2135 "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]

1443 "Craig (1992:238) claims that it is 'philosophically unobjectionable' to conceive of God as causally prior to the Big Bang, since 'God's act of creation may be regarded as simultaneous with the origin of the universe'. However--as Grünbaum observes on several occasions--many of us find it hard to make any sense of this suggestion. It is true that there are contexts in which it clearly makes sense to speak of 'simultaneous causation'--e.g. as Craig notes, there is no impropriety in the claim that the downward pressure exerted by the otherwise unsupported head causes the indentation in the pillow--but this is compatible with the claim ü that, strictly speaking, causation must be local and mediated by finite signals. On this view, given a sufficient margin of error, causation can appear simultaneous--but there is no reason to think that there is any genuinely simultaneous causation." Graham Oppy, "Professor William Craig's Criticisms of Critiques of Kalam Cosmological Arguments By Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking, And Adolf Grünbaum" (1995)

1496 "I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue." Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), p. vi.

1156 "God is make believe"

479 "Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter." -- Thomas Paine

3565 "The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

3069 "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." [Joseph Sapere]

1247 "What, then, should be our approach in apologetics? It should besomething like this: 'My friend, I know Christianity is true because God's Spirit lives in me and assures me that it is true. And you can know it is true, too, because God is knocking at the door of your heart, telling you the same thing. If you are sincerely seeking God, then God will give you assurance that the gospel is true. Now, to try to show you it's true, I'll share with you some arguments and evidence that I really find convincing. But should my arguments seem weak and unconvincing to you, that's my fault, not God's. It only shows that I'm a poor apologist, not that the gospel is untrue. Whatever you think of my arguments, God still loves you and holds you accountable. I'll do my best to present good arguments to you. But ultimately you have to deal, not with arguments, but with God himself.'" William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, (Revised edition, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), p. 48.

2308 "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." [Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872]

3565 "The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

3753 "Windows VirusScan 1.0 - 'Windows found: Remove it? (Y/N)'"

682 "When I get a little money, I buy books; And if any is left, I buy food and clothes."--Erasmus

54 "It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan

1420 "In his book, Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse, Philip Greven (1992), a professor of history at Rutgers University, says that the roots of America's unusally angry, violent, and crime-ridden society lie in the country's Judeo-Christian heritage. Greven examines cases of childhood punishment and the rationales for physical punishment among those with strong Protestant conviction. The latter usually boil down to the belief that it is necessary for parents to break the will of their children to gain their respect and obedience. In reality, he says physical assault only breeds rage and hostility, with negative outcomes." Marlene Winell, Leaving the Fold (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 1993), p. 126.

1783 "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." [Ayn Rand]

2606 "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)]

807 "He concluded the old coffee table was not really a coffee table at all, but rather the sacred Ark of the Covenant described in the Old Testament. How it got to New Jersey," he remarked, "God only knows."

372 "Skepticism -- Reasonable doubt!"

1809 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...

793 "Proof establishes knowledge; knowledge inspires belief; belief in any other context is mere sentiment."