UOTES - General Wisdom, About Religion, and by Christians

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
-Ambrose Redmoon

Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.
-Sir William Haley

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
-E. E. Cummings

The best defense against logic is ignorance.
-unknown

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
-Alan Ashley-Pitt

Don't speak unless you can improve on the silence.
-Spanish proverb

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
-H. L. Mencken

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
-Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes)

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
-George Washington (1790)

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
-Bertrand Russell

Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
-Bertrand Russell

Live simply, that others may simply live.
-Mohandas Gandhi

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
- Wallace Irwin

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
-Mark Twain

The mockingbird can change its tune eighty-seven times in seven minutes. Politicians regard this interesting fact with envy.
-unknown

If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?
-Will Rogers

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up and does not stop until you get into the office.
-Robert Frost

For we can avoid ineptness or emptiness in our assertions only by presenting the model as what it is, as an object of comparison--as, so to speak, a measuring-rod; not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond. (The dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy.)
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ß 131

Men who are not free always idealise their bondage.
- Boris Pasternak

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
- Charles Darwin, Introduction, The Ascent of Man, 1871

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
- Douglas Adams

We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.
- Epictetus (Discourses)

In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain. Either you already reach a higher point today, or you exercise your strength in order to be able to climb higher tomorrow.
- Friedrich Nietsche

It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Do you have to salt your truth so heavily that it does not even-quench thirst any more?
- Fredrich Nietzsche

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
- Fredrich Nietzsche

Madness is rare in individuals-but in groups, parties, nations and ages it rules.
- Fredrich Nietzsche

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt!
-Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

Life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.
- Marjory Stoneham Douglas, (b. 1890) American conservationist

Vain are the thousand creeds that move men's hearts, unutterably vain, worthless as wither'd weeds.
-Emily Bronte (1818-1848)

All men are created equal and independent. From that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable.
-Thomas Jefferson's original wording in the Declaration of Independence

They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.
-Wording as revised by Congress

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
-Abraham Lincoln

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
-Albert Einstein

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
-Albert Einstein

bout ReligionTop-o-page

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
-Siddartha Gautama (the Buddha)

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
-Richard Dawkins

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust.A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
-Albert Einstein, (1879-1955)

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
-Isaac Asimov

When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
-Oscar Wilde

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 believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'
-Robert G. Ingersoll

I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them.
-Galileo

Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits.
-Dan Barker, Former evangelist, author, critic

They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they beleive rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.
-Mark Twain

Which is more dangerous: fanaticism or atheism? Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion whereas fanaticism does; atheism is opposed to crime and fanaticism causes crimes to be committed.
-Voltaire

If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.
-General Marquis De Lafayette, 1789

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.
-Anne Lamott

I used to think it was terrible that life was so unfair. Then I thought 'wouldn't it be much worse if life really were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us occur because we actually deserve it.'
- Marcus, Babylon 5

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

Out of all of the sects of the world, we notice an uncanny coincidence: the overwhelming majority just happen to choose one that their parents' belong to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best music: when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing, compared to the matter of heredity. This is an unmistakable fact; nobody could seriously deny it. Yet people with full knowledge of the arbitrary nature of this heredity, somehow manage to go on believing in *their* religion, often with such fanaticism that they are prepared to murder people who follow a different one.
-Richard Dawkins

There was a time when religion ruled the world. It was known as the dark ages.
-Ruth Hurmence

Puritanism: the haunting fear that somebody, somewhere, might be having a good time.
-H.L. Mencken

What was it that Adam ate that he wasn't supposed to eat? It wasn't just an apple. It was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The subtle message? 'Get smart and I'll fuck you over' sayeth the Lord. God is the smartest, and he doesn't want any competion. Is this not an absolutely anti-intellectual religion?
-Frank Zappa

[The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.
-Mark Twain

I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degredation left in the world.
-Charles Dickens

Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion.
-Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D.

I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance.
-Christopher Marlowe

A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what he knows.
-Mark Twain

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.
-George Bernard Shaw

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.
-Gene Roddenberry

It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.
-Marquis de Sade

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.
-George Bernard Shaw

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.
-Author Unknown

Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
-Ambrose Bierce

Fundamentalists are like the fir trees in German forests: they cannot stand alone, and are only stable when crowded together, branches locked with those of their brothers. That is why we must always fear them, because they will always hate us for our individualism.
-Brent Yaciw

Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people.
-Voltaire

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
-John Adams

Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion---several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.
-Mark Twain

The fundamentalists deny that evolution has taken place; they deny that the earth and the universe as a whole are more than a few thousand years old, and so on. There is ample scientific evidence that the fundamentalists are wrong in these matters, and that their notions of cosmogony have about as much basis in fact as the Tooth Fairy has.
-Isaac Asimov

If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absense of prayers.
-Steve Allen

How on earth can religious people believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash?....The acceptance of a creed, any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a way to fight loneliness. Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so lonely anymore.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate....Try science.
-Carl Sagan

Praying is like a rocking chair---it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere.
-Gypsy Rose Lee

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
-Carl Sagan

When you put the Bible in the hands of the ignorant, it becomes a dangerous weapon.
-Eugene Orlando

Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich.
-Unknown

The mind of the fundamentalist is like the pupil of the eye: the more light you pour on it, the more it will contract.
-Unknown

Getting atheists and freethinkers to cooperate is like trying to herd cats
-unknown

Religious experiences are like those induced by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, and sleep deprivation: They tell no uniform or coherent story, and there is no plausible theory to account for discrepancies among them.
-Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification

I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief.
-Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist

If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?
-Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist

Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb.
-Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

If, when we perceive results similar to those that might be due to a wise man, we conclude that they have been produced by a being similar to a wise man, then, when we see results similar to those that might be due to an idiot, shall we not conclude that they have been produced by an idiot?
-E.M. McDonald, Design Argument Fallacies

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.
-Ernest Renan, 1863

The notion of personal responsibility in fundamentalism is a curious one. You are responsible for your sins, but you cannot take credit for the good things that you do. Any good that you do must be attributed to God working through you. Yet you must try to be Christlike. When you fail, it is your fault for not 'letting the power of God work in you.' This is an effective double bind of responsibility without ability.
-Marlene Winell, Leaving the Fold

Scientific hypotheses are always tentative; they are designed to be held only so long as they conform to the evidence. Proponents of the theistic hypothesis, on the other hand, are already sure that their hypothesis is correct; they only seek evidence to buttress a foregone conclusion.
-Keith Parsons, Is There a Case for Christian Theism? Does God Exist?

You are free, therefore choose--that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics will reply, 'Oh but there are!' Very well; still, it is I myself, in every case, who have to interpret the signs.
-Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism

The scientist yearns to find and eventually know the truth; the religious man wants the truth to fit his preconceived mold. So, as a result... The scientist alters his perception to conform to the facts; The religious man tries to change the facts to conform to his beliefs.
-Unknown

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 perfume.
- Robert G. Ingersoll, Gods, 1879

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
- Nietzche, The Anti-Christ, 1889

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. One must be sick enough for it.
- Nietzsche

One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this.
- Fredrich Nietzsche

Who is more godless than I, that I may rejoice in his teachings?
- Nietzsche

Only a brave person is able honestly to accept, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers.
- Rodan of Alexandria

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.
- Robert G. Ingersoll

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.
- Robert G. Ingersoll

This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.
- Robert G. Ingersoll

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?
- Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 2, p. 259

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!
- Robert G. Ingersoll, The Gods, 1872

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
- Thomas Jefferson

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
- Albert Einstien

Believing is easier than thinking. Hence so many more believers than thinkers.
- Bruce Calvert

If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.
- Alister Crowley

Nothing changes history like the Christian Historian
- Emmett F. Fields

A mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology
- Mark Twain (On The Bible)

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
- Mark Twain

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

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful-- just stupid.)
- Robert A. Heinlein

My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd.
- Ingersoll

The idea of a hell was born of revenge and brutality on the one side, and cowardice on the other ... I have no respect for any human being who believes in it. I have no respect for any man who preaches it. I have no respect for the man who will pollute the imagination of childhood with that infamous lie ... I dislike this doctrine, I despise it, I hate it, I defy this doctrine.
- Robert Ingersol

God says do what you wish, but make the wrong choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell. That sir, is not free will. It would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend, do what you wish, but if you choose to leave me, I will track you down and blow your brains out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath and cry out for his imprisonment/execution. When god says the same we call him loving and build churches in his honor.
- William C. Easttom II, skeptic@icon.net

A metaphysician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there, and a theologian is one who finds the cat.
- Anonymous

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
- Albert Einstein

Although I cannot believe that the individual survives the death of his body, feeble souls harbor such thought through fear or ridiculous egotism.
- Albert Einstein

God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers-- at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!
- Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages-- as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.
- Edward Abbey

Prayers never bring anything... They may bring solace to the sap, the bigot, the ignorant, the aboriginal, and the lazy - but to the enlightened it is the same as asking Santa Claus to bring you something for Xmas
- W. C. Fields

Fantastic doctrines (like Christianity or Islam or Marxism) require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward.
- Edward Abbey

To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force.
- Hypatia (Alexandrian mathematician, murdered by a Christian mob in 415 CE)

If you were taught that elves caused rain, every time it rained, you'd see the proof of elves.
-Ariex

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.
- Hippocrates

Doubt everything. Find your own light.
- Last words of Gautama Buddha, in Theravada tradition

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
- John Adams (letter to Thomas Jefferson)

The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.
- Mohandas Gandhi (Young India, 1927)

The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.
- Robert A. Wilson

The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals. It has been used to encourage belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching of scientific truths. We must never forget that both good and evil flow from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism.
- Steve Allen

No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible.
- Steve Allen

The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don't like that statement, but few can argue with it.
- Kenneth V. Lanning, Supervisory Special Agent at the Behavioral Science Institution and Research Unit of the FBI Academy

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?
- Carl Sagan

According to the Bible, God was ignorant, a ruthless liar and cheat; he broke his pledges, changed his mind so often that he grew weary of repenting. He was a murderer of children, ordered his people to slay, rape, steal, and lie and commit every foul and filthy abomination in human power. In fact, the more I read the Bible the less I find in it that is either credible or admirable.
- Rupert Hughes

The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.
-Arthur Schopenhauer

Now 7-11 has bowed to pressure from the Moral Majority to remove Playboy and Penthouse from their newsstand. I guess to be fair you have to look at it from the fundamentalist perspective. What they're saying is that they don't want pornography out in the open, because what it does is it forces a certain type of literature on somebody in a public place. It would be like..., uh..., oh I don't know, say like ...putting the Bible in everybody's hotel room, or something crazy like that.
-Dennis Miller

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.
- D. Dale Gulledge

The Bible is the greatest hoax in all history. The leading characters of the Old Testament would today be in the penitentiary and those of the New would be under observation in psychopathic wards.
- Charles Smith (1887-1964) U.S. attorney, author

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.
- W. K. Clifford

Starlight said to Nonentity, Master, do you exist, or do you not exist?
He got no answer to his question, however.
- Lao Tse

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would neither be created nor destroyed... it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?
-Cosmologist Stephen Hawking

I have asked inerrantists what they would think if I should take the position that the Bible is errant in everything it says. They admit that anyone who would do this would not be an objective person, yet they seem to think that they are being perfectly objective in their position that the Bible is inerrant in everything it says.
-Farell Till: Editor, The Skeptical Review

I tell Christians, If you had two children and one had to be bribed (heaven) and threatened (hell) to do what he was supposed to do, and the other one just did it because that's what he knew was the right thing to do, which would you consider the better person? -
-Greg Irwin, President of the Humanist Association of Canada

Ideas that cannot be defended by reason and evidence can lead anywhere, and, if there is no warrant for one's belief, there is no telling where it will end.
-Paul M. Pfalzner Canadian medical physicist, author, humanist

If you eat sausage, you are better off not knowing the inner workings of sausage factories, and if you are a Christian, that of the Christian church.
-Rev. Donald Morgan

Immortality: A toy which people cry for,
And on their knees apply for,
Dispute, contend and lie for,
And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
-Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

In the year 415, the woman scientist Hypatia, head of the legendary Alexandria library, was beaten to death by Christian monks who considered her a pagan. The leader of the monks, Cyril, was canonized a saint.
-James A. Haught, Free Inquiry (Winter 1996/1997)

In spite of centuries wasted in preaching God's omnipotence, his omnipotence is contradicted by every Christian judgment and every Christian prayer.
-George Santayana (1863-1952) U.S. philosopher, writer, professor

In the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with God, and the nonsense was God.
-Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900) German philosopher.

Irreverence: As defined by religionists, the reluctance on the part of an atheist or agnostic to passively listen to incessant god-speak without wanting to respond.
-Don Morgan

It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author-and that he did not learn it better.
-Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900) German philosopher

It is said that a neurotic builds castles in the sky and the psychotic moves in. What does this say about the mental state of Christians with their Heaven paved in gold?
-Donald Morgan

It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good, and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring.
-Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)

Jesus Christ: A name that once upon a time was taken by God when he went to make a short sojourn in Judea, where, failing to declare his right name ...he was hanged.... Had it not been for this lucky turn..., the human race had been lost.
-Voltaire (1694-1778)

Jesus' last words on the cross, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? hardly seem to be the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here.
-Rev. Donald Morgan

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity; you don't realize how irritating it was 'til it's gone.
-anonymous

Man is without doubt the most interesting fool there is. He concedes that God made the angels immune from pain and death, and that he could have been similarly kind to man, but denies that he was under any moral obligation to do so.
-Mark Twain (1835-1910)

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.
-Donald Morgan

No theologian could ever be a historian. History is essentially disinterested. The historian has only one concern: art and truth, ...whereas the theologian has something else at stake-his dogma.
-Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1890)

No theory is too false, no fable too absurd for acceptance when embedded in common belief. Men will submit to torture and death, mothers will immolate their children [for] beliefs they accept.
-Henry George (1839-1897)

Once purged of the insanity, plagiarisms, illegalities, contradictions, and the perverse, the Bible could be printed on match book covers while increasing it's usefulness.
-Anonymous

One does not have to appeal to God to set the initial conditions for the creation of the universe, but if one does He would have to act through the laws of physics.
-Stephen Hawking, author of Black Holes & Baby Universes

Resurrection: The means by which his friends became convinced that Jesus was the Messiah. Though they never got together on the details of the story, faith teaches us that it is nonetheless a historical fact.
-Donald Morgan

Saints fly only in the eyes of their disciples.
-Hindu Proverb

Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.
[when asked by Napoleon why he had not mentioned God in his Mecanique Celeste]
-Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827) French astronomer, mathematician

Sunday school: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
-H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The Belief that man is outfitted with an immortal soul, differing altogether from the engines which operate the lower animals, is ridiculously unjust to them. The difference between the smartest dog and the stupidest man-say a Tennessee Holy Roller-is really very small, and the difference between the decentest dog and the worst man is all in favor of the dog.
-H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The Bible: The inerrant, inspired Word of an omnipotent, omniscient diety who lived in a tent that desert nomads carried around with them some 3500 years ago.
-Farell Till

The Church says that 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.
-Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521)

The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self mutilation....
-Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900)

From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end.
-G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion.
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)

The process of creating new scripture by constructive abuse of the old reaches its climax in the letters ascribed to Paul.
-Robin Lane Fox Historian; Fellow, New College, Oxford

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
-Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) English scientist and writer

They came with a Bible and their religion- stole our land, crushed our spirit... and now tell us we should be thankful to the 'Lord' for being saved.
-Chief Pontiac (d. 1769) American Indian Chieftain

Letterman Book of Top Ten Lists (Submitted by Dardedar@aol.com) [3-28-96]

Top Ten Reasons Jesus Hasn't Returned Yet:

10. Changed his mind after he saw Ernest Saves Christmas
9. Afraid to travel in the Middle East
8. Waiting for this AIDS thing to blow over
7. So many Second Comings, so little time
6. Still hasn't received thank you notes from last visit
5. Can't remember which darned planet we're on
4. Having second thoughts about leaving heaven now they just got cable
3. Has decided to give humanity its space
2. Waiting for long hair to become popular again
1. Already did return, but everyone thought he was Elvis

Top Ten Suggested New Names for the Bible

10. The Ten Commandments-The Book
9. War and More War
8. The Little Golden book of Contradictions
7. Grim Fairy Tales
6. All the Messiah's Men
5. Regress for Success
4. I'm OK-You're Damned. Or: I Fly, you Fry
3. The Guiness Book of Really Weird Stuff
2. 101 Ways to a Guiltier Lifestyle
1. Fear of Frying

What, me worry about the historical Jesus? The gospel writers made up their story; the church fathers invented the virgin birth on the winter solstice; the pope thought up the immaculate conception; so I can imagine any damn thing I please about Jesus, or the Spook, or about the big guy himself.
-Theologian Franz Bibfeldt, on how to write religious history.

Whenever the wisdom of the world has clashed with the 'wisdom of God,' the wisdom of the world has had a consistent way of proving itself right.
-Farell Till Editor, The Skeptical Review

You say there is but one way to worship the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?
-Red Jacket Seneca Indian Chief

A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.
-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
-Carl Sagan

A man who believes that he eats his God we do not call mad; yet, a man who says he is Jesus Christ, we call mad.
-Claude A. Helvetius (1715-1771)

All this [Paul's writing] is nothing better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told.
-Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

America's favorite religion is scientifically unsupported, philosophically suspect at best, disreputable at worst, and historically fraudulent.
- Delos B. McKown, Ph.D., Former clergyman

Any idiot can believe in Jesus H. Christ. To truly understand all that confusion in the gospels takes a real contortionist scholar.
-Franz Bibfeldt, German theologian

Because I have been enjoined, by this Holy Office, to abandon the false opinion that the Sun is the center and immovable, ...I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies... contrary to the said Holy Church.
-Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

Christianity: Safer than a lobotomy, but just as effective.
-anonymous

God-who is said to have created everything from nothing and to have done so with no help from anyone is now completely helpless to do anything at all without the assistance of an army of clergymen and the charity of a flock of faithful followers.
-Rev. Donald Morgan

I believe in treating others as I want to be treated-but I certainly don't believe in turning the other cheek and the truth is that I never knew any Christians who did either.
-James Hervey Johnson

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
-Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

Cockroach: An ugly, greasy, universally reviled, six-legged freeloader with a fondness for procreation and leftovers. One of nature's all-time success stories, suggesting that God must love an obscene joke.
-adapted from Rick Bayan's The Cynic's Dictionary Hearst Books, N.Y., 1992

Could a being create the fifty billion galaxies, each with two hundred billion stars, then rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh?
-Ron Patterson

The crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.
-Robert Green Ingersoll

How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares 'God wills it thus.' Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
-Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Born again?! No, I'm not. Excuse me for getting it right the FIRST time!
-Dennis Miller

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
-Bertrand Russell, 1927

Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti, and Mr. Winston Churchill? Really I am not much impressed with the people who say: Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must have been design in the universe. I am not very impressed by the splendor of those people. Therefore I think that this argument of design is really a very poor argument indeed.
-Bertrand Russell

What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.
-Bertrand Russell, 1944

If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'
-Bertrand Russell

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 been very chic for an atheist.
-Bertrand Russell, Autobiography

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.
-Bertrand Russell

The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.
-The Theological Works of Thomas Paine

The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
-Albert Einstein

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.
-Galileo Galilei

To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover.
-Galileo Galilei

If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction.
-Judith Hayes

In the fundamentalist view, unbelievers have only two relevant attributes: They are potential converts and sources of temptation. As objects of evangelism, they are called 'crops to be harvested,' 'sheep to be found,' and 'fish to be netted.' Because of the danger of worldly influence (much like a contagious disease), relationships with 'them' must be handled gingerly. Contacts must be superficial, geared toward evangelism only, and cut short if there is not a positive response. Since Christians are already full of truth, there is no need for them to listen, nothing for them to learn, and much for them to lose by admitting alternative views into their consciousness.
-Marlene Winell

If the belief in god were natural, there would be no need to teach it. Children would possess it as well as adults, the layman as the priest, the heathen as much as the missionary. We don't have to teach the general elements of human nature; the five senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. They are universal; so would religion be were it natural, but it is not. On the contrary, it is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are Atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds they would remain so. Even as it is, they are great sceptics, until made sensible of the potent weapon by which religion has ever been propagated, namely, fear -- fear of the lash of public opinion here, and of jealous, vindictive God hereafter. No; there is no religion in human nature, nor human nature in religion. It is purely artificial, the result of education, while Atheism is natural, and, were the human mind not perverted and bewildered by the mysteries and follies of superstition, would be universal.
-Ernestine L. Rose

The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty.
-Stephen Hawking

"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

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.
-Ayn Rand

The god of the Bible measures up to the level of a petty and vicious tyrant. The god of the bible punishes babies for the sins of their parents (Ex 20:5, 34:7; Num 14:18; 2 Sam 12:13-19); punishes people by causing them to become cannibals and eat their children (2 Ki 6:24-33, Lam 4:10-11); gives people bad laws, even requiring the sacrifice of their firstborn babies, so that they can be filled with horror and know that god is their lord (Ez 20:25-26); causes people to believe lies so that he can send them to hell (2 Thess 2:11), and many other atrocities, far too many to list here. It would not be hard to measure up to, and exceed, that level of moral purity. Atheists surpass it every day.
-Doug Krueger

Christian faith is a habit of flouting reason in forming and maintaining one's answer to the question whether there is a god. Its essence is the determination to believe that there is a god no matter what the evidence may be.
-Richard Robinson

hristian Quotes Top-o-page

To affirm that the Sun...is at the centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures.
-Cardinal Bellermine, 17th century Church Master Collegio Romano, who imprisoned Galileo.

Away with the one who is always seeking, for he never finds anything; for he is seeking where nothing can be found. Away with the one who is always knocking, for he knocks where there is no one to open; away with the one who is always asking, for he asks of one who does not hear.
- Tertullian (A Christian leader in the early 3rd century compare to Matt. 7:7)

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....
-Martin Luther (1483-1546)

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.
-Martin Luther (1483-1546)

I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism.
- Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue quoted in The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 8-16-93

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.
-Martin Luther (1483-1546) German Protestant leader

On some occasions the bodies of the martyrs who had been devoured by wild beasts, upon the beasts being strangled, were found alive in their stomachs.
-Eusebius (4th century), Bishop & Christian ecclesiastical historian

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

If there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book it did not come from the God of truth.
-John Wesley (1703-1791)

Whatever the natural cause, sin is the true cause of all earthquakes.
-John Wesley (1703-1791)

Mr. Speaker, a new report says only 7% of scientists believe in God. That is right. And the reason they gave was that the scientists are super smart. Unbelievable. Most of these absent-minded professors cannot find the toilet.
-Congressman James Traficant, August 3, 1998. House record page H6885

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.
-Martin Luther (1483-1546)

There is no observational fact imaginable which cannot, one way or another, be made to fit the creation model.
-Henry Morris, Past President, Institute for Creation Research

Surely, it would be fascinating to have a real encounter with another intelligence [i.e., an alien]. I think we'd have to consider whether we should baptize him.
-Rev. Chris Corbally Catholic astronomer, scientist

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
-St. Augustine

The decline in American pride, patriotism, and piety can be directly attributed to the extensive reading of so-called 'science fiction' by our young people. This poisonous rot about creatures not of God's making, societies of 'aliens' without a good Christian among them, and raw sex between unhuman beings with three heads and God alone knows what sort of reproductive apparatus keeps our young people from realizing the true will of God.
- Jerry Falwell, Can Our Young People Find God in the Pages of Trashy Magazines? No, Of Course Not! Readers Digest (1985)

The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan concedes the right of every Christian citizen the right to worship God as he sees fit, and will not tolerate denominational dissention of any nature. All White Christians must unite, at this juncture in history.
-From the KKK's web site