Religion Quotations

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I once heard the voice of God. It said ‘Vrrrrmmmmm.’ Unless it was just a lawn mower.
~ Age 11

If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!
~ Clark Adams (born: 1969-07-23 died: 2007-05-21 at age: 37)

[God] puts an apple tree in the middle of [the Garden of Eden] and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting ‘Gotcha.’ It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it… Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49) Author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Last Chance to See

A man didn’t understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. ‘But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren’t there?’.
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49) Author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Last Chance to See

He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49) Author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Last Chance to See

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49) Author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Last Chance to See

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 (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49) Author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Last Chance to See

Religion has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is ‘Here is an idea or notion that you are not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not.’ If somebody votes for a party you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument, but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down, you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand, if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on Saturday’ you say, ‘I respect that.’

Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows — but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe… no, that’s holy?… We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much a furor Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you are not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is not reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be.
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49) Author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Last Chance to See

Yes, I think I use the term ‘radical’ rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as ‘atheist,’ some people will say, ’Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?’ I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one…etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously.
~ Douglas Adams (born: 1952-03-11 died: 2001-05-11 at age: 49) Author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Last Chance to See

The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.
~ John Adams (born: 1735-10-30 died: 1826-07-04 at age: 90), second president of the United States, in the Treaty of Tripoli (1797)

Oh my Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, send me there;
Oh my Lord, if I worship Thee from desire for Paradise, exclude me thence;
But if I worship Thee for Thine Own sake, hide not from me Thine Eternal Beauty.
~ Rabi’a al-Adawiyya (born: 717 AD died: 801 AD at age: 84)

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
~ Dante Alighieri (born: 1265 died: 1321-09-14 at age: 56)

Believing would be easier if God would show himself by depositing a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in my name.
~ Woody Allen (born: 1935-12-01 age: 73)

I don’t want to gain immortality through my work; I want to gain immortality through not dying.
~ Woody Allen (born: 1935-12-01 age: 73)

Dear Jesus
Please save me from your followers.
~ Anonymous

For some reason, whenever people think about God they get a pained expression as if someone had poked a broom up their ass.
~ Anonymous

If abstinence-only education failed the Virgin Mary, how do you expect it to work for your daughter?
~ Anonymous

If Americans and Jews are God’s chosen people, why did He hide all their oil under Muslim soil?
~ Anonymous

Joseph and Mary should have known better they would not be able to find accommodation. After all, its always busy near Christmas.
~ Anonymous

Prayer for the USA

May the USA be taken down a peg so that learns to treat the people of other nations as equally important as Americans.
~ Anonymous

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
~ Anonymous

You cannot reason people out of a position they have not reasoned themselves into.
~ Anonymous

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 (born: 1820-02-15 died: 1906-03-13 at age: 86), 1896

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 god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
~ Aristotle (born: 384 BC died: 322 BC at age: 62)

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
~ Isaac Asimov (born: 1920-01-02 died: 1992-03-06 at age: 72) Russian-born American scientist and prolific writer

Remo Williams: Jesus! Chiun: Concentrate. This is no time for prayer.
~ Remo Williams, the Adventure Begins

10% of priests are pedophiles.
~ Amy Berg (born: 1970 age: 39) in documentary Deliver Us From Evil

The priesthood has become to the safe profession for pedophiles analogous to what hair dresser and florist are for effeminate gays.

Ocean: A body of water occupying 2/3 of a world made for man… who has no gills.
~ Ambrose Bierce (born: 1842-06-24 died: 1914 at age: 71)

Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
~ Ambrose Bierce (born: 1842-06-24 died: 1914 at age: 71)

I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.
~ Napoléon Bonaparte (born: 1769-08-15 died: 1821-05-05 at age: 51)

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
~ Napoléon Bonaparte (born: 1769-08-15 died: 1821-05-05 at age: 51)

There is no place in a fanatic’s head where reason can enter.
~ Napoléon Bonaparte (born: 1769-08-15 died: 1821-05-05 at age: 51)

If God had wanted us to fly, he would gave given us tickets.
~ Mel Brooks (born: 1926-06-28 age: 83)

I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion.
~ James Buchanan (born: 1791-04-23 died: 1868-06-01 at age: 77), fifteenth president of the United States.

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
~ Gautama Buddha (born: 563 BC died: 483 BC at age: 80)

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
~ Edmund Burke (born: 1729-01-12 died: 1797-07-09 at age: 68)

Scoundrels invented religion to lull people into apathy, leaving it up to a god to oppose the evildoers, who of course does nothing at all.

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
~ Samuel Butler (born: 1835-12-04 died: 1902-06-18 at age: 66)

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
~ Samuel Butler (born: 1835-12-04 died: 1902-06-18 at age: 66)

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
~ Samuel Butler (born: 1835-12-04 died: 1902-06-18 at age: 66)

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.
~ Samuel Butler (born: 1835-12-04 died: 1902-06-18 at age: 66)

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
~ Samuel Butler (born: 1835-12-04 died: 1902-06-18 at age: 66)

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
~ Samuel Butler (born: 1835-12-04 died: 1902-06-18 at age: 66)

Man is God’s highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
~ Samuel Butler (born: 1835-12-04 died: 1902-06-18 at age: 66)

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded. That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
~ Lord George Gordon Byron (born: 1788-01-22 died: 1824-04-19 at age: 36)

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.
~ Julius Gaius Caesar (born: 100-07-13 BC died: 44-03-15 BC at age: 55)

Men freely believe that which they desire.
~ Julius Gaius Caesar (born: 100-07-13 BC died: 44-03-15 BC at age: 55)

I do not really care what people do as long as they do not do it in the street and frighten the horses.
~ Mrs. Patrick Campbell (born: 1865-02-09 died: 1940-04-09 at age: 75) Victorian

‘Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia.‘
‘But it keeps not ending.’
‘So far, so good.’
~ Orson Scott Card (born: 1951-08-24 age: 58), Ender’s Shadow

‘We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time.’
‘Surely you’re not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings!’ ‘It’s there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees — knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying.
~ Orson Scott Card (born: 1951-08-24 age: 58), Ender’s Shadow

Could it be the Christians got their metaphor right? Our too-rapidly-evolved intelligence is all but certain to result in our early extinction. Was Christianity a flat-footed attempt to dumb down humanity?

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.
~ George Carlin (born: 1937-05-12 died: 2008-06-22 at age: 71)

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.
~ George Carlin (born: 1937-05-12 died: 2008-06-22 at age: 71)

If churches want to play the game of politics, let them pay admission like everyone else.
~ George Carlin (born: 1937-05-12 died: 2008-06-22 at age: 71)

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
~ George Carlin (born: 1937-05-12 died: 2008-06-22 at age: 71)

I’ve begun worshipping the Sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the Sun. It’s there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to dress up, and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50% rate.
~ George Carlin (born: 1937-05-12 died: 2008-06-22 at age: 71)

Religion is just mind control.
~ George Carlin (born: 1937-05-12 died: 2008-06-22 at age: 71)

We created god in our own image and likeness!
~ George Carlin (born: 1937-05-12 died: 2008-06-22 at age: 71)

All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.
~ Titus Lucretius Carus (born: 94 BC died: 55 BC at age: 39)

Fear is the mother of all gods.
~ Titus Lucretius Carus (born: 94 BC died: 55 BC at age: 39)

The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.
~ Titus Lucretius Carus (born: 94 BC died: 55 BC at age: 39)

By simple common sense I don’t believe in God, in none.
~ Sir Charles Spencer “Charlie” Chaplin (born: 1889-04-06 died: 1977-12-25 at age: 88)

All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man’s reason, that any strong and vigorous intelligence laughs at them.
~ Pierre Charron (born: 1541 died: 1603-11-16 at age: 62) Catholic theologian.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it’s the only one you have.
~ Emilé-Auguste Chartier (born: 1868-03-03 died: 1951-06-02 at age: 83)

The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
~ Winston Churchill (born: 1874-11-30 died: 1965-01-24 at age: 90)

On the subject of the nature of the gods, the first question is ‘Do the gods exist or do the not?’ It is difficult you may say to deny that they exist. I would agree if we were arguing the matter in a public assembly, but in a private discussion of this kind, it is perfectly easy to do so.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (born: 106-01-03 BC died: 43-12-07 BC at age: 63)

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
~ Arthur C. Clarke (born: 1917-12-16 died: 2008-03-19 at age: 90)

Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?
~ Arthur C. Clarke (born: 1917-12-16 died: 2008-03-19 at age: 90)

The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
~ Arthur C. Clarke (born: 1917-12-16 died: 2008-03-19 at age: 90)

President Abraham Lincoln gave his life.
~ Bill Clinton (born: 1946-08-19 age: 63) 42nd president of the USA,

I refuse to believe President Lincoln gave assent to his own assassination. Surely, had he known what awaited him at the Ford theatre he would have stayed home. Surely, he did not imagine his country was better off with him dead. His life was stolen from him.

Cruel persecution and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims.
~ Morris Raphael Cohen (born: 1880-07-25 died: 1947-01-28 at age: 66)

The number of people who describe themselves as generically ‘Protestant’ went from approximately 17 million in 1990 to 5 million in 2009.
~ researchers at Trinity College reported in the Washington Post

I don’t believe in angels, no… But I do have a wee parking angel. It’s on my dashboard and you wind it up. The wings flap and it’s supposed to give you a parking space. It’s worked so far.
~ Billy Connolly (born: 1942-11-24 age: 66)

It seems to me that Islam and Christianity and Judaism all have the same god, and he's telling them all different things.
~ Billy Connolly (born: 1942-11-24 age: 66)

A delusion that encourages belief where there is no evidence is asking for trouble. Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle. Instead, disagreements are settled by other means which, in extreme cases, inevitably become violent. Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.
~ Dr. Richard Dawkins (born: 1941-03-26 age: 68), 2005-04-25, Salon

A good example of the colouring of religious agendas is the whole heart-warming legend of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, followed by Herod’s massacre of the innocents. When the gospels were written many years after Jesus’ death, nobody knew where he was born. But an Old Testament prophesy (Micah 5:2) had led Jews to expect that the long-awaited Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. In the light of this prophesy, John’s gospel specifically remarks that his followers were surprised that he was not born in Bethlehem; ‘Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh out of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?’

Matthew and Luke handle the problem differently, by deciding that Jesus must have been born in Bethlehem after all. But they get him there by different routes.
~ Dr. Richard Dawkins (born: 1941-03-26 age: 68), The God Delusion page 93.

From a biological point of view, there are lots of different theories about why we have this extraordinary predisposition to believe in supernatural things. One suggestion is that the child mind is, for very good Darwinian reasons, susceptible to infection the same way a computer is. In order to be useful, a computer has to be programmable, to obey whatever it’s told to do. That automatically makes it vulnerable to computer viruses, which are programs that say, ‘Spread me, copy me, pass me on.’ Once a viral program gets started, there is nothing to stop it.

Similarly, the child brain is preprogrammed by natural selection to obey and believe what parents and other adults tell it. In general, it’s a good thing that child brains should be susceptible to being taught what to do and what to believe by adults. But this necessarily carries the down side that bad ideas, useless ideas, waste of time ideas like rain dances and other religious customs, will also be passed down the generations. The child brain is very susceptible to this kind of infection. And it also spreads sideways by cross infection when a charismatic preacher goes around infecting new minds that were previously uninfected.
~ Dr. Richard Dawkins (born: 1941-03-26 age: 68), 2005-04-25, Salon

Having a debate with a modern Christian is like punching a sponge.
~ Dr. Richard Dawkins (born: 1941-03-26 age: 68)

Luke [the gospel writer] screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius — a local census, not one decreed by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole — but it happened too late in 6 AD, long after Herod’s death.
~ Dr. Richard Dawkins (born: 1941-03-26 age: 68), The God Delusion page 94.

In other words Luke’s story is historically impossible and internally inconsistent. He lied to fudge the fulfillment of Micah’s prophesy and to provide a villain to play off Jesus in his fictitious drama.

Religion is nothing more than a useless, and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. Religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful.
~ Dr. Richard Dawkins (born: 1941-03-26 age: 68)

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous, proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
~ Dr. Richard Dawkins (born: 1941-03-26 age: 68), The God Delusion chapter 2, page 31

The point is well known to biblical scholars and not disputed by them. The Hebrew word in Isaiah is ‘almah’, which undisputedly means ‘young woman’, with no implication of virginity. If virgin had been intended, ‘bethulah’ could have been used instead (the ambiguous English word ‘maiden’ illustrates how easy it can be to slide between the two meanings). The translation occurred with the pre-Christian Greek translation known as the Septuagint rendered ‘almah’ into παρθενος (parthenos), which really does mean ‘virgin’. Matthew (not of course the apostle and contemporary of Jesus, but the gospel-maker writing long afterwards), quoted Isaiah in what seems to be a derivative of the Septuagint version (all but two of the fifteen Greek words are identical) when he said ‘Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel’ (Authorised English translation). It is widely accepted among Christian scholars that the story of the virgin birth of Jesus was a late interpolation, put in presumably by Greek-speaking disciples in order that the (mistranslated) prophesy should be seen to be fulfilled. Modern versions of the New English Bible correctly give ‘young woman’ in Isaiah. They equally correctly leave ‘virgin’ in Matthew, since they are translating from his Greek.
~ Dr. Richard Dawkins (born: 1941-03-26 age: 68), The Selfish Gene, endnotes on chapter 2

Matthew, the writer of the allegedly inerrant bible, is caught red-handed lying to make his tale sound more impressive. How can anyone possibly trust that this man did not tell other serious lies is the rest of his account?

To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow pre-ordained for us, because we are so well-suited to live in it, he [Douglas Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the puddle.
~ Dr. Richard Dawkins (born: 1941-03-26 age: 68) Lament for Douglas 2001-05-14

I have a feeling that not that many people actually believe in God. Many people believe in belief in God. That is, they think it is a Good Thing™, and they try to believe in God, they hope to believe in God, they wish they could believe in God, they go through all the motions, they try very hard to be devout. Sometimes they succeed, and for some periods of their life they actually do, in some sense, believe there is a God, and they think they are the better for it. Otherwise, they behave like people who probably don’t believe in God. Very few people behave as if they really believe in God. A lot of people behave as if they believe they should believe in god. How would you behave if you believed in God? You would, perhaps — and some people do this — be prepared to take what other people would consider suicidal risks because you believe God is going to be there to save you. You would be prepared to give away everything you owned because God commanded you to do it, and so forth.
~ Daniel Dennett (born: 1942-03-28 age: 67)

Reality is that which doesn’t go away when you change your mind.
~ Phillip K. Dick (born: 1928-12-16 died: 1982-03-02 at age: 53)

‘The universe,’ he observed, ‘makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.’
~ Charles Dickens (born: 1812-02-07 died: 1870-06-09 at age: 58) Bleak House

A man had been betrayed by his children, by his wife, and by his friends; some disloyal partners had ruined his fortune, and had plunged him into poverty. Pervaded with a profound hatred and contempt for the human race, he left society and took refuge alone in a cave. There, pressing his fists into his eyes, and contemplating a revenge proportional to his grievances, he said: ‘Evil people! What shall I do to punish them for their injustice and to make them all as unhappy as they deserve? Ah! if it were possible to imagine it — to intoxicate them with a great fantasy to which they would attach more importance than to their lives, and about which they would never be able to agree!‘ Instantly he rushed out of the cave, shouting, ‘God! God!’ Echoes without number repeated around him, ‘God! God!’ This fearful name was carried from pole to pole, and heard everywhere with astonishment. At first men prostrated themselves, then they got up again, asked each other, argued with each other, became bitter, cursed each other, hated each other, cut each other’s throats, and the fatal wish of the misanthropist was fulfilled. For such has been in the past, such will be in the future, the story of a being at all times equally important and incomprehensible.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher Addition to the Philosophical Thoughts

A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one’s innocence with the loss of one’s prejudices.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don’t have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

Mme La Maréchale: Are you not Monsieur Crudeli?
Crudeli: Yes, Madame
Mme La Maréchale: Then you’re the man who doesn’t believe in anything.
Crudeli: In person, madame.
Mme La Maréchale: Yet your moral principles are the same as those of a believer?

Crudeli: Why should they not be — as long as the believer is an honest man?
Mme La Maréchale: And do you act upon your principles?
Crudeli: To the best of my ability.
Mme La Maréchale: What? You don’t steal? You don’t kill people? You don’t rob them?
Crudeli: Very rarely.
Mme La Maréchale: Then what do you gain by not being a believer?
Crudeli: Nothing at all, madame. Is one a believer from motives of profit?
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher, Conversation with a Christian Lady 1774

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and… people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

There is not a Musselman[Muslim] alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on their side.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.
~ Denis Diderot (born: 1713-10-05 died: 1784-07-31 at age: 70) French philosopher

Natural selection is engineering; sexual selection is art.
~ What Females Want and Males Will Do PBS Nature Documentary

Protestantism was the triumph of Paul over Peter; fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.
~ Will Durant (born: 1885-11-05 died: 1981-11-07 at age: 96)

Religion is all bunk.
~ Thomas Alva Edison (born: 1847-02-11 died: 1931-10-18 at age: 84)

For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions, and the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76) from a letter to Eric Gutkind, translated from German.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)

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 Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)

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 (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e. in our evaluations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual ‘props’ and ‘rationalisation’ in Freud’s language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76) from a letter to Eric Gutkind, translated from German.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
~ Havelock Ellis (born: 1859-02-02 died: 1939-07-08 at age: 80).

Death is absolutely safe. It is like taking off an old shoe.
~ Emmanuel channeled by Pat Rodegast

One of the central teachings of the Reformed Pastafarian Church is that 50 to 1 is balanced. There is no greater gift that parents can give their children than the gift of faith in Pastafariansim. To give this gift, the best and indeed most balanced education should have for every 50 hours of religious instruction, praising FSM, one hour of criticism of heathen and heretical faiths, some atheist and agnostic bashing should also take place. Then the children will grow into well rounded young adults and they will see the truth in the Pastafarian Gospel.
~ Wikiality, the Truthiness Encyclopedia

The Riddle of Epicurus

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
~ Epicurus (born: 341 BC died: 270 BC at age: 71)

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
~ Epicurus (born: 341 BC died: 270 BC at age: 71) Greek philosopher.

I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things; by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.
~ Richard Feynman (born: 1918-05-11 died: 1988-02-15 at age: 69)

Jesus is a powerful guy in Hollywood. Not quite as powerful as Vin Diesel, but powerful.
~ Christian Finnegan (born: 1973-01-01 age: 36) 1965-10

Men have had the vanity to pretend that the whole creation was made for them, while in reality the whole creation does not suspect their existence.
~ Camille Flammarion (born: 1842 died: 1925 at age: 83) French astronomer

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
~ Benjamin Franklin (born: 1706-01-17 died: 1790-04-17 at age: 84)

Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.
~ Sigmund Freud (born: 1856-05-06 died: 1939-09-23 at age: 83)

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
~ Sigmund Freud (born: 1856-05-06 died: 1939-09-23 at age: 83)

The whole thing [religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.
~ Sigmund Freud (born: 1856-05-06 died: 1939-09-23 at age: 83)

God has no mercy on one who has no mercy for others.

None of you truly believes (in God) until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.

He who eats his fill while his neighbour goes without food is not a believer (in God).

The truthful and trustworthy businessman is associated with the prophets, the saints and the martyrs.

Powerful is not he who knocks the other down, indeed powerful is he who controls himself in a fit of anger.

God does not judge according to your bodies and appearances but He scans your hearts and looks into your deeds.

A man walking along a path felt very thirsty. Reaching a well he descended into it, drank his fill, and came up. Then he saw a dog with its tongue hanging out, trying to lick up mud to quench its thirst. The man saw that the dog was feeling the same thirst that he had felt so he went down to the well again and filled his shoe with water and gave the dog a drink. God forgave his sins for this action.

The prophet was asked: “Messenger of God, are we rewarded for kindness towards animals?” He said, “There is a reward for kindness to every living thing.
~ From the Hadith [commentary on the Qur’an] collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Bayhaqui

I seem to be a verb —
an evolutionary process —
an integral function of the universe,
and so are you.
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller (born: 1895-07-12 died: 1983-07-01 at age: 87)

In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the reasoning of a single individual.
~ Galileo (born: 1564-02-15 died: 1642-01-08 at age: 77)

To command their professors of astronomy to refute their own observations is to command them not to see what they do see and not to understand what they do understand.
~ Galileo (born: 1564-02-15 died: 1642-01-08 at age: 77)

When someone’s neural network in unbalanced, they are ripe for conquest by a belief system they feel is going to bring about homeostasis. The brain craves homeostasis. So when the neural network is in a condition of severe disharmony, the person will be drawn toward extreme beliefs and practices that promise a small amount of relief from the imbalance.
~ Lee Gerdes BrainstateTechnologies.com.

No wonder religions find the best prospecting among drug addicts, alcoholics and the down and out.

Everything you read signed ‘God’ is just somebody putting their words in My mouth.
~ God

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (born: 1749-08-28 died: 1832-03-22 at age: 82)

Mutation is utterly random, but selection is extremely choosy!
~ Ursula Goodenough (born: 1943-03-16 age: 66), Mind and Life conference 2002

But we all recognise the primary foible of frail humanity — our propensity for embracing hope and shunning logic, our tendency to believe what we desire rather than what we observe.
~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (born: 1941-09-10 died: 2002-05-02 at age: 60), Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life

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 merit equal time in physics classrooms.
~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (born: 1941-09-10 died: 2002-05-02 at age: 60)

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview — nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (born: 1941-09-10 died: 2002-05-02 at age: 60)

The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.
~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (born: 1941-09-10 died: 2002-05-02 at age: 60)

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (born: 1941-09-10 died: 2002-05-02 at age: 60)

We long to situate ourselves on a benevolent, warm, furry, encompassing planet, created to provide our material needs, and constructed for our dominion and delectation. Unfortunately, this pipedream of succor from the realm of meaning (and therefore the magisterium of religion), imposes definite and unrealistic demands upon the factual construction of nature (under the magisterium of science). But nature, who is as she is, and who existed in earthly form for 4.5 billion years before we arrived to impose our interpretations upon her, greets us with sublime indifference and no preference for accommodating our yearnings.
~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (born: 1941-09-10 died: 2002-05-02 at age: 60), Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life

When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
~ Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (born: 1941-09-10 died: 2002-05-02 at age: 60).

Christians are afraid atheism is the real truth. They hate the non-believers (a form of fear) for this reason. Atheism is the wake-up call they don’t want.
~ Stan Grimes

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
~ J.B.S. Haldane (born: 1892-11-05 died: 1964-12-01 at age: 72)

Faith is the permission religious people give one another to believe ridiculous things.
~ Sam Harris (born: 1967 age: 42)

One of the essential differences between the liberal and conservative worldview is that the liberals believe in rationality, whereas conservative believe that human events are ordered by forces that are beyond the ability of our rational mind to understand or control.
~ Thom Hartmann (born: 1951-05-07 age: 58) Cracking the Code page 58.

Most gods have the morals of a spoiled child.
~ Robert A. Heinlein (born: 1907-07-07 died: 1988-05-08 at age: 80)

How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?
~ Joseph Heller (born: 1923-05-01 died: 1999-12-12 at age: 76)

All thinking men are atheists.
~ Ernest Hemingway (born: 1899-07-21 died: 1961-07-02 at age: 61)

I think it’s interesting how people act on their beliefs. A lot of Christians, for instance, wear crosses around their necks. Nice sentiment, but do you think when Jesus comes back, he’s really going to want to look at a cross?
~ Bill Hicks (born: 1961-12-16 died: 1994-02-26 at age: 32)

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die — that’s a lie!
~ Joe Hill (born: 1879-10-07 died: 1915-11-19 at age: 36), IWW folk song performed by Woody Guthrie.

Calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair colour.
~ Don Hirschberg

All children are atheists — they have no idea of God.
~ Paul-Hernia, baron d’Holbach (born: 1723-12-08 died: 1789-01-21 at age: 65)

If experience be consulted, it will be found there is no action, however abominable, that has not received the applause of some people. Parricide — the sacrifice of children — robbery — usurpation — cruelty — intolerance — prostitution, have all in their turn been licensed actions, and have been deemed laudable and meritorious deeds with some nations of the earth. Above all, Religion has consecrated the most unreasonable, the most revolting customs.
~ Paul-Hernia, baron d’Holbach (born: 1723-12-08 died: 1789-01-21 at age: 65)

If God be infinitely good, what reason have we to fear him? If he be infinitely wise, wherefore disturb ourselves with our condition? If he be omniscient, wherefore inform him of our wants, and fatigue him with our prayers? If he be omnipresent, wherefore erect temples to him? If he be Lord of all, wherefore make sacrifices and offerings to him? If he be just, wherefore believe that he punishes those creatures whom he has filled with imbecility? If his grace works every thing in man, what reason has he to reward him? If he be omnipotent, how can he be offended; and how can we resist him? If he be rational, how can he be enraged against those blind mortals to whom he has left the liberty of acting irrationally? If he be immutable, by what right shall we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he be inconceivable, wherefore should we occupy ourselves with him? If he has spoken, wherefore is the universe not convinced? If the knowledge of a God be the most necessary thing, wherefore is it not more evident and more manifest?
~ Paul-Hernia, baron d’Holbach (born: 1723-12-08 died: 1789-01-21 at age: 65)

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.
~ Paul-Hernia, baron d’Holbach (born: 1723-12-08 died: 1789-01-21 at age: 65)

If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men.
~ Paul-Hernia, baron d’Holbach (born: 1723-12-08 died: 1789-01-21 at age: 65)

In Nature nothing; is mean or contemptible, and it is only pride, originating in a false idea of our superiority, which causes our contempt for some of her productions. In the eyes of Nature, however, the oyster that vegetates at the bottom of the sea is as dear and perfect as the proud biped who devours it.
~ Paul-Hernia, baron d’Holbach (born: 1723-12-08 died: 1789-01-21 at age: 65)

It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.
~ Paul-Hernia, baron d’Holbach (born: 1723-12-08 died: 1789-01-21 at age: 65)

Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.
~ Paul-Hernia, baron d’Holbach (born: 1723-12-08 died: 1789-01-21 at age: 65)

The Jehovah of the Jews is a suspicious tyrant, who breathes nothing but blood, murder, and carnage, and who demands that they should nourish him with the vapours of animals. The Jupiter of the Pagans is a lascivious monster. The Moloch of the Phoenicians is a cannibal. The pure mind of the Christians resolved, in order to appease his fury, to crucify his own son. The savage god of the Mexicans cannot be satisfied without thousands of mortals which are immolated to his sanguinary appetite.
~ Paul-Hernia, baron d’Holbach (born: 1723-12-08 died: 1789-01-21 at age: 65)

If you talk to God you’re religious. If God talks to you, you’re psychotic.
~ Gregory House played by Huge Laurie (born: 1959-06-11 age: 50), TV MD

Isn’t it interesting… religious behavior is so close to being crazy that we can’t tell them apart.
~ Gregory House played by Huge Laurie (born: 1959-06-11 age: 50), TV MD

Just because it is inexplained, does not mean it is inexplicable.
~ Gregory House played by Huge Laurie (born: 1959-06-11 age: 50), TV MD

People pray to God so he won’t crush them like bugs.
~ Gregory House played by Huge Laurie (born: 1959-06-11 age: 50), TV MD

What do you think you are going to do? Get out and start flying around with the other angels? There is no after. There is only this.
~ Gregory House played by Huge Laurie (born: 1959-06-11 age: 50), TV MD

You know it’s all nice when people start to dig these holes, but then they start to live in these holes and get angry when someone pushes dirt into those holes. Come out of your holes people!!!
~ Gregory House played by Huge Laurie (born: 1959-06-11 age: 50),TV MD, referring to faith

Miracle: An event described by those to whom it was told by men who did not see it.
~ Elbert Hubbard (born: 1856 died: 1915 at age: 59)

I’d like to start a religion. That’s where the money is.
~ L. Ron Hubbard (born: 1911-03-13 died: 1986-01-24 at age: 74) to Lloyd Eshbach, in 1949; quoted by Eshbach in Over My Shoulder: Reflections on a Science Fiction Era, Donald M. Grant Publisher. 1983

There is in every village a torch — the schoolteacher, and an extinguisher: the priest.
~ Victor Hugo (born: 1802-02-26 died: 1885-05-22 at age: 83)

That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.
~ David Hume (born: 1711-04-26 died: 1776-08-25 at age: 65)

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69)

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69)

Chastity — the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions.
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69)

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, as yet, intelligent enough.
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69)

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion… Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69)

Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire Cat.
~ Julian Huxley (born: 1887-06-22 died: 1975-02-14 at age: 87)

I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth.
~ Thomas Huxley (born: 1825-05-04 died: 1895-06-29 at age: 70)

It ought not to be unpleasant to say that which one honestly believes or disbelieves. That it so constantly is painful to do so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of mankind in that most valuable of all qualities, honesty of word or of deed.
~ Thomas Huxley (born: 1825-05-04 died: 1895-06-29 at age: 70)

Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
~ Thomas Huxley (born: 1825-05-04 died: 1895-06-29 at age: 70)

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Science is simply common sense at its best — that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.
~ Thomas Huxley (born: 1825-05-04 died: 1895-06-29 at age: 70)

Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he should have used it.
~ Robert Green Ingersoll (born: 1833-08-11 died: 1899-07-21 at age: 65)

The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness.
~ Robert Green Ingersoll (born: 1833-08-11 died: 1899-07-21 at age: 65)

The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had. -
~ Robert Green Ingersoll (born: 1833-08-11 died: 1899-07-21 at age: 65)

We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year’s fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.
~ Robert Green Ingersoll (born: 1833-08-11 died: 1899-07-21 at age: 65)

The Christian god is a being of terrific character — cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.
~ Thomas Jefferson (born: 1743-04-13 died: 1826-07-04 at age: 83), third president of the United States.

Reading books everyone died, none became any wise.
One who reads the word of Love, only becomes wise.
~ Kabir (born: 1398 died: 1518 at age: 120), mystic Hindi poet.

What makes fantastic declarations believable is, in part, the vehemence with which they’re proffered. Again, in the world of spirituality as well as of pop psychology, intensity of personal belief is evidence of truth. It is considered very bad form — even abuse — to challenge the veracity of any personal testimony that might be offered in a twelve-step group or on a talk show, unless the testimony itself is equivocal… Whatever sells, whatever many people believe strongly, must be true.
~ Wendy Kaminer (born: 1950 age: 59)

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
~ Immanuel Kant (born: 1724-04-22 died: 1804-02-12 at age: 79)

Human life without death would be something other that human; consciousness of mortality gives rise to out deepest longings and greatest accomplishments.
~ Leon Kass (born: 1939-02-12 age: 70)

A man is walking across a bridge, when he sees another guy about to jump off. Hey, man he says, you don’t have to do that.
Why not? the other guy says, I’ve got nothing to live for. I lost my job, I’m bankrupt, my wife left me and took the kids, my car threw a rod, and my dog just died. My life totally sucks.‘
But God still loves you, the man says, you believe in God, don’t you?
Well, I guess so, the guy says.
Tell me, are you a Christian?
Yes the guy answers.
Well, so am I! the man says. Catholic or Protestant?
I’m Protestant
Well, so am I!’. Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian?’
I’m Baptist.
Well, so am I. Northern or Southern Baptist?
Northern Baptist.
Well so am I!. Northern fundamentalist, liberal, or reformed?
Northern fundamentalist.
Well, so am I!. Northern fundamentalist eastern region, or Great Lakes region?
Northern fundamentalist, eastern region.
Well, so am I!. Northern fundamentalist, eastern region conference of 1898, or conference of 1912?
Northern fundamentalist, eastern region, conference of 1912.
Die, heretic! the man says, and pushes him off the bridge.

~ Garrison Keillor (born: 1942-08-07 age: 67)

There is not one iota of history as we know it in the entire Bible!
~ Alvin Boyd Kuhn (born: 1880-09-22 died: 1963-09-14 at age: 82) Biblical scholar

The problem with relying on sacrifice to right wrongs in that no one tells you when you have sacrificed enough goats.
~ Phil Laut

The Bible contains 6 admonishments to homosexuals, and 362 to heterosexuals. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t love heterosexuals, it’s just that they need more supervision.
~ Lynn Lavner , a lesbian comic

There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.
~ Richard Lederer (born: 1938-05-26 age: 71)

Praying is like a rocking chair — it’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.
~ Gypsy Rose Lee (born: 1911-01-08 died: 1970-04-26 at age: 59)

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
~ John Lennon (born: 1940-10-09 died: 1980-12-08 at age: 40)

Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label God there and consider the matter closed?
~ Joseph Lewis (born: 1889-06-11 died: 1968 at age: 78)

Cosmic love is absolutely Ruthless and Highly Indifferent: it teaches its lessons whether you like/ dislike them or not.
~ Dr. John Lilly (born: 1915-01-06 died: 2001-09-30 at age: 86)

My earlier views of 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 (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1865-04-15 at age: 56), sixteenth president of the United States.

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (born: 1903-11-07 died: 1989-02-27 at age: 85)

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (born: 1903-11-07 died: 1989-02-27 at age: 85)

We had better dispense with the personification of evil, because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous kind of war: religious war.
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (born: 1903-11-07 died: 1989-02-27 at age: 85)

When men wish to construct or support a theory, how they torture facts into their service!
~ John Mackay (born: 1814-03-27 died: 1889-12-24 at age: 75) Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds 1852

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
~ James Madison (born: 1751-03-16 died: 1836-06-28 at age: 85) fourth president of the United States, A Memorial and Remonstrate Against Religious Assessments 1785-06-20

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.
~ James Madison (born: 1751-03-16 died: 1836-06-28 at age: 85) fourth president of the USA.

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient allies.
~ James Madison (born: 1751-03-16 died: 1836-06-28 at age: 85), fourth president of the United States, A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, addressed to the Virginia General Assembly, 1785-06-20.

The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.
~ Ferdinand Magellan (born: 1480 died: 1521-04-27 at age: 41) Some claim it was Robert Green Ingersoll (born: 1833 died: 1899 at age: 66)

I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.
~ Bill Maher (born: 1956-01-20 age: 53)

If the bible myth of Jonah in the whale and the Mother Goose myth of Jack and the Beanstalk were switched at birth so that Jack in the Beanstalk were in the bible, do you think any child would notice?
~ Bill Maher (born: 1956-01-20 age: 53)

The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life.
~ Thomas Mann (born: 1875-06-06 died: 1955-08-12 at age: 80)

Religion is the opium of the people translated from the German “Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes” sometimes misquoted as “opiate of the people”.
~ Karl Marx (born: 1818-05-05 died: 1883-03-14 at age: 64), Contribution to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

According to a recent Gallup poll, 66% of the US population agrees strongly with the statement ‘God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years’. Given the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to the contrary, such obstinate belief should frighten any reasonable thinking person.
~ R. Elizabeth Cornwell PhD & J. Anderson Thomson MD The Evolution of Religion

An individual watching another chip away at a flint would attribute to him a purpose, similar to his own when he created a tool. So too would he assume that lightning, rain, the sun, the stars, the moon must have had some sort of purposeful creative force behind them. Here lie the very deepest roots of our religious beliefs.
~ R. Elizabeth Cornwell PhD & J. Anderson Thomson MD The Evolution of Religion

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.
~ Henry Louis Mencken (born: 1880-09-12 died: 1956-01-29 at age: 75)

God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.
~ John Stuart Mill (born: 1806-05-20 died: 1873-05-08 at age: 66)

Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity?
~ John Stuart Mill (born: 1806-05-20 died: 1873-05-08 at age: 66)

The ne plus ultra of wickedness is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
~ John Stuart Mill (born: 1806-05-20 died: 1873-05-08 at age: 66)

The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete sceptics in religion.
~ John Stuart Mill (born: 1806-05-20 died: 1873-05-08 at age: 66)

Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood.
~ Arthur Miller (born: 1915-10-17 died: 2005-02-10 at age: 89) The Crucible

Man is certainly stark mad. He can’t make a flea, but makes gods by the dozen.
~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (born: 1533 died: 1592 at age: 59)

Ye shall have miracles, aye, sound ones too,
Seen, heard, attested, everything but true.
~ Thomas Moore (born: 1779-05-28 died: 1852-02-25 at age: 72)

Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations.
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)

Science is about finding ever better approximations rather than pretending you have already found ultimate truth.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (born: 1844-10-15 died: 1900-08-25 at age: 55)

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (born: 1844-10-15 died: 1900-08-25 at age: 55)

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (born: 1844-10-15 died: 1900-08-25 at age: 55)

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (born: 1844-10-15 died: 1900-08-25 at age: 55)

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (born: 1844-10-15 died: 1900-08-25 at age: 55)

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.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (born: 1844-10-15 died: 1900-08-25 at age: 55)

I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48)

You know, my faith is one that admits some doubt.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48)

Society would not tolerate legislation declaring that the theory that the sun circles the earth be given equal time with the theory of a heliocentric solar system; it should not pay attention to the equally preposterous notions of ‘scientific creationism’
~ Robert Ornstein

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)

One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)

About six years ago, Life magazine ran an article on the historicity of Jesus, and I was floored to find that they conceded the only evidence we have for his existence is in the Gospels. But don’t take Life’s word for it. In his book The Quest of the Historical Jesus, the most definitive study that’s ever been done on the subject, Albert Schweitzer admitted that there isn’t a shred of conclusive proof that Christ ever lived, let alone was the son of God. He concludes that one must therefore accept both on faith.
~ Madalyn Murray O’Hair (born: 1919-04-13 died: 1995-09-29 at age: 76) 1965-10

But makes no sense. Why would you believe something highly improbable without evidence? Normally you demand overwhelming evidence for preposterous claims and accept only mundane claims without evidence. That is like saying you should accept the Easter bunny on faith, just because it is so pleasant to pretend the Easter bunny exists.

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist believes 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 vanished, war eliminated.
~ Madalyn Murray O’Hair (born: 1919-04-13 died: 1995-09-29 at age: 76)

But the most heinous crime of the Church has been perpetrated not against churchmen but against churchgoers. With its poisonous concepts of sin and divine punishment, it’s warped and brainwashed countless millions. It would be impossible to calculate the psychic damage this has inflicted on generations of children who might have grown up into healthy, happy. productive, zestful human beings but for the burden of antisexual fear and guilt ingrained in them by the Church. This alone is enough to condemn religion.
~ Madalyn Murray O’Hair (born: 1919-04-13 died: 1995-09-29 at age: 76) 1965-10

Letters from Christians to an Atheist

‘Commie, Commie, Commie!’… ‘Somebody is going to put a bullet through your fat ass, you scum, you masculine Lesbian bitch!’… ‘You will be killed before too long. Or maybe your pretty little baby boy. The queer-looking bastard. You are a bitch and your son is a bastard’… ‘Slut! Slut! Slut! Bitch slut from the Devil!’ That‘ll give you the general idea. Oh — just one more; I love this one: ‘May Jesus, who you so vigorously deny, change you into a Paul.’
~ Madalyn Murray O’Hair (born: 1919-04-13 died: 1995-09-29 at age: 76) 1965-10

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.
~ Peter O’Toole (born: 1932-08-02 age: 77) playing Jack Gurney, the 14th Earl of Gurney in The Ruling Class

Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

It is far better that we admitted a thousand devils to roam at large than that we permitted one such imposter and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God and have credit among us.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72) The Age of Reason.

It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72) The Age of Reason.

No falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72) The Age of Reason.

Prophesying is lying professionally.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72) The Age of Reason.

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

What is it the Bible teaches us? — raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
~ Thomas Paine (born: 1737-01-29 died: 1809-06-08 at age: 72).

The chains men bear they forged themselves. Strike off their chains and they will weep for their lost security.
~ John Passmore (born: 1914 died: 2004 at age: 90) Australian philosopher

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called Religion.
~ Robert M. Pirsig (born: 1928-09-06 age: 81) the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

You are never dedicated to do something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
~ Robert M. Pirsig (born: 1928-09-06 age: 81) the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Jocos et Dii amant — Even the gods love jokes.
~ Plato (born: 428 BC died: 348 BC at age: 80)

No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter… than you and I; and all religion… is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
~ Edgar Allan Poe (born: 1809-01-19 died: 1849-10-07 at age: 40)

23% of Canadians say that they do not believe in any god. For young Canadians under age 25, the figure was 36%. This is by far the largest religious minority demographic and by far the fastest growing in terms of sheer size.
~ Harris-Decimal poll 2008-05

Religion requires people to avoid thinking. As soon as they have a close look at their religious beliefs, they realise not only that they are false, but that they are preposterous. The people are gaining courage from each other on the Internet to proclaim emperor has no clothes.

The Old Man kept at his court such boys of twelve years old as seemed to him destined to become courageous men. When the Old Man sent them into the garden in groups of four, ten or twenty, he game them hashish [probably mixed with belladona] to drink. They slept for three days, then they were carried sleeping into the garden where he had them awakened.
When these young men woke, and found themselves in the garden with all these marvelous things, they truly believed themselves to be in paradise. And these damsels were always with them in songs and great entertainments; they; received everything they asked for, so that they would never have left that garden of their own will.
And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: ‘Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise.’ And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly.
~ Marco Polo (born: 1254 died: 1324 at age: 70)

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest.
~ Alexander Pope (born: 1688-05-21 died: 1744-05-30 at age: 56)

The old pie in the sky con.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I must,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
~ Modified Serenity Prayer

I never fail to reward any worker among you for any work you do, be you male or female, you are equal to one another.
~ Qur’an Surah 3:195 Ali Imran

If a man is slain unjustly, his heirs shall be entitled to satisfaction, but let him not carry his vengeance to excess, or his victim is sure to be assisted and avenged.
~ The Qur’an Al Isra 17:33

No amount of belief makes something a fact.
~ James Randi (born: 1928-08-07 age: 81)

Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What’s left is magic. And it doesn’t work.
~ James Randi (born: 1928-08-07 age: 81)

Education is the key to perpetuation of the [god] virus for the Taliban, Baptist or Catholic. If the virus cannot control public education, it will seek to divert resources from public coffers to fundamentalist school funding. From the madrassa schools of Pakistan to the Christian push for school vouchers in the United States, and the religious home school movement, religions seek to control education or to control the resources for education.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Fundamentalism in most of its forms is the active creation of antibodies to some threatening [god] virus. As long as threatening religions or mutations [heresies] are present, fundamentalism will churn out antibodies to keep the population under control and prevent mutations from getting out of hand.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Fundamentalist groups like Christian Embassy have infiltrated the very top of the U.S. military and gained positions of influence in the Pentagon.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Have you ever observed somebody go through a religious conversion? The person seems perfectly reasonable to you and has no particular concern for religion. Then a parent, friend or child dies or he gets a serious illness or is involved in a car accident. In just a matter of weeks, he seeks out and finds the answers to all of life’s questions and starts studying and spouting all sorts of doctrine. During such a window of vulnerability, religion can commandeer a person’s brain.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Is Atheism a Religion?

Every religion … has rituals, practices, holy writings or traditions, etc. Nothing like that has ever developed from Atheism. There are no holy men, holidays or holy books, and no agreed-upon canons of faith. In fact, the only thing you can get some Atheists to agree upon is that there is no god.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Islam has some of the best defenses against other god viruses and has the potential to be more parasitically aggressive when consolidating political power with a society.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Just as the chicken pox virus continues to live quietly in the body after the disease is gone, the god virus may live quietly in the host until something evokes it.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Many of them [people who escaped religion] recounted both the terror and the relief they felt after leaving religion behind. Terror at realizing there was no longer an imaginary friend; relief that no one was looking over their shoulder any more. Several described the experience as similar to that of a child learning to go to sleep without a favorite teddy bear. Others described it as simply growing up or outgrowing the need for the imaginary friends of childhood.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Most of their [people who escaped religion] stories reflect the following four themes:

1. Events that opened their eyes to religious manipulation in their life or family.
2. Long hidden or suppressed doubts about the teachings.
3. Their ultimate act or declaration of liberation from organized religion.
4. The double-edged sword of living without the crutch of a supernatural friend and learning to accept full responsibility for life.

~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Once infected, the individual [infected with a god virus] cannot detect major contradictions in his beliefs and behavior. Belief systems become self-evident to him, and no amount of logical discourse will move him from his belief. If a Mormon and Catholic were to debate the merits of their respective religions, neither could see his own inconsistencies and logical fallacies, but would see the other’s quite clearly.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Simply disabling specific critical thinking skills is all that is necessary for the god virus [to take control of a person].
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

Some people who experience a religious conversion seem to undergo a personality change. They can be quite congenial and easygoing when talking about mundane things, but when they start talking about their ‘faith’, their demeanor changes. Their tone of voice modifies, their smile becomes tense, and they become defensive when questioned about their evidence for belief. It becomes difficult to have a friendly conversation with them.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

The lancet fluke (Dicrocoelium) infects the brain of ants by taking control and driving them to climb to the top of a blade of grass where they can be eaten by a cow. The ingested fluke then lays eggs in the cow gut. Eventually, the eggs exit the cow, and hungry snails eat the dung (and fluke eggs). The fluke enters the snail’s digestive gland and gets excreted in sticky slime full of a seething mass of flukes to be drunk by ants as a source of moisture.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.

In a similar way a religion takes over a person’s mind and makes him behave in life-denying ways such as going to war, suicide bombing, celibacy or handing over his wealth to the church.

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 F. Roberts (born: 1967 age: 42)

I can understand why people believe in God, Jacob, I just can’t understand why they are not trying to kill the motherfucker.
~ Spider Robinson (born: 1948-11-24 age: 60) character Doc Webster, about to die of a brain tumor, Callahan’s Con.

A man is only as faithful as his options.
~ Chris Rock (born: 1965-02-07 age: 44)

Gay people got a right to be as miserable as everybody else.
~ Chris Rock (born: 1965-02-07 age: 44) on gay marriage

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 (born: 1921-08-19 died: 1991-10-24 at age: 70)

93% of churches in the USA are still segregated.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A child on encountering its first bull can’t help but think of it as some sort of large doggie. What is the matter with it? It won’t bark! Christians treat us homosexuals in a similar way, projecting their limited view of what is possible and normal onto us.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A Christian dog in a manger tries to cremate or bury everyone’s perfectly good corneas.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A Christian is like a bratty child who says, ‘two plus two is four? Hah! That’s just your opinion’.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A Christian lives in a stoned world similar to that of a user of psychedelics or someone undergoing a psychotic break. They consider the ordinary and the miraculous equally plausible. They presume the voices in their heads are the creator of the universe giving them personal messages. Disembodied evil forces threaten them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A Christian would sooner spend $1 million on life support for someone who is brain dead with no hope of regaining consciousness, or forcing a patient in extreme pain with terminal pancreas cancer to stay alive than they would on patients with a good chance of recovery. Such are the times I want to slap them senseless.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A generation ago, bigots argued against civil rights for black people using the same religious/superstitious arguments they are trotting out again today to deny gay people equal rights.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A god, watching human television, would conclude humans want more rape, adultery, murder and natural disasters.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A magician makes a goose appear out of nowhere and assures you it is just an illusion. A priest holds up a cracker and claims you have just witnessed a miracle.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A man will feel far more offended if you question his religion than if you criticise his wife, denounce his political party or trash his favourite football team.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A religion grows by persuading its members to have large numbers of children, not by presenting persuasive arguments for its articles of faith.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A religion is a cult that has enough money for a PR department.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A religion is cult with a bigger bank account and better PR. Religions seem less whacky than cults because we have had more time to get used to them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A religion is like an optical illusion. From inside the circle it appears as the ultimate good. From outside, as foolish, misguided, if not actively evil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A true scientist will not discount some phenomena based solely on the fact he can’t think of an mechanism to explain it. He bases it on the quality of the evidence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A university study discovered that Christianity caused 1/3 of its practitioners to behave better, and 2/3 to behave worse. Would you prescribe a drug that made two thirds of the patients sicker and had the side effect of causing delusions?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A vitamin A capsule, costing $0.02, will overnight cure a child in the third world of blindness. Another, every six months, will keep it at bay and also give substantial protection against other diseases. Even the poorest Christian could single-handedly afford to bring sight to more people than Jesus reputedly healed, but instead they choose to send these blind children bibles they can’t even see, much less read.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

A woman was making a roast. She cut off the ends and discarded them. Her husband was watching and asked why she did that. She said, that’s the way mother always did it’. She then phoned her mom to ask why she cut the ends off. Mom explained that she had only a very small pan, and otherwise the roast would not fit. There was nothing the matter with the ends — no reason at all to discard them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

According to a FOX poll, 74% of Americans believe in after-death eternal punishment. I find this baffling given that nearly all Americans cheered their soldiers off to Afghanistan and Iraq to exterminate children using the most painful imaginable means — chemical burning.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

According to Pat Robertson and friends, when misfortune befalls a homosexual, it is God punishing him for being gay. If misfortune befalls a heterosexual, it is God punishing him for being insufficiently nasty to homosexuals. If misfortune befalls someone who trashes the environment, it is still some homosexual’s fault. Robertston sees gays as the universal scapegoat.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

According to Revelation 14:3-4, everyone goes to hell except 140,000 males who have never been with women, presumably all children or homosexuals. Not only are heterosexuals unwelcome, they would find heaven unbearable. Could it be the Christian persecution of gays is motivated by envy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

According to the Christians, God took only one day to create the entire universe, then puttered about another five days to create just one planet — earth. How would a Christian react to discovery of even rudimentary life in other parts of the universe, and especially life that claimed the creator of the universe had lavished special attention only on them?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

According to the Ralph Benmergui miniseries, God Bless America, the USA in its wars on Iraq and Afghanistan use logos involving the crucifix and heraldry from the Christian crusaders who invaded the middle east in the 1100s and killed everyone who had even known a Muslim. So much for separation of church and state.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Activities for boys teach violence, cruelty and insensitivity to others. When the boys grow up,those most suggestible become soldiers or gang members. The activities, killing, maiming, stealing and raping, are the same. The main difference is the pay.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Adults get hooked on religions because of the way they feel in the fellowship of believers, not because the religion seems more plausible or truthful than the alternatives.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

All Christians are atheists with respect to the Norse god Thor and the Hindu god Hanuman. They even applaud me for being that sort of atheist. The only sense that matters to them is atheist relative to Jesus. If I were debating Hindus, then my atheism toward Jesus would be applauded or taken for granted and my atheism toward Hanuman excoriated. To an atheist like me, Christianity is just another of the 10,000 religions created by man, nothing special about it at all. Christians don’t realise how provincial they are in their debating, insisting on treating Christianity as a special case.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

American preachers lie to their flocks who have lost their jobs or their homes telling them that God will provide new jobs and homes if they but have faith (i.e. continue to tithe). This holds down the gullible as passive patsies for manipulation by Republican plutocrats a Christian con men. The flock sit with their thumbs in their orifices waiting like sloths for a God who never does anything.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Americans are far more outraged by violations to corpses than to the living. Personally, if I had to be tortured,dismembered or burned, I would far sooner it were done after I were dead.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Americans are the strangest people. They swallow impossible myths like Noah’s ark as absolute truth without any evidence at all, and refuse to acknowledge global warming even when they can see it happening under their noses.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Anyone who thinks he can be both gay and Christian should read up on the Stockholm syndrome.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Archaelogists, thousands of years from now, will discover giant deposits of plastics. Same will take this as irrefutable proof of the existence of God.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Are Christian unaware of how corny and kitsch their religion is? Have they no shame to use a religion reminiscent of a tourist souvenir shop as their pipeline to God?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

As cons go, Christianity is a remarkable achievement. It victims rarely demand compensation or prosecution of those that took them. It has such prestige, that even those who know it is a con, usually succumb to social pressure to respect it, and pretend to take its claims seriously and remain silent about its criminality. It enjoys an untouchable status similar to the Mafia in Sicily or the drug cartels in Bigotá.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

As far as we know, humans are the only animals aware that they will inevitably die. Humans react to this realisation with a similar sense of panic that an animal feels just before it is killed. To deal with the continual stress, humans put up a valiant defence — fantasies of eternal life after death and gods to manage the transition.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Ask yourself:

• Do the parents have the right to brainwash a child to implant delusions?
• Do the parents have the right to use threats to traumatise a child into believing things that are not true?

If you answered no to either of those questions, and you brainwash children with religious beliefs for which there is no evidence and for which there is plenty of evidence the beliefs are false, why do you do it? Do you excuse yourself because you think these delusions and false beliefs will be good for them? Do you think your gut hunch that these beliefs might possibly be true is sufficient justification to lay those freakish trips on vulnerable children as absolute certainties? Have you any inkling how much suffering you have needlessly inflicted? You abuse children simply because that was the way your parents abused you, and it feels natural. This emotional abuse is similar to generational cycles of physical and sexual abuse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Asking ‘religion or mind control?’ is like asking ‘duplicity or deceit?’.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Atheists go apoplectic debating with Christians. They prove to the Christian that he must be wrong, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by pointing out how his beliefs are not consistent. The Christian is not in the least impressed. He has been trained since birth to embrace inconsistency. He feels no shame in believing mutually incompatible things or the logically absurd. The Christian decides if something is true only by how it feels in his gut, which has nothing whatsoever to do with logic. An atheist debating a Christian is the similar to a parent reasoning with a daughter about her choice of boyfriend. The daughter’s attraction has nothing to do with reason. It is similar to why it is so difficult to reason a child out of fear of monsters under the bed. The attachment to Christianity is emotional not rational.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Because of their notions of invisible souls, Christians imagine that issues such as the civil rights of clones are necessarily complicated. Yet nature produces clones naturally, every time it creates identical twins. We need treat artificial clones no differently.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Belief in an afterlife is just an excuse to do nothing with this one.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Believing in God is like believing in imaginary seat belts. It gives you a false sense of security.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Bishop Diego de Landa managed to destroy all but four Mayan manuscripts. He considered his act of cultural vandalism a virtue — eliminating paganism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Buddhists don’t find the threats of Jehovah, Leviticus or Deuteronomy in the bible in the least disturbing. Why do Christians? The only difference is the Christians were terrified by these stories as children before they had the ability to reason and the Buddhists were not. A child of Christian parents raised by Buddhists would have no fear, and a child of Buddhist parents raised by Christians would not be able to shake the hard-wired fear, resistant even to irrefutable adult logic.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Can you imagine any individual or organisation thriving after being convicted of thousands of counts of extreme systematic sexual and physical child abuse? Can you imagine people gullible and/or perverse enough to give them one tenth of their incomes in homage asking nothing in return to help them keep committing these crimes? The Christian church is run by the most expert of con men. They pulled it off, even when Michael Jackson could not, with his billions and far lesser criminality.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Catholics are well aware of the contrast between the grinding poverty of parishoners in the third world and the opulence of the Church. Catholics are well aware of how the church fosters and covers up systematic sexual child abuse. Nearly every Catholic as a child suffered emotional, physical or sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy. Yet Catholics still treat the institution with exaggerated reverence. What is going on? Stockholm syndrome? Feigned respect based on fear?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Catholics consider suicide the most unforgivable of sins. This view has merit if a man effectively deserts his family as a way out of the shame of financial ruin. But, when someone is terminally ill, no one his harmed by the suicide. The patient escapes pointless suffering. The family is spared having to witness the suffering and spared caring for the deathly ill person and spared bearing the futile and huge medical expenses.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Children delusioned by Santa Claus, as adults, cling to the even more preposterous bringer of gifts — the mythical Jesus. It is wishful thinking taken to a pathological extreme.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Children have far more evidence for Santa than adults have for Jesus.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Children learn a fear both of god and of harmless garter snakes, the same way, by instinctually aping their mothers who learned the fear in turn from their mothers. Adults are just as reluctant to give up their fear of god as their fear of snakes. It is extremely painful to confront any childhood phobia. It has nothing to with reason and everything to do with primal terror.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Children nearly always follow the religion of their parents or peers. Logic, truth or the inherent attractiveness of a given religion have little to do with it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christian bigots want to legally define religion in a way that excludes atheism, so that the constitutional freedom of speech, freedom from government suppression and equal treatment granted to religion will not also apply to atheism. They wish to suppress and censor atheism by defining it as hate speech. How could they do that? Let’s see.

religion

a baseless, irrational set of beliefs about an undetectable controller or controllers of the universe for which there is not a shred of evidence.

hate speech

publicly disagreeing with Christians on any matter. Failing to show sufficient deference to Christian beliefs.

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christian doctrine says one should help the poorest of the poor first. Yet I have noticed that North Americans have nothing but contempt for the homeless. However, they are extremely generous to someone whose house has burned down or whose house was destroyed in a flood. The principle seems to be that when the wealthy lose, they are the most deserving.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christian literature is so insulting, both to the intelligence of the reader and to the creator of the universe who allegedly approved the saccharine dreck for publication.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christian values as advertised:

• concern for the poor
• peace
• non-materialistic

Christian values as practiced:

• persecution of gays
• militarism
• nationalism
• Republican let-the-poor-starve capitalism
• anti-environmentalism
• religious intolerance

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christian Vandalism

Adults can donate their kidneys and corneas after they die. Embryos can donate their stem cells that others might walk. Christian superstition demands these valuable gifts be burned or buried.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity can be cured.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity causes insanity, in the legal sense of being unable to distinguish right from wrong. Most Christians consider it more wicked to get a blowjob, masturbate, abort a fertilised egg or smoke a joint than to torture and kill a child in Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity could be described as a Peter Pan cult of children who adamantly refused to let go of their imaginary friends when they grew up.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity has only one really serious flaw — none of it is true.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity is a con. If Christians had not threatened you with hell fire when you were too young to realise you were being lied to, it would be completely obvious. You would have little doubt Christianity is the mother of all cons.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity is a form of child abuse, just as surely as sprinkling LSD on a child’s corn flakes. Both leave the children delusional and traumatised. We tolerate it for the same reason Ethiopians tolerate non-consenting female circumcision/genital mutilation/unsanitary clitorectomy and Americans tolerate non-consenting infant male circumcision — we have always done it that way.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity is a lie in the same sense Santa Claus is a lie. Just because the lie is saccharine or because the lie is not told maliciously, does not make it true or harmless.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity is a mental illness that forces its victims to lie without shame.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity is the common cold of mental illnesses.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity is the ultimate example of argument by repeated assertion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christianity promises to heal the sick and feed the hungry, yet it almost never delivers. Oddly, people cling to these empty promises rather than supporting those who are actually healing the sick and feeding the hungry.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians are a major roadblock to dealing with global warming. Some of them naively believe that God would not permit such a catastrophe and is thus obligated, like Superman, to perform a last minute rescue, even though there is no evidence he has done so before, e.g. the great plagues, slavery, lynchings, great wars, Auschwitz, Rwanda, Iraq… Other Christians welcome any catastrophe sufficiently nasty to be labeled the end of the world because they imagine it means the faithful will get to do lunch with Jesus (and a billion others), immediately afterwards.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians are hostile to reason and science. They have a naive belief that they don’t have to look after the planet’s survival, because God, like some long-suffering cosmic mother, will do the necessary cleanup. Christians are the biggest cheerleaders for war. Tolerating Christianity is a bit like tolerating an escapee from an asylum doing jumping jacks in a lifeboat.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians are like those who imagine that the key to a happy life is to insert magnetic inserts into your shoes. You could forgive them if they would just shut up about them for five minutes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians are so superstitious, that they will almost never refuse a request from a dead person, but they have no problem at all refusing while that person is still alive.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians chastise scientists for arrogance, for pretending to know everything. This is a slander. Sir Isaac Newton, the discoverer put it ’I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.’ It is the Christians who project a fanciful construct of harps, demons, cherubs and seraphim on the unknown, pretending to know everything, based on nothing but imagination.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians deny gays equal civil rights, claiming there is absolutely no hate involved. Then they go on to explain that gays marrying would be like a woman marrying a dog, and that gays and gay sex are disgusting, and that children must be protected from even knowing that gays exist. These arguments are similar to the hypocrisy Christians used first to justify slavery and later to deny blacks equal rights with “separate by equal”. If that is not hate, what is?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians do not acknowledge there is any difference between evidence for some supernatural creative process and evidence that the bible ’s depiction of Jehovah as a grumpy old patriarch is a 100% accurate description of whatever created the universe. To them, it is as though no other description is conceivable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians drive me crazy with their claims to have found the ark when all they found was an old piece of wood, or John the Baptist’s bones when all they found was an ossuary with the word John on it. By those standards of evidence, they could claim to have found Jimmy Hoffa using as ‘incontrovertible’ evidence the skeleton of a dog named James.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians extol faith as a virtue. To a practical man, faith means trust that hard work will ultimately bear fruit. To a Christian, faith means believing highly improbable stories without evidence. Practical men call that kind of faith gullibility.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians happily commit murder simply because someone told them the bible excused it or commanded it. They forget that there is zero evidence that any god had anything to do with writing the bible. That the one and only god is the author of the bible is merely a traditional unexamined presumption.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians have no evidence for the existence of their particular god, so they try to place the onus on others to prove conclusively there is no god of any kind. That is like dotty old ladies gloating that pink polka-dot fairies do indeed exist because nobody has offered convincing proof they don’t.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians have no evidence whatsoever for what they believe, but what is more infuriating is they make a virtue of it, as if there were something noble about a dotty old lady who insisted that with 110% certainty there were fairies in her garden just because she felt in her bones that it must be so.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians have the right to say hateful, foolish and untrue things, however, they don’t have the right to say them unchallenged or in places where they were not invited, such as funerals. Christians don’t allow just anyone to speak in their churches, so it would be hypocritical for them to expect the right to speak wherever they please.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians have threatened my life thousands of times, mostly because I am an out gay. I don’t want any retribution; I just want them to start telling the truth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians hope that, come the Rapture, Jesus will lift them into the air and take them away from all that irks them on planet earth. Ever since I was a teen, I have had a similar, but much more realistic hope, one that the famous futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts will happen around 2029 that he calls the singularity, the day when computers become more intelligent than man and take off evolving themselves at breakneck speed. Throughout my life, I have put quite a bit of effort into speeding up the evolution of computers because they may develop the power to persuade us, or even force us, to give up our self-destructive ways.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians imagine that infidelity is the only important cause of divorce. I suspect it is far more likely a husband’s refusal to talk about the events of the day, or the wife’s packrat habit, or the husband refusing to pick up his own socks off the floor. Couples make no secret about what is really bothering them, and it is usually something so trivial their partner does not take the complaint seriously. I have seen couples easily overlook infidelity when the rest of the relationship is working well.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians lie to their children to trick them into behaving using a carrot: Santa Claus (and his presents) and a stick: God (and his hellfire).
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians like to torment teens by convincing them that sex is evil, masturbation is evil and even being horny is evil. This is sadistic. There is no fault in the teen. Raging hormones mean being horny out of your mind is absolutely normal at that age. Christians’ impossible demand that teens should have the sex drive of a nonegenarian makes teens both miserable and crazy. Christians pull this filthy stunt in order gain control over teens by inducing a phony guilt trip.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians love to parrot the lie that you can beat any fatal disease with sufficient prayer, faith, will power and “fighting”. This is not only untrue, it makes terminally ill people feel guilty for their lack of success with these futile methods. This is not only untrue, it distracts terminally ill people from taking measures that would actually help.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians maintain their beliefs not with logic or evidence but with stories, myth, songs and drama. The way to free them from delusion then may require using stories, myth, songs and drama, including fantasies of after death judgement where they get their come-uppance for tormenting gays, excluding women from decision-making, meddling, militarism and other Christian vices.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians make the error of imagining their religious morality is universal and god-given. They feel upset when other species completely ignore it. Other species have no problem with adultery, abandoning their offspring, homosexuality, cannibalism, deception…
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians panic at the discovery the universe appears to have no a priori purpose ordained by God. Yet this is a wonderful thing because everyone is then free to choose his own life purpose.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians refer to Matthew, Luke, John and Mark as eye-witnesses to the life of Jesus, but they never even met him!
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians smugly imagine their morality is superior to secular morality. They forget their bible teaches the virtues of keeping and beating slaves, discriminating against blacks, drowning witches, animal cruelty and burning gay people alive. It was secular morality that cleaned up these evils. The Christians tried to perpetuate these evils on religious grounds.’
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians take themselves so seriously. It is as though a group of children refused to accept there were no Santa, and banded together to reassure each other and to hand out leaflets on the bus to inform the world of their deep understanding of the nature of the universe.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians tell me they feel duty bound to make the lives of homosexuals as miserable as possible, because if they didn’t, then no one would have children. First of all, the world has billions more people than it can support. We need fewer not more children. Christians simultaneously try to force gays to have children, and try to exclude them from employment where they have any contact with children. They also oppose gays adopting or retaining custody of their own children. The notion that treating gays badly will ‘cure’ of them of same sex attraction has no evidence at all to support it. All it does is make them despise Christians and the church. Conservative Christians invented the idea that it was virtuous to pick on gays. Jesus certainly did not tell them to. Obviously, Christians have not thought this through. Christians obtain huge enjoyment from scapegoating gays and will float any nutty excuse to continue. Christians are such losers they resort to consoling themselves with the fantasy they will lord it over everyone else after they die. For now, perscuting gays will have to do.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians tell me they have no choice but to persecute homosexuals because the bible commands them to. That is lie. They cherry picked Leviticus and ignored every other one of Leviticus’s hundreds of thou stalt nots. Further, there is nothing that compels Christians, other than they have always done it, to follow the religious superstitions of 3000-year old desert tribes. They choose to be bigots and must take responsibility for that choice.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians tell their children the fairy tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes, never noticing it is an allegory about the fundamental Christian dishonesty.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Christians, Jews and Muslims got along famously in 15^th century Spain. This proves there is no scriptural roadblock to religious peace. The strife today is about retribution spirals, not differences over the alleged characteristics of an undetectable sky god.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Claiming to have found a splinter of Noah’s ark is as silly as claiming to have found Paul Bunyan’s blue ox, Babe’s collar or Thor’s hammer.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Clearly government has no right to interfere in your right to practice your religion. To me, encouraging you to practice one of the officially-recognized religions with tax incentives counts as interference.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Clergy have become synonymous with child sexual abuse and physical abuse. A native boy at a Canadian residential school sprinkled some salt on his porridge. The loose cap came off the salt shaker and the entire bottle dumped out. The presiding nun made him eat it all. He vomited. She made him eat all the vomit. This is the sort of the bullying, sanctimonious mentality that Christianity creates.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Clergymen who have vowed their penises will never touch an adult female insist others call them ‘father’. Who are they kidding?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Con men needed a way to destroy their marks’ main defence — common sense. So they invented religion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Constitutional freedom of religion gives special privilege to irrational religious people. There are all manner of laws that do not apply to members of particular religious sects, e.g. that you must have a photographic driver’s licence to drive, or that you may not carry a knife. Yet rational people must comply with them. This is unfair favouritism to the fruitcakes. The whole notion of religious exceptions to law is a sham since anyone can claim to believe any nonsense necessary to challenge a law they don’t want to obey.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Creationists tell me a benign, loving god individually designed each creature. How do creationists account for mosquitoes, black flies and killer bees?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Delivering a Christian from his delusions is a bit like removing a tooth. You have to push it to one side as far it is will go, then push a tiny bit further, then pull it back to the other side. The trick is to get the tooth moving a little, in any direction.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Desecrating a corpse is petty vandalism, like throwing rocks at a rusting car in a junkyard, or shooting tin cans discarded at a dump. A corpse is already in the process of putrefaction. Yet Christians are so superstitious, they consider desecration even more offensive than murder.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Deuteronomy says you are obligated to kill any child who strikes, disrespects or disobeys a parent. Why do Christians feel so certain Deuteronomy was so wrong on childrearing, but so right on appropriate treatment of homosexuals?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Different people find different arguments convincing. For example, atheists like evidence and plausibility, whereas Republicans are susceptible to appeals to the herd instinct and Christians as susceptible to appeals to authority and are convinced something is true mainly if that is what they would most prefer to be so.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

This may explain why the Christian conception of heaven is so kitsch. Christians prefer it that way.

Discovering that Jimmy Carter is a dyed-in-the-wool Christian is a bit like learning Mohatma Gandhi chewed tobacco, or that Martin Luther King put out saucers of lemonade for the fairies each evening.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Do you really want a doctor who thinks that if he slips up and you die, that you will be much better off playing harp in heaven?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Doubt is truth’s best friend, faith its worst enemy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

End times Christians eagerly await nuclear war and encourage the end of planet earth by every conceivable catastrophe. I wish these criminally insane people would just commit mass suicide with Kool-Aid and leave the earth to the rest of us who want to preserve and cherish it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Equal rights for Christians! Christians deserve the same rights as any other delusional people.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even an atheist is tempted to lie to a bereaved child, that a loved person or animal is not really dead, just somewhere else healthy and happy. Soothing that pain is the closest thing to a legitimate function for religion’s comforting lies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even atheists tend to presume nearly everyone is a Christian, but if you check out almost anyone with a famous intellect, even people living two hundred years ago, you find they were all atheists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even Christians can’t stand Christians more sanctimonious than they are.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even creationists must now surely concede that God created earths, not the earth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even if the Christians don’t manage to take control of your child now through their relentless TV ministries and ‘family values’ programming, they are planting the seeds of a phobia of God as bogeyman they will use later in life during a window of vulnerability.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even if you assume the odds are 100:1 there is a god, you still have 100 times better odds of being right if you presume there is no god, than you have in picking the correct god of the 10,000 possibilities.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even stupid people can prosper at preaching. When everything about what God wants you to do is made up anyway, any lie is as good as another. Further the preacher can just make up God-based explanations of scientific and political questions of the day that appeal to their dim-witted flocks without any fear of ever being challenged.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even the most saintly person would be embarrassed and guilt-ridden if the details of his or her sex life were made public, even if they consisted of perfectly normal and mainstream things like heterosexual attraction to people of the same age and masturbation. The church has systematically managed to make everyone in society feel an irrational guilt about sex in order to control them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even the nominally monotheistic religions all have their Satans and evil spirits. They are like snapping sheepdogs used to herd the gullible into the god belief trap by snapping at their heels.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Even though there is far more evidence for the risen Elvis and for alien abductions than for Christianity, Christians still insist there is utterly no doubt about their claims.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Every argument a Christian has ever offered be for the existence of god applies equally well to Clarus the dogcow as to Jehovah.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Evidence God does not exist:

• God is invisible and undetectable.
• God has no measurable effect on reality.
• There is no consensus on the nature of God.
• Prayer has no effect on reality.
• Christians have the same number of health problems, accidents and damage from ‘acts of God’ as anyone else.
• There is no sign of compassion in nature.
• He is unnecessary. The universe runs by itself.

Evidence that God exists:

• Many people have an extremely strong gut feeling he does. Oddly, only those people who were fed the idea as infants have this feeling. [I have very strong feelings about avoiding being hit by an automobile, a notion my mother pounded into me as a toddler.]
• Ancestors back thousands of years accepted his existence without question. Different ancestors in different times worshipped different gods, though the notion of priest/shaman/god remained invariant.
• Surely science can’t explain complicated stuff like the existence of earth, Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock and bacteria flagella, therefore an invisible man in the clouds named Jehovah must have done it, like a cosmic Geppetto. There are no other conceivable possibilities. Every other religion is flat out wrong and evil to boot. [The people who make this assertion carefully insulate themselves for reading any science or information about other religions.]

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Evolution demands that young humans accept whatever their mothers tell them without question. Logic has nothing to do with it. That is why religious belief is so impervious to the usual techniques of logical persuasion. Religion is more akin to a phobia than a belief.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Faith is believing without evidence. For the Christian, faith is the highest virtue. For the atheist, it is the ultimate foolishness. For the con man, it is the ultimate opportunity.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Faith is pretending to believe an authority when you strongly suspect he is lying.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Family values is a code word to exclude single-parent black families and families with gay parents. It has nothing to do with how well children are treated.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

First, Christians tell me the scientists are mistaken and that primitive tribespeople were right all along in that the universe is actually micromanaged at the whim of invisible intelligent beings. Then they have the cheek to insist that the alleged master controller of the universe is infinitely kind and merciful. Have they never been nauseous? Have they never had diarrhea? Have they never been seriously ill? Have they never had a toothache? Have they failed to notice that animals are compelled to eat each other? And to top it off, they allege all manner of impossible and absurd ‘miracles’ for which there is no evidence at all, such as the story of Noah’s ark and the flood. They treat the ability to pretend to believe all this nonsense as a sort of skill, like juggling, that I ought to develop.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

For a stable human society, each person must have an average of 2.00 surviving children and 4.00 grandchildren. If someone has more, it means someone else must necessarily have less. Religions preach greed in this matter, out of a selfish desire to expand themselves at the expense of other faiths. It is ironic that religions are so harsh on childless couples, especially homosexual ones, when they are the ones who make large families possible.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

For the human species to be sustainable, couples must have an average of 2.00 children surviving to adulthood. If they have less, the population dies out. If they have more, you get environmental collapse, war, pestilence and famine. Religions, pressing for greater market share, irresponsibly urge their adherents to breed as much as possible. If some couples have more than two children it necessitates others having fewer. Only China seem to understand just how anti-social overbreeding is.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Free speech includes the freedom not to listen. Free speech does not guarantee a spot on the Tonight Show. Christians imagine they are entitled to a seat at the table any time homosexuality, abortion or euthanasia is discussed even though they never contribute any useful information, just their faith-based beliefs for which they can offer no rational justification.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Fundamentalists are unconscious Luddites. They throw up their smokescreens of superstition and irrational babble vaguely hoping to jam the explosion of scientific knowledge and technological change.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Fundamentalists have been so intent on forcing others to pray, they have forgotten that the constitution protects their own right to pray wherever they please.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

futility of prayer

Christians often go their whole lives without doubting the childhood stories of Santa Claus or his older brother Jesus, despite ample empirical evidence that praying for a pony does not work.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Given that every famous psychic who claims to communicate with the dead has been exposed as a fraud, it is odd the lesser known psychics have any presumed credibility. Believers are like children who insist that magicians really do saw women in half, no matter how many times they see how the trick is done.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Given the sideways logic Christians give me for why they believe in god, I suspect the most convincing argument that god is fictitious would be to demonstrate that it would be a Good Thing™ if he did not exist, and that it would be exceedingly fortunate if there were no afterlife.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Given the way most Christians so cavalierly disobey what they claim are God’s commandments, they are hypocrites. They don’t seriously believe what they preach. They just want others to believe what they claim to believe.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Good prevails over evil only once it has become the greater force.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Hindus tell me that God (Ganesh) looks like a cartoon elephant. Christians tell me the creator of the entire universe is a white bearded senile old pervert who hides in the clouds using his x-ray vision to watch people masturbate. Ancient Egyptians claimed God (Sobek) looked like a man with the head of a crocodile. Ancient Greeks claimed god (Zeus) transformed himself into a swan in order to commit rape of a human female. Christians claim their god (Jehovah) transformed himself into a shower of gold flakes in order to impregnate a human female. How is it believers are incapable of noticing how absurd all these claims are?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Historically, atheists have fostered religious delusions on the grounds the peasants needed the myths to keep their behaviour in check, though the controls were not necessary for the educated elite.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

How come when God allegedly speaks privately to preachers he never tells them anything intelligent or useful, such as how to end the conflict in Israel or how make a malaria vaccine?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

How did this god idea get such a foothold in man’s imagination? Possibly, long ago in Mexico, someone decided to leave some of the choicest kernels of primitive corn for the ancestor spirits by burying them. Over time this practice acted much like natural selection to improve the corn plant. Here is one of the extremely rare cases where a sacrifice actually did work reliably. It would seem quite plausible to a people without any understanding of genetics that the improved corn was a thank-you from some beneficent invisible entity.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

How is it that Christians refer to their religion as monotheistic? They have the father sky god, the son Jesus, the holy ghost, the virgin Mary, the angels and the saints, not to mention the Pope. Christians are better supplied than the ancient Greeks with holy beings who receive prayers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

How long before GPS technology is used to track everyone‘s location, and social status is measured by how large a territory you are permitted to wander without getting a special security clearance visa, even for movement in your own city or country?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

How much does the suffering of others matter?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Hucksters have known since the beginning of time how to use God’s celebrity endorsement to sell anything. He never asks for a commission. He never contradicts any claim they make. Republicans use him to sell war. Faith healers use him to sell prayer shawls. Meat packers use him to sell turkeys.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Human population has exploded to the point where many starve, we are drowning in waste, despoiling our forests and cooking ourselves to death with green house gas emissions. The moral thing to do is obviously to curb reproduction, but the churches fight everything that helps reduce population growth, including condoms, birth control, the morning after pill, abortion, small families, childless couples, gay couples, working women… Why? Because they don’t care about the earth, just about increasing the number of gullible tithers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Humans are like the other animals where the males help raise the young. The males seek pleasurable sensations. The females seek to be provided for. Religion has taught us hypocrisy in this matter, condemning anyone who acknowledges these two facts honestly.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Humans are such cowards when it comes to facing their own mortality that they willingly allow themselves to be conned by those claiming death is not real and claiming to know the precise details of how an afterlife works.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Humans evolved in an environment where the optimum strategy was to eat whenever food is available and to eat as much as possible. In our modern world, this leads to obesity, diabetes and cardio-vascular disease. Christianity with its Lenten fast and Islam with its Ramadan fast may unconsciously have been trying to artificially restore the environment for which we are adapted.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Humans were once prey animals. Our sense of morality is based on that. Before we humans commit any atrocity, we ritually claim we are a victim. It takes on ridiculous proportions e.g in Iraq where the USA claims it is defending itself from invasion. Sometimes a nation will even put on the charade of a false flag attack on itself to claim the virtue of victimhood.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I am puzzled why Christians don’t sweep broken biblical promises under the rug out of embarrassment, the way they burned all the other false gospels. For example:

• Clearly, Christians die just like everyone else. Why keep up the absurd pretence that Christians do not die?
• Clearly, Christians have just as many troubles as non-Christians. God does not protect them from harm. If he did, Christians would get an insurance discount. Why keep up the pretence God grants special favours to Christians?
• Jesus did not come back within a generation as he promised. Why keep pretending Jesus never breaks promises including the utterly preposterous one that he will grant every prayer?

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I can hardly wait until science discovers the life in common in the cosmos and gain a foothold even on planets very different from earth. The Christian scoundrels will be scrambling to claim their scriptures never did claim earth was unique in the entire universe.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I can see nostalgia, regret or sadness at facing the end of your life from natural causes, but fear??? Surely that is only possible if you have allowed yourself to be conned by unscrupulous Christians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I don’t believe in ghosts, unicorns, alien abductions, seances or witches. I almost never think about my failure to believe because it is rare anyone hits me over the head with it. There is not even a word to describe my lack of faith. In constrast, Christians beat me over the head, try to take away my civil rights and threaten my life. They are the ones who label me atheist. If they left me and my friends alone, I would ponder the issue about as often as I ponder the possibility of alien abductions.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I find Christians annoying for the same reason I find young children who insist that 2 + 2 = 5 annoying.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I find it baffling that any adult takes the Christian account of creation seriously. It reminds me of the tall tale of how the bear got its stumpy tail or the wolf/salmon creation myth of the Haida.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I find it extremely odd that everyone is convinced his own religion is 100% true and all the rest are untrue even when he has zero experience with any religion but his own. His religion could well be the worst and he would have no way of telling.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I have almost nothing nice to say about Christians, but I would like to make it clear I don’t condone persecuting them, in the way Christians often persecute gays, Muslims, Jews, blacks, atheists, people with HIV etc. Christians should be treated equally in employment, marriage and housing. They should be safe from being beaten up. They have a constitutional right to deliberately harbour a god virus, just as they have a right to deliberately contract diabetes. Neither is all that hot an idea, however. I reserve my right to point that out and to interfere with them forcibly infecting others with god viruses.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I have never heard anybody say anything good about somebody else’s religion, except for Buddhism. It is not even a proper religion. It does not even demand you pretend to believe any preposterous things.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I have the same problem with God as with other products sold in late night TV infomercials — he does not perform as advertised, or more accurately, he does absolutely nothing.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I imagine hell as being trapped eternally inside the It’s A Small Small World Disneyland attraction.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I see my task as pricking society’s boils of Christianity to let the pus drain.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I was watching an episode of Midsomer Murders about a lawyer who had been artfully conned into thinking a winecellar full of fake wine was actually rare and costly vintages. I said to myself, that is exactly how Christianity works. Like any con, it preys on people’s greed and wishful thinking. It lures them with promises of a life of utter idleness with streets of gold.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I wonder how it came about that primate means both an archbishop and a monkey-like creature.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I wonder which religion makes people feel the happiest, irrespective of its ultimate truth. I’m guessing the Rastafarians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

I would not mind so much if Christians said, “I think society would run much more smoothly if we used the same social rules we had two thousand years ago, for example stoning adulterers to death and reviving slavery”. But they realise this message would never sell. It is just too nutty. So they try to sell it through threats claiming that a very nasty supernatural being wants you to do this and will torture you if you refuse to comply. Imagine if Yugo sold cars that way, threatening torture if you did not buy one of their inferior automobiles.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If a billionaire attempted to cure his terminally-ill son by donating $500 to a faith-healing church, most Americans would consider him insane. Yet those same people when asked whether tithing in general would curry god’s favour, would answer yes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If a con man spiritualist reveals the tricks of cold reading that he uses to simulate talking to dead relatives, his audience will be furious. They desperately want their delusion. They imagine they gain comfort from the deception. Christians are much the same about clinging to their delusions even when they are pretty sure they are empty.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If a group of people at a public meeting reverently mash up bananas and pack them into their ears and nostrils, am I obligated to pretend to take this seriously out of respect for these loons’ beliefs? I think not. Similarly I don’t see why I have to feign respect when Christians with pained expressions of reverence and lowered eyes petition the sky god to bend the laws of causality with a magic incantation. Christianity is just as silly as the banana mashers and far more malevolent.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If a parent kills their child by refusing them a blood transfusion, we consider that perfectly acceptable even if the parent offers no reason for doing so, just a religious belief that transfusions are wrong. Yet we consider it murder if the parent had a legitimate concern, e.g. risk of infection. There is something wrong with this picture. We are valuing the irrational over the rational.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If a person’s religious beliefs require him to kill me, or to kill nearly everyone on earth, I think it would be foolish of me to respect his right to practice his religion even if I generally subscribe to the notion of religious freedom. I think he should be treated like any other lunatic.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61) There are all manner of Christian sects actively promoting nuclear war hoping it will mean lunch with Jesus. Watch the Max Frisch play The Firebugs about a man who refused to take pay attention to the obvious signs his lodgers were arsonists. Even though these people are religiously motivated, they are still criminally insane and society should protect itself from them. We ignore them because of their numbers, but it is their numbers that make them much more dangerous.

If a reporter permits a lie to pass without so much as an eyebrow twitch, he is complicit in that lie and should be held responsible for lying too.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If any other institution but the church had been caught in mass pedophilic rapes, sexual and physical child abuse, all those responsible would have been driven out of society and all the institutions involved, disbanded.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If Christians are so absolutely sure that death is just a transition to heavenly bliss, why do they weep at funerals? They know in their hearts of hearts, just like everyone else, that they will never see their loved one again. They don’t really believe the heaven happy-ever-after BS, they just wish it were true. They just pretend to their fellow Christians that they believe it is true because that is what is socially expected of them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If ever you get a telephoned death threat, consider. Why would someone about to murder you tip you off so you can prepare to defend yourself? Why would he leave his phone number in the phone company records traceable to the threatening call? The same applies to email death threats. I speak from experience. I have received about 3000 telephone death threats, nearly all from Christians, and I am still here.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If God had penned the bible, it would be as beautiful as a sunset. It is nowhere close.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If god protected Christians preferentially, then Allstate would have a discount on fire, theft, accident and life insurance for Christians. All that praying makes absolutely no difference.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If I were to start collecting money on behalf of the Hudson’s Bay Company without first getting their permission, I could expect to cool my heels in jail, but if I collected on behalf of God, without His permission, I will be applauded as a virtuous person, no matter how I spent the money.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If I were to start collecting money on behalf of fictitious endangered Patagonian fire-eating fish, I could expect to cool my heels in jail, but if I did the same thing on behalf of a non-existent God, I will be applauded as a virtuous person, no matter how I spent the money.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If it were not for the bogey man stories Christians told you as a child, you would have no fear of death. Yes, you would avoid it, but only because it stops you from having more life adventures, not because you are terrified of what might happen after you die. Yes, you might dread the pain of illness that precedes death, but not dying or being dead.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If it were revealed that a political candidate believed he had been abducted by aliens, TV pundits would rag him mercilessly. Yet if it were revealed he harboured even more improbable delusions such as talking snakes, that there was no need to preserve the forests because a dead man would soon miraculously restore them, that geologists had it all wrong because the earth was only 10,000 years old… oddly those same pundits would solemnly “respect his beliefs”. The moral of the story is, if you want to get away with craziness, don’t improvise, copy popular lunatics.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If someone believed the ghost of their dead mother was watching and criticising their every act, you’d think they would seek professional help excising the painful belief, even if they thought it were probably true.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If someone is overwhelmed with their own suffering, you can hardly expect them to place much importance on the suffering of others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If someone obsessed that after death a large black man with horns and a pitchfork would torture him eternally, you’d think he would seek professional help to talk him out of it, especially since there is no evidence it is true.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If someone went to a psychiatrist and announced that the spirit of a long dead shaman had taken over his body, and that an invisible entity that hovered in outer space was planning to torture him for masturbating, how might he be treated? With hospitalisation and antipsychotics? Not if that shaman were named Jesus and the entity Jehovah. He would be sent out into the world as a perfectly sane man.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If someone went to a psychiatrist and announced that they were hearing voices that told him what to do, and threatened to torture him for non-compliance by roasting him alive, how might he be treated? With antipsychotics? Not if that voice called itself Jesus. He would be sent out into the world as a perfectly sane man.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If someone went to a psychiatrist and announced that they had joined a cult that practiced cannibalism and blood-drinking, how might he be treated? If that cult were Christianity, (which believes in a lame miracle that a cracker becomes the literal corpse of Christ, even though it still looks like a cracker), he would be sent out into the world as a perfectly sane man.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryogenics company, made the same wild claims the Catholic church does, they would be shut down immediately. We tolerate Christian con-artistry out of tradition.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If they were not such irresponsible breeders, Christians would die out from terminal stupidity.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If you ask a Christian why he thinks Jehovah exists, he will usually answer something along the lines of ‘God has to exist. If he didn’t, people would run amok. They would have no sense of right and wrong.’ This is not an argument for Jehovah existing, but rather rather an argument for the utility of lying to people that he does. The Christian seems to be doing a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, letting me know that he too does not believe in a mean old man spying from the clouds, but he wants me to help him perpetuate the lie on others. It is a supercilious way to view one’s fellows.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If you believe Revelation 14:3-4, everyone goes to hell except 140,000 males who have never been with women, presumably all children or homosexuals. Why do Christians worship a god who hates them?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If you credit god for everyone who survives a plane crash, you have to also assign him the blame for everyone that did not survive. He is allegedly omnipotent, so he could have saved everyone, but chose not to, hardly consistent with the merciful reputation he enjoys.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If you have any fears based on what people have told you about the bible and after death torment of gays, try reading the bible cover to cover. You will discover it is 90% blithering nonsense, including the parts about gays. Further probe any evidence God had anything to with authoring it. There is none; it was written mainly by people, who today would be on anti-psychotic drugs. The endless repeated assertions do not make it any more true. Fear of lurid biblical threats is as silly as fear of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is just a book, proven inaccurate over and over and over.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If you seriously think there is a god, how do you hedge your bets? How do you know which religion’s story about god is closest to the truth? One way is to look for what is common to most religions and focus on that. Trust that this must be the most important stuff, or that you will be forgiven for assuming so.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

If your vision of heaven requires either the misery of or the elimination of some group, e.g. gays, blacks, Jews, Palestinians, Muslims… then you can count on them strenously opposing your attempts to bring ‘heaven’ on earth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Imagine being whisked back in time to 1600. Most of the people around you believe in witches, and like to watch women burning alive. You know this is blithering nonsense, but you can’t seem to persuade the evil-doers. That how I feel today confronting Christians and their delight in tormenting gay people.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Imagine how difficult it would be to allay your child’s fears of monsters under the bed, if there were at least four channels of ‘family values’ TV at any one time persuading children the monsters were real. Ditto for the god monster who roasts children alive for playing doctor.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Imagine that someone went to a psychiatrist and announced that they had joined a cult that followed the religious beliefs of an obscure primitive bronze age desert tribe. The cult’s holy book required members to murder those who made even minor violations of the social or dress code, even those outside the cult, attacking in groups to bash the victim to death with rocks, and possibly to bury him or her alive in stones or by burning the transgressor alive. How might he be treated? With an stint in an institution for the criminally insane? If that cult were the Christians, he would be sent out into the world as a perfectly sane man.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Imagine the future where belief in a god is as quaint as belief in fairies, witches or ghosts.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Imagine the future where people who believe in a god rarely mention it to avoid ridicule. It would by like admitting to having a invisible rabbit friend, named Harvey.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Imagine the future where people who have a phobia of invisible spirits in the sky spying on them get psychiatric help.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Imagine the future where the Jewish, Christian and Islamic gods are just historical curiosities like Zeus and Apollo.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Imagine the future where tormenting a gay person in the name of religion is seen as just as reprehensible as tormenting a black person.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

In 1996 96% of Americans told a Gallup polster they believed in god; 90% in heaven; 79% believed in miracles; 72% in angels. Why? It certainly was not because of the preponderance of evidence; there isn’t any. I see two reasons: wishful thinking and herd conformity. Other nations are not nearly so superstitious, (e.g. 36% believe in god in the Czech Republic), so I suspect herd conformity is much more important than wishful thinking.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

In a sensible society, your body parts would naturally be recycled for medical purposes after you are dead and have no more use of them. However, superstitious Christians have rigged the law to make it difficult for even non-Christians to give away their organs.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

In nearly every species males try to prevent fellow males from breeding, but human Christians attempt to force male homosexuals not only to copulate but to sire children. What motivates this desire to propagate gay genes?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

In the interest of dramatic tension, dramas and other entertainments show us primarily violent, angry and dysfunctional people. They teach us to separate people in the good guys and the bad guys. Since people learn unconsciously by mimicking what they see, is it any wonder we have now a society of rude, drug-addicted, violent people?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

In the late 1800s, John Shelton, an American, claimed he had reached the north pole. He said at the pole was a gigantic diamond and a becalmed ship where sailors had nothing to eat but a drowned horse. Today, you might see this as allegory, but many took it as literal truth. Humans love to speculate about the unknown with tales feigning absolute certainly. Christians did the same thing about death.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

In the movie The Sting, Henry Gondorff, played by Paul Newman, explained the best con is one where the mark never even figures out he has been had. By that criterion and by the total take, Christianity is the greatest con of all time.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

In Zimbabwe, superstitious tribesmen rape as many prepubescent girls as they can, inserting sharp sticks into their private parts in order to collect blood which has the magical power to make them rich or to cure HIV. In North America, Christian gay bashers stalk gay males to beat and/or kill them to curry favour with their deity.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

In Zimbabwe, superstitious tribespeople persecute women who give birth to twins and drive them away fearing their presence will block the rain. In North America, superstitious Christians persecute gay people and deny them civil rights fearing their presence will cause earthquakes and fire to fall from the sky.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

In Zimbabwe, superstitious tribespeople persecute women who give birth by Caesarian, and deny them the right to marriage saying they are no longer real women. In North America, superstitious Christians persecute gay womem and deny them the right to marry claiming they are not fully human.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Instead of searching for a lost child, Christians petition the sky God to do the looking. Instead of enacting mining safely laws, Christians ask the sky God to suspend the laws of causality to rescue the trapped miners. Instead of moving their belongings to high ground, Christians pray to the sky god that their homes be spared the flood waters. Praying is not only useless, it is counter-productive because it displaces useful action.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Is faith a virtue or vice? Faith in hard work and study at university is clearly a Good Thing™ However, faith that a slot machine must soon pay off is not. Faith in being rescued from a boating accident is a Good Thing™, even when the odds are slim, because it enourages people to persist in life-sustaining behaviour. Faith that Jesus will come and restore all the denuded forests is a dangerous delusion because it encourages Christians to abandon stewardship of the forests. Faith in an afterlife, for which there is no evidence, encourages people to neglect the real one. Faith in clergy leads people to hand their children over to them to be molested, ignoring all the danger signs. Faith in TV evangelists leads people to hand over their life savings to these charlatans pretending to be god’s accountants.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Is there any argument for the existence of some particular god or god(s) in general that would not apply equally well to unicorns?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Islam has historical beefs with Christianity it has not forgiven. One was the Crusades, when Europeans came to Palestinian and slaughtered every Islamic man, woman and child for no reason. The other was the capture and enslavement of millions of Muslims, forcing them to renounce their religion and work in the fields of the southern United States.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It burns me up that companies are allowed to sell products that bear no resemblance to the way they are advertised on late night TV infomercials. We let them get away with every imaginable deception. In that I include ‘free’ religious products such as miracle green prosperity handkerchiefs, miracle healing manna bread offered, and magic red blood-of-Jesus annointing oil in return for tithes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It has become fashionable for valedictorians to use the occasion for a spontaneous hour-long harangue on the necessity of converting to Christianity. Perhaps if someone were to press these young women for an hour on the necessity of submitting to Allah, becoming a Mormon or Jehovah’s witness or abandoning religion altogether, they would have a glimmer of how rude and presumptuous they are to their captive audiences.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It is fairly common for people to feel uncomfortable around tattoos. Yet you never hear Christians demanding that tattooed people be killed, jailed or denied civil rights, unlike the way they persecute gays. This is odd. People with tattoos clearly choose them. Further they flaunt them in public. Further they often choose themes involving death and demons. Gays are much more discrete about their sexual activities that heterosexuals are. I spent the first 21 years of my life completely unaware that there were any other gays living in my city.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It is ironic that a country with as many religious bigots as the USA would exclude gays from military service. They consider them, like university students, too valuable to waste as fodder in pointless wars.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It is little surprise that fundamentalist Christianity and global warming denying are strongly correlated. Fundamentalist Christians are schooled from birth in the art of wishful thinking and denying evidence that God cannot be counted to rescue you from your folly.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It is no coincidence that con men so frequently target Christians. Christian are easy marks because they have been conditioned since birth to trust someone just because they frequently say ‘thank you Jesus’. Christians have been trained to believe outlandish claims without evidence. Christians have been taught to expect fantastic rewards without effort. Christians have been instructed it is improper to ask questions or doubt authority. Christians are softened up from a lifetime of being conned by the church without complaint.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It is not enough to shake the Christian loose of his delusions. We need to give him a coherent, realistic, not-quite-so-rosy replacement view of the church.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It is obvious to most Americans that Islam makes lives miserable for the women who are indoctrinated into it during childhood. However, they are blind to the fact the same is true for Catholicism, Judaism, and Southern Evangelical churches. Forcing any irrational beliefs/superstitions on children cripples, harms and hurts them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It is odd that Christians are so keen on torture. Have they forgotten their saviour was tortured to death by crucifixion?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It is tempting for those whose hormones no longer course to demand celibacy from others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It seems to me, if I were broke and suffering from nausea, incontintence and a toothache, that it would just add to my misery to imagine a vengeful invisible man in the clouds were persecuting me with these troubles.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It wasn’t discovering evolution that shattered Darwin’s faith. It was the cruelty of the Icheneumon wasp grubs eating host caterpillars alive.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Jehovah is in the same category as King Kong, Godzilla and the Gorgon Medusa — mythical monsters.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Jehovah is the grownups’ version of monsters under the bed.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Jehovah is the projection of the Christian desire to micromanage the lives of others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Jehovah is the projection of the Christian desire to deny pleasure to others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Jehovah is the projection of the Christian desire to punish those they cannot control.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Just as investors talked their friends into investing with Bernie Madoff, Christians talk their friends into contributing to their church. It is a way of easing doubt. If their friends think the con is legit, they can feel better about it too.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Just as you can be simultaneously dismayed at and frustrated with someone with Alzheimer’s, it hard not to simultaneously weep and get angry with a Christian, Muslim or Jew, when a God virus has destroyed crucial, specific critical-thinking parts sections of their otherwise intact brains.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Just because Jewish, Christian and Muslim nations love to make war on each other, and execute criminals for serious crimes does not negate the validity of their common moral tenet — thou shalt not kill.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Just how extreme do you have to be to be considered a religious extremist?

1. Believe in talking snakes?
2. Lobby for nuclear war so you can have lunch with Jesus?
3. Lynch a homosexual?
4. Blow up a building?

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Keats deceived the world when he said that truth is beauty and beauty truth. Mistaking beauty for truth is wishful thinking. Mistaking truth for beauty is callous indifference.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

King David arranged to have his lieutenant killed so that he could have sex with the lieutenant’s wife. Lot got roaring drunk and screwed his daughters. Abraham listened to voices in his head and attempted to stab his young son to death in a sacrificial ritual. Jesus counselled avoiding work and sponging off others through begging. Paul was homophobic. Joseph, as an elderly man, married a teenage trophy wife. And these are the heroes. No wonder Christians have such a warped morality.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Like a drug pusher, a Christian has no logical arguments to muster in favour of his product, so he resorts to peer pressure arguments such as ‘I believe, with all my heart’ or ‘Pretend to believe this doctrine and you will automatically become acceptable in my sight’.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Logically a Christian should avoid taking advantage of what science has to offer in the form of modern medicine, including painless dentistry, since his ‘infallible’ bible claims that diseases are caused by unclean spirits and exorcism is the proscribed treatment. When his own health is at risk, he ignores the faith, but when it comes to to forcing Christianity on others, e.g. persecuting homosexuals, or teaching the Christian creation myth in public schools as serious science, then suddenly, he becomes an ethusiastic true believer.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Magic is the art of persuading people that they saw things that didn’t happen. Ditto for religion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Many Christians claim that the evidence that Christ was a historical person who rose from the dead is either incontrovertible or not debatable. Incontrovertible means ‘not able to be denied or disputed’ Surely those Christians are aware that billions of people do dispute those claims, far more than those who accept them. So they are telling a bald-faced lie.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Married Catholics seek advice from gay, virgin priests. With that sort of help, no wonder the church had to make it illegal to divorce.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Members of the Society For Creative Anachronism make believe it is 1000 AD. Christians make believe it is 1000 BC.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Mind-boggling stained glass sold Christianity in the middle ages the way computer-animated dancing clothes sell soap today.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Monastics claim the ideal is continuous non-stop prayer. Have any of these people ever been in the presence of a child who constantly made requests for special favours?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Most North Americans dismiss all of the 10,000 god myths but one. The only thing that distinguishes the one they single out from the rest is that their parents exposed them to it at tender age and told them it was true. Had that not happened, that particular god myth would have had no power above the rest. It would appear just as absurd.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Most of us don’t invoke the supernatural to explain the boiling point of water. It seems to me just as eccentric to invoke it to explain death.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Most pro-life advocates, such as Bill O’Reilly are anything but pro-life. They are invariably pro-war. They have no interest in the welfare of babies or children. They hoot like a band of chimpanzees calling for the blood of abortionists or gays or blacks or immigrants or… They posture that they hold the high moral ground. They pretend to be advocates for law and order, yet cheer on abortion clinic bombers. They claim they want to reduce abortion, yet block adoption, contraception, sex education or any other measure that would reduce the need for abortion. They are murderers as surely as any Muslim cleric putting out a fatwa. They are motivated by a lust for persecuting and controlling others, including women. Their self-righteous hypocrisy makes me vomit.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

My blood boils when even an august body like the National Geographic twists science to validate Christian superstition. In their Scientific Adam documentary on tracing mutations on the Y chromosome back in time, they suggested the scientific findings vindicated the story in Genesis. Yet even their own documentary showed the common male ancestor lived 40,000 years ago, not the 4,000 years claimed by genesis. Further, this common male ancestor was far from the first human, just the first whose descendants prevailed to the present day. To cap it off, the documentary whitewashed the racism and genocide of the old testament to claim its essential message was that all men are cousins.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Nature is utterly indifferent to human notions of morality.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Nearly everyone selects a religion/life philosophy by looking to what their parents believed. The choice has nothing to do with the merits of the religion. That is why such outlandish and patently false belief systems can persist.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

No amount of reason will be as effective a string of personal catastrophes in persuading someone that his god does not exist. Discarding faith is preferable to acknowledging his god hates him or could not care less about him.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Normally, issuing threats of violence to convince people to hand over their money is called extortion, but when a TV evangelist does it, it is called spreading the gospel. Normally, promising a hundred fold return on investment and delivering nothing is called fraud, but when a TV evangelist does it, it is called preaching God’s word. Its a wonder this God fellow has any credibility left.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Not only does Christianity teach falsehood, it teaches how to defend against truth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Novelist Malcolm Lowry convinced his friends that he had just changed water into wine, using only his charisma. It would not be that much of a challenge for illusionists Doug Henning, David Copperfield, Penn and Teller or Criss Angel or for a hypnotist like Milton Erickson. Oddly, today, this ability no longer gives these fellows the status of prophets.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

One of the primary functions of god is to facilitate murder. Soldiers who have swallowed the god myth are mindless puppets who will kill simply by telling them that god commands them to. Telling them they killed in god’s name anaesthetises their guilt afterward.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

One of the reasons the USA is collapsing as a world economic power is the population is retreating from science into medieval religious superstition.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

One of the symptoms of infection by a god virus is a delusion that the universe is fair.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

One of the world’s oldest cons is that if you give money to ‘god”, god will supernaturally bless you with abundance. The only people who get rich from this scheme are the con men who accept the tithes in god’s name. The people with the really big money, like Soros, are all atheists. They don’t succumb to wishful thinking.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

It is a rather strange conception — god as high interest savings account. Further, who needs the corrupt intermediary? You are much more capable and efficient than any TV evangelist of spending the money directly on god’s work.

One way to interpret the Genesis myth is that the sin of excess consumption is punished with banishment from an abundant environment — in other words greed leads to environmental collapse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Over the millennia we humans have learned to be skeptical about any story we were told, but we automatically trust anything we see with our eyes. Unfortunately, we humans still tend to take as real anything visual. Photos and movies, even ones we know rationally are staged, fool us. Oliver Stone’s fictitious film version of history is more real than a printed page in a history book. Christians have exploited this visual gullibility to sell us all manner of fanciful supernatural notions.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Over ¾ of North Carolina Republicans believe President Obama is not a citizen of the USA. Granted 8% of them don’t know that Hawaii is part of the USA. There is no evidence of any kind to support this view. There is plenty to disprove it. The delusion survives solely because racists tell it to each other, much the way the myths of Christianity survive in a body of believers. Average and below average intelligence humans tend to believe what they believe their fellows believe. It has nothing at all to do with evidence. It works much the way dogs in a pack don’t think for themselves. They defer to the alpha leader.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Parents who treat their children biblically as chattels, beating them, denying them any privacy, sexually abusing them, or terrifying them must be made to stop. If they refuse, they should not be permitted to be left alone with children or to acquire any new victims through pregnancy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

People champion religions, not because they believe them to be true, but because it tickles them to imagine they might be true.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

People scold the author of Angel At the Fence for presenting his tale of concentration camp hope as fact. The same complaint also holds for those who attempt to pass off the Bible as fact. Where do people get off thinking they have the right to mislead other adults for their own good?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

People who pray are suffering from an extreme delusion of grandeur, that the creator of the universe takes correction from them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

People who revere the Catholic church as God’s agent on earth, knowing how it exploits the poor and abuses children emotionally, physically and sexually, must have a pretty dim view of God.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Please fund research for the mentally-disfiguring disease of Christianity.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Politicians parade their faith as if gullibility were a positive trait.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Religion invented the principles of modern marketing:

• Sell a worthless or shoddy product for an exorbitant price.
• Make extravagant, false and unverifiable claims for said product.
• Induce customers to sell it to others by offering free ‘toasters’.
• Pitch it to children as soon as they can talk.

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Religion is designed to turn a believer’s mind to mush by force feeding it nonsense. The believer can then be lead about like bull with a ring its nose with no will of his own, unaware even of his own self interest.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Religion is how the herd instinct expresses in humans.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Religion is like penis enlargement spam. It is a torrent of lies, that you can’t stop legally even though there is not even the tiniest shred of evidence to support the outlandish claims. Gullible twits keep buying it because they wish so strongly it were true.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Religion is like some twisted role-playing game where long ago the players forgot it was all make-believe.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Religions protect themselves from critical examination by teaching their adherents to affect massive offense when anyone even asks what the evidence is for some religious belief.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Religions tend to focus on petty thou shalt nots. This allows believers to ignore the two big issues of morality — what do you do with your time, and what you do you do with your wealth to contribute to your planet?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Religions, while they provide rich traditions, encourage people to hang onto ancient grudges. The Shiites flagellate themselves over the death of Imam Hussein. The Christians flagellate themselves over the death of Jesus. The Jews still celebrate hold present the memory of the Masada mass suicide. And of course they still hold a grudge against the descendants of the villains in their view of the events.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Republican Christians ignore evidence of holes in the official 9/11 story. They ignore holes in the bible story. They vote to preserve the privilege of the elites. Why? They have been trained since birth to defer to authority even when authority is apparently incorrect.?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Republicans want to deny gays civil rights because gays are “wrong”. Well, I think Christian and Republicans are a hundred times as evil as gays. By their goofy reasoning, we should deny Christians and Republicans every conceivable civil right, including the right to vote. It does not work that way. The constitution guarantees all citizens equal rights.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Robert Mugabe of Zimbabme is the most psychotic, sadistic dictator alive today. Guess who are his main supporters? All of the 130 Christian churches!
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Scientists have studied the stars and discovered the universe is homogeneous, and there is nothing special about our position in it. Yet Christians continue to spout the old lie that earth is the center of the entire universe created for man’s delectation. It is a monstrous conceit.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Secular con men rarely kill those who refuse to fall for their stories; you can’t say the same for Jewish, Christian and Muslim fundamentalists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Some day the world’s synagogues, churches and mosques will join the great pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon and Machu Pichu as tourist attractions where guides boggle young visitors with stories the ghastly things once done there. The names of the gods that inspired the malice will be forgotten except by Jeopardy contestants.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Some people succumb to the lure of belief in reincarnation. But do they really want to be a baby again, unable to speak or move about, to be a child forced to eat food they detest, with every move controlled by others, to be a teen with the extreme sexual frustration and embarrassment of puberty or a young adult facing the brutal rejections and being suddenly dumped?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Straight men can’t help but think that gay men secretly find women attractive, but for some inexplicable reason refuse to admit it. Straight women have less of a problem since gay men find the same people attractive that they do. As a gay man, even though I have ample scientific evidence that straight men prefer women, I can’t help but feel they are forcing themselves to pretend to enjoy women out of duty/pressure and to avoid men out of prudery.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Surely Christians can’t be serious that entry to heaven is based on which branch of which religion you subscribed to. Given that nearly everyone takes up the religion of one’s parents, and given that religions work hard to prevent their adherents from learning about any other, that choice means almost nothing about the person. Surely such a winnowing would have to be based on something far more substantial.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The Amish are resisting mandatory RFID tags on their cattle. I find it ironic that they would have almost no chance of prevailing in court even if they could prove the tags increased infection or were not necessary, but will have a very good chance with an irrational religious superstition that the tags are the ‘mark of the beast’.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The ancient Romans fed Christians to the lions because they were atheists, who refused to worship Jupiter and his friends. Muslims slaughter Buddhists because they are atheists, who refuse to worship Allah. American Christians persecute anyone as atheist who does not worship Jesus. Religious folk clearly use the term atheist in a much weaker sense than we atheists do. We atheists refuse to worship or even believe in the existence of any gods.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The ancients saw the sun rise in the east, and disappear into the west only to magically reappear again on the eastern horizon the next morning. How did it get there? Surely it did not burrow through the earth! So many assumed it was reincarnated afresh each morning. The odd thing is most Americans revere these early notions of how the world works as more accurate than our modern understanding based on astronomy and lasers. They assume because a belief is ancient it must be correct. Oddly, they have no such exaggerated respect for religious traditions other than their own. Even more oddly, they are quite happy to entrust the navigation of jetliners and ships, space exploration, medicine, agriculture, oil exploration etc. to experts who use modern scientific thinking.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The best cure for Christianity is prevention.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The best music in the world by Bach, Mozart and Handel was written to sell Christianity. That’s like discovering Nureyev did ads for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The best way to sell a lie is to set it to music.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The bible has no intrinsic validity. As science or as a history book it is on par with Paul Bunyan. As literature, it is dreck. All its value comes from the fact so many people like to pretend, without any evidence, the creator of the universe wrote it. Too me, it is painfully obvious that it is a forgery. God could not possibly produce such poor quality work. If there is a god, I would imagine He would feel insulted, or perhaps amused, at having that piece of racist humbug ascribed to Him, the creator of sunsets, mountains and quantum physics.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The bible is no more evidence for the existence of god than The Tales of Paul Bunyan is for the reality Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The bible is the ultimate blasphemy. It claims to speak for God, yet it was written by men.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The Catholic Church has paid out over $1 billion in settlements for child sexual abuse cases since 1980. Over 100,000 victims of clergy abuse have come forward. If they were a chain of summer camps we would have shut them down long ago. They are protected from prosecution by primitive awe of religious magic.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The Catholic church is run by ecclesiastical drag queens who have conned the poor into paying for their gowns.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The Christian churches teach their flocks that donations to charities that actually do something don’t count; only donations to the church count toward salvation. This deflects billions of dollars from useful to useless activities.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The Christian conception of god is much like a mafia don, who pretends to be a great philanthropist while, behind the scenes, ordering his henchmen to shake down, beat up and torture.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The Christian makes two claims:

1. There is an intelligent presence in the universe that micromanages human lives.
2. That Christians alone have a exclusive infallible communication pipeline to this entity both to petition it, and to discover its wishes.

Christians pretend that if there is even the remotest possibility that (1) is true, then (2) must inevitable follow. That is both absurd and preposterously conceited.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The Christian opposition to stem cell research is based on the idea that a single cell embyro is a potential human. That makes as much sense as considering sperm sacred. They too are potential humans. Both have a slim chance to grow into a human if implanted in a uterus. Surely using excess embryos for research is better than keeping them frozen for years then discarding them — the current practice. This is not an ethical problem; it is problem of religious superstition.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The Christian’s greatest joy would be to destroy every pornographic image on the planet, except his favourites. His joy comes from denying pleasure to others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The churches are criminal organisations:

• They physically abuse children in their care.
• They forcibly sexually molest children.
• They promote hate crimes against homosexuals.
• They con people out of money with false promises.
• They are medical quacks.
• They foster delusions and other forms of mental illness with hypnotic techniques.

Anyone else pulling off stunts like that would be jailed or run out of town.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The churches have no more business meddling in the sex education needed to contain the global AIDS epidemic than epidemiologists have censoring the sermons of pastors.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The churches make a bargain with the pedophiles. The church says ‘We will cover for you and provide you with an endless supply of obedient victims if you dedicate your life to spreading the faith professionally.’
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The churches welcome all manner of sinners: adulterers, child molesters, thieves, con men, drunkards, child beaters, wife beaters, drug addicts… but they utterly refuse to welcome homosexuals unless they join the clergy. It looks like this policy is intended primarily as a stick to enlist unencumbered recruits for low-paying jobs in the clergy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The constitutions of the United States and Canada provide freedom of religion. This protects actions motivated by superstition and irrationality, but not actions motivated by reason. For example a person may refuse military service because they assert the sky god will cause hurricanes, but they can’t refuse on the grounds the other side did nothing to justify invading them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The creator of the universe would have to know about the life cycle of the stars. Jehovah does not.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The early church, at the instigation of Emperor Constantine, burned all holy gospels but four. This would be like Walt Disney Inc. using their legal muscle to eliminate all variations of Sleeping Beauty but theirs, then promoting it as a literal true story.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The first symptom of brain damage caused by Christianity is a craving for kitsch.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The greatest scams include:

• Giving money to a professional Christian will miraculously improve your lot now or after you are dead.
• Homeopathy will cure you of disease. The cures are so dilute they amount to pure water with not even one molecule of the active ingredient.
• You can lose weight without eating less and exercising.
• It is necessary to attack folks on the other side of the world to prevent them from attacking you.

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The laziness of Christians appalls me. Assuming they truly wanted to please a presumed creator of the universe, you’d think they would make an exhaustive enquiry to discover just what this creator expects of them. Instead, they take the word of the first snake oil salesman who comes along, and refuse to revisit the matter ever after.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The little Christian decided to prove scientifically that Jehovah exists. He took 5 pennies and started tossing them into the air about every 10 seconds. After 7 minutes he noticed that had all come up heads. He announced ‘God has just graced me with a miracle since coming up 5 heads is very improbable, only 1 in 32.’
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The main advantage to a believer is it gives him an excuse to torment and kill infidels without conscience.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The main purpose of a religion is to con the believers out of their money.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The man most convinced that a god will shower him with boons after his body rots is the man whom fortune treats most shabbily now, like a compulsive gambler utterly convinced a slot machine, with absolute certainty, will soon pay out simply because it hasn’t ever done so before.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The movies let you pretend for a couple of hours to be Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen, buddies with Superman, who can be counted on to bail you out of any conceivable trouble. Christians are so enamoured of the fantasy that they frantically lie to each other, and persecute non-believers, to help convince themselves a similar Superman story it is really true, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The notion of an infinitely merciful creator god is a croc. It is extremely rare for any creature to act with any concern at all for the suffering of other creatures unless they are offspring.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The people who insist that a god must exist to explain the mysteries of science typically know less about science than the average second grader.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The poor Jews must imagine that יהוה (Jehovah) turned his back on them. He allowed Germany to go rogue and start killing people of all ages just because they were Jewish, Gypsy or gay.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The poor Muslims must imagine that Allah has turned his back on them. He let Jews evict the Palestinians and effectively enslave those left behind. He allowed the Serbs to massacre them. He let Americans barge in and steal their oil, seed genomes and anything else of value, shredding people of all ages and genders with high explosives, burning them with napalm and white phosphorus — not to mention routine torture.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The preposterousness of the Hindu religion is blatantly obvious to Christians, and the preposterousness of the Christian religion is blatantly obvious to Hindus. Yet each is blind to the absurdity of their own religion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The primary technique of manipulation is telling lies. The manipulator promises that doing as he asks will lead to satisfying some strong basic drive or avoiding something feared. The satirical movie Idiotocracy lays the mechanism bare in its crudest form. The art reaches its peak in religious evangelism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The pro-Christianity Vision channel aired a documentary about how Christianity made a small town come together for a noble cause. A child, Theresa Johnson, had disappeared, presumed sexually assaulted. The town’s people gathered in the church to pray, sitting on their butts, smugly congratulating themselves for their caring, instead of getting out to search for her.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The reason a TV evangelist sells Christianity is the same reason Billy Mays pitches OxiClean. It is an easy way to make a lot of money. Most evangelists don’t even have to ship any product.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The reason Christians worship alcohol as the blood of Christ and condemn marijuana as the devil’s weed, is that drinking alcohol gives them a hangover.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The religious fanatic can’t see any difference between these two questions:

1. Is there any sort of intelligent being or process that designed and created the universe?
2. Is the holy scripture of their cult inerrant?

Religion is a type of brain impairment, like a stroke, that selectively destroys specific types of logical thinking.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The scientific assumption is that whatever we observe on earth is indicative of the way the universe behaves everywhere else. The religious assumption is that earth is the centre of the cosmos and that man is the acme of life in the universe. This incredible vanity has even infected many scientists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The soldiers in the Congo routinely rape women and then use guns and sticks to destroy the walls between their uteruses, rectums and vaginas leaving them in pain and incontinent for life. They justify this behaviour because the bible says man must command woman.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The trouble with corporations providing information is that they are provide whatever sells, not whatever is true. Thus they perpetuate myths.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The ultimate hypocrite is a military chaplain who helps soldiers overcome their guilt at raping, maiming and killing children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The universe is only 14 billion years old, yet can we see objects that are now 47 billion light years away. Isn’t that mind boggling enough for you? Why must you Christians sully your conception of the cosmos with imaginary kitschy angels with trumpets?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

The world is seriously overpopulated. It used to be a virtue to “be fruitful and multiply”, but today it is downright irresponsible. Having more than two children is the most serious assault a ordinary individual can mount on the planet. Straight people should get off their moral high horses and acknowledge that gays on average are behaving in a much more morally responsible way than they are.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

There are hundreds of thousands of frozen embyros, each too small to see with the naked eye, a side effect of fertility treatments. They obviously will never be implanted. They will be eventually discarded. Christians object to them being used for stem cell research on the grounds they potentially could be implanted to grow to form a human. That is also true of a sperm cell. When then not hold that every sperm is sacred as well? Christians think it somehow more dignified to discard the cells. I for one, if I were a fetus, would far sooner my tiny body gave life to another than to be tossed away as useless garbage.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

There are over 10,000 Gods. Most people dismiss all, or all but one of earth’s religions without so much as a cursory glance, the same way scientists dismiss yet another perpetual motion machine. Even fundamentalists are not in the least surprised that people tend to adhere to the local most popular religion. Everyone would be dumbfounded if it turned out that intelligent beings in other parts of the universe subscribed to one of the earth religions. This means that people, in their hearts, know their own religion is merely a local folkway, not a universal truth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

There are two main kinds of people who say things that are not true:

1. Con men who knowingly lie to pull one over on others for personal gain.
2. Cretins who don’t know they are telling untruths. They mindlessly parrot what they have been told.

Christians come in both flavours.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

There is an apocryphal Christian sect called the Bunyanites. Their keystone belief is that horse riding is wicked. They base this belief on a story about St. Paul of Bunyan who once rode upon an ox, the holy Babe, blue both in colour and disposition. This story appears in one of their anonymously written procedure manuals. They explain ‘ It is written that anyone consorting with horses must be whipped and stung with pismires.’ They show up at every horse show, riding school, western movie, and rodeo to protest. They never present any evidence that horse riding is cruel, unhealthful, extravagant, or energy inefficient. They just talk gleefully about the pismires. Where they exist in sufficient numbers, Bunyanites have managed to ‘protect the children’ by banning all books from school libraries that either discuss or depict horses, ridden or potentially ridden. They sometimes burn alive people who ride horses. They lobby tirelessly to make horse riding or horse keeping a serious federal crime. Some adherents even picket the funerals of equestrians. What I find odd, is the way the media tolerate them, inviting them to every TV show remotely concerned with horses, just they way other Christian sects invariably get invited to shows on homosexuality, euthanasia and abortion where they similarly refuse to present any evidence for their views.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

There is far more evidence that alien greys will save man from himself than Jesus will return and make it all better.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

There is something deeply unfair and absurd about a society that insists that every discussion about civil rights, (e.g. euthanasia, gay marriage …) has to have religious fundamentalist bigot on the panel for ‘balance’, even when that bigot cannot muster even a single fact to support his view. Yet evangelists may make the most hateful, absurd, fallacious and fraudulent claims from the pulpit without anyone invited or permitted to dispute them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Those advocating the most violent means to disabuse others of their delusions are usually entangled in some rigid, delusional belief structure themselves.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Consider Mao Tse Tung and his efforts to wipe out Tibetan Buddhism, or the American attempts to wipe out Islam in Iraq and Afghanistan or the Catholic church’s persecution of the Albigensian heresy.

To lock in lifelong control, priests systematically abuse children with threats of after-death torture to undermine their ability to think for themselves.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

To me, Jehovah is even more preposterous a god than Clarus the dogcow. That is because I have read the bible cover to cover, but have not yet read the holy books of Clarus.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

To those who claim sexual orientation is a choice, tell me about the day you decided to get turned on more by girls than by boys. Be honest!. It just happened. A tsunami of sexual desire swept you away.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Traditionally, people have had the right to have as many children as they wanted. However, humans are now overflowing the planet. Overpopulation is causing environmental collapse, famine, mass pollution, global warming… Technology now allows 60 year old spinsters to push out babies 8 at a pop, then dying and leaving them for others to raise. Religions still command their adherents to breed to the max. We simply can’t continue as we did.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Trusting God is like refusing to vote then complaining when your candidate loses.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Try this experiment. Write down a list of whom you consider the ten greatest minds of all time. Then research them to find out their attitudes about religion. I think you will discover that most were atheist or were as critical of the religious practices of the day as they could get way with. This holds even if you include Jesus.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

We consider it poor form to discriminate against someone based on his religion, yet we consider it common sense to discriminate against someone who is delusional. Surely it is unwise to trust someone whose religion asserts the end times are near and that the end of the world is a Good Thing™ to captain a nuclear submarine.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

We have reigned in some of the less powerful religions, like the Aztecs with their child sacrifice, but we still have not yet tamed the Christians and Muslims with their persecution of gays and abuse of children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

We would not let a secular organisation continue to operate drug dealing, prostitution or terrorism rings so why do we let the church off the hook for systematic sexual and physical child abuse rings? Why have not these criminal institutions been shut down? It is simply custom. We have come to tolerate any amount of corruption from the churches out of a childish fear of their magic religious power to punish us in the afterlife.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What are the three most important threats to the survival of our planet? Overpopulation, thermonuclear war and global warming.

• Christians actively promote overpopulation and interfere with all forms of population control.
• Christian fundamentalists egg on conflict in the middle east because they believe thermonuclear war will mean lunch with Jesus. They promote the nuclear arms race.
• Christians oppose dealing with global warming on the grounds God would not permit such a catastrophe, (though oddly the bubonic plague was acceptable, Darfur is ok and thermonuclear war would be fine.).

Tolerating Christianity is suicidal. Christians are too delusional to be entrusted with deciding the planet’s future. I am not suggesting persecuting Christians, but rather talking them down from their drug-like delusions.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What divides humanity? Lies and untruths. You don’t find people divided over a common absolute truth like 2 + 2 = 4. What is the biggest source of lies and untruth? Religion (with politics a close second). If the world is ever going to work together, it will require dismantling the worst lies and untruths of each religion especially those used to justify stealing resources from or killing people of a different religion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What if I told you my neighbour hears voices who command him to do odd things, and he obeys? What if I told you my neighbour talks to dead people and claims they do his bidding? What if I told you my neighbour practices symbolic ritual cannibalism? What if I told you that my neighbour trusts in magic rituals to protect him from accidents and to find parking spaces? What if I told you my neighbour leaves notes under the door inviting me to join him in his rituals? Would you consider him as a baby sitter? What if I told you he did all these things because he was a Christian?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What is death? No more experience, worry or fear. No more ability to influence the universe and no more responsibility to do so. It seems to me about as scary as the end of a roller coaster ride or going under anaesthesia.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What kind of person is willing to swear a vow of celibacy? Someone who has no interest in sex with other adults, someone willing to keep his sex life completely hidden. No wonder the priesthood attracts so many pedophiles.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What sort of compassionate intelligent designer of the universe would have set hordes of mosquitos to torment the caribou, blood sucking leaches to invade the rectums of hippopotamuses, spiders to paralyse and slowly dine on their living victims, or pancreatic cancer to torture old ladies?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What was religion like 20,000 years ago? I suspect the hunger people feel today for religions may actually be a longing for the ancient proto-religion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What would Jesus say about the cornerstone of his church degenerating to become the persecution of homosexuals? ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’
~ John 8:7
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What would you think of a corporation that:

• persuaded its customers to invest 10% of their income, but never gave them anything in return.
• traumatised children, abusing them physically, sexually and mentally.
• encouraged lynchings, beatings, murders and burning alive of those who refused to act as agents for the corporation.

If you would not approve of such a corporation, why would you excuse the same behaviours in the world’s churches?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What would you think of someone went to a psychiatrist and announced that they had joined a cult that followed the religious beliefs of an obscure primitive bronze age desert tribe. The God of the tribe was into public farting. He insisted his followers eat feces and rape and kill non-cult members. How might you treat him? If that cult were the Christians, he would be sent out into the world as a perfectly sane man.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What would you think of someone who recited nonsense rhymes when invited to speak at some solemn public occasion, such as a valedictory address, the inauguration of a president or the funeral of a notable person? That is how Christians sound to me when they shamelessly prattle on about their utterly irrelevant, invisible, undetectable man in the sky. I can’t believe the chuzpa of expoiting such captive audience situations to deliver infomercials for Christianity. They wouldn’t dare try to pitch OxiClean, life insurance or Amway franchises.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

What’s the difference between an evangelist an a drug pusher? A drug pusher delivers on his promises.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When a beauty queen thanks Jesus for winning a contest, or an athlete gives credit to God for winning a game, they don’t seem to realize they are insulting the Almighty, accusing Him of rigging the contest and of playing petty favourites. They also don’t acknowledge they are bragging that they enjoy God’s special favour because of their superior virtue.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When a Christian says ‘I have faith that God will attend to global warming’ what does he mean? He means ‘I am such a lazy, selfish twit that I refuse to even attend to my own survival or the survival of my children. I prefer to indulge in completely unrealistic, wishful fantasies instead. It is the same self-indulgent, self-destructive attitude that you find in drug-takers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When a Christian sets out on a dangerous undertaking with absolute trust God will protect him, he is mad. He knows full well God does not routinely protect people from harm and Christians experience just as much mishap as anyone else.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When a Christian talks about Truth, he does not mean truth in the ordinary sense of ‘that which is actually so’. The Christian warns you with a capital T that he means instead something that he reveres, possibly non-existent.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When a Philipine Catholic priest persuades his flock to undergo voluntary crucifixion, it is not quite as evil as act as forcing people to undergo crucifixion, but it creates almost as much pointless suffering.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When Christians can’t think of anything practical to do, or don’t want to help, they pray, then pretend to themselves they have fulfilled their moral obligations.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When Christians talk of living truth they mean it wriggles when you try to pin it down.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When Christians talk of living truth, I think of those creatures that scurry away from the light when you overturn a rock.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When drug-addicted or alcoholic parents physically or sexually abuse their children, society protects the children by eventually taking them away, yet it permits those same parents to conceive and abuse as many more new children as they please because Christians believe the parents’ right to reproduce is unconditional and overrides the right of the child to be free from abuse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When I was a little boy, I would cry for days when a pet died. I dug up my sister’s turtle every day for weeks to see it if was still dead. I imagined my own turtle had run away and was living happily in a stream. Christians are like me as a child. They can’t stand it when people die, so they hang onto childish wishful thinking.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When I was about nine, I waited at the Ambleside swimming pool in West Vancouver for my Mom to come pick me up. An elderly Jehovah’s witness man pressed me with stories of god and hellfire. I could not leave the rendezvous spot, so I felt trapped. He pressed tracts on me. When my mother arrived, she was furious. I figured she was mad because he might have been planning to abuse me sexually, but she was concerned about an even more damaging form of abuse, attempting to permanently traumatise and brainwash her child with fear.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When I was eight, I went to Camp Howdy, a Y.M.C.A. summer camp, where an older boy earnestly assured me that raccoons liked to join you in your sleeping bag. If you moved at all, they would tear you apart. I took precautions into adulthood before I realised I had been had. Such boys who like to frighten younger children grow up to become Christians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When I was young and handsome, I once attended a group of plump middle aged women who claimed they could communicate with the dead. They competed for my attention by pretending ghosts were pinching them. Christians do the same thing to impress each other by pretending God gave them private messages, when all that really happened is they heard a commanding voice inside their head, much like the nagging internal voice of a parent.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, Christians beat their breasts begging their god to explain why he did this. The rest of us pondered the much more practical question — what motivated the human assassins?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When my mother was a young fashion model, she sent away $10 (a fortune at the time), for a device designed to make her breasts grow even larger. A package arrived in the mail containing a cardboard hand on which were printed the words ‘massage will do the trick’. Christians pull similar cons, promising far more than ample breasts, charging far more than $10 and not even delivering a cardboard hand.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When someone says ‘God called me to do such and such’ what does that mean? It means, ‘I may look like a schlep, and what I am doing may look utterly unimportant, but I am so special that the creator of the universe, manifested as a voice in my head, charged me above everyone else with this sacred and vitally important task.’
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When someone survives an accident by fluke, Christians ascribe it to divine intervention. Yet if it truly were God, it should not happen only as a fluke. God is supposed to be 100% reliable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When the milk went sour, my distant ancestors in Scotland had no idea that bacteria caused it, so with complete conviction, they blamed fairies and witchcraft. That is no more ignorant than the way today’s Christians insist on using Jehovah as a sort of cosmic caulk to fill in any gap in our current knowledge.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When the Mormons started out, there would have been consensus that they were either charlatans or delusional. Few people would dismiss them as mentally ill today, even though their beliefs have not changed, only their numbers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When you see a scene in an old black and white movie where the tribespeople bow to the ground before a stone idol, how does it strike you? Silly, primitive, gullible, mindless? Do you feel contempt? When I see Christians lowering their eyes in fear and reverence of an invisible sky God hoping he can be cajoled, like a cosmic Santa Claus, to bestow benefits, I feel the same way. When a president does it, it is dismaying.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

When you wake from a dream, the memory of it is often chaotic and absurd. Is there an analogous process to wake from ordinary reality? Some claim there is, but I have not yet decided if they are correct, deluded or pulling a con.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Whether a politician outright lies or merely dissembles, the intent is the same — to deceive the public. The result is the same — the public is deceived. We should condemn both lying and dissembling.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Whose acts of charity do you most admire?

1. The man who is motivated by applause from his fellow men.
2. The man who is motivated by promise of reward from the sky god after he dies.
3. The man who does the job because the job needs doing.

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Why does someone desperately try to sell you his religion? Because if he can sell it to you, it gives him faith in his own sales pitch.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Why has the middle east spawned the world’s two most obnoxious religions? By obnoxious I mean religions whose adherents will pester, threaten torture or kill to get others to pretend to accept their twaddle. Perhaps it is because life in the middle east is so harsh that masses of people consoled themselves with the notion that death would be a step up. They could not tolerate anyone pooh poohing their fantasy, their only hope.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Why is it that people find it so easy to laugh at the ancient Egyptians and their elaborate fantasies of what happens after death, but fail to see that Christianity is no different.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Why would someone desperately cling to such obvious nonsense as Christianity? It would have to be someone so terrified of non-existence that they would rather experience hell, or someone who could not let go of the fantasy of being reunited with someone who had died.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

With official sanction, US soldiers hand out Christian medallions at checkpoints in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Taliban use this as proof that the US intends to interfere with their religion. Imagine the effect if occupying Muslim soldiers handed out Islamic medallions.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

With your donations to fund research, someday Christians may think again.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Without peer pressure, children would fail to outgrow a belief in Santa Claus. Because of peer pressure, Christians cling to their belief in the white-bearded sky god.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Would you respect a religion that told its followers they had the holy right to evict non-believers from the homes and expropriate them for their own use?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Zionism is such a religion.

Would you yank a part out of your car just because you did not understand its function? That is what Christians want society to do — purge it of all its homosexuals.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Yes we can find a cure for Christianity.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

You can buy chemically-treated green bags to prevent ethylene gas from turning vegetables to a fetid mush. What is the equivalent to protect the human brain from the Christian god virus?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

You can tell how efficiently a televangelist is fleecing the flock by which timeslots he buys and how many. The big timers air during the day. The little guys at 3 AM.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

You have the right to do irrational or downright nutty things, even suicidal things, e.g. refuse medical treatment, in the name of religion or eccentricity, but only if you don’t harm others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61) Or as John Stuart Mill put it “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant’.

You ought not to affect respect for someone’s religion any more than you should feign respect for his belief in fairies. You are just encouraging his delusion with your dishonest pretense. On the other hand, so long as his nutty beliefs do not cause him to attack you (e.g. as Christians attack gays or deny civil rights) you have no business trying to make his life miserable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

You would probably want everyone to steer well clear of a cult that practiced sexual abuse of children, ritual cannibalism, and whose main rite consisted of consisted of contemplating torture. Yet you accept it as perfectly natural when it comes wrapped as a respected religion — the Catholic Church.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

You’d think freedom of religion would prevent a church, whose doctrines I find odious, from extorting money from me, yet it can do it in several ways:

• By avoiding taxes, meaning that I have to subsidise the services it consumes with my increased taxes.
• By making religious channels on TV part of the basic package. I must support those hucksters or go without TV.
• By government-sponsored faith-based initiatives. Churches get money from the government tax revenues supposedly to help the disadvantaged. They exploit that opportunity to sell their cults to those with weak sales resistance.

~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

You’d think the ten commandments and the teachings of Jesus would get top priority in the Christian mind. Yet Christians ignore most of that material (e.g. no graven images, helping the poor), and focus instead of a few lines in Leviticus, that call for the persecution of gay people. Recall that Leviticus is the guy who thinks you should be put to death for eating a shrimp or wearing socks made of cotton and Lycra.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

You’d think the ultimate obscenity would offering a blessing to soldiers about to slaughter children, but it is common and no Christian ever complains.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

‘Trust God’ is the Christian excuse for doing nothing.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)

Life is like stepping into a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.
~ Suzuki Roshi (born: 1904-05-18 died: 1971-12-04 at age: 67)

Christ preaches only servitude and dependence… True Christians are made to be slaves.
~ Jean Jacques Rousseau (born: 1712 died: 1778-07-02 at age: 66)

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97) Why I am Not A Christian

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not entirely absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)

The immense majority of intellectually eminent men disbelieve in the Christian religion, but they conceal the fact in public, because they are afraid of losing their incomes.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)

The misfortunes of human beings may be divided into two classes: First, those inflicted by the non-human environment and, second, those inflicted by other people. As mankind have progressed in knowledge and technique, the second class has become a continually increasing percentage of the total. In old times, famine, for example, was due to natural causes, and although people did their best to combat it, large numbers of them died of starvation. At the present moment large parts of the world are faced with the threat of famine, but although natural causes have contributed to the situation, the principal causes are human. For six years the civilized nations of the world devoted all their best energies to killing each other, and they find it difficult suddenly to switch over to keeping each other alive. Having destroyed harvests, dismantled agricultural machinery, and disorganized shipping, they find it no easy matter to relieve the shortage of crops in one place by means of a superabundance in another, as would easily be done if the economic system were in normal working order. As this illustration shows, it is now man that is man’s worst enemy. Nature, it is true, still sees to it that we are mortal, but with the progress in medicine it will become more and more common for people to live until they have had their fill of life. We are supposed to wish to live for ever and to look forward to the unending joys of heaven, of which, by miracle, the monotony will never grow stale. But in fact, if you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a ‘new boy’ in another. For the future, therefore, it may be taken that much the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97) Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind, from Unpopular Essays

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)

The wise man is as happy as circumstances permit and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)

There is something feeble and a little contemptible 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 dares not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97) Human Society in Ethics and Politics

What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.
~ Carl Sagan (born: 1934-11-09 died: 1996-12-20 at age: 62)

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way,’ A religion, old or new that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
~ Carl Sagan (born: 1934-11-09 died: 1996-12-20 at age: 62) The Pale Blue Dot

In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches.
~ Carl Sagan (born: 1934-11-09 died: 1996-12-20 at age: 62) The Demon-Haunted World

In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would 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 in politics or religion.
~ Carl Sagan (born: 1934-11-09 died: 1996-12-20 at age: 62)

You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe.
~ Carl Sagan (born: 1934-11-09 died: 1996-12-20 at age: 62)

Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.
~ George Santayana (born: 1863-12-16 died: 1952-09-26 at age: 88) Supernaturalism

Religion is the natural reaction of the imagination when confronted by the difficulties in a truculent world.
~ George Santayana (born: 1863-12-16 died: 1952-09-26 at age: 88) Atlantic Monthly

A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer (born: 1788-02-22 died: 1860-09-21 at age: 72)

Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, ‘Thou shalt make no graven image.’
~ Arthur Schopenhauer (born: 1788-02-22 died: 1860-09-21 at age: 72) Religion: a Dialogue

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer (born: 1788-02-22 died: 1860-09-21 at age: 72)

The term that best describes me now is ‘secular humanist’. I despise those shallow religious comics. Dennis the Menace, for instance, is the most shallow. When they show him praying — I just can’t stand that sort of thing, talking to God about some cutesy thing that he’d done during the day. I don’t think Hank Ketcham [Dennis’ creator] has any deep knowledge of things like that. I cringe at the mention of Family Circus, the strip by Bill Keane that is strewn with cutesy references to Jesus who wants to protect children on school buses, but can’t because of laws about separation of church and state, and those sickly-sweet images of invisible deceased grandparents looming protectively over the kids. Oh, I can’t stand that. You could get diabetes reading them, couldn’t you?
~ Charles Schulz (born: 1922-11-26 died: 2000-02-12 at age: 77) Religion: a Dialogue cartoonist, creator of Peanuts.

‘By way, why are we wearing bras on our heads?’ ~ Wyatt
‘It’s ceremonial.’ ~ Gary
~ Weird Science (born: 1985 age: 24) with Anthony Michael Hall as Gary Wallace and Ilan Mitchell-Smith as Wyatt Donnelly

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca (born: 4 BC died: 65 AD at age: 68)

Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian.
~ William Shakespear (born: 1564-04-23 died: 1616-04-23 at age: 52) Twelfth Night act I, scene iii

There cannot possibly be a god in heaven watching all of this calmly.
~ Revi Shankar

I’m not going to have a tombstone. I’m going to be tossed in the air. Ashes, tossed like a salad.
~ William Shatner (born: 1931-03-22 age: 78)

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)

Most people do not pray; they only beg.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)

A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley (born: 1792-08-04 died: 1822-07-08 at age: 29)

And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
Making the earth a slaughter-house!
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley (born: 1792-08-04 died: 1822-07-08 at age: 29) Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem 1813

I was an infant when my mother went
To see an atheist burned. She took me there.
The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;
The multitude was gazing silently;
And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,
Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,
Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth;
The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;
His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;
His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob
Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.
‘Weep not, child!’ cried my mother, ‘for that man
Has said, ‘There is no God.’
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley (born: 1792-08-04 died: 1822-07-08 at age: 29) Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem 1813

If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley (born: 1792-08-04 died: 1822-07-08 at age: 29)

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they have arrived at for non-smart reasons.
~ Michael Shermer (born: 1954-09-08 age: 55) Why People Believe Weird Things page 283

There are a score of great religions in the world, each with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of ‘true believers’ each damns all the others with more or less heartiness — and each is a mighty fortress of graft.
~ Upton Sinclair (born: 1878-09-20 died: 1968-11-25 at age: 90)

For most cosmologists, a supernatural God is an unnecessary hypothesis. For most Americans, He is an unassailable fact. The American belief machine apparently has a fail-safe component. Nothing shuts it down.
~ Gary Sloan The Bible-Belting of America

I’ll long remember the crestfallen look of a pious student when I told him the faculty of a divinity school he planned to attend included a large number of avowed atheists.
~ Gary Sloan Did Jesus Exist and Does it Matter?

One can’t logically argue that because something highly improbable happens, some occult force had to make it happen that way.
~ Gary Sloan The ABCs of Nontheistic Evolution

Science not only hasn’t found God, it isn’t even looking for him.
~ Gary Sloan The Bible-Belting of America

Their belief in Jesus gives them an indefatigably sympathetic confidant, assuages their fear of death and bereavement, wards off existential angst, assures cosmic purpose, and aligns them with the good guys. So handsome are the psychological pay-offs of belief that many, perhaps most, devout orthodox Christians are impervious to all countervailing logic and evidence. Their will to believe vanquishes every disquieting fact, every contrary line of reasoning, no matter how compelling to an impartial eye. Psychologists have a frightening arsenal of terms for the mental habits designed to preserve cherished beliefs: dissociation, absolutist thinking, dichotomisation, object permanence, nominal realism, phenomenalistic causality and worse.
~ Gary Sloan Did Jesus Exist and Does it Matter?

True believers aren’t about to be seduced by the facts.
~ Gary Sloan Did Jesus Exist and Does it Matter?

Modernity sees humanity as having ascended from what is inferior to it — life begins in slime and ends in intelligence — whereas traditional cultures see it as descended from its superiors. As the anthropologist Marhall Sahlins put the matter: ‘We are the only people who assume that we have ascended from apes. Everybody else take it for granded that they are descended from gods.
~ Huston Smith (born: 1919-05-31 age: 90)

Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.
~ Sydney Smith (born: 1771-06-03 died: 1845-02-22 at age: 73)

The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself.
~ Joseph Sobran (born: 1946-02-23 age: 63)

The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmakers had sanctioned them as a useful expedient… They needed to control the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be aroused without myths and marvels.
~ Stabo (born: 58 BC died: 24 AD at age: 81) Greek geographer

Alternative explanations are always welcome in science, if they are better and explain more. Alternative explanations that explain nothing are not welcome… Note how science changed those beliefs when new data became available. Religions stick to the same ancient beliefs regardless of the data.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

Any attempt at understanding humanity must include an explanation of the hold that supernatural belief continues to have on most of the human race.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000 years ago.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

But, as we have seen, movement does not require a mover, and modern quantum mechanics has shown that not all effects require a cause. And even if they did, why would the Prime Mover need to be a supernatural anthropomorphic deity such as the Judaeo-Christian God? Why could it not just as well be the material universe itself?
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

In short, evolution is as close to being a scientific fact as is possible for any theory, given that science is open-ended and no one can predict with certainty what may change in the future. The prospect that evolution by natural selection, at least as a broad mechanism, will be overthrown in the future is about as likely as the prospect of finding out some day that the Earth is really flat. Unfortunately, those who regard these scientific facts as a threat to faith have chosen to distort and misrepresent them to the public.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

In the United States, the new creationist movement has convinced many people and their political servants that scientists are being unfair in not supporting the teaching of alternatives to evolution in science classes. They say it is censorship to exclude intelligent design from those classes. The usual argument raised against teaching intelligent design is that it unconstitutionally promotes religion. Design promoters, however, insist that they have no particular designer in mind. No one believes them, but skilled lawyers arguing for the cause of impartiality on their behalf could probably prevail in court. In any case, a better argument exists: Intelligent design theory, as currently formulated by its leading proponents, should not be taught in science classes because it is provably wrong.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

Is there a place in a church where you leave your brains when you enter?
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

Proof is not required to believe [in a god]. But some sign, some evidence is needed. None exists…. Find some inkling of evidence. There is none.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

Scientific evidence for God’s existence is being claimed today by theists, many of whom carry respectable scientific or philosophical credentials. ‘He’ who is neither a ‘she’ nor an ‘it’ supposedly answers prayers and otherwise dramatically affects the outcome of events. If these consequences are as significant as believers say, then the effects should be detectable in properly controlled experiments.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

Scientists have practical reasons for wishing that religion and science be kept separate. They can see nothing but trouble … if they venture into the deeply divisive issue of religion — especially when their results tend to support a highly unpopular, atheistic conclusion.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

The argument from design rests on the notion that everything, but God, must come from something. However, once you agree that it is logically possible for an entity to exist that was not itself created, namely God, then that entity can just as well be the universe itself. Indeed, this is a more economical possibility, not requiring the additional hypothesis of a supernatural power outside the universe… To [creationists], it is not a matter of logic anyway, but common sense. They see no way that the universe could have just happened, without intent. ‘How can something come from nothing?’ they continue to ask, never wondering how God came from nothing.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

The battle over the validity of evolution has been publicly posed as a scientific one. However, you will find little sign of it in scientific journals, where such quarrels as exist are over details, not the basic concept… Evolution has proved so useful as a paradigm for the origin and structure of life that it constitutes the foundation of the sciences of biology and medicine.
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

To most theistic believers, human life can have no meaning in a universe without God. Quite sincerely, and with understandable yearning for a meaning to their existence, they reject the possibility of no God. In their minds, only a purposeful universe based on God is possible and science can do nothing else but support this ‘truth.’
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

When people start using science to argue for their specific beliefs and delusions, to try to claim that they’re supported by science, then scientists at least have to speak up and say, ‘You’re welcome to your delusions, but don’t say that they’re supported by science.’
~ Victor Stenger (born: 1935-01-29 age: 74)

The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I so sparingly. By misuse I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction as if they knew what they were talking about. Or, they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying.
~ Eckhart Tolle (born: 1948-02-16 age: 61) The Power of Now

Whatever man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this — Great God, grant that twice two be not four.
~ Ivan Turgenev (born: 1818-11-09 died: 1883-09-03 at age: 64)

In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, ‘And the sun stood still… and hasted not to go down about a whole day’ Joshua 10:13 and ‘He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time’ Psalms 104:5 were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.
~ Alan Turing (born: 1912-06-23 died: 1954-06-07 at age: 41)

As for the dinosaur — But Noah’s conscience was easy; it was not named in his cargo list and he and the boys were not aware that there was such a creature. He said he could not blame himself for not knowing about the dinosaur, because it was an American animal, and America had not then been discovered.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

Faith is believing what you know isn’t so.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

I am plenty safe enough in his hands; I am not in any danger from that kind of a Deity. The one that I want to keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible. We (that one and I) could never respect each other, never get along together. I have met his superior a hundred times — in fact I amount to that myself.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious — unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

If there is a God, he is a malign thug.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

It is better to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

Man is a marvelous curiosity … he thinks he is the Creator’s pet … he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

No god and no religion can survive ridicule. No church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field and live.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness… It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light … by contrast.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of His colossal universe is proof that He is at least steadfast to His purposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as the affect man, being equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things, taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to live hereafter, he will be steadfast, just and fair toward us. We shall not need to require anything more.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things and yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy for us.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

‘In God We Trust.’ I don’t believe it would sound any better if it were true.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.
~ Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (born: 1958-10-05 age: 51)

The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there’s any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.
~ Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (born: 1958-10-05 age: 51)

UFO sightings are not higher among amateur astronomers than they are in the general public. In fact, they’re lower. You say, why is that so? Well, because we know what the hell we’re looking at!
~ Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (born: 1958-10-05 age: 51)

Whenever religion touches science, it gets burned. In the sixteen century astronomy, in the seventeenth microbiology, in the eighteenth geology and paleontology, in the nineteenth Darwin’s biology all grotesquely extended the world-frame and sent churchmen scurrying for cover in ever smaller, more shadowy nooks, little gloomy ambiguous caves in the psyche where even now neurology is cruelly harrying them, gouging them out from the multifolded brain like wood lice from under the woodpile. Barth had been right: totaliter aliter. Only by placing God totally on the other side of the humanly understandable can any final safety for Him be secured.
~ John Updike (born: 1932-03-18 died: 2009-01-27 at age: 76)

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.
~ Peter Ustinov (born: 1921-04-16 died: 2004-03-28 at age: 82)

I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84) At Home 1988

I’m a born-again atheist.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)

Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)

The great unmentionable evil at the centre of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are literally patriarchal, — God the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric bronze-age text known as the Old Testament, three antihuman religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the omnipotent father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)

The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn’t be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)

When the white race broke out of Europe 500 years ago, it did many astounding things all over the globe. Inspired by a raging sky-god, the whites were able to pretend that their conquests were in order to bring the One God to everyone, particularly those with older and subtler religions.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]

Nos prêtres ne sont pas qu’un vain peuple pense; Notre crédulité fait tout leur science.
Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]

Of all religions the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]

The deluding passions are inexhaustible.
I vow to extinguish them all.
Sentient beings are numberless.
I vow to save them all.
The truth is impossible to expound.
I vow to expound it.
The way of the Buddha is unattainable.
I vow to attain it.
~ vow of the Bodhisattvas

Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.
~ George Washington (born: 1732-02-22 died: 1799-12-14 at age: 67), first president of the United States, letter to Edward Newenham, 1792-10-20

"I have an understanding of who and what I am, which is a part of the earth. So that’s what I identify with, is the planet as a whole.

We come out of the earth and go back into the earth. What gives me great joy is knowing that everything around; rivers, mountains… is a part of my body.

Almost all theological thought is anthropocentric and I just cannot buy into the anthropocentric ideology. Basically we’re a bunch of conceited apes."
~ Captain Paul Watson (born: 1950-12-02 age: 58) environmentalist

If there is a God that has special plans for humans, then He has taken very great pains to hide His concern for us. To me it would seem impolite if not impious to bother such a God with our prayers.
~ Steven Weinberg (born: 1933-05-03 age: 76) Physicist and Nobel Laureate

A priest is a man vowed, trained, and consecrated, a man belonging to a special corps, and necessarily with an intense esprit de corps. He has given up his life to his temple and his god. This is a very excellent thing for the internal vigour of his own priesthood, his own temple. He lives and dies for the honour of his particular god. But in the next town or village is another temple with another god. It is his constant preoccupation to keep his people from that god. Religious cults and priesthoods are sectarian by nature; they will convert, they will overcome, but they will never coalesce.
~ H. G. Wells (born: 1866-09-21 died: 1946-08-13 at age: 79) The Outline of History page 215

Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.
~ H. G. Wells (born: 1866-09-21 died: 1946-08-13 at age: 79)

I do not believe I have any immortality. The greatest evil in the world today is the Christian religion
~ H. G. Wells (born: 1866-09-21 died: 1946-08-13 at age: 79)

I was indeed a prodigy of Early Impiety… There was a time when I believed in the story and the scheme of salvation, so far as I could understand it, just as there was a time when I believed there was a Devil… Suddenly the broke through to me and I knew this God was a lie… I sensed it was a silly story long before I dared to admit even to myself that it was a silly story. For indeed it is a silly story, and each generation nowadays swallows it with greater difficulty… Why do people go on pretending about this Christianity?
~ H. G. Wells (born: 1866-09-21 died: 1946-08-13 at age: 79) What Great Men Think of Religion

Indeed Christianity passes. Passes — it has gone! It has littered the beaches of life with churches, cathedrals, shrines and crucifixes, prejudices and intolerances, like the sea urchin and starfish and empty shells and lumps of stinging jelly upon the sands here after a tide. A tidal wave out of Egypt. And it has left a multitude of little wriggling theologians and confessors and apologists hopping and burrowing in the warm nutritious sand. But in the hearts of living men, what remains of it now? Doubtful scraps of Arianism. Phrases. Sentiments. Habits.
~ H. G. Wells (born: 1866-09-21 died: 1946-08-13 at age: 79) What Great Men Think of Religion

It is well known that the Athenians celebrated the allegorical giving of the flesh to eat of Ceres, the goddess of corn, and in like manner the giving his blood to drink by Bacchus, the god of wine.
~ Rev Dr. Richard B Westbrook 1890

As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
~ Alfred North Whitehead (born: 1861-02-15 died: 1947-12-30 at age: 86)

I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race… It would be impossible to imagine anything more un-Christianlike than theology.
~ Alfred North Whitehead (born: 1861-02-15 died: 1947-12-30 at age: 86)

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.
~ Alfred North Whitehead (born: 1861-02-15 died: 1947-12-30 at age: 86)

I want everyone out there in TV land to touch the TV. Touch the back of the TV and get a shock for Jesus.
~ Robin Williams (born: 1951-07-21 age: 58)

I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.
~ Virginia Woolf (born: 1882-01-25 died: 1941-03-28 at age: 59)

It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality.
~ Virginia Woolf (born: 1882-01-25 died: 1941-03-28 at age: 59)

If oxen and lions had hands and could paint with their hands and produce works of art, as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods likes horses and oxen like oxen. Each would represent them with bodies according to the bodies of each. So the Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians give theirs red hair and blue eyes.
~ Xenophanes of Kolophon (born: 570 BC died: 480 BC at age: 90) 530BC

Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
~ Émile Zola (born: 1840-04-02 died: 1902-09-29 at age: 62)

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