creation Research, 1978]

"The only Bible-honoring conclusion is, of course, that Genesis 1-11

is actual historical truth, regardless of any scientific or

chronological problems thereby entailed."

And the church, all they want is your money"

"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument

against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes."

"Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has

known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not

known man ... , keep alive for yourselves."

[Moses, relaying God's orders to his people, Numbers 31:17-18]

"God"--as revealed in his book of edicts and narratives--

is practically an idiot. He has nothing to say that any

sensible person should want to listen to."

[Johann Most (c. 1890), Popular anarchist speaker]

"As set forth by theologians, the idea of "God" is an argument

that assumes its own conclusions, and proves nothing."

[Johann Most (c. 1890), popular anarchist speaker]

"Among all mental diseases that have been systematically inoculated

into the human cranium, the religious pest is the most abominable."

"The god of the Christians, as we have seen, is the god who makes promises

only to break them; who sends them pestilence and disease in order to heal

them; a god who demoralizes mankind in order to improve it. A god who

created man "after his own image", and still the origin of evil in man

"No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian

apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve."

[Saki, H.H. Munro (1870-1916), Scottish author]

"CEE is opposed to censoring such things as the true Christian history of

our nation and the scientific evidence that renders macro-evolution

impossible. Both of these have been extensively censored. We do

support rejection or removal of obscene, morbid and unhealthy materials."

[David Muralt, Texas Director of Citizens for Excellence in

Education, from Feb. 7, 1994 Austin American-Statesman]

"Find a christian today and tell him he is sick. Convert him,

if that term means anything, to a healthy lifestyle. Christians

don't have a monopoly on morality. We too can do 'the good work'."

"There was no such person in the history of the world as Jesus Christ.

There was no historical, living, breathing, sentient human being by that

name. Ever. [The Bible] is a fictional, nonhistorical narrative. The

[Jon Murray, President of American Atheists, as

quoted in Life Magazine, Dec. 1994 "Jesus" issue]

"A Mormon is a man that has the bad taste and the religion to do

what a good many other people are restrained from doing by

"For man is the maker of all deities, inventer of all abstractions,

builder of all laws and from first to last, the measure of all

"The history of the rise of Christianity has everything to do with politics,

culture, and human frailties and nothing to do with supernatural manipulation

of events. Had divine intervention been the guiding force, surely two

millennia after the birth of Jesus he would not have a world where there

are more Muslims than Catholics, more Hindus than Protestants, and more

nontheists than Catholics and Protestants combined."

"Koranic teaching still insists that the sun moves around the

earth. How can we advance when they teach things like that?"

"I write against the religion because if women want to live like human

beings, they will have to live outside the religion and Islamic law."

[Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, in exile, 6/21/94]

"Jesus said, 'Love your neighbors.' Well, I

"Almighty God, dear heavenly Father. In Thy name let us now, in pious

spirit, begin our instruction. Enlighten us, teach us all truth, strengthen

us in all thatis good, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from all evil

in order that, as good human beings, we may faithfully perform our duties

and thereby, in time and eternity, be made truly happy. Amen."

[Mandatory secondary school prayer in Nazi Germany in the 1930s,

from July-August 1995 issue of Liberty: A Magazine of Religious

Freedom, published by the North American Division of the Seventh-

day Adventist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland]

"No country or people who are slaves to dogma and the dogmatic

mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people

have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded."

[Jawaharlal Nehru - a Biography vol. I , Sarvepalli Gopal]

"I want nothing to do with religion concerned with keeping the masses

satisfied to live in hunger, filth and ignorance. I want nothing to

do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people

that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized, on this

earth, capable of becoming true man, master of his fate and captain

of his soul. To attain this, I would put priests to work, also, and

"The applications of science are inevitable and unavoidable for all countries

and peoples today. But something more than its application is necessary.

It is the scientific approach, the adverturous and yet critical temper of

science, the search for the truth and new knowledge, the refusal to accept

anything without testing and trial, the capacity to change previous

conclusions in the face of new evidence, the reliance on observed fact and

not on preconceived theory, the hard discipline of the mind all this is

necessary, not merely for the application of science but for life itself

[Jawaharlal Nehru, former Prime Minister of India]

"These extremist sects appeal to many people in an antispiritual age

because they combine their empowering theology with a warm, supportive

environment, at least at first. Those who join become part of a close-knit

body of believers who are convinced they understand the meaning of history

"One would like to believe that people who think of themselves as

devout Christians would also behave in a manner that is in according

with Christian ethics. But pastorally and existentially, I know that

this is not the case -- and never has been."

[John Neuhaus, in San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 1993]

"Three years ago, Ralph Reed, the executive director of the Christian

Coalition, wished not to be seen. 'I want to be invisible,' he said.

'I do guerilla warfare...'... But on June 25th Reed played the expansive

host at a luncheon given by the Coalition, the most influential group on

the religious right, which was attended by hundreds of delegates to the

Iowa Republican Party convention. They were celebrating their victories

in gaining control of the state Party's central committee, ousting

moderate Republicans, and in dictating a platform that supported the

teaching of creationism in the public schools."

["Christian Soldiers", New Yorker magazine, July 18, 1994]

"In January, [Dan Quayle] spoke at a training conference of religious-right

activists in Fort Lauderdale, whose theme was 'Reclaiming America,' and

before the event began he stood at attention as the crowd of more than two

thousand rose, faced a flag with a cross on it, and, with hands on hearts,

recited in unison, 'I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the

Saviour, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Saviour, crucified, risen, and

coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe."

["Christian Soldiers", New Yorker magazine, July 18, 1994]

"By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic

credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists)

who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex

life forms did not evolve but appeared "abruptly."

"It is interesting that every time God gives direct

orders to anyone, it is always "Thou shalt kill."

"So, how come there are no "talking snakes" nowadays? ...

Because you are not righteous enough to hear them talk."

"Think about the bio-mass involved [with the Biblical flood].

"When we make mistakes they call it evil.

When God makes mistakes they call it Nature!"

[Jack Nicholson in "The Witches of Eastwick"]

"It is the creationists who blasphemously are claiming

that God is cheating us in a stupid way."

"A second possible thing that creationists might look for is some kind

of instrument that will detect darkness. It is my conclusion, based

on [scripture] that darkness is a positive thing."

[Richard Niessen, Professor, Christian Heritage College]

"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that

the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes."

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion

come into contact with reality at any point."

"You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?"

[Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians]

"I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great intrinsic

depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge for which no expedient

is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, *petty* -- I call it

"Belief means not wanting to know what is true."

"Though I drew this conclusion, now it draws me."

[Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra]

"The belief that the world as it ought to be is, really exists, is a belief

of the unproductive who do not desire to create a world as it ought to be.

It is a measure of the degree of strength of will to what extent one can

do without meaning in things, to what extent one can endure to live in

a meaningless world because one organizes a small part of it oneself."

All the beauty and sublimity we have bestowed upon... imaginary things I

will reclaim as the property and product of man... with what regal

liberality he has lavished gifts upon things so as to impoverish himself

[Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Will to Power]

"God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers--

at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!"

"The advent of the Christian God, as the maximum god attained so far,

was... accompanied by the maximum feeling of guilty indebtedness on Earth.

Presuming we gradually enter upon the reverse course, there is no small

probability that with the irresistible decline of faith in the Christian

god, there is now a considerable decline in mankind's feeling of guilt;

indeed, the prospect cannot be dismissed that the complete and definitive

victory of Atheism might free mankind of this whole feeling of guilty in-

debtedness towards its origin... Atheism and a kind of second innocence

[Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Genealogy of Morals]

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum

shows that faith does not prove anything."

"Have you noticed there are no interesting people in heaven?

--Just a hint to the girls as to where they can find their salvation."

"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The

truth is that they are not even superficial."

[Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: 126]

"One is *not* free to become a Christian.

"For let us not underestimate the Christian: the Christian, *false

to point of innocence*, is far above the ape--regarding Christians,

a well-known theory of descent becomes a mere compliment."

"The 'evangel' died on the cross. What has been called 'evangel'

from that moment was actually the opposite of that which *he* had

"This indictment of Christianity I will write on all walls, wherever

there are walls--I have letters to make even the blind see."

"One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The

proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this."

"However un-Christian this may sound, I am

"Assuming that he believes at all, the everday Christian is a pitiful

figure, a man who really cannot count up to three, and who besides,

precisely because of his mental incompetence, would not deserve such

a punishment as Christianity promises him."

"Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity."

"The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all

freedom, all price, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time

subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation..."

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher

esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

"Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move

real mountains... But it can put mountains where there are none."

"What a theologian feels as true, must be false:

one has therein almost a criterion of truth."

"War to the death against depravity--depravity is Christianity."

"It is regrettable that a Dostoyevski did not live near this most

interesting of all decadents--I mean someone who would have known

how to sense the very stirring charm of such a mixture of the sublime,

"The god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption

from life; Dionysus cut to pieces is a *promise* of life: it will be

eternally reborn and return again from destruction."

"...it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific.

Moral: science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is forbidden.

Science is the first sin, seed of all sin, the original sin. This

alone is morality. 'Thou shalt not know' -- the rest follows."

"It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and

invented the things of heaven and the redeeming drops of blood: but even

these sweet and dismal poisons they took from the body and the earth!"

"Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teachings?"

"The noble soul has reverence for itself"

"Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further."

[Zarathustra, in Nietzsche's _Also Sprach Zarathustra_]

"Is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders?"

". . . an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that

[crucifixion of Jesus Christ]!' . . . the deranged reason of the little

community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for

forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its

most repugnant and barbarous form -- the sacrifice of the innocent for the

sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!"

"The Christian resolution to find the world ugly

and bad has made the world ugly and bad."

"Only under two suppositions does prayer- that custom of earlier ages that

has not yet completely died out- make any sense: it would have to be

possible to induce or convert the divinity to a certain course of action,

and the person praying would himself have to know best what he needed, what

was truly desirable for him. Both presuppositions, assumed true and

established by custom in all other religions, are however denied precisely

by Christianity; if it nonetheless adheres to prayer in the face of its

belief in an omniscient and all-provident rationality in God which renders

prayer at bottom senseless and, indeed, blasphemous- in this it once again

demonstrates its admirable serpent cunning; for a clear commandment 'Thou

Shalt Not Pray' would have led Christians into unchristianity through

[Nietzsche, _The Wanderer and his Shadow_, passage 74]

"Christianity has done it's utmost to close the circle and declare even doubt

to be a sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a

miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least

ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that

one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the

slightest impulse of our amphibious nature - is sin! And notice that all

this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on it's origin

is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and

intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned."

"Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my

age he would have repudiated his doctrine."

"Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died,

and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth

is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails

of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth."

"For the old gods, after all, things came to an end long ago; and

verily, they had a good gay godlike end. They did not end in a "twilight,"

though this lie is told. Instead: one day they *laughed* themselves to

death. That happened when the most godless word issued from one of the gods

themselves--the word: "There is one god. Thou shalt have no other god before

me!" An old grimbeard of a god, a jealous one, thus forgot himself. And then

all the gods laughed and rocked on their chairs and cried, "Is not just this

"Everywhere the voice of those who preach death is heard; and the

earth if full of those to whom one must preach death. Or, "eternal

life"---that is the same to me, if only they pass away quickly."

"Christianity came into existence in order to lighten the

heart; but now it has to burden the heart first, in order

to lighten it afterward. Consequently it will perish."

[Nietzsche, from Human, All Too Human, s.119]

"An agreeable opinion is accepted as true: this is the proof by pleasure

(or, as the church says, the proof by strength), that all religions are

so proud of, whereas they ought to be ashamed. If the belief did not make

us happy, it would not be believed: how little must it then be worth!"

"Thus a certain false psychology, a certain kind of fantasy in interpreting

motives and experiences, is the necessary prerequisite for becoming a

Christian and experiencing the need for redemption. With the insight into

this aberration of reason and imagination, one ceases to be a Christian."

"One should not go into church if one wants to breathe pure air."

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."

"There is not enough religion in the world

"Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and

crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he

invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven."

"Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and

pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire."

"The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.

"Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. WE HAVE KILLED HIM - you

and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could

we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire

horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?

Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns?

Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, foreward, in all

direction? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through

an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not

become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need

to light candles in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of

the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the

divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead.

"The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and

fragrant drop of levity--and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it

into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive."

"Christianity makes suffering contagious."

"A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of

those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against

the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian. Hatred

of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred

of the sense, of the joy of the senses, of joy in general is Christian."

"But in the end one also has to understand that the needs that religion has

satisfied and philosophy is now supposed to satisfy are not immutable; they

can be weakened and exterminated. Consider, for example, that Christian

distress of mind that comes from sighing over ones inner depravity and care

for ones salvation - all concepts originating in nothing but errors of reason

and deserving, not satisfaction, but obliteration."

[Nietzsche, from Human, all too Human, s.27]

"At the deathbed of Christianity.-- Really unreflective people are now

inwardly without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people

of the intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to

say marvelously simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges

everything in a manner that in the end will be best for us; a god who gives

to us and takes from us our virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all

is meet and fit and there is no reason for us to take life sadly, let alone

exclaim against it; in short, resignation and modest demands elevated to

godhead - that is the best and most vital thing that still remains of

Christianity. But one should notice that Christianity has thus crossed

over into a gentle moralism: it is not so much 'God, freedom and immortality'

that have remained, as benevolence and decency of disposition, and the belief

that in the whole universe too benevolence and decency of disposition

prevail: it is the euthanasia of Christianity."

he sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see

he tries to tell me what i put inside of me

he's got the answers to ease my curiosity

he dreamed a god up and called it christianity

he flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line

he made a virus that would kill off the swine

his perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain

demands devotion atrocities done in his name

and if there is a hell i will see you there

[Nine Inch Nails, from "The Downward Spiral," lyrics by Trent Reznor]

"The whole point of Christianity is that everyone in the world,

from Charles Manson to Mother Teresa, deserves to go to hell."

"As a literary monument the Bible is of much later origin than the Vedas;

as a work of literary value it is surpassed by everything written in the

last two thousand years by authors even of the second rank, and to compare

it seriously with the productions of Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare

or Goethe would require a fantacized mind that had entirely lost its power

of judgment. Its conception of the universe is childish, and its morality

revolting, as revealed in the malicious vengeance attributed to God in the

OT and in the New, the parable of the laborers of the eleventh hour and

the episodes of Mary Magdelene and the woman taken in adultery."

"We profess our faith in a Supreme Being on our coins marked "In God we trust."

It seems more appropriate to me to recognize the Deity in our spiritual

dedication to the flag, the symbol of our God-given freedom. Our belief in God

highlights one of the fundamental differences between us and the Communists."

[Rep. Charles G. Oakman, Congressional Record, Appendix, p. A2527]

"Whoever did this (burn down the Margaret Sanger Center) is a hero.

I think they are heroes. The Bible commands us to rescue those being

[Nancy O'Brien, Co-Director Project Jericho, 2/23/87]

"The tolerance of liberty can be maintained until complete federal and

state control by Catholics has been accomplished."

"I do believe in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe

in the separation of God and the state. God has a special place in his

plan for our nation. And as the Senate goes, so goes the nation."

[Rev. Lloyd Ogilvie, official Chaplain to the U.S. Senate, who

receives a salary at taxpayer expense for religious services]

Marriage Ceremony: An incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the

law being dragged into the affairs of your family.

"Why doesn't God behave in such a way as to be worthy of worship?"

"Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every

stage of human history than any other single idea."

"The church doctrines of obedience to authority, repentance, fear of

punishment, self-abnegation, acceptance of outer direction rather than

inner assurance, elevation of faith over reason, and intolerance make

institutionalized religion an ideal instrument of social constraint.

In an unconstitutional partnership with the state, the church can impose

the most irresistible, if covert, controls conceivable."

"No god ever gave any man anything, nor ever answered

"Atheists are now here to stay. We are ready to take over the culture and

move it ahead for the benefit of all mankind. Religion has ever been anti-

human, anti-woman, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason, and anti-science.

The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind but to the earth.

It is time now for reason, education, and science to take over."

[Madalyn O'Hair, "Atheists: The Last Minority"]

"YOUR PETITIONERS ARE ATHEISTS and they define their life-style as follows.

An Atheist loves himself and his fellowman instead of a god. An Atheist

knows that heaven is something for which we should work now -- here on

earth -- for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist thinks that he can get

no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction

and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue, and enjoy it. An

Atheist thinks that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his

fellowman can he find the understanding that will help to a life of

Therefore, he seeks to know himself and his fellowman rather than to know

a god. An Atheist knows that a hospital should be build instead of a church

An Atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An

Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.

He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants

man to understand and love man. He wants an ethical way of life. He knows

that we cannot rely on a god nor channel action into prayer nor hope for an

end to troubles in the hereafter. He knows that we are our brother's keeper

and keepers of our lives; that we are responsibile persons, that the job is

"It is in the temporal affairs of mankind, not in the delusions

of religious faiths, that man's actual well being and happiness

[Culbert L. Olson, "Secularism and Social Progress". 1961]

rascals when old age is the real medicine."

"Burn the libraries, for their value is in this one book (the Koran)."

[Omar I, 2nd Caliph, at the capture of Alexandria]

"Your sweet little book is a bizarre collection of out-of-context quotations,

misquotations, misleading quotations, non sequiturs, errors of fact and just

about every other dirty intellectual trick known to man."

[Tim O'Neill, on the JW's anti-evolution book]

"Whether or not the statement is _analytically_ true is not as important

as the fact that it is _a priori_ true and hence transcendentally true."

"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma

in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to

doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors."

[J. Robert Oppenheimer, Life, 10 October 1949]

"As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to

say what they think, free to think what they will,

freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress."

[J. Robert Oppenheimer, Life, 10 October 1949]

"Making fun of born-again christians is like hunting

dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope."

"If you keep your mind sufficiently open,

people will throw a lot of rubbish into it."

"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent."

"Recently I was reading somewhere or other [about] an Italian curio-dealer

who attempted to sell a 17th century crucifix to J.P. Morgan. [I]nside it

was concealed a stiletto. What a perfect symbol of the Christian religion."

"In theory it is still possible to be an orthodox religious believer without

being intellectually crippled...; but it is far from easy, and in practice

books by orthodox believers usually show the same cramped, blinkered outlook

as books by orthodox Stalinists or others who are mentally unfree. The ...

Christian churches still demand assent to doctrines which no one seriously

believes in. The most obvious case is the immortality of the soul."

"Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that

it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock.

And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a

"Why can't the Jews and Arabs just sit down

together and settle this like good Christians?"

"No doubt a sizeable majority of Americans believe in the concept of a

Creator or, at least, are not opposed to the concept and see nothing

wrong with teaching school children about the idea.

The application and content of First Amendment principles are not

determined by public opinion polls or by a majority vote. Whether the

proponents of Act 590 constitute the majority or the minority is quite

irrelevant under a constitutional system of government.

No group, no matter how large or small, may use the organs of

government, of which the public schools are the most conspicuous

and influential, to foist its religious beliefs on others."

[U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton,

overturning Arkansas Act 590, requiring public

"It is convenient that there be gods, and, as

it is convenient, let us believe there are."

"My reason taught me that I could not have made one of my own qualities- they

were forced upon me by Nature; that my language, religion, and habits were

forced upon me by Society; and that I was entirely the child of Nature and

Society; that Nature gave the qualities and Society directed them. Thus was

I forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief

in every religion which had been taught by man."

"Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot be

true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of

mankind trained from infancy to believe in error."

"Any Latter-day Saint who denounces or opposes, whether actively or otherwise,

any plan or doctrine advocated by the 'prophets, seers, and revelators' of

the Church is cultivating the spirit of apostasy. Lucifer....wins a great

victory when he can get members of the Church to speak against their leaders

and to 'do their own thinking'.... "When our leaders speak, the thinking had

been done. When they propose a plan -- it is God's plan. When they point the

way, there is no other which is safe. When they give direction, it should

[Mormon Elder Boyd K. Packer, The Improvement Era, June 1945, pg. 354]

"I was feeling sorry for you and thinking I was

doing my Christian duty by making love to you."

[Republican Bob Packwood, quoted from his diary,

"All countries censored books; Protestant authorities labored to keep "papist"

works from the eyes of the faithful ... ... In the Catholic world, with the

trend toward centralization under the pope, a special importance attached to

the list published by the bishop of Rome, the papal Index of Prohibited

Books. Only with special permission, granted to reliable persons for special

study, could Catholics read books listed on the Index, on which most of the

significant works written in Europe since the Reformation have been included."

[A History of the Modern World, R.R. Palmer,p. 90]

"If you want to know what God thinks of money,

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as

when they do it from a religious conviction"

"A pleasant justice, that, which a river or a mountain limits.

Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, may be heresy on the other!"

"If I have to resurrect you, I'll resurrect you, whether you like it or not!"

[Paul to Jesus, _The_Last_Temptation_of_Christ_]

"A tendency to drastically underestimate the frequency of coincidence

is a prime characteristic of innumerates, who generally accord great

significance to correspondences of all sorts while attributing too little

significance to quite conclusive but less flashy statistical evidence."

[John Allen Paulos, mathematics professor, in "Innumeracy:

Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences"]

"God" as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every

valid metaphysical principle. The point is wider than just the Judeo-

Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to

a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting

this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism"]

"Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a

false metaphysical premise. None can survive for amoment on a correct

Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary;

it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate

something beyond existence--some supernatural realm--you must do it openly

denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying

flatly, "To Hell with argument, I have faith." That, of course, is a

Objectivism advocates reason as man's sole means of knowledge, and

therefore, for the reasons I have already given, is atheist. It denies

any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of

existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the

supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we

[Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism",

"Can God perform miracles? A "miracle" does not mean merely the unusual. If

a woman gives birth to twins, that is unusual; if she were to give birth to

elephants, that would be a miracle. A miracle is an action not possible to

the entities involved by their nature; it would be a violation of identity."

[Leonard Peikoff, "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand", p. 32]

"Perhaps there was an organization in Phineas' day known as the N.A.A.C.P.

(National Association for the Advancement of Canaanite People) who took

exception with this teaching of segregation. Perhaps there were pulpits

proclaiming a more tolerant and socially accepted view and government agency

crusading for 'affirmative action.' We really do not know; but we do know

from the Bible story in Numbers chapter 25 that the Israel people began to

disobey God's law, accept integration, cultural exchange and a type of

interracial marriage, and thus were struck collectively by a plague.

Phineas was the man who courageously fought against the racial treason

even to the point of bloodshed, and he too was honored by God."

[Pastor Pete Peters, _THE BIBLE: Handbook For Survivalists, Racists,

Tax Protestors, Militants And Right-Wing Extremists_, ND,

Scriptures For America, La Porte, Colorado, pp. 4-5]

"Thixotropy -- the property that lets toothpaste ooze when squeezed out of

its tube and yet not drip off the toothbrush -- may explain a centuries-old

miracle. Blood, once congealed, tends to stay that way. But when religious

leaders handle a vial believed to contain the blood of St. Januarius, the

dark brown substance begins to flow. Periodic demonstrations of this effect

have drawn crowds to Naples since 1389, notes Luigi Garlaschelli, an organic

chemist at the University of Pavia in Italy. In the Oct. 10 [issue of]

Nature, Garlaschelli and two other Italian researchers propose that medieval

alchemists could have created a thixotropic substance that looked like blood

by mixing water and salt with a mineral called molysite. Thixotropic

materials exist as gels until a mechanical stress -- such as picking up or

tilting their containers -- makes them flow. To explore this possibility,

Garlaschelli searched through the scientific literature and discovered that

about 70 years ago, researchers demonstrated thixotropy in an iron hydroxide

alloy. He reproduced their work by mixing a ferric chloride compound with

calcium carbonate in water, then separating out the iron hydroxide that

formed. By adding salt to a solution of this alloy, he created a dark brown

gel. 'It looks exactly like the samples in Naples,' he told Science News.

All of these materials were available five centuries ago, including ferric

chloride, found near Mt. Vesuvius in the form of molysite, he says."

[Ivars Peterson, Science News 140(15):229, 12 October 1991]

"An attempt to give credibility to Hebrew mythology by making people

believe that the the world's foremost biologists, paleontologists,

and geologists are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops."

"It is fear that first brought gods into the world."

"I was walking across a bridge one day, and i saw a man standing on the edge,

about to jump off. So I ran over and said "stop! don't do it!" "Why

shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He

said, "Like what?" I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He said,

"Religious." I said, "Me too! Are you christian or buddhist?" He said,

"Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you catholic or protestant?" He said,

"Protestant." I said, "Me too! Are you episcopalian or baptist?" He said,

"Baptist!" I said, "Wow! Me too! Are you baptist church of god or baptist

church of the lord?" He said, "Baptist church of god!" I said, "Me too!

Are you original baptist church of god, or are you reformed baptist church of

god?" He said, "Reformed baptist church of god!" I said, "Me too! Are you

reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed baptist

church of god, reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed baptist church of

god, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off."

"Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics."

[Wendell Phillips, Speech, 7 November 1860]

"The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated

member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false

or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the

universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack."

[Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), American abolitionist, speech, 1863]

"Religions are like farts. Yours is good, but everyone else's stinks."

"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise

anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear

and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."

"The creationists have this creator who is evil, who is small-minded, who is

malevolent, and who is not very bright and can't even get his science right.

Creationists have made their creator in their own image, in my view."

[Prof. Ian Plimer - The Skeptic, Vol 13, No 2]

"Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the

truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses.

But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition."

[Pliny to Trajan about the Christians, 111 AD]

"All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of

fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry."

"Not only might one-quarter to one-half of the weight be lost in planing,

whereas with iron only a minute fraction was lost in this way, but half

of the weight of timber in a wooden ship was wasted, its only use being

to hold the other half in position. Even so, a wooden ship had great

stresses as a structure. *The absolute limit of its length was 300 feet,*

and it was liable to "hogging" and "sagging" in addition to being unable

to withstand the local strain of the screw propeller"

["The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870-1914", pp. 13-14,

by Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, as cited by Robert

Moore in "The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark", on the

physical impossibility of Noah's 450 foot-long wooden ark]

"Since the masses of the people are inconsistent, full of unruly

desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be

filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well,

therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death."

"We are convinced the masses of evidence render the application of the

concept of evolution to man and the other primates beyond serious dispute."

"It was once proposed that all religions persuasions should be free and

their worship publicly exercised. We Catholics have rejected this article

as contrary to Roman Catholic canon law."

"The state (the U.S. Constitution) has not the right to leave every man

free to profess and embrace whatever religion he may desire."

"Let Catholic writers take care when defending the cause of the

proletariat and the poor not to use language calculated to

inspire among the people aversion to the upper classes of society."

"One Galileo in two thousand years is enough."

"Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one,

take this as a sign that you have neither understood the

theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve."

"Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths."

"The act of bellringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It

implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people."

" The year is 2001. Half the population hs been converted to faith in

Jesus Christ, and the Christian churches rule the world.

Though this seems implausible, more than two hundred Christian

missionary organizations are scheming to bring it about--as a birthday

present for Jesus. The battle lines are being drawn for the conflict

[Skip Porteous, "Christian Activism Intensifies

as 2001 Approaches", Free Inquiry magazine]

"Try this," she said, "it can't hurt. A simple experiment, and who knows?

It might mean a lot to you in the future." She handed me a pocket Bible,

which she carried at all times. "Open it randomly to a passage and read

what's written here." I don't know how I managed, but I kept sober as I

read the passage chance had sent me. "Does it mean something to you?" I

nodded gravely, and handed the passage to Todd. He had to leave the room

to keep from bursting. Exodus 22, xviv: Whosoever copulateth with a beast

[Richard Powers, _The Gold Bug Variations_]

"The world is in need of less religion and more common sense."

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people

will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."

"The merest accident of microgeography meant that the first man to hear the

voice of (the God) Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd

and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world,

and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid

and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent and need to be led."

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffeable game of his

own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the

other players [ie., everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex

version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes,

with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who _smiles all the time_."

It's not His fault, it's just my own bad luck"

"The Madonnas will be returning to a post office near you next year.

...Thanks in part to pressure from President Clinton, the Postal Service

on Wednesday reversed its decision to abandon the popular Madonna and

Child stamp series in 1995. That action, disclosed last week, had upset

religious groups, members of Congress and the president."

"Putting a different spin on Flag Day, a 7-year-old atheist Wednesday urged

public-school students to refuse to recite the 'Pledge of Allegiance' until

the words 'under God' are excised. ...'When kids are forced to say, 'under

God,' it makes them think that atheists are bad people,' Ricky Sherman said

at a news conference, reading a statement he wrote on composition paper in

large block letters. ...'Atheists are good people,' he said. 'We just

"I think the Zapruder film was arranged [by] Jesus, so that this particular

'terrible head wound' would be seen by the whole word for over 3 decades."

"I predict/prophecy in Jesus name that: John F. Kennedy will publicly

reappear, amaze the world, and is in fact the "beast" of the Revelation."

"An engineering professor is treating her husband, a loan officer, to dinner

for finally giving in to her pleas to shave off the scraggly beard he grew

on vacation. His favorite restaurant is a casual place where they both feel

comfortable in slacks and cotton/polyester-blend golf shirts. But, as always,

she wears the gold and pearl pendant he gave her the day her divorce decree

was final. They're laughing over their menus because they know he always

ends up diving into a giant plate of ribs but she won't be talked into

"Quiz: How many biblical prohibitions are they violating? Well, wives are

supposed to be 'submissive' to their husbands (I Peter 3:1). And all women

are forbidden to teach men (I Timothy 2:12), wear gold or pearls (I Timothy

2:9) or dress in clothing that 'pertains to a man' (Deuteronomy 22:5).

Shellfish and pork are definitely out (Leviticus 11:7, 10) as are usury

(Deuteronomy 23:19), shaving (Leviticus 19:27) and clothes of more than one

fabric (Leviticus 19:19). And since the Bible rarely recognizes divorce,

they're committing adultery, which carries the rather harsh penalty of

"So why are they having such a good time? Probably because they wouldn't

think of worrying about rules that seem absurd, anachronistic or -- at best

-- unrealistic. Yet this same modern-day couple could easily be among the

millions of Americans who never hesitate to lean on the Bible to justify

[from `And Say Hi To Joyce' by lesbian columnist Deb Price]

but in every pile of crap is a gem of stupidity

that will have you on the floor in laughter."

"The best defense against Christianity is a good Christian Education"

"I'm willing to bet that when we finally discover

the root causes for most sexual problems facing

people today, that Christianity will top the list."

"Christianity faces no greater enemy than the age of information."

"Might there have been fewer crimes in the name of Jesus,

and more mercy in the name of Judas Iscariot?"

"There was no difference between the behavior

of a god and the operations of pure chance..."

"Once a ruler becomes religious, it [becomes] impossible for you to debate with

him. Once someone rules in the name of religion, your lives become hell."

[Colonel Moammar Qaddafi, at the General People's Congress

"I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Saviour,

for whose Kingdom it stands, one Saviour, crucified, risen,

and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe."

"Religions tend to disappear with man's good fortune."

"The future war is between the religious and the materialists. Collaboration

between religious governments in support of outlawing abortion is a fine

beginning for the conception of collaboration in other fields."

[Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Hashemi Rafsanjani,

as reported in the Iranian newspaper _Abrar_ of August 1, 1994,

after meeting with special envoys from Pope John Paul II]

"Ask youself whether the dream of heaven and greatness

should be waiting for us in our graves--or whether it

should be ours here and now and on this earth."

"In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit

you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure

and certainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe."

"The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition

is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates

man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence...Man's mind,

say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God... Man's

standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose

standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on

faith....The purpose of man's life...is to become an abject zombie who

serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question."

"...if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no

greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who

assumes the responsibility of thinking.... the alleged short-cut to

knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind."

Playboy: "Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of

Ayn Rand: "Qua religion, no - in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported

by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason.

Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation

of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of

philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a

coherent frame of reference to man's life and a code of moral values, were

made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have

philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral

points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate,

but in a very contradictory context and, on a very - how should I say it?

- dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith."

"If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your

doctrine doesn't make sense--you're ready for him. You tell him there's

something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must _feel_.

He must _believe_. Suspend reason and you can play it deuces wild."

"And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the

earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into

being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

"I know another preacher who, along with his church, prayed that the

LORD would help a pot of noodles last through a social dinner, not only

did they last, not only did several take home a container full of

noodles, but the containers always stayed full. Finally, they had to

throw them out, after thanking the LORD of course."

"To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our

species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage"

"To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my

opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no

evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and

saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that

the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost

is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the

Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place -- not to

mention the "ethnic cleansing" presently being performed by Christians in

our world -- and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging

racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women."

[James Randi, challenging blasphemy laws in several US states]

"I honesty believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once

again governed by Christians . . . and Christian values. What

Christians have got to do is take back this country, one precinct

at a time, one neighborhood at a time, and one state at a time."

[Ralph Reed, Executive Director of the Christian Coalition]

"We've learned how to move under radar in the cover of

the night with shrubbery strapped to our helmets,"

[Ralph Reed, executive director of Christian Coalition]

"They call them extremists. We have our own names. We call them

senators, congressman, governors, mayors, state legislators"

[Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition Executive Director]

"I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my

face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're

in a body bag. You don't know until election night."

[Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition Exec. Director]

"The old faiths light their candles all about,

but burly Truth comes by and puts them out."

"The `wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on

bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging.

It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."

"...full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean

the end of mystical feelings of any kind, that, in other words, natural

sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion. The church, by making

the fight over sexuality the center of its dogmas and of its influence

"The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars,

and miseries than any other name has caused."

"No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept.

Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and

in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of

persons who are disposed to believe them."

"I don't know if God exists, but it would be

"I DO want your money, because god wants your money!"

"He's the type of guy that has to talk to God

"I believe to this day what I believed when I was eight -- science."

"I might have become a Catholic if the Church were a little

hipper. Like if the host were fudge, I'd be there for that.

[Rick Reynolds, atheist comedian, on religion]

"God is dead and no one cares. If there is a hell, I'll see you there."

"Incest is a voluntary act on the woman's part."

[Charles Rice, Professor of Law, Notre Dame University,

in a pamphlet published by the American Life League]

"And all the good you've done will soon be swept away,

You've begun to matter more than the things you say"

"There are ten commandments, right? Well, it's like an exam.

You get eight out of ten, you're just about top of the class."

"In 1127, the Norse farmers of Greenland sent the King of Norway a live

polar bear. He sent them back a bishop. By 1500, the only people living

in Greenland were the Inuit seal hunters. All that remained of the Norse

settlements were the ruins of their churches.

Faced with a sudden cooling of the climate, the Norse people were more

concerned with building churches and providing for bishops than changing

their way of life to take account of the harsher climate. While they continued

to graze their cattle on increasingly poor land, the Inuit remained flexible

and adjusted their life style to suit the shifting conditions."

[_'Rigid' cultures caught out by climate change_, article

in the 5 March 1994 edition of _New Scientist_]

"In the Middle East, the Bronze Age people of Canaan--the ancient region

between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean that roughly corresponds

to Israel--also failed to adapt to the drying out of their lands around

2200 BC(E). In their case, says Arlene Rosen of Ben Gurion University of

the Negev, it was their beliefs that were their undoing. 'In Canaan,

people believed that environmental disasters were caused by a deity

unhappy with the people," she says. Like the Mayans, the Canaanites

could have coped with the new conditions by introducing new irrigation

Instead, they attributed the shift in climate to the wrath of the gods,

built more temples and prayed for better times. Within a short time, the

cities and towns were abandoned and the people became nomadic hearders."

[_'Rigid' cultures caught out by climate change_, article

in the 5 March 1994 edition of _New Scientist_]

is superior to any religion so far devised"

"We care not about rights. We spread our beliefs according to what our God

tells us to. Simple as that. We don't struggle for rights."

[Christopher N. Roberts (cnr1@erc.msstate.edu) on alt.atheism]

"...I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one

fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all

the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

"At the time of its Founding, the United States seemed to be an infertile

ground for religion. Many of the nation's leaders - include George

Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin - were not Christians,

did not accept the authority of the Bible, and were hostile to organized

religion. The attitude of the general public was one of apathy: in 1776,

only 5 percent of the population were participating members of churches."

[Ian Robertson, _Sociology_, 3rd editions, Worth

Publishing Inc.: New York, 1987, page 410]

"The best argument for the use of the name Agnostic is simply that the word

Atheist has been so long covered with all manner of ignorant calumny, that

it is expedient to use a new term, which though in some respects faulty, has

a fair start, and will in time have a recognized meaning. The case so

stated is reasonable; but there is a per contra that whatever the motive

with which the name is used, it is now tacked to half a dozen conflicting

forms of doctrine, varying loosely between Theism and Pantheism. The name

of Atheism escapes that drawback. Its unpopularity has saved it from a

"The theory that religion is not only hostile to

magic but quite separate from it is as fallacious as the

distinction between religion and superstition."

"I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple

to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the farther

we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light into the

blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from the

reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing off

this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the color

scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on out,

it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars singing,

and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors."

[Pat Robertson, on a telecast of the 700 Club]

"... A socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to

leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy

"There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that

sanctifies the separation of church and state."

"God showed me...that he was going to bless the Christian Coalition beyond our

wildest expectations. Before the year 2000, the Christian Coalition will be

the most powerful organization in America. We'll be back in 1993. We'll be

back in 1994. We'll be back in 1995...We'll be back until we win it all."

"The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous

document for self-government by Christian people. But the minute you

turn the document into the hands of non-Christian and atheistic

people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society."

[Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, Dec. 30, 1981]

"Many of those people involved in Adolf Hitler were Satanists,

many were homosexuals -- the two things seem to go together"

[Pat Robertson, ADL report on Religious Right, page 131]

"It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-biased media

and the homosexuals who want to destroy all Christians"

[Pat Robertson, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 14, 1993]

"Before the year 2000, the Christian Coalition

will be the most powerful organization in America."

"Modern experience has shown that usury inevitably leads to subservience.

And God did not want his that for his people but rather intend for them to

rule... He directed very fifty years years that all debt would be cancelled,

all property be redistributed, and the cycle begin again... Not withstanding

the sneers of many in the banking community, it may be that God's way

is the only one open to us - a year of jubillee to straighten us out."

[Pat Robertson, The Secret Kingdom, 1992]

"I have known few homosexuals who did not practice their tendencies. Such

people are sinning against God and will lead to the ultimate destruction

of the family and our nation. I am unalterably opposed to such things,

and will do everything I can to restrict the freedom of these people to

spread their contagious infection to the youth of this nation."

"I know one man who was impotent who gave AIDS to

his wife and the only thing they did was kiss."

"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the

Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing.

Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist."

[Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 14, 1991]

"They have kept us in submission because they have talked about separation

of church and state. There is no such thing in the Constitution. It's a

lie of the left, and we're not going to take it anymore."

[Pat Robertson, The State, Columbia, South Carolina, Nov. 14, 1993]

"That [separation of church and state] was never in the Constitution,

however much the liberals laugh at me for saying it, they know good and

well it was never in the Constitution! Such language only appeared

in the constitution of the communist Soviet Union"

[Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, Jan. 22, 1995]

"The wars of extermination have given a lot of people trouble unless they know

what was going on. The people in the land of Palestine were very wicked. They

were given over to idolatry; they sacrificed their children; they had all

kinds of abominable sex practices; they were having sex, apparently, with

animals; they were having sex men with men, and women with women; they were

committing adultery, fornication; they were worshipping idols, offering their

children up; and they were forsaking God. God told the Israelites to kill them

all - men, women and children, to destroy them. And that seems to be a

terrible thing to do. Is it? Or isn't it? Well, let us assume there were 2,000

of them, or 10,000 of them living in the land, or whatever number there was of

them. I don't have the exact number. Pick a number. God said, 'Kill them all.'

Well, that would seem hard, wouldn't it? That would be 10,000 people who would

probably go to Hell. But, if they stayed and reproduced, in 30 or 40 or 50 or

60 or 100 more years, they could conceivably be - 10,000 would go to a 100,000

- 100,000 could conceivably go to a million. And then, there would be a

million people who would have to spend eternity in Hell! And it's far more

merciful to take away a few than to see in the future a 100 years down the

road, and say, 'Well, I have to take away a million people that would forever

be apart from God,' because the abomination was there like a contagium. God

saw that there was no cure for it. It wasn't going to change; their hearts

weren't going to change; and all they would do is cause trouble for the

Israelites, and pull the Israelites away from God, and prevent the truth of

God from reaching the Earth. So, God, in love, took away a small number

that he might not have to take away a large number."

[Pat Robertson, rationalizing genocide committed by the early

Israelites, on "The 700 Club" television program. May 6, 1985]

"When I said during my presidential bid that I would only bring Christians

and Jews into the government, I hit a firestorm. `What do you mean?' the

media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government?

How dare you maintain that those who believe in the Judeo-Christian values

are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple

[Pat Robertson, "The New World Order," page 218]

"These are actually chunks of lung itself being coughed up. I don't

understand exactly what it is, but God has healed you right now. Amen."

[Pat Robertson, during a "faith healing" session]

"They said God was on high and he controlled the world and therefore

we must pray against Satan. Well, if God controls the world, he

controls Satan. For me, religion was full of misstatements and

reaches of logic that I just couldn't agree with."

"I've always thought that, if we did not have supernatural explanations for

all the things we might not understand right away, this is the way we would

be, like the people on that planet. [ST:TNG "Who Watches the Watchers"]

I was born into a supernatural world in which all my people -my family-

usually said "That is because God willed it," or gave other supernatural

explanations for whatever happened. When you confront those statements on

their own, they just don't make sense. They are clearly wrong. You need

a certain amount of proof to accept anything, and that proof was not

forthcoming to support those statements."

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God,

who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."

"I was driving home early Sunday morning, through Bakersfield

Listening to gospel music on the public radio station

When the preacher said "You'll always have the Lord by your side."

That I ran twenty red lights in his honor.

"A long acquaintance with the literature of the Witnesses leads one to

the conclusion that they live in the intellectual `twilight zone'....

Whenever their literature strays onto the fields of philosophy, academic

theology, science or any severe mental discipline their ideas at best

mirror popular misconceptions, at worst they are completely nonsensical."

[Alan Rogerson, _Millions Now Living Will Never Die: A

Study of Jehovah's Witnesses_, 1969, p. 116]

"Every man is free to adopt and profess any religion, which,

under the guidance of reason, he believes to be true."

[Rome's "Syllabus of Condemned Opinions"]

"Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever

church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused

of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with

religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money."

"Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the

temporal power should not become too important in any church."

"Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character,"

[W.T. Root, Prof. of Psychology at Univ. of

Pittsburg, after examining 1,916 prisoners]

"It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists

and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so."

"Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and

you are a conqueror. Kill all and you are God."

"But I am mistaken in speaking of a Christian republic; the terms are mutually

exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit

is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits such a regime. True

Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not mind; this

short life counts for too little in their eyes."

[Jean Jacques Rousseau, Contrat Social (The Social Contract)]

"If Christ does not appear to meet his 144,000 faithful

shortly after midnight on February 6th or 7th, it means

that my calculations, based on the Bible, must be revised."

[Margaret Rowen, Church of the Advanced Adventists, 1925]

Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,

"Because when I pray, I find I'm talking to myself."

They say there are strangers, who threaten us

They say there is strangeness, too dangerous

Quick to judge ... Quick to anger ... Slow to understand...

Ignorance and prejudice and fear [all] Walk hand in hand.

"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;

I will choose a path that's clear- I will choose Free Will."

"I don't believe in destiny or the guiding hand of fate,

I don't believe in forever or love as a mystical state,

I don't believe in the stars or the planets or angels watching from above,

But I believe there's a ghost of a chance we can find someone to love

"[My] mind is not for rent to any god or government"

"To put it as simply as possible: *I am not a Muslim*.[...] I do not

accept the charge of apostacy, because I have never in my adult life

affirmed any belief, and what one has not affirmed one can not be

said to have apostasized from. The Islam I know states clearly that

'there can be no coercion in matters of religion'. The many Muslims

I respect would be horrified by the idea that they belong to their

faith *purely by virtue of birth*, and that a person who freely chose

not to be a Muslim could therefore be put to death."

"God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth

year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. [...]and afterwards, to

prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham

sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of

the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. [...] From that

day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person."

[Salman Rushdie, "In God We Trust", 1985]

"I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in."

"The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most

conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn

other ideas --uncertainty, progress, change -- into crimes."

"To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him...

If dissent is now also to be thought of as a form of 'dissing,' then we have

[Salman Rushdie, to Reuters News Service, 4/17/96]

"If I were asked for a one-sentence soundbite

on religion, I would say I was against it."

"God in His law requires the death penalty for homosexuals."

"Democracy is the great love of the failures and cowards of life."

[R.J. Rushdoony, _Thy Kingdom Come_,1978]

"The state is a bankrupt institution. The only alternative to this

bankrupt 'humanistic' system is a God-centered government."

[R.J. Rushdoony, Reconstructionist theologian,

from _The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance

and Pluralism In America_, published by ADL]

"Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic;

it is committed to spiritual aristrocracy."

[R.J. Rushdoony, Reconstructionist theologian,

from _The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance

and Pluralism In America_, published by ADL]

"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do."

"William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For

my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.' ...

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the

will to find out, which is the exact opposite."

[Bertrand Russell, _Skeptical_Essays_, 1928]

"I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion,

as organized in its churches, has been and still is

the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."

"It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there

is no reason whatsoever for supposing it to be true."

"If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by

argument, rather then by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument

goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize

that argument is useless and will therefore result to force either in the

form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young

"There is something feeble and a little contemptable about a man who cannot

face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost

inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes

them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought!

Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not real,

he becomes furious when they are disputed."

[Bertrand Russell, "Human Society in Ethics and Politics"]

"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence,

it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."

"He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one

verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there

is a certain pleasure in contemplating the wailing and gnashing of

teeth, or else it would not occur so often."

[Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian"]

"So far as I can remember, there is not one

word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."

"What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry

combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether

inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer."

"There has been a rumor in recent years to the effect that I have

become less opposed to religious orthodoxy than I formerly was.

This rumor is totally without foundation. I think all the great

religions of the world- Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam,

"I think that in philosophical strictness at the level where one

doubts the existence of material objects and holds that the world

may have existed for only five minutes, I ought to call myself an

agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do

not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than

the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another

illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between Earth and

Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptic orbit, but nobody

thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in

practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely."

"We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there

is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith."

We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth

is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion

for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead

to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions."

"The conquering of fear is the beginning of wisdom"

"The splendour of human life, I feel sure, is greater

to those who are not dazzled by the divine radiance."

"People are zealous for a cause when they are

"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly

the terror of the unknown, and partly the wish to feel that you have a

kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and

disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious,

fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore

it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand"

"... when people begin to philosophize they seem to think

it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid."

[Bertrand Russell in "Theory of Knowledge"]

"To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason,

and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true."

[Bertrand Russell, "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization"]

"Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little

and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive

of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other

hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in

fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of

impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the

presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured

if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales."

"I was told that the Chinese said that they would would bury me by the

Western lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret

that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have

"The question of the truth of a religion is one thing, but the question of

its usefullness is another. I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm

[Bertrand Russell, _Why I Am Not A Christian_, 1957]

"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence

of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."

"At the age of eighteen ... I read Mill's Autobiography, where I found

a sentence to the effect that his father taught him that the question

'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the

further question 'Who made God?'. This led me to abandon the 'First

Cause' argument, and to become an atheist. Throughout the long period

of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual

loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my

surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject."

[Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, chap. 2]

"I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine

which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine

in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when

there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must of course admit

that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our

social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless,

"The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests

that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours."

"Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were

achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and

beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no

fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an

[Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Why I Am Not a Christian"]

"I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation.

Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end,

nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting."

"Few people can be happy unless they hate

"I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally

cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so

may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one

of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside

the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason

to consider any of them. The fact that an opinion has been widely held

is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the

silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often

[Bertrand Russell, _A History of Western Philosophy_, 1945]

"We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square

at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties,

and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid

of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by

being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it."

[Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not A Christian"]

"Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no

longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent

allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below

to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of

place that the churches in all these centuries have made it."

[Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not A Christian"]

"The most savage controversies are those about matters

as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic."

"Fear is the main source of superstition,

"The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was,

as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that

all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of

this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by

sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in

Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a

force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life."

"It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden

age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the

dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion."

"The deliverance of the saints must take place some time before 1914."

[Charles Taze Russell, American religious leader

and founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Studies in

"The deliverance of the saints must take place some time after 1914."

[Charles Taze Russell, American religious leader

and founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Studies in

"Our Father or Mother, who are either in heaven, nirvana, Mecca or

Salt Lake City, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will

be done, providing thy will is that America is always the big winner

over foreign heathen. Give us this day our daily white bread, black

bread, Italian bread, Jewish rye, English muffins, or tacos, and a

quarter-pounder with cheese and large fries to go. And lead us not

into temptation, or into school buses that take us to neighborhoods

where the kids are different. For thine is the kingdom and the power

and the glory, especially for people who still use words like "thine."

"It requires only two things to win credit for a

miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women."

"...Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion

or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the 2, in

the 1st instance I should be mad to believe in him, and in the 2nd a fool."

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled

long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no

longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured

us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that

we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the

[Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,"]

"Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion

and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage.

But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to

solve the truly serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a

nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along."

[Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,"]

"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And

in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the

additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true."

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a

really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually

change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.

They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because

scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens

every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened

[Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address]

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who

sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But

if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe,

then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying...

it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."

"You can't convince a believer of anything; for

their belief is not based on evidence, it's based

"You see, the religious people -- most of them -- really think this planet

is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or

other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives,

giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children,

telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say,

making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that.

Why can't the gods let well enough alone? All this intervention speaks

of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't

he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he

hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would have listened to him

more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the

universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants?

Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing

the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's

not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business

[Carl Sagan, character Sol Hadden in _Contact_, 1985]

"It was a Christian university dedicated to the Christian education of

Christians, and this purpose still dominated the campus. It was there like a

dense fog shrouding low-lying land on still summer mornings - never a real

hindrance to progress but frequently a nuisance to vision. It seemed to be

heaviest around the Administration Building."

[Ferrol Sams, "The Whisper Of The River"]

"The New York Times reports that evangelist Pat Robertson, who will announce

in two weeks whether he will run for the presidency, claims he can pray away

bad weather. ... Robertson said in a recent interview that his prayers to

keep Hurricane Gloria away from Virginia Beach last June had been successful,

which was 'extremely important because I felt, interestingly enough, that if

I couldn't move a hurricane, I could hardly move a nation.' ... Robertson

said that if the hurricane had come ashore, he would have seen it as a sign

from above to abandon his presidential ambitions."

[Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 September 1986]

"Bound by a common theology and the spreading sensation that their number is

great and their time and leader have come, the Rev. Pat Robertson's fellow

Pentecostal and charismatic evangelists are stirring to his still-unannounced

quest for the Republican nomination for the presidency. ... Robertson is the

founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and a regular commentator on

its '700 Club.' ... It is a quickening that the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who is

supporting Vice President George Bush, said was the beginning of 'a mighty

army.' ... No preacher has ever tried to summon this latent religious army to

his own political cause. ... In the last two weeks, however, Robertson has

persuaded two evangelists, [Jimmy] Swaggert of Louisiana and Oral Roberts of

Oklahoma, both of whom are Pentacostals, to give him emotional public

endorsements. The evangelist Rex Humbard sat on stage with him at

Constitution Hall in Washington last week, and the camera picked him out as

Robertson announced to a national audience on a satellite telecast that

3 million signatures on a petition would persuade him to declare for the

nomination. Evangelist Jim Bakker of North Carolina, in response to a

reporter's inquiry, gave a mild reply: 'I would have no problems standing

with him. My feeling is that our viewers would welcome his candidacy.' ...

Robertson, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, is a charismatic. Unlike

other evangelicals who also believe that the Bible is true and that one must

be reborn to experience salvation, Pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies

of God and charismatic Christians of any denomination share an additional

theology. It is a belief in the 'gifts' of the spirit, the abilities to heal

and work other miracles through faith, to speak in tongues, to discern the

[Dudley Clendinen, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 October 1986]

"Television preacher Pat Robertson, who plans to officially announce his

candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next month, said he

would not tolerate atheists in his administration, Time magazine reported

yesterday. ... Although Robertson firmly denied a quote attributed to him

that only born-again Christians and Jews should hold government jobs, he

told Time that nonbelievers would have no place in his administration if

[San Francisco Chronicle, 21 September 1987 (UPI)]

"The Washington newsletter Roll Call reports that a 1981 tape of candidate Pat

Robertson, who used to be an evangelical faith healer, has been distributed

to several political reporters. The tape shows Robertson at a 1981 faith

healing session in Philadelphia, claiming to cure members of the audience of

cancer, hemorrhoids and bad teeth. Later, he shouts that God has just

[Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 October 1987]

"Republican presidential hopeful Pat Robertson said yesterday that a quarter

of America's autoworkers use illegal drugs, contributing to declining

productivity. The remark was criticized by a labor leader as 'stupid'."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 4 November 1987 (AP)]

"Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson, a former TV evangelist, once

said he believed only devout Christians and Jews were qualified to lead the

government, the New York Times reported yesterday. Robertson also maintained

that government is subservient to the will of God and that democracy is

'next best' to 'government controlled by God,' the newspaper said.... The

Times story cited several articles written by Robertson in which he said God

had spoken to him, directed his actions or heeded his prayer to steer away a

hurricane. The article also said Robertson had a conversation with Satan

in 1960 at the time of his religious conversion. 'I heard Satan say,

"Jesus is playing you for a sucker, Robertson."'"

[San Francisco Chronicle, 28 December 1987 (UPI)]

"Pat Robertson, who once claimed to have diverted a hurricane from its path,

yesterday had his presidential campaign disrupted by a second-rate snowstorm.

A dark-horse contender for the Republican nomination, Robertson was forced

to cancel several stops on a scheduled 18-city barnstorming tour of southern

Iowa when weather grounded the helicopter he had planned to use."

[Jerry Roberts, San Francisco Chronicle, 5 February 1988]

"Now that he did so well in Iowa, The Reverend Pat Robertson doesn't want to

be called a 'former television evangelist' anymore. He told NBC's Tom Brokaw

in no uncertain terms that such a 'slur' was the height of 'religious bigotry.

And he's right. Who'd want their sister to marry a television evangelist?

But how shall we ace newsmen describe him instead? I've given the matter a

great deal of thought, and I think the fairest to all concerned is 'former

hemorrhoid healer.' This refers, of course, to the former hemorrhoid healer's

celebrated, videotaped sermon to his congregation back in 1981, when he

cried: 'Satan has gone! God has just healed somebody! A hernia has been

healed! Several people are being healed of hemorrhoids and varicose veins!

People with flat feet! God is doing just great things to you!' ... 'Former

hurricane deflector' struck me as macho, and most voters would probably like

a president who could deflect hurricanes. But Hurricane Gloria, which he

deflected back in 1985 to save his broadcasting station in Virginia Beach,

slammed into Long Island and Boston instead, doing $320 million worth of

[Arthur Hoppe, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 February 1988]

"Allegations by U.S. presidential candidate Pat Robertson that the Soviet Union

has placed nuclear missiles in Cuba are 'wild fantasy,' the official Soviet

news agency Tass said yesterday. 'Of course it is up to the Americans

themselves to decide who will be the next occupant of the White House. But

in this case we are dealing with problems concerning international security,

concerning all,' Tass said. 'That is why Robertson's wild fantasy gives rise

to a legitimate question: How is it that such an irresponsible politician

could at all become a candidate for the presidency in such a country as the

[San Francisco Chronicle, 17 February 1988 (Chronicle Wire Services)]

"It's all very well to say he [Pat Robertson] can't be nominated or elected,

though even that remains to be seen. What does it say, meanwhile, about the

American people and the system by which they choose their leaders, that a

former faith healer, a man who boasted that his religious appeals could

change the course of hurricanes, should have become perhaps a decisive factor

in the presidential nomination of a major party?"

[Tom Wicker, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, 18 February 1988]

"According to a story in the New Republic magazine, Pat Robertson paid former

football star Roosevelt Grier a $3,000 'honorarium' for appearing at a rally

in a Brooklyn ghetto to express his support for the candidate. ... He

introduced the candidate as Pat Robinson. ... The magazine also reported that

Robertson paid singer and Christian Pat Boone $5,000 for his endorsement."

[Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 31 March 1988]

"Nearly 25 percent of the nation's 1,411 television stations now have full-

time religious programming, according to the 1989 Directory of Religious

Broadcasting. That reflects a 30 percent jump over 1988. This doesn't count

the three religious television networks, including Pat Robertson's Christian

Broadcasting Network, or the hundreds of stations that carry some religious

programming. Of the nation's 10,546 radio stations, 1,485 or 14 percent, are

Christian stations -- a 7 percent increase over 1988. Dwarfing the impact of

U.S. radio stations is the worldwide network of evangelical ministries that

preaches to Third World countries via shortwave radio. From high in the

Andes mountains in Quito, Ecuador, HCJB World Radio -- which stands for

Heralding Christ Jesus' Blessings -- uses its combined 1-million-watt

shortwave power of several transmitter stations to broadcast 24 hours a day

[Annie Nakao, San Francisco Examiner, 23 July 1989]

"Houston. The Rev. Pat Robertson may have lost his political battle for the

presidential nomination four years ago, but he's won some impressive

victories at the onset of this week's Republican convention here. The party

platform contains some of the most conservative language in modern history

about abortion, education and homosexuality, and Robertson's Christian

Coalition had a lot to do with that. In 1988, Robertson could only muster

about 200 delegates and had almost no influence on the platform. The number

of Coalition members among delegates this year has risen to about 750, out

[Carl Irving, San Francisco Examiner, 16 August 1992]

"The entertainment company headed by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson agreed

yesterday to buy Dorothy Hamill's Ice Capades, the skating road show rescued

last year by the Olympic gold medalist. International Family Entertainment

Inc., which owns the Family Channel cable network, declined to disclose how

much it paid for the show and related assets owned by the figure skater and

her husband, physician Kenneth Forsythe. The deal expands International

Family's interests in live entertainment while providing a new source of

material for programs that can be shown on broadcast or cable television here

or abroad and on home video. International Family launched a live

entertainment division last year with its purchase of three theaters in Myrtle

Beach, S.C., where it produces live musical variety shows. 'This agreement

will add another facet to our company's philosophy of supplying high-quality,

family-oriented entertainment and programming to America and the world,' said

Tim Robertson, chief executive and president. His father Pat is chairman

[San Francisco Chronicle, 9 June 1994 (AP)]

"Rescue teams battled yesterday to answer the desperate screams of mud-caked

survivors of a volcano that killed as many as 20,000 people. ...A man stood

buried up to his neck by mud and water, his legs pinned down by a body four

feet below the surface. ...Another man, his foot crushed by rubble, lay for

more than 24 hours on top of the bodies of his three children -- but he

survived along with his pregnant wife. 'It was a miracle,' Jose Martinez,

a 49-year-old truck driver, said from his hospital bed in Bogota. 'For those

[San Francisco Chronicle, 16 November 1985 (Reuters)]

"Father Junipero Serra moved closer to sainthood when a miracle attributed to

the Spanish friar was 'confirmed' by Pope John Paul II yesterday. ...The

miracle was reported by a Franciscan nun, Sister Bonafice Dyrda, who said

she was cured in 1960 of a skin disease, diagnosed as lupus, after praying

to Serra. ...A group of Indians held a two-day prayer vigil in Carmel to

protest the pope's visit to Serra's grave at Carmel Mission. The group

charged that Serra set the policies for the Spanish priests and soldiers

that led to the death of 80 percent of the local Indian population."

[Michael McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 December 1987]

"He [Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci] talked about Father Junipero

Serra's qualifications for sainthood: 'They say he cured a nun's lupus.

A miracle. Now I'm not a doctor, but I know lupus goes into remission.

It's not always fatal. Have Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder play

[Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 February 1989]

"Colfax, Placer County. Yesterday's crowd of pilgrims, some of whom arrived

at midnight, saw a blue-gray light form over the right shoulder of a five-

foot statue of Jesus near the altar of the 40-year-old Catholic church. For

some, the shimmering light that turned green-pink bore the shape of a shawl

covering a woman's head and shoulders. Sometimes the image was sharp; other

times it was fuzzy. The eerie image appeared about 9:30 a.m., as it has

every day since Thanksgiving, and remained for about an hour. At one point,

a second light gold in color and resembling the shape of a crown or halo

briefly appeared directly above the first image. At the moment the gold

light appeared, many people in the line outside said they spotted a rainbow

over the church. Inside the 200-seat church, pilgrims gasped, prayed, wept

and stared at the image. ...According to James Phelps, a physics professor

at Sacramento State University, the image is a phenomenon caused by natural

light refracting through a stained-glass window and then bouncing off a

light fixture and onto the wall. 'There's nothing exotic, nothing esoteric

about it,' said the optics expert, who observed the image at the request of

[Martin Halstuk, San Francisco Chronicle, 8 December 1990]

"Colfax. A bishop joined throngs of people packing a Placer County church to

see a shining image on the wall that devout Catholics claim is an apparition

of the Virgin Mary. ... 'It could be the image of the Blessed Mary in a

silhouette pose,' Bishop Francis Quinn of the Sacramento Diocese said

Tuesday. ... The image has been appearing for about an hour each morning

since Thanksgiving, bringing throngs of the devout and curious to the 40-

year-old church along Interstate 80 northeast of Auburn. ... Some viewers

say the image, which also resembles the profile of a rabbit head, could be a

reflection from a stained glass window. ... 'For those who believe, no

explanation is necessary,' Quinn said. 'And for those who not believe, no

"Colfax. The day before the shining apparition that some believe represents

the Virgin Mary began appearing at St. Dominic's church, the hanging light

fixtures in the sanctuary were stabilized with wire -- perhaps setting the

stage for a reflection that could create the image. ... 'It might explain

it,' said parishioner Edmund 'Mick' Molloy, whose father Ed Molloy is the

parish coordinator. ... Molloy said the work was done Wednesday afternoon

just before Thanksgiving. ... 'So on Thanksgiving morning we have this

[Press Democrat, 7 December 1990 (McClatchy News Service)]

"Colfax, Placer County. A mysterious light on a church wall that many

believed was a divinely inspired image of the Virgin Mary did not appear

yesterday amid heavy clouds, seeming to confirm the theory it was merely

sunlight shining through stained-glass window. ... When the image failed

to appear at its customary time, however, the worshipers trooped out, some

in dismay. ... Church officials had been considering an investigation to

determine whether the appearance of the image, which looked like the

outline of the top half of a figure, was a miracle."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 11 December 1990 (Chronicle Wire Services)]

"McDonald's has announced plans to open a restaurant at Lourdes, the French

grotto that Catholics believe is a site of miraculous healing. The fast-

food restaurant will open in November or December. The grotto of Lourdes,

visited by 5.5 million people a year, is said to be where St. Bernardette

had a vision of the Virgin Mary in the middle of the 19th century."

[Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 March 1991]

"A mystery dating from medieval times -- the ability of the reputed clotted

blood of a saint to turn liquid when handled in a religious ceremony -- may

be just ordinary chemistry, researchers say. The scientists say they

created a dark brown gel that turns easily to liquid when disturbed and then

thickens back into a gel. Such a mixture may be in the vial that is said to

hold the blood of St. Januarius, also called San Gennaro, in the Roman

Catholic cathedral of Naples, Italy, the researchers propose in today's issue

of the journal Nature. In a ceremony performed since the 14th century, the

hermetically sealed, four-inch glass container is repeatedly turned upside

down. Many Neapolitans believe that good luck will come if the vial's

contents liquefy, but that disasters such as earthquakes may await if the

contents remain solid. ...The gel was made with substances available in the

14th century, including table salt, water, calcium carbonate and ferric

chloride hydrate, the researchers wrote."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 10 October 1991 (AP)]

"A boy missing for 15 hours in a partly flooded cave where six others drowned

was pulled out of the cave alive Saturday, providing a moment of light in

the relentless gloom of the Midwest flood. ...'It was God that was with him

and brought him back,' said his grandmother. The bodies of a 21-year-old

female school counselor and another 12-year-old boy were discovered in the

cave, raising the total number of victims in the tragedy to six."

[Bob Burgdorfer, Reuters, San Francisco Examiner, 25 July 1993]

"I think the thing to remember, though, the next time you hear someone

who is really certain that he is on the side of the angels, is that

the idea of angels was created by human beings, who are famous for

being frequently untrustworthy and occasionally crazy."

[Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle, 10 June 1994]

"Watsonville. In this sleepy farm town where thousands are still feeling

the effects of the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, people take

their signs of hope where they can find them. ... About a month ago, an

elderly woman praying in a shaded grove at Pinto Lake County Park found one

in the bark of a tree. ... An estimated 4,000 people have flocked every day

this week to see what many claim is the outline of the Virgin of Guadalupe

on the limb of an oak tree, and park officials have cordoned off part of the

tree because pilgrims are carving gashes and dents in it to take bark home

as souvenirs. ... She is said to appear on the Watsonville tree as the

outline of a cloaked woman. Some visitors claim they see two other Virgins

on the same tree. Skeptics see little more than a garden-variety growth on

[Dan Turner, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 July 1992]

"Chalma, Mexico. At least 41 Indian pilgrims, most of them elderly women

and children, were trampled to death yesterday in a crush of worshipers

heading through a narrow marketplace to church for this town's Ash

Wednesday celebration. ... Chalma, about 35 miles southwest of Mexico

City, is famous for its gold-trimmed church and the Father of Chalma

image of Christ that is said to perform miracles."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 14 February 1991 (Los Angeles Times)]

"Dozens of motorists on Memorial Drive say they have seen Jesus shrouded

in pasta and tomato sauce on a pizza chain's billboard. ... The billboard

overlooks a Jiffy Lube and a Texaco gas station in DeKalb County, Ga. ...

According to those who say they see it, the face, with deep-set eyes, beard

and crown of thorns, is on a billboard advertising Pizza Hut spaghetti. It

shows a forkful of steaming, hot spaghetti and the words 'Spaghetti Junction.'

... Austin Kelly Advertising Inc., which handles the Pizza Hut account

locally, used a stock photograph from the food chain, the agency said. ...

Nowak, who expressed surprise that people have been seeing the image, said

Pizza Hut had used the photograph before, and that she had a difficult time

seeing anything unusual in the spaghetti. ... 'I'm looking at it right now,'

she said. 'Unless Jesus looks like a Muppet...'"

[San Francisco Chronicle, 24 May 1991 (Cox News Service)]

"With the Virgin Mary's image appearing in churches and auto parts stores all

over the country this holiday season, it was bound to happen. Now Dan Quayle

has turned up in the bathroom sink of Horschmeyer's Philly Cheesesteak Parlor

in El Cerrito. ... The eerie manifestation was first spotted last Tuesday by

Elvira Banks, 35, the establishment's pickled tomato slicer. 'I recognized

him right away,' Miss Banks, a past president of the El Cerrito Dan Quayle

Fan Club, told reporters. ... The mysterious image in the sink bowl looks

like a large brown stain. It surrounds the drain, which Miss Banks insists

is 'the vice president's mouth opened in a call to all Americans to support

the president in the current Middle East crisis.' ... So far, there has been

no scientific explanation of the phenomenon. The closest anyone has come was

the admission by janitor 'Foggy' Phelps that he had poured a cup of the

parlor's coffee in the sink the night before the image was first seen. 'I

guess I forgot to rinse it down,' he said."

[Arthur Hoppe, San Francisco Chronicle, 24 December 1990]

"The Roman Catholic Church announced yesterday that the Shroud of Turin,

venerated by millions of Christians over the centuries as the burial cloth

of Jesus, cannot be authentic because new scientific tests show that it dates

from the Middle Ages. ... Nevertheless, Catholics were encouraged to continue

their veneration of the shroud as a pictorial image of Christ, still capable

of performing miracles, even though it cannot be accepted as a genuine

historic relic, and no one knows how the image was produced. ... At a news

conference yesterday, the shroud's custodian, Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero,

revealed that radiocarbon tests conducted independently by three laboratories

this year have concluded that the shroud cloth was created between 1260 and

1390. ... The shroud's authenticity has been debated since it was first put

on display in the mid-14th century. ... In the Middle Ages, many objects

appeared in Europe that were said to be the shroud of Jesus, fragments of his

cross or other relics, but most were discarded as fakes long ago, and few

others maintain a devoted following as does the Shroud of Turin. ... The

shroud, which belongs to the pope, has been kept for the last 410 years at

the Cathedral of Turin, where it lies folded inside a silver casket. It is

rarely put on public display. ... An estimated 3 million visitors came to

see it when it was last exhibited in 1978."

[Roberto Suro, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 October 1988]

"Progreso, Texas. Hundreds of people a day have visited an auto parts store

to view what they believe is the Virgin Mary's image on a bathroom floor.

... The image -- varying shades of gray that store owner Reynaldo Trevino

said were once one color -- appeared December 3 on the cement floor of the

shower stall in the rear of his Progreso Auto Supply. ... Some days more than

1,000 visit. About 100 per hour stopped at the store Tuesday morning. ...

Some knelt to pray by the shower stall, next to a toilet. Others made the

sign of the cross or touched the image they saw. ... They see the Virgin's

image in the varying shades of gray cement."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 20 December 1990 (AP)]

"Louisiana's [1981] creationism law, which requires creationism

to be taught wherever the theory of evolution is explained, is

unconstitutional, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled yesterday....

'The act's intended effect is to discredit evolution by

counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of

creationism, a religious belief,' the U.S. Court of Appeals said."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 9 July 1985 (AP)]

"Seventy-two American winners of the Nobel Prize in science urged the Supreme

Court yesterday to strike down a Louisiana law requiring public schools

teaching evolution to also teach creationism. ...Creation-science is linked

closely to a literal interpretation of the biblical book of Genesis, teaching

that Earth and most of its life forms came into existence suddenly about 6000

years ago. ...The case before the high court is Edwards v. Aguillard,85-1513."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 19 August 1986 (AP)]

"More than half the college students polled in three states, including

California, said they are creationists who believe that God created Adam

and Eve, while about one-third believe in aliens, Big Foot and the lost

city of Atlantis. ...The poll results, released yesterday by Texas

researchers, also indicated that students who believe in creationism are

less likely to read books, tend to be more politically conservative and

have a lower grade-point average than students who dispute that God created

Earth in six days. ...Last fall, about 1000 students attending colleges in

Texas, Connecticut and California filled out detailed questionnaire on their

beliefs. ...In Texas, 71 percent of students said they believe in the story

of Adam and Eve, while 51 percent in Connecticut and 47 percent in California

said they believed in the biblical first couple. An average of 44 percent of

the students in the three states said the story of Noah's Ark is true. About

one-third of all the students surveyed believed that Big Foot, a hairy man-

like creature reputed to live in the mountains of northwest America, actually

exists. An equal number believed in the lost city of Atlantis, a legendary

island of advanced civilization that supposedly sank into the ocean. Thirty

percent of the students responding to the survey said aliens from outer space

visited Earth in ancient times. Overall, 37 percent said they believed in

ghosts, and 39 percent said it is possible to communicate with the dead."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 3 November 1986 (UPI)]

"On a June day nearly 300 years ago, two young women were hanged

in Salem village, and by the end of the summer, colonists had

executed 13 women and seven men convicted of being witches."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 13 April 1988 (AP)]

"A woman suspected of being a witch was dragged from her hut, tied to a tree

and then axed to death by her neighbors in an eastern India village, police

said yesterday. Sonamoni Kisku was killed Sunday by Ganesh Soren and his

brother, Meghraj, in Goaljoi, about 155 miles northwest of Calcutta, police

said. ...It was the latest in several killings of women suspected of being

witches in the predominantly tribal region of the state."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 26 April 1989 (AP)]

"Now the religious right is joining the war against children, saying Halloween

is a satanic plot. A Costa Mesa Christian group, Citizens for Excellence in

Education, says the witch's broomstick is a phallic symbol of pagan worship.

Yet another reason not to clean the house. The group says a 'spiritual

battle' is raging on this night as covens of witches and other pagan religions

call forth their demon spirits.' Even kids know demons are make-believe.

It's unreal adults you have to worry about."

[Rob Morse, San Francisco Chronicle, 31 October 1993]

"[The U.S. Supreme Court] Declined, without comment, to hear a challenge to

the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Religious groups

challenged the establishment of diplomatic relations, saying the ties would

violate the First Amendment's requirements for separation of church and state.

American Baptist Churches vs. Reagan, 86-113, said that religious groups did

not have legal standing to try to block the administration's decision."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 21 October 1986]

"Manila. Cardinal Jaime Sin yesterday ordered Roman Catholics who vote

in next month's Philippine national elections to reject Communists and

candidates who advocate divorce or abortion. ...Sin, who distributed

copies of the letter at a press conference, insisted that church and

[San Francisco Chronicle, 23 April 1987 (Los Angeles Times)]

"President Bush, saying faith has fostered democratic change around

the world, told the National Religious Broadcasters yesterday that

'one cannot be America's president without a belief in God.'"

[San Francisco Chronicle, 30 January 1990 (UPI)]

"Exhausted, dehydrated, yet spiritually uplifted, some 350,000 Catholic

pilgrims packed themselves onto a hot and dusty field yesterday to say

good-by to Pope John Paul II. ... More than 10,000 people were treated

at field hospitals for mostly minor problems. Leading the list of maladies

were dehydration, severe asthma, altitude-caused dizziness, and twisted

ankles suffered by pilgrims tripped up by prairie-dog holes. ...The

73-year-old pontiff made two visits to the site by Marine helicopter."

[Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 August 1993]

"Montgomery, Alabama. A white Republican state senator running for

Congress wrote a speech in which he argued that slavery is justified by

the Bible and was good for African Americans. ... 'People who are bitter

and hateful about slavery are obviously bitter and hateful against God

and his word, because they reject what God says and embrace what mere

humans say concerning slavery,' Charles Davidson wrote."

[San Francisco Chronicle, 10 May 1996 (Associated Press)]

"People who are bitter and hateful about slavery are obviously bitter and

hateful against God and his word, because they reject what God says and

embrace what mere humans say concerning slavery. This humanistic thinking

[Alabama State Senator Charles Davidson, citing

"Yekaterinburg, Russia. Three-quarters of a century after Czar Nicholas II

and his family were executed by Bolsheviks in this Ural Mountain city,

people are flocking to the site of the killings, drawn by reports of

miraculous cures... A drive is under way to build an imposing cathedral

in an empty field near the execution site, where a second cross and a

small wooden chapel already have been constructed."

"Phnom Penh. A Texas evangelist fled Cambodia on Saturday [26 November] after

a mob, angry over his failure to perform faith-healing miracles, rioted

outside his hotel. ...Only the arrival of 20 armed police on Friday night

kept the crowd from storming the luxury Hotel Cambodiana, where the Rev. Mike

Evans and his entourage were staying after arriving for a scheduled five-day

visit here Wednesday. ...The preacher's appearance had been heralded on

radio and television stations. 'Blind eyes will open, the paralyzed will

walk,' promised the promotional announcements. Thousands of Cambodians,

including sick, blind and paralyzed people from remote areas, came to the

capital to attend his meetings. ...Evans, 47, is pastor of Church on the

Move in Euless, Texas, and is head of Mike Evans Ministries Inc., a Euless-

based group that organizes Christian crusades in developing countries and

inner-city neighborhoods. Evans sought unsuccessfully in 1987 to replace

Jim Bakker as host of the PTL, a popular televised ministry, after Bakker

[San Francisco Examiner, 27 November 1994 (AP)]

"Two recent surveys rate the United States at the top among Western nations

in belief in God and at the bottom among six major countries in school kids'

understanding of science and math. This could be dismissed as chance, but it

shouldn't be. While our economic competitors' schools are teaching students

advanced math and science, many of our schools are wasting energy debating

whether to teach evolution or creationism, which maintains that God created

the universe over a six-day period about 6,000 years ago."

[Bill Mandel, San Francisco Examiner, 12 February 1989]

"Walnut Creek. The movement to grant California families credit toward

private tuition just got some unexpected support -- a coven of witches

who plan to open their own school if the program passes. ...Proponents

say a school based on their religion is as valid as any church school."

"Jesus was mentioned in Josephus' _Antiquities of the Jews_....The Jewish

historian certainly knew something about Jesus, and there is a paragraph

on him in the _Antiquities_. But Josephus' works were preserved by

Christian scribes, who could not resist the temptation to revise the

text and thus make Josephus proclaim that Jesus was 'the Messiah'; that

he taught 'the truth'; and that after death he was 'restored to life'.

Failing a fluke discovery, we shall never know what Josephus actually wrote."

[E.P. Sanders, _The Historical Figure of Jesus_ ISBN 0-713-99059-7]

"A Christian Reconstructionist is a Dominionist. He takes seriously the

Bible's commands to the godly to take dominion in the earth. This is the

goal of the gospel and the Great Commission. The Christian Reconstructionist

believes the earth and all its fullness is the Lord's: that every area

dominated by sin must be "reconstructed" in terms of the Bible. This

includes, first, the individual; second, the family; third, the church;

and fourth, the wider society, including the state."

[The Creed of Christian Reconstruction by Rev. Andrew Sandlin]

"Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical

profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past,

[Margaret Sanger, "Shall We Break This Law?",

The Birth Control Review, vol. 1 no. 1, Feb. 1917]

"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and

denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of

"The true contrast between science and myth is more nearly touched

when we say that science alone is capable of verification."

[George Santayana (1863-1952), "The Life of Reason" (1905-1906)]

"The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration

"People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are

mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another."

"Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling

so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily

contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself."

"What religion a man shall have is a historical accident,

quite as much as what language he shall speak."

"For Shakespeare, in the matter of religion, the choice lay

between Christianity and nothing. He chose nothing."

[George Santayana, The Absence of Religion in Shakespeare]

"The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality."

"Couples who are not childless by choice are of course

not culpable. But something is wrong if a couple refuses

to have children without a very good reason."

[Bishop Santer, addressing the Birmingham [england]

Diocesan Synod, Daily Telegraph, June 26 1995 pg 8]

"Shelley was familiar with tyranny and intolerance. In 1811, while yet

an undergraduate, he'd had the 'The Necessity of Atheism' published at

Worthing in Sussex. It appeared for sale in the bookshop window of

Munday and Slater's for just twenty minutes. The brevity of the sale

was due, unfortunately, not to an exhaustion of the edition, but the

appearance upon the scene of a clerical wowser yclept John Walker. The

good Rev., strolling by the bookstore, saw the essay upon display, and

exhibiting correct Christian indignation, upbraided the two miserable

sinners. The pamphlets were removed and burned in true Hitlerian fashion -

except for one that Slater kept, and which is the surviving copy."

"GARCIN: "Open the door! Open, blast you! I'll endure anything, your

red-hot tongs and molten lead, your racks and prongs and garrotes - all

your fiendish gadgets, everything that burns and flays and tears - I'll

put up with any torture you impose. Anything, anything would be better

than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and

caresses one and never hurts quite enough."

"God is dead. Let us not understand by this that he does not exist

or even that he no longer exists. He is dead. He spoke to us and

is silent. We no longer have anything but his cadaver. Perhaps he

slipped out of the world, somewhere else like the soul of a dead man.

Perhaps he was only a dream...God is dead."

"This (Aum sect Tokyo nerve gas attack) was done not by people

with a political ideal but by a lunatic religious group whose

[Atsuyuki Sassas, Japanese expert on terrorism]

"I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate

the "laws" of man and of "God"! I request reasons for your golden

rule and ask the why and wherefore of your ten commands. Before

none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence, and he who

saith "thou shalt" to me is my mortal foe!"

"Whatever alleged "truth" is proven by results to be but an empty

fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness,

among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other

"Anti-abortionists believe that life begins at the moment you agree with them."

"HUMANISM: an exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our

need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society."

"A healthy nature needs no God or immortality."

"It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear

of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility,

or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain-damage [sic]

baby even ten years later when she may be happily married."

"We are starting a movement in the state legislatures...to forbid

the installation of clinics that dispense contraceptives."

[Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum]

"Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like

the way we're made you've got to take it up with God."

[Phyllis Schlafly, hypocrite who has had a successful business career and

run for public office, who would apparently deny that to other women]

"Sex education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions."

"Many years ago Christian pioneers had to fight savage

Indians. Today missionaries of these former cultures are

being sent via the public schools to heathenize our children."

"If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color."

"The initial word does not lie within the province of the

theologian, but of the historian and the psychologist.

[Hugh J. Schonfield, _The_Passover_Plot_]

"Theism is incompatible with the responsibility of a moral being because in

theism responsibility always falls back on the Creator of that being....If

our will is free it is also original being, and vice versa."

"Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all lands and in all ages, in

splendour and vastness, testify to the metaphysical need of man, which, strong

and ineradicable, follows close upon his physical need. Certainly whoever is

satirically inclined might add that this metaphysical need is a modest fellow

who is content with poor fare. It sometimes allows itself to be satisfied

with clumsy fables and insipid tales. If only imprinted early enough, they

are for a man adequate explanations of his existence and supports of his

morality. Consider, for example, the Koran. This wretched book was

sufficient to found a religion of the world, to satisfy the metaphysical need

of innumerable millions of men for twelve hundred years, to become the

foundation of their morality, and of no small contempt for death, and also to

inspire them to bloody wars and most extended conquests. We find in it the

saddest and the poorest form of Theism. Much may be lost through translation;

but I have not been able to discover one single valuable thought in it. Such

things show that metaphysical capacity does not go hand in hand with the

metaphysical need. Yet it will appear that in the early ages of the present

surface of the earth this was not the case, and that those who stood

considerably nearer than we do to the beginning of the human race and the

source of organic nature, had also both greater energy of the intuitive

faculty of knowledge, and a truer disposition of mind, so that they were

capable of a purer, more direct comprehension of the inner being of nature,

and were thus in a position to satify the metaphysical need in a more worthy

manner. Thus originated in the primitive ancestors of the Brahmans, the

Rishis, the almost superhuman conceptions which were afterwards set down in

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training,

for it trains people as to how they shall think."

"There is no absurdity so obvious that it cannot be firmly planted

in the human head if you only begin to impose it before the age of

five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity."

"Aristotle once said, "Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth."

So we say, "The Bible is dear, but dearer still is truth."

[J. Frank Schulman, in UU pamphlet "UU views of the Bible."]

"Without cultural sanction, most or all our religious beliefs

and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance"

[John F. Schumaker, "Corruption of Reality, Unified

Theory of Religion, Hypnosis and Psychotherapy"]

"There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of

the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the

Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the

kingdom of God upon earth, and died to give his work its final consecration,

never had any existence. His image has not been destroyed from without, it

has fallen to pieces, cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical

problems which come to the surface one after another.... He is a figure

[Dr Albert Schweitzer, _The Quest for the Historical Jesus_]

"It is, therefore, our unequivocal conclusion that creationism, with its

accounts of the origin of life by supernatural means, is not science."

["Science and Creationism", National Academy Press, 1984]

"If you're looking for a little background reading on scientific

creationism, it's best not to take the word scientific too seriously.

A three-year database search of 4,000 scientific publications -- focusing

on the names of people associated with the Institute for Creation Research

and on phrases and keywords such as 'creationism' -- didn't turn up a

single paper. A follow-up study of 68 journals found that only 18 of

135,000 total manuscript submissions concerned scientific creationism,

and all 18 were rejected. Reasons cited included 'flawed arguments,'

'ramblings,' and 'a high-school theme quality'."

"Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to."

"..that freedom of the press is one of the greatest evils threatening modern

society. Freedom of the press was universally one of the most pernicious

[Cardinal Pedro Segura, NY Herald Tribune, 12/5/52]

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true,

by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

"To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man."

"Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book.

No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books."

[Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel), 1904-1991]

"What is really happening is that the religious right, as usual, wants to

force their will upon the world. It's been happening since Christianity

spawned the Crusades and as long as we as a species cling to our

monotheistic tenets then it will never ever stop. Anyone with an iota of

intelligence understands that a mandated moment of silence is a moment

when the religionist can say to the rest of the world, "Look at me.

I'm praying to my god. Maybe you should be praying also."

"Why should we take advice on sex from the pope?

If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!"

"I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity

when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such

"All religions begin with a revolt against morality,

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the

point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."

"There are scores of thousands of human insects who are ready at a

moment's notice to reveal the Will of God on every possible subject."

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says:

He is always convinced that it says what he means."

"Common people do not pray, my lord: they only beg."

"No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition then

Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus."

"It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it is belief."

"Beware of the man whose God is in the skies."

"What God hath joined together no man shall

put asunder: God will take care of that."

person with no ability can become great."

"There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it."

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."

"The same means that have supported every other popular belief, have

supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, assassination, and falsehood:

deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is."

[Percy Bysshe Shelley, notes to "Queen Mab"]

"Christianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating the Deity. Prayer

may be considered under two points of view; -as an endeavor to change the

intentions of God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. But the former

case supposes that the caprices of a limited intelligence can occasionally

instruct the Creator of the world how to regulate the universe; and the

latter, a certain degree of servility analogous to the loyalty demanded by

earthly tyrants. Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism

of him who thinks that he can do something better than reason."

"There are in fact so many strong biblical, doctrinal, and logical arguments

against the existence of a literal hell that this question naturally arises:

Why do the churches teach it and why do people often believe it? ... The

churches tend to believe that fear, rather than love conquers all."

"Too much thinking can give people diabetes. It is not sugar that causes

diabetes, it's thinking. We can cure diabetes. After realization. And

this new thing AIDS. After realization we can cure that too."

[Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, yet another Eastern mystic]

"I do not consider it a sign of divine love to consign to hell

people who live good lives but make an honest mistake in belief"

"The central problem of Christianity is: if the Messiah has come, why is

the world so evil? For Judaism, the problem is: if the world is so evil,

"The "dropping of context" -- deliberately and deceitfully -- by

Creationist "spokesmen" is part of their game of fraud in the "use" of

quotations from scientists. And it "works" (rhetorically, for the kinds

of audience in front of which they use it) when the readers do NOT

have the basic background in critical reading..."

"The extracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right

[Rev. E.D. Simms, professor, Randolph-Macon College]

But proof is the bottom line for everyone."

"The separation of church and state is a socialist myth

[Robert Simonds, head of Citizens for Excellence,

group which took over Vista CA school board]

"Dear God. We paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing."

"I was at Bible camp, learning how to be more judgmental."

[Mrs. Flanders (Homer Simpson's neighbor)]

"If the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn't, it's

that girls should stick to GIRLS sports, such as hot oil

wrestling, foxy boxing, and such and such."

"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go

to church we're just making him madder and madder"

"I put out these milk and cookies as a sacrifice.

If Thou wishest me to eat them, please give me a

sign by doing absolutely nothing. MMMMmmmm..."

"Marge, have you ever actually sat down and read this thing?

Technically, we're not even allowed to go to the bathroom."

"Prayer has no place in the public schools, just

like facts have no place in organized religion."

[School Superintendent on "The Simpsons"]

"Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking

the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe,

from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man."

"If you keep saying things are going to be bad,

"God knows everybody needs a hand in their decisions.

"Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and

good humour and with more real resignation to the necessary course

of things, than any Whining Christian ever dyed with pretended

[Adam Smith, on the death of David Hume. In the published version

of Smith's introductory letter to Hume's autobiography, these

words are tempered to exclude the Whining Christian.]

"*Atheism, therefore, is the absence of theistic belief.* One who

does not believe in the existence of a god or supernatural being is

Atheism is sometimes defined as "the belief that there is no God

of any kind," or the claim that a god cannot exist. While these are

categories of atheism, they do not exhaust the meaning of atheism--

and are somewhat misleading with respect to the basic nature of

atheism. *Atheism, in its basic form, is not a belief: it is the

absence of belief.* An atheist is not primarily a person who

*believes* that a god does *not* exist, rather he does *not believe*

"Reason is not one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox.

To advocate that reason be discarded in some circumstances is to advocate

that thinking be discarded- which leaves one in the position of

attempting to do a job after throwing away the required instrument."

[George Smith,_Atheism, The Case Against God_, p.110]

"Few theologians would care to pursue their research to its logical conclusion

and finally assert, as did Thomas Paine, that the biblical account of Jesus

has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it."

[George H. Smith, from _Atheism: The Case

Against God_, chapter 2, The Concept of God]

"... why have those countries with a strong Church-State alliance displayed

such an eagerness to enforce religious dogmas and eliminate dissent through

the power of the state. Why has Christianity refused, whenever possible, to

allow its beliefs to compete in a free marketplace of ideas? The answer is

obvious and revealing. Christianity is peddling an inferior product, one

that cannot withstand critical investigation. Unable to compete favorably

with other theories, it has sought to gain a monopoly through a state

franchise, which means: through the use of force.

[George H. Smith, from _Atheism: The Case Against God_]

"I am arguing that faith as such, faith as an alleged method of aquiring

knowledge, is totally invalid and as a consequence, all propositions of

faith, because they lack rational demonstration, must conflict with reason."

[George H. Smith, from _Atheism: The Case Against God_]

"The third major characteristic of God -- "infinitude" -- is the catchall,

the universal modifier of Christian theology. God is not merely a being;

he is infinite being. God is not merely good; he is infinite goodness.

God is not merely wise; he is infinite wisdom. And so on down the list.

[George H. Smith, _Atheism: The Case Against God_,

"A nation can assume that the addition of the words "under God" to its pledge

of allegiance gives evidence that its citizens actually believe in God

whereas all it really proves is that they believe in _believing_ in God."

[Huston Smith, "The Religions of Man [Buddhism]"]

"If I had been the Virgin Mary, I would have said "No."

"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."

"We need a new cosmology. New Gods. New Sacraments. Another drink."

"The observances of the church concerning feasts and

fasts are tolerably well-kept, since the rich keep

"Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers'

every time someone writes `bible thumpers?'

"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no

substitute for a good blaster at your side."

"His heart shall be torn from his living bosom and thrown in his face, after

which his head is to be taken off and exposed on the church steeple in his

native village. His body is to be cut into four pieces and a quarter

fastened upon different towers of the City of Alkamaar."

[Diedrich Sonoy, Lutheran governer in Holland, on the Catholic

Nanning Koppezoon, who was tortured for refusing to convert]

"Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which

human beings have available to them for blowing their minds."

"Madison observed in criticizing religious presidential proclamations, the

practice of sponsoring religious messages tends, over time, -to narrow the

recommendation to the standard of the predominant sect.- Madison's -Detached

Memoranda,- 3 Wm. & Mary Q. 534, 561 (E. Fleet ed. 1946)"]

[Justice Souter, concurring opinion in Lee Vs. Weisman]

"The sweep [of the Establishment Clause] is broad enough that Madison

himself characterized congressional provisions for legislative and

military chaplains as unconstitutional -establishments.- Madison's

[Justice Souter, concurring opinion in Lee Vs. Weisman]

"It needs but to glance over the world and to contemplate the doings of

Christians everywhere to be amazed at the ineffectiveness of current

theology. Or it needs only to look back over past centuries and the

iniquities alike of populace, nobles, kings, and popes to perceive an

almost incomprehensible futility of the beliefs everywhere held and

[Herbert Spencer, "Facts and Comments", 1901]

"Most studies show that conventional religion is not an effective

force for moral behavior or against criminal activity."

["The Psychology of Religion", by Bernard Spilka, Ralph

Hood, and Richard Gorsuch, standard psychology text]

"I call him free who is led solely by reason."

"As nature preserves a fixed and immutable order; it must clearly follow that

miracles are only intelligible as a relation to human opinions, and merely

mean events of which the natural cause cannot be explained by a reference to

any ordinary occurrence, either by us, or at any rate, by the writer and

[Benedict Spinoza, Ethica ordine geometrica demonstrata]

"Unlike Descartes, however, he regarded mind and body (or ideas and the

physical universe) as merely different aspects of a single substance,

which he called alternately God and Nature, God being Nature in its

fullness. This pantheism was considered blasphemous by the religious