Many thoughtful quotes concerning religion and gods

"Creation is not taking place now, so far as can be observed. Therefore, it was accomplished sometime in the past, if at all, and thus is inaccessible to the scientific method." Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, (General edition, second edition, El Cajon, CA: Master, 1985), p. 5.
"It is impossible to devise a scientific experiment to describe the creation process, or even to ascertain whether such a process can take place. The Creator does not create at the whim of a scientist." Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, (General edition, second edition, El Cajon, CA: Master, 1985), p. 5.
"Another point important to recognize is that the creation was 'mature' from its birth. It did not have to grow or develop from simple beginnings. God formed it full-grown in every respect, including even Adam and Eve as mature individuals when they were first formed. The whole universe had an 'appearance of age' right from the start. It could not have been otherwise for true creation to have taken place. 'Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them' (Genesis 2:1)." Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism, (General edition, second edition, El Cajon, CA: Master, 1985), p. 210.
"Some of the state's witnesses suggested that the scientific community was 'closed-minded' on the subject of creationism and that explained the lack of acceptance of the creation-science arguments. Yet no witness produced an article for which publication had been refused." Judge William R. Overton, "Decision of the Court" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984),
"Although the ICR often emphasizes that it is the scientific nature of creationist theory which brings scientists to a belief in a supreme being, it is curious that they include a requirement for membership (the inerrancy of the Christian Bible) which effectively excludes Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and the majority of Christian sects (who do not accept a literal reading of all parts of the Bible) from membership. It is clear that the ICR, which is the most respected of creationist groups in its attempts to appear scientifically legitimate, is essentially an organization composed solely of Christian Fundamentalists." Kenneth R. Miller, "Scientific Creationism versus Evolution" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 22.
"The American creationist movement has entirely bypassed the scientific forum and has concentrated instead on political lobbying and on taking its case to a fair-minded electorate... The reason for this strategy is overwhelmingly apparent: no scientific case can be made for the theories they advance." Kenneth R. Miller, "Scientific Creationism versus Evolution" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 22.
"The fact of the matter is that the fossil record not only documents evolution, but that it was the fossil record itself which forced natural scientists to abandon their idea of the fixity of species and look instead for a plausible mechanism of change, a mechanism of evolution. The fossil record not only demonstrates evolution in extravagant detail, but it dashes all claims of the scientific creationists concerning the origin of living organisms." Kenneth R. Miller, "Scientific Creationism versus Evolution" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 22.
"The only Bible-honoring conclusion is, of course, that Genesis 1-11 is the actual historical truth, regardless of any scientific or chronologic problems thereby entailed." Henry M. Morris, Remarkable Birth, p. 82. Quoted in Kenneth R. Miller, "Scientific Creationism versus Evolution" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 56. (italics added)
"We do not know how the Creator created, [or] what processes He used, for he used processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe. This is why we refer to creation as special creation. We cannot discover by scientific investigation anything about the creative processes used by the Creator." Duane Gish, Evolution? The Fossils Say No!, 1985), p. 42.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered." Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 118.
"Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends (on the staircase model) are rife at the higher level of transitions within major groups." Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 124.
"In candid moments, leading creationists will admit that the miraculous character of origin and destruction precludes a scientific understanding. Morris writes (and Judge Overton quotes): 'God was there when it happened. We were not there . . . . Therefore, we are completely limited to what God has seen fit to tell us, and this information is in His written Word.'" Stephen Jay Gould, "Creationism: Genesis vs. Geology" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 130.
"Why don't we teach astrology in the schools? Astrology holds that the course of each human life is determined to a considerable degree by the position of the stars in the sky at the exact moment of the individual's birth. Belief in it, in one variant or another, has probably been held by most of the people on earth. Even today, some universities in India offer degrees in the subject. Yet American believers do not pressure boards of education to add their subject to the curriculum. If belivers in astrology became as well organized as the creationists, it is hard to see how their demands could be withstood." Garrett Hardin, "Marketing Deception as Truth" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 162.
"The probabilistic teleological argument exploits the idea that it is extremely improbable that the laws of the universe should be so balanced as to permit the development of life unless we adop the hypothesis that these laws were fixed by a creator who desired the development of life. The argument, however, faces the same kind of objection as the one we brought against the cosmological argument in the previous chapter: it takes a certain concept out of a context in which it is obviously applicable, and applies it to a context in which that concept is not applicable. In the case of the cosmological argument, the crucial concept is that of causation; in the case of the teleological argument, it is statistical probability. Neither argument carries conviction because we can plausibly deny that the concept in question can be extended to cover extraordinary contexts." Robin Le Poidevin, Arguing for Atheism, (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 57.
"If God is the basis of moral values, then such values must be objective, and we are, therefore, faced with the following questions: (1) How do we come to be aware of these moral values, if they exist entirely independently of us? (2) Why do moral facts supervene on natural facts? (3) How can the existence of objective moral values be reconciled with the existence of different conceptions of what is right? These difficulties are not faced by the atheist." Robin Le Poidevin, Arguing for Atheism, (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 85.
"If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic. So the onus of proof has to rest on the proposition [of theism]." Antony Flew, "The Presumption of Atheism" God, Freedom, and Immortality, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), p. 22.
"However far back we may be able to trace the -- so to speak -- internal history of the Universe, there can be no question of arguing that this or that external origin is either probable or improbable. We do not have, and we necessarily could not have, experience of other Universes to tell us that Universes, or Universes with these particular features, are the work of Gods, or of Gods of this or that particular sort." Antony Flew, "The Presumption of Atheism" God, Freedom, and Immortality, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), p. 51.
"Now, if anything at all can be known to be wrong, it seems to me to be unshakably certain that it would be wrong to make any sentient being suffer eternally for any offence whatever." Antony Flew, "The Presumption of Atheism" God, Freedom, and Immortality, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), p. 64.
"What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of, God?" Antony Flew, "The Presumption of Atheism" God, Freedom, and Immortality, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), p. 74.
"If you look up 'atheism' in a dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and this is not what the term means if one consider it from the point of view of its Greek roots. In Greek 'a' means 'without' or 'not' and 'theos' means 'god.' From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative view, characterized by the absence of belief in God." Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 463.
"Could it not be said that it is improbable that we would have a universe in which life arose anywhere? One answer that might be given is that we do not know whether it is improbable or not. Judgments about a priori probabilities in such cases are arbitrary, and we have no evidence in this case of any relevant empirical probabilities." Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 132.
"Religious experiences are like those induced by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, and sleep deprivation: They tell no uniform or coherent story, and there is no plausible theory to account for discrepancies among them." Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 159.
"Religious experiences in one culture often conflict with those in another. One cannot accept all of them as veridical, yet there does not seem to be any way to separate the veridical experiences from the rest." Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 159.
"Since experiences of God are good grounds for the existence of God, are not experiences of the absence of God good grounds for the nonexistence of God? After all, many people have tried to experience God and have failed. Cannot these experiences of the absence of God be used by atheists to counter the theistic argument based on experience of the presence of God?" Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 159.
C.S. "Lewis is certainly right to suppose that in considering the question of whether miracles exist there is a danger that one will appear to a priori arguments and assumptions. But the solution to this problem is not to decide on naturalism or supernaturalism beforehand. Rather, one must attempt to reject the a priori arguments and instead base one's position on inductive considerations. Lewis has not shown that this is impossible. Thus he has not shown that one must choose between naturalism and supernaturalism before investigating the possibility of miracles." Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 193.
"God does not exist if Big Bang cosmology, or some relevantly similar theory, is true. If this cosmology is true, our universe exists without cause and without explanation. There are numerous possible universes, and there is possibly no universe at all, and there is no reason why this one is actual rather than some other one or none at all. Now the theistically alleged human need for a reason for existence, and other alleged needs, are unsatisfied. But I suggest that humans do or can possess a deeper level of experience than such anthropocentric despairs. We can forget about ourselves for a moment and open ourselves up to the startling impingement of reality itself. We can let ourselves become profoundly astonished by the fact that this universe exists at all." Quentin Smith in William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) ,p. 216.
"I wonder how appropriate it is to try to 'argue someone into the kingdom.' Many apologists hotly deny any such charge, but I don't believe them. The tenor of almost all apologetics literature makes it plain that this is their intent." Robert M. Price, Beyond Born Again, p. 63.
"What suggests to non-Evangelical scholars that the resurrection narratives contain legendary accounts? First there is a variety of apparent contradictions in the stories which in any ancient narrative would have to arouse the historian's suspicion." Robert M. Price, Beyond Born Again, p. 75.
"The very admission of the need to harmonize is an admission that the burden of proof is on the narratives, not on those who doubt them. What harmonizing shows is that despite appearances, the texts still might be true." Robert M. Price, Beyond Born Again, p. 75.
"A critic may reject some miracle stories as legendary, and not others, with no inconsistency at all for the simple reason that even if one holds miracles to be possible, one need not hold legends to be impossible! There are other factors, literary and historiographical ones, that might lead a critic to conclude that even though miracles can happen, it does not appear that in this or that case they did." Robert M. Price, Beyond Born Again, p. 116.
"If, when we compare two versions of a story, the second known to be a retelling of the first, and find that the second has more of a miraculous element, we may reasonably conclude we have legendary (or midrashic or whatever) embellishment. The tale has grown in the telling. This sort of comparison is common in extrabiblical research and no one holds that it cannot properly indicate legend formation there. When biblical scholars apply the same method to the Bible it in no way implies a wholesale rejection of miracles." Robert M. Price, Beyond Born Again, p. 118.
"But the argument is still unsound, because the first premise is false: there are other unmentioned alternatives, for example, that Jesus as described in the gospels is a legendary figure, so that the trilemma is false as it stands." William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, (Revised edition, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), p. 39.
"What, then, should be our approach in apologetics? It should be something like this: 'My friend, I know Christianity is true because God's Spirit lives in me and assures me that it is true. And you can know it is true, too, because God is knocking at the door of your heart, telling you the same thing. If you are sincerely seeking God, then God will give you assurance that the gospel is true. Now, to try to show you it's true, I'll share with you some arguments and evidence that I really find convincing. But should my arguments seem weak and unconvincing to you, that's my fault, not God's. It only shows that I'm a poor apologist, not that the gospel is untrue. Whatever you think of my arguments, God still loves you and holds you accountable. I'll do my best to present good arguments to you. But ultimately you have to deal, not with arguments, but with God himself.'" William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, (Revised edition, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), p. 48.
"Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God." William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, (Revised edition, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), pp. 35-36.
"Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa." William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, (Revised edition, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), p. 36.
"The Bible says all men are without excuse. Even those who are given no good reason to believe and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve have no excuse, because the ultimate reason they do not believe is that they have deliberately rejected God's Holy Spirit." William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, (Revised edition, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994), p. 37.
"If we trust the author, either of the Gospel or of the early tradition, then even a non-saying may be historically illuminating about the primary Jesus: this was what a primary source, perhaps even a close one, thought that he meant. But how do we distinguish between what Jesus did mean, what an early close acquaintance thought that he meant and what later Christians claimed that he had said?" Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, (New York: Vintage, 1993), p. 203.
"The same standards apply to heathen evidence as to biblica. Is it based on a primary source? Is it biased, ambiguous or simply wrong? Relevant evidence is extremely scarce; what, if anything, does silence imply? In the early parts of the Bible's story, biblical persons have yet to be identified correctly in any external sources. There have been many attempts, and some confident claims, but as yet there is no good reason to identify Moses or Joseph with any known person or period in ancient Egyptian records." Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, (New York: Vintage, 1993), p. 252.
"A major function of fundamentalist religion is to bolster deeply insecure and fearful people. This is done by justifying a way of life with all of its defining prejudices. It thereby provides an appropriate and legitimate outlet for one's anger. The authority of an inerrant Bible that can be readily quoted to buttress this point of view becomes an essential ingredient to such a life. When that Bible is challenged, or relativized, the resulting anger proves the point categorically." Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism, (San Fransisco: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 5.
"What the mind cannot cannot believe the heart can finally never adore." Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism, (San Fransisco: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 24.
"Today Christianity has been so important for so long that one is apt to assume that it must have appeared important to educated pagans who lived AD 50-150; and that if they fail to discuss Jesus' historicity or the pretensions of his worshippers, their silence must be attributed to their consciousness that they were unable to deny the truth of the Christian case. In fact, however, there is no reason why the pagan writers of this period should have thought Christianity any more important than other enthusiastic religions of the Empire." G.A. Wells, Did Jesus Exist? (Revised edition, London: Pemberton, 1986), p. 15.
"Whether the 'Christ' they worshipped had been on earth as a man will have been of no interest either to him [Pliny] or to Trajan. What worried them was that Christians were holding meetings which, because of Christian unwillingness to make due obeisance to the emperor, might have been seditious, they were not concerned about whether there was any historical basis to Christian doctrinal niceties." G.A. Wells, The Jesus Legend (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), p. 41.
"I would ask whose historicity was questioned in antiquity, when both pagan historians and Christian Fathers accepted pagan saviour gods as historical personages? (Herodotus says Attis was the son of a king of Lydia and that Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, was a ruler of Egypt. Clement of Alexandria regarded pagan saviour gods as 'mere men' and Firmicus Maternus called Osiris and Typhon 'without doubt' kings of Egypt). Can one expect much in the way of critical scepticism when, even in modern times, Wilhelm Till long passed as a real person?" G.A. Wells, The Jesus Legend (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), p. 47.
"The eight Pauline letters I have accepted as genuine [Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon, and Colossians] are so completely silent concerning the events that were later recorded in the gospels as to suggest that these events were not known to Paul, who, however, could not have been ignorant of them if they had really occurred." G.A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 22.
All of the "extant post-Pauline epistles of the New Testament which are likely to have been written before the end of the first century (and probably before 90) refer to Jesus in essentially the same manner as Paul does. They stress one or more of his supernatural aspects -- his existence before his life on earth, his resurrection and second coming - - but say nothing of the teachings or miracles ascribed to him in the gospels, and give no historical setting to the crucifixion, which remains the one episode in his incarnate life unambiguously mentioned, at least in some of them." G.A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 47.
"The silence of the early material about so much of what Jesus (according to the later material) said and did, is widely admitted to be something of a problem. Of course, silence does not always imply ignorance. But a book on transport in Cologne which, though written after 1965, made no reference to an undergound railway, might reasonably be presumed to have been written in ignorance of the undergound then constructed there. In other words, silence on a topic is significant if this silence if this silence extends to matters obviously relevant to what the writer has chosen to discuss." G.A. Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 218.
"Fantasy and precision go together, and fantasy stands there with the air of an eyewitness. Fantasy fills in all of knowledge's gaps, and not with coarse strokes but with the fine touches of a miniaturist. Witnesses often know more about an episode twenty years later than they did immediately afterward. So whenever we find precise details, a certain amount of caution is always called for. It might be mere fantasy. The exactitude of the eyewitness and that of fantasy are hard to tell apart." Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Putting Away Childish Things (San Fransisco: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 92.
"When Christianity gained control of the Roman Empire it suppressed the writings of its critics and even cast them into flames." Robert L. Wilken, The Christians As the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale, 1984), p. xii.
"The question of the mythological and legendary character of the Gospels did not first arise in modern times. The historical reliability of the accounts of Jesus' life was already an issue for Christian thinkers in the second century." Robert L. Wilken, The Christians As the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale, 1984), p. 112.
"Why were these texts buried -- and why have they remained virtually unknown for nearly 2,000 years? Their suppression as banned documents, and their burial on the cliff at Nag Hammadi, it turns out, were both part of a struggle critical for the formation of early Christianity. The Nag Hammadi texts, and others like them, which circulated at the beginning of the Christian era, were denounced as heresy by orthodox Christians in the middle of the second century. We have long known that many early followers of Christ were condemned by other Christians as heretics, but nearly all we knew about them came from what their opponents wrote attacking them." Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. xviii.
"Possession of books denounced as heretical was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were burned and destroyed. But in Upper Egypt, someone, possibly a monk from a nearby monastery of St Pachomius, took the banned books and hid them from destruction -- in the jar where they remained buried for almost 1,600 years." Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (New York: Vintage, 1989), pp. xviii-xix.
"Contemporary Christianity, diverse and complex as we find it, actually may show more unanimity than the Christian churches of the first and second centuries. For nearly all Christians since that time, Catholics, Protestants, or Orthodox, have shared three basic premises. First, they accept the canon of the New Testament; second, they confess the apostolic creed; and third, they affirm specific forms of church institution. But every one of these -- the canon of Scripture, the creed, and the institutional structure -- emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century." Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (New York: Vintage, 1989), pp. xxii-xxiii.
"The efforts of the majority to destroy every trace of heretical 'blasphemy' proved so successful that, until the discoveries at Nag Hammadi, nearly all our information concerning alternative forms of early Christianity came from the massive orthodox attacks upon them." Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (New York: Vintage, 1989), pp. xxiv.
"Why did the consensus of Christian churches not only accept these astonishing views but establish them as the only true form of Christian doctrine? . . . these religious debates -- questions of the nature of God, or of Christ -- simultaneously bear social and political implications that are crucial to the development of Christianity as an institutional religion. In simplest terms, ideas which bear implications contrary to that development come to be labeled as 'heresy'; ideas which implicitly support it become 'orthodox.'" Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (New York: Vintage, 1989), pp. xxxvi.
"If the New Testament accounts could support a range of interpretations, why did orthodox Christians in the second century insist on a literal view of resurrection and reject all others as heretical? . . . [W]hen we examine its practical effect on the Christian movement, we can see, paradoxically, that the doctrine of bodily resurrection also serves an essential political function: it legitimizes the authority of certain men who claim to exercise leadership over the churches as the successors of the apostle Peter. From the second century, the doctrine has served to validate the apostolic succession of bishops, the basis of papal authority to this day. Gnostic Christians who interpret resurrection in other ways have a lesser claim to authority: when they claim priority over the orthodox, they are denounced as heretics." Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, (New York: Vintage, 1989), pp. 7.
"The historian, who can take no cognizance of his miraculous birth to the Virgin Mary, has to conclude that his father was Joseph, the son of Jacob (or Heli)." Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (New York: Collier, 1977), p. 171.
"But before we consider the Gospels individually, two further special difficulties have to be mentioned. First they cannot be checked effectively from other sources. The assistance provided by pagan literature, in particular, is meagre indeed. References to the Christians in Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the younger are a good deal later, and in any case they throw little or no light on the life of Jesus himself. The Jewish evidence, too, notably in the Talmud, comes from a subsequent period, and some of the Talmud passages are based on Christian sources, so that they carry no independent weight." Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (New York: Collier, 1977), p. 183.
"Roman sources that mention him [Jesus] are all dependent on Christian reports. Jesus' trial did not make headlines in Rome, and the archives there had no record of it. If archives were kept in Jerusalem, they were destroyed when revolt broke out in 66 CE or during the subsequent war. That war also devastated Galilee. Whatever records there may have been did not survive. When he was executed, Jesus was no more important to the outside world than the two brigands or insurgents executed with him -- whose name we do not know." E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 49.
"But knowledge of Jesus was limited to knowledge of Christianity; that is, had Jesus' adherents not started a movement that spread to Rome, Jesus would not have made it into Roman histories at all. The consequence is that we do not have what we would very much like, a comment in Tacitus or another Gentile writer that offers independent evidence about Jesus, his life and his death." E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 50.
"It is true, of course, that the phrase 'separation of church and state' does not appear in the Constitution. But it was inevitable that some convenient term should come into existence to verbalize a principle so clearly and widely held by the American people.... [T]he right to a fair trial is generally accepted to be a constitutional principle; yet the term "fair trial" is not found in the Constitution. To bring the point even closer home, who would deny that "religious liberty" is a constitutional principle? Yet that phrase too is not in the Constitution. The universal acceptance which all these terms, including "separation of church and state," have received in America would seem to confirm rather than disparage their reality as basic American democratic principles." Leo Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom (Beacon Press: Boston, 1967).
"Jefferson's Danbury letter has been cited favorably by the Supreme Court many times. In its 1879 Reynolds vs. U.S. decision the high court said Jefferson's observations 'may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment.' In the court's 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision, Justice Hugo Black wrote, 'In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state.' It is only in recent times that separation has come under attack by judges in the federal court system who oppose separation of church and state." Robert Boston, Why The Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church & State (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 221
The statement that Thomas Jefferson meant his "wall of separation" to be "one-directional," only to protect the church from incursions by the state "is an example of one of the Religious Right's more blatant lies. It is impossible to determine where this myth originated, but we do know that it began appearing with increasing frequency in the early 1990s. The phrase 'one-directional' often appears in quotation marks to make it appear as if it were lifted from a letter or personal writing of Jefferson's. "Of course, Jefferson said no such thing about his 'wall,' as any of his biographers or church-state historians will readily testify. Jefferson's writings indicate beyond a doubt that he believed separation would protect both church and state." Robert Boston, Why The Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church & State (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 222.
"Since Jefferson coined the phrase 'wall of separation between church and state' in 1802, a full 145 years before the Soviet provision was written, it is obviously incorrect to suggest that the Soviets pioneered the separation principle. If anything, the Soviets stole the concept from the United States. In any case, what the Soviet constitution said about religious freedom has no bearing on U.S. constitutional provisions. The Soviet document also guaranteed free speech (at least on paper), but no one has labeled freedom of expression a Communist idea." Robert Boston, Why The Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church & State (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 222-23.
"The Framers wrote the Constitution as a secular documet not because they were hostile to Christianity but because they did not want to imply that the new federal government would have any authority to meddle in religion." Robert Boston, Why The Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church & State (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 223-24.
"Although Murray O-Hair did play an important role in this controversy [government-led prayer in public schools], she did not 'single-handedly' remove state-sponsored religious exercises from public schools. Other people were involved. Today the controversial Texas atheist serves as a convenient villain for Religious Right propagandists who hate religious liberty and church-state separation." Robert Boston, Why The Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church & State (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 227.
"In a footnote to the Supreme Court's 1961 Torcaso v. Watkins decisions, Justice Hugo Black wrote, 'Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God is Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others.' The Torcaso case dealt with religious tests for public office; it has nothing to do with public schools. The justice's comment is far from a finding that humanism is being taught in the schools." Robert Boston, Why The Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church & State (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 229-30.
"The Christian religion cannot be believed without a miracle by any reasonable person." J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 12.
Theism's "continuing hold on the minds of many reasonable people is surprising enough to count as a miracle in at least the original sense." J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 12.
"The theistic hypothesis does not differentially explain specific phenomena in the way that successful scientific theories do: it does not explain why we have these phenomena rather than others." J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 138.
"As Darwin so convincingly argued, there are many details which his hypothesis explains while that of special creation does not." J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 140.
"From a neutral point of view all that is true is that conditions have been right for life far less often than they have been wrong, so their being right once can well be ascribed to chance, and not seen as calling for any further explanation." J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 141.
"Freethought is respectable. Freethought is crucial. Freethought needs to be publicized." Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 70.
"I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief." Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 87.
"Freethinkers reject faith as a valid tool of knowledge. Faith is the opposite of reason because reason imposes very strict limits on what can be true, and faith has no limits at all. A Great Escape into faith is no retreat to safety. It is nothing less than surrender." Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 103.
"The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever believed Christian notions." Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 106.
"If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?" Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 108.
"To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance. That implies that everyone else (such as the opposing football team, driver, student, parent) is de-selected, unfavored by God, and that I am special, above it all." Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 109.
"Some theists, observing that all 'effects' need a cause, assert that God is a cause but not an effect. But no one has ever observed an uncaused cause and simply inventing one merely assumes what the argument wishes to prove." Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 109.
"I have an Easter challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day that their most important doctrine was born." Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 178.
"Even if it is true that all cultures share a common morality, why does this prove a supreme intelligence? After all, don't we humanists sometimes claim that there is a common thread of humanistic values running through history across cultural and religious lines?" Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 109.
"The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural,Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible." Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1992), p. 109.
"There is no religious experience which guarantees that our experience is an experience of God. This can be asserted without for a moment doubting that some people have religious experiences. The psychological reality of such experience is one thing, that these experiences are actually experiences of God is another." Kai Nielsen, Philosophy and Atheism (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1985) p. 46.
"If the evidence supports the historical accuracy of the gospels, where is the need for faith? And if the historical reliability of the gospels is so obvious, why have so many scholars failed to appreciate the incontestable nature of the evidence?" Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Fransisco: Polebridge Press, 1996), p. 50.
"Such an act can be neither verified (nor falsified) on the basis of empirical data, by facts established by historical investigation. His death as redepmtive event was not an act visible to the disinterested observer. All such mythological acts lie outside the purview of the empirical sciences and hence of the historian." Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Fransisco: Polebridge Press, 1996), p. 51.
"As historians we are not obliged to take anybody's word for anything; we must attempt to verify every scrap of information we decide to use in our reconstructions. That an involves an assessment of the proclivities of our sources along with an evaluation of the sources from which they got their information." Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Fransisco: Polebridge Press, 1996), p. 58.
"Particulars are established by attempting to verify each item, either by the confirmation of independent sources or by comparative evidence." Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Fransisco: Polebridge Press, 1996), p. 60.
"To the amateur, however, to grant that something is possible is immediately taken as verification of a canonical report. For the skeptic, on the other hand, walking on the water is impossible; therefore Jesus did not do it. The historian accedes to neither generalization. Possibilities (and impossibilities) do not and cannot establish facts. Historians insist on looking every report in the face and judging its reliability independently of theoretical possibilities." Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Fransisco: Polebridge Press, 1996), pp. 60-61.
"We now know that where Matthew and Luke overlap with Mark, their reports do not constitute independent sources for those events." Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Fransisco: Polebridge Press, 1996), p. 61.
"Ralph Reed likes to quote Alexis de Tocqueville on religion's central place in American democratic society. The quotations are not always accurate, but he is right about one important thing. Tocqueville, like Benjamin Franklin, believed that religion is essential to the health of republican liberty. However, Reed apparently closed the pages of Democracy in America too soon. Had he read further, he would not have missed Tocqueville's point that it is dangerous for religion to tie itself to political institutions and to topical political controversy." Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 21.
"The principal framers of the American political system wanted no religious parties in national politics. They crafted a constitutional order that intended to make a person's religious convictions, or his lack of religious convictions, irrelevant in judging the value of his political opinion or in assessing his qualifications to hold political office." Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 23.
"So succesful were the drafters of the Constitution in defining government in secular terms that one of the most powerful criticisms of the Constitution when ratified and for succeeding decades was that it was indifferent to Christianity and God. It was denounced by many as a godless document, which is precisely what it is." Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 23.
"The people with the best reason to attack Pat Robertson are devout Christians who care about the credibility of their faith. They object to the partisan uses he has sought to make of the passion of Christ. But not one of them worthy of respect, and especially not the Pentecostal faith where Robertson began, would trivialize the agony and suffering of its redemptive God into campaign slogans for politicians. Faith, to be blunt, is irrelevant to many of the political causes that Robertson has forcefully championed. Not to all of them, and we shall come to those issues. What needs emphasis now is the fact that Robertson's self-declared war to save the soul of America is not with secular humanists, as he says. It is with other Christians. Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 155. (italics added)
"Yet Robertson fails to follow up the implications of what he has written about moral decline. If Americans are Christian -- in fact, if they are by dint of church membership more Christian than they were a hundred years ago, and vastly more Christian than they were in the eighteenth century -- then how do we explain the decline of religiously based morality?" Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), pp. 155-56.
"If anything is unconstitutional, it is government encouragement to pray in the public schools. Moreover, the proposed constitutional amendment to allow voluntary prayer is offensive on two counts. First, it violates explicitly the intended secular base of the Constitution. And far worse, it encourages the political use of religion in a way that allows elected officials to evade their real responsibilities and to claim for themselves a moral high ground that they too often have done nothing to earn." Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 165.
Biblical higher criticism "is preserved in the particular enclave of academic Christian scholarship and is thought to be too unfruitful to share with the average pew-sitter, for it raises more questions than the church can adequately answer. So the leaders of the church would protect the simple believers from concepts they were not trained to understand. In this way that ever-widening gap between academic Christians and the average pew-sitter made its first appearance." Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 12.
"At its very core the story of Easter has nothing to do with angelic announcements or empty tombs. It has nothing to do with time periods, whether three days, forty days, or fifty days. It has nothing to do with resuscitated bodies that appear and disappear or that finally exit this world in a heavenly ascension." Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 12.
"Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long- range future of anyone." Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 99.
"I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter." Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 237.
"If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable." Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 238.
"We may have faith in something, about something, even faith in spite of evidence for something, but if there is nothing existing in the first place to have faith about then the act of faith is not only ungrounded but completely misplaced and without content. Faith of itself does not provide supporting evidence for anything. It does provide such things as pyschological reassurances and attitudes to be taken towards things. It may provide perspectives from which to relate to events and people. But faith that Creation Ex Nihilo does take place cannot be had. There is nothing there in the first place to have faith in. If the attitude of faith is a supporting ground for the validity of an idea, then by the same token one can by faith give supporting ground to any notion whatever. By an act of faith God could be said not to Create Ex Nihilo, but He is Co-Eternal with the Universe. By an act of faith it could be said that God does not exist, or that many Gods exist, or that God isn't here yet, or that God passed out of existence many years ago. Unguarded, both the appeal to mystery and the appeal to faith tend to become arguments from ignorance or arguments to ease the burden of something unknown or unacceptable." Peter A. Angeles, The Problem of God: A Short Introduction (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 66.
"The phrase 'the child should cheat' means that genes that tend to make children cheat have an advantage in the gene pool. If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature." Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 139.
"What is it about the idea of a god that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment? The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The 'everlasting arms' hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor's placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture." Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 193.
"Blind faith can justify anything. In a man believes in a different god, or even if he uses a different ritual for worshipping the same god, blind faith can decree that he should die - on the cross, at the stake, skewered on a Crusader's sword, shot in a Beirut street, or blown up in a bar in Belfast. Memes for blind faith have their own ruthless ways of propagating themselves. This is true of patriotic and political as well as religious blind faith." Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 198.
"But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something -- it doesn't matter what -- in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that 'evolution itself is a matter of faith' so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence." Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 198.
"Faith cannot move mountains (though generations of children are solemnly told the contrary and believe it). But it is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness. It leads people to believe in whatever it is so strongly that in extreme cases they are prepared to kill and to die for it without the need for further justification." Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 198.
"Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb." Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 330-331.
"If such a God did exist, he could not be a beneficient God, such as the Christians posit. What effrontery is it that talks about the mercy and goodness of a nature in which all animals devour animals, in which every mouth is a slaughter-house and every stomach a tomb!" E.M. McDonald, "Design Argument Fallacies" An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 90.
"If, when we perceive results similar to those that might be due to a wise man, we conclude that they have been produced by a being similar to a wise man, then, when we see results similar to those that might be due an idiot, shall we not conclude that they have been produced by an idiot?" E.M. McDonald, "Design Argument Fallacies" An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 91.
"If Christ rose at all, he rose on the very day on which he was buried. According to Matthew, a guard of Roman soldiers was placed at the entrance of the sepulchre to watch that no dead person came out, and that no living person went in. But Matthew admits that one night had passed before the guard was placed at the door of Roman militarism, with its unbending and inexorable discipline, does not need to be assured that the smartest corpse that was ever laid in a tomb would not be able to pass a Roman guard without being reduced to the kind of corpse that does not require a sealed stone and a squadron of soldiers to keep it from rising. If Christ rose at all, he rose before the soldiers walked sentry in front of his tomb; in other words, he rose on the very night of the very day he was placed in the tomb." W.S. Ross, "Did Jesus Christ Rise from the Dead?" An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 210.
"The story of the Roman soldiers falling alseep is too feeble and clumsy to merit serious refutation; and that the soldiers were bribed to say they slept is, if possible, more preposterous still. The penalty while doing sentry work would be death, and it requires a rather liberal bribe to induce a man to offer himself for instant execution. If there be any such bravo on record, I have not heard of him, and I cannot quite see what use the bribe for which he gave his life would be to him, even if he took it with him into his coffin." W.S. Ross, "Did Jesus Christ Rise from the Dead?" An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 210.
"The most extraordinary Roman soldiers that Rome ever heard of were those soldiers that were set to watch the tomb of Jesus. They managed to fall asleep simultaneously in order to allow Jesus to pass unseen, and when they awoke, for a bribe they deliberately committed suicide by admitting that they had slept -- an admission that meant instant execution. Was ever invention so stupidly desparate and medacity so reckleslly absurd as that invention and that mendacity upon which rests the story of the Resurrection, upon which the whole fabric of the CHristian faith has elected to stand or fall? The basis is too puerile to support a story told by an idiot for the purpose of imposing upon a fool." W.S. Ross, "Did Jesus Christ Rise from the Dead?" An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 211.
"It would require higher authority than that of Christ and his biographers to convince any classical scholar that he escaped from the tomb after the Roman guard had been set. That every soldier on the vigil slept at his post is one of the most incredible of the incredible statements we are expected to believe in order to be 'saved.'" W.S. Ross, "Did Jesus Christ Rise from the Dead?" An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 211.
"If it were desirable upon the part of God to send his son to save the world from eternal perdition, why was it that, when he did arrive, so many nations were kept in ignorance of his mission? Even the Jews, God's chosen people, had no knowledge than an incarnate deity was to expire on the Cross. If the regeneration of the world had been the object of Christ, would it not have been better, instead of ascending to heaven, for him to have remained on earth, teaching practical truths, and showing by his own personal example how the world could be rescued from that moral and intellectual darkness and despair to which it had been reduced by the influence of a degrading theology?" Charles Watts, "The Death of Christ" An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 217.
"It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief" An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (ed. Gordon Stein, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1980), p. 282.
"If Jesus is the answer, then what was the question?" Jeffery Jay Lowder
And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"
They replied,"You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed."
And Jesus replied, "What?
Any belief worth having must survive doubt.
"I think I'll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don't believe in Gosh too, you'll be darned to heck."
If there were an afterlife, Isaac Asimov would have written a book about it by now.
Evolution is both fact and theory. Creationism is neither.
Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely; God is all-powerful. Draw your own conclusions
Theists think all gods but theirs are false. Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one.
"If the fundamentalists are right, then all the cool people are in Hell!" Jeffery Jay Lowder
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
freethinker n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief.
May theists be shaved with Ockham's Razor!
If Jesus loves me, why doesn't he ever send me flowers?
It's your god. They're your rules. *You* go to hell.
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." The Wise Man Says it to the World.
Man created God in his own image.
"If god doesn't like the way I live, Let him tell me, not you." [As seen on a button]
"If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!" [Clark Adams]
"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank." [Woody Allen]
"Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends." [Woody Allen]
"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition." [Woody Allen]
"As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on." [Woody Allen]
"A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect. "he" becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all- knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified." [Karen Armstrong, _A History of God_, pg. 383, speaking on Paul Tillich]
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." [Isaac Asimov]
"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka" and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!" [Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"]
"In fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation Man came up with for *anything* until about 1926 was stupid." [Dave Barry]
"Dear God. We paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing." [Bart Simpson saying grace]
"Marge, have you ever actually sat down and read this thing? Technically, we're not even allowed to go to the bathroom." [Priest on "The Simpson's"]
Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. [Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary]
Infidel: In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. [Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American author]
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." [First Amendment, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution]
"No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion." [Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]
"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and state.'" [Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]
"The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach." [Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947),last words]
"The manifest object of the men who framed the institutions of this country, was to have a _State without religion_, and a _Church without politics_ -- that is to say, they meant that one should never be used as an engine for any purpose of the other, and that no man's rights in one should be tested by his opinions about the other. As the Church takes no note of men's political differences, so the State looks with equal eye on all the modes of religious faith. ... Our fathers seem to have been perfectly sincere in their belief that the members of the Church would be more patriotic, and the citizens of the State more religious, by keeping their respective functions entirely separate." [Chief Justice of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Jeremiah S. Black, from a 1856 speech on religious liberty]
"The Boy Scouts of America maintain that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing his obligation to God." [Boy Scouts of America, statement on membership form]
"The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship..." [Boy Scouts of America policy, 1970]
"...Any organization could profit from a 10-year-old member with enough strength of character to refuse to swear falsely." [New York Times editorial, 12/12/93, on the Boy Scouts' refusing membership to Mark Welsh, who would not sign a religious oath]
"If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little Electric Chairs around their necks instead of crosses" [Lenny Bruce]
"No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." [Republican Presidential Nominee George Bush]
"Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?" [John Calvin, citing Ps. 93:1 in his Commentary on Genesis]
"The night of December 25, to which date the Nativity of Christ was ultimately assigned, was exactly that of the birth of the Persian savior Mithra, who, as an incarnation of eternal light, was born the night of the winter solstice (then dated December 25) at midnight, the instant of the turn of the year from increasing darkness to light." [Joseph Campbell, _The Mythic Image_, Bollingen Series C, Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 33]
"I don't believe in god because I don't believe in Mother Goose." [Clarence Darrow, speech, Toronto, 1930]
"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of." [Clarence Darrow]
"The fact that there is a general belief in a future life is no evidence of its truth." [Clarence Darrow]
"Even many of those who claim to believe in immortality still tell themselves and others that neither side of the question is susceptible of proof. Just what can these hopeful ones believe that the word "proof" involves? The evidence against the persistence of personal consciousness is as strong as the the evidence for gravitation, and much more obvious. It is as convincing and unassailable as the proof of the destruction of wood or coal by fire. If it is not certain that death ends personal identity and memory, then almost nothing that man accepts as true is susceptible as proof." [Clarence Darrow, "The Myth of Immortality"]
"In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality." [Clarence Darrow, The Sign, May 1938]
"On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation..." [Charles Darwin]
"I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine." [Charles Darwin]
"And it's not just faith itself: it's the idea that faith is a virtue and the less evidence there is, the more virtuous it is. You can actually quote, well, Tertullian for example: "It is certain because it is impossible." Sir Thomas Brown, actually seeking for more difficult things to believe, because things for which there is mere evidence are just too easy, and it's no test of his faith. In order to have a test of your faith, you must be asked to believe really daft things like the transubstantiation, you know, the blood of Christ turning into wine, and stuff... That is so manifestly absurd that you've got to be a really great believer, in the class of the Electric Monk, in order to believe it..... You're actually showing off your believing credentials by the ability to believe something like that... If it were an easy thing to believe, substantiated by facts, then it wouldn't be any great achievement." [Richard Dawkins, interview with Douglas Adams]
"To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature." [Diderot]
"Christian Science repudiates the evidences of the senses and rests upon the supremacy of God. Christian healing . . . places no faith in hygiene or drugs; it reposes all faith in mind, in spiritual power divinely directed." [Mary Baker Eddy, on Christian Science "healing"]
"My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it." [Thomas Edison, "Do We Live Again?"]
"All Bibles are man-made." [Thomas Edison]
"So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk." [Thomas Edison]
"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God." [Thomas Alva Edison, "Columbian Magazine"]
"I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States." [Thomas Edison]
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." [Albert Einstein,_The World as I See It_]
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." [Albert Einstein]
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." [Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930]
"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: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.]
"The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action." [Albert Einstein]
"God does not play dice with the universe." [Albert Einstein, on quantum mechanics]
"If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing" [Anatole France]
"I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use." [Galileo]
"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." [Galileo Galilei]
"They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit..." [Galileo Galilei, 1615]
"The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith." [Catholic Church's decision against Galileo Galilei]
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations." [Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]
"To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover." [Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]
"It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment." [Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]
"It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved." [Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]
"Having been admonished by this Holy Office [the Inquisition] entirely to abandon the false opinion that the Sun was the center of the universe and immovable, and that the Earth was not the center of the same and that it moved... I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church." [Galileo Galilei, Recantation, 22 June 1633]
"If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion." [Edmond and Jules de Goncourt]
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise?" [Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer"]
"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents." [Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186]
"In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms." [Stephen J. Gould]
"When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown." [Stephen Jay Gould]
"Why should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church which he despises should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can the apologists for the church exemption answer it? [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"The churches beg -- and if we don't give them money, why, they take it anyway, forcibly, by means of this unjust state tax exemption." [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"The churches can well afford to pay fair taxation. But supposing they couldn't. Would not that be a very significant evidence that the churches were not really wanted?" [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"How can a preacher talk with a straight face about political graft? He is, himself, profiting by one of the most notorious political grafts in this country." [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"Why should the residence of a preacher be untaxed? Useful citizens must pay taxes on their homes. Yet the Preacher -- actually and notoriously the least useful member of the community -- lives in a tax-free dwelling." [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"Would you tax God?" asks a defender of church tax exemption. Well, if there were a God he should be able to pay his own way and support his own business. If not, then he should do like other business men and close up shop." [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"Church tax exemption means that we all drop our money in the collection boxes, whether we go to church or not and whether we are interested in the church or not. It is systematic and complete robbery, from which none of us escapes." [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"It is an absurd fiction that the churches are useful. They are nothing more than propaganda centers for superstitious faiths and doctrines. Church members have a right to believe in and propagate their various doctrines. But they should pay every item of the cost, of this propaganda, including fair taxation for all church property." [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"There can be no perfect freedom unless the church and state are separated. But the church and state are not separated in America so long as the state grants a subsidy to the church in the form of tax exemption." [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"Is a church too small and too poor to pay taxes? That means that not enough people want the church seriously enough to pay for its upkeep. Then, why should such a church exist? Why should atheists, agnostics and non-churchgoers be forced to maintain such a useless, unwanted church by granting it tax exemption?" [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"Martyrs have been sincere. And so have tyrants. Wise men have been sincere. And so have fools." [E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"]
"No deity will save us, we must save ourselves. Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful." [Humanist Manifesto II, Prometheus Books, 1973]
"...but I would still reply, that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature." ["An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", David Hume, 10:2:30]
"There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves" [David Hume]
"The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one." [David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748]
"In the infancy of new religions, the wise and learned commonly esteem the matter too inconsiderable to deserve their attention or regard. And when afterwards they would willingly detect the cheat, in order to undeceive the deluded multitude, the season is now past, and the records and witnesses, which might clear up the matter, have perished beyond recovery." [David Hume, "Of Miracles"]
"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." [David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739)]
"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish." [David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748]
"Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules." [Huxley]
"...it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are propositions which men ought to believe, without logically satisfactory evidence; and that reprobation ought to attach to the profession of disbelief in such inadequately supported propositions." [Thomas Huxley]
"The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes." [Thomas Huxley]
"The Bible account of the creation of Eve is a preposterous fable." [Thomas Huxley, English biologist]
"Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice." [Robert Green Ingersoll]
"I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders." [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations.'" [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray." [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"The Declaration of Independence "was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others." [Robert G. Ingersoll, "Individuality"]
"With soap, baptism is a good thing." [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"...to argue with a man who has renouced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead." [Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p.127]
"It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon that book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah." [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"I combat those only who, knowing nothing of the future, prophesy an eternity of pain- those who sow the seeds of fear in the hearts of men- those only who poison all the springs of life, and seat a skeleton at every feast." [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not." [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"Orthodoxy cannot afford to put out the fires of hell." [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"If we should put god in the Constitution there would be no room left for man." [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"We are not accountable for the sins of "Adam" [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves." [Robert G. Ingersoll]
"By the efforts of these infidels, the name of God was left out of the Constitution of the United States. They knew that if an infinite being was put in, no room would be left for the people. They knew that if any church was made the mistress of the state, that mistress, like all others, would corrupt, weaken, and destroy." [Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 3, p. 382]
"I talk to God every day, and He's never mentioned you." [movie, _Ladyhawke_]
"It is possible to pay another man's debts on his behalf, but it is not possible to make a guilty man innocent by suffering in his place." [Carl Lofmark, _What is the Bible?_]
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." [Delo McKown]
"Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof" [Ashley Montague]
"Christians say that--without exception--their God answers all of their prayers; it's just that He sometimes says "yes" and other times "no," "maybe," or "wait." Of course the same could be said of the rain-god,"Bob." [Rev. Donald Morgan]
"God" as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle. The point is wider than just the Judeo- Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a "super-existence." [Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism"]
"Ask youself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves--or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth." [Ayn Rand]
"In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and certainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe." [Ayn Rand]
"The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence...Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God... Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith....The purpose of man's life...is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question." [Ayn Rand, "For the New Intellectual"]
"...if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.... the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind." [Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"]
"I honesty believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once again governed by Christians . . . and Christian values. What Christians have got to do is take back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time, and one state at a time." [Ralph Reed, Executive Director of the Christian Coalition]
"We've learned how to move under radar in the cover of the night with shrubbery strapped to our helmets," [Ralph Reed, executive director of Christian Coalition]
"They call them extremists. We have our own names. We call them senators, congressman, governors, mayors, state legislators" [Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition Executive Director]
"I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night." [Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition Exec. Director]
"The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars, and miseries than any other name has caused." [John E. Remsburg, The Christ(1910)]
"No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe them." [Ernest Renan, 1863]
"As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe. This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked: What did God do before he created the universe? Augustine didn't reply: He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions. Instead, he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe." Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 8
"Hubble's observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang, when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. Under such conditions all the laws of science, and therefore all ability to predict the future, would break down. If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no onservational consequences. One may say that time had a beginning at the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined. It should be emphasized that this beginning in time is very different from those that had been considered previously. In an unchanging universe a beginning in time is something that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe; there is no physical necessity for a beginning. One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!" Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 8-9.
"Throughout the 1970s I had been mainly studying black holes, but in 1981 my interest in questions about the origin and fate of the universe was reawakened when I attended a conference on cosmology organized by the Jesuits in the Vatican. The Catholic Church had made a bad mistake with Galileo when it tried to lay down the law on a question of science, declaring that the sun went round the earth. Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology. At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference -- the possibility that space- time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death!" Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 115-16.
"The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty." Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 124.
"The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started -- it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?" Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 140-41.
"The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth." Bertrand Russell, "A Debate on the Existence of God" Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus), p. 136.
"Then you have to say one or other of two things. Either God only speaks to a very small percentage of mankind -- which happens to include yourself -- or He deliberately says things are not true in talking to the consciences of savages." Bertrand Russell, "A Debate on the Existence of God" Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus), p. 136.
"The Ages of Faith, which are praised by our neo-scholastics, were the time when the clergy had things all their own way. Daily life was full of miracles wrought by saints and wizardry perpetrated by devils and necromancers. Many thousands of witches were burnt at the stake. Men's sins were punished by pestilence and famine, by earthquake, flood, and fire. And yet, strange to say, they were even more sinful than they are now-a-days." Bertrand Russell, "A Debate on the Existence of God" Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus), p. 208.
"Throughout the last 400 years, during which the growth of science had gradually shown men how to acquire knowledge of the ways of nature and mastery over natural forces, the clergy have fought a losing battle against science, in astronomy and geology, in anatomy and physiology, in biology and psychology and sociology. Ousted from one position, they have taken up another. After being worsted in astronomy, they did their best to prevent the rise of geology; they fought against Darwin in biology, and at the present time they fight against scientific theories of psychology and education. At each stage, they try to make the public forget their earlier obscurantism, in order that their present obscurantism may not be recognized for what it is." Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus), p. 209.
"The expression 'free thought' is often used as if it meant merely opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy. But this is only a symptom of free thought, frequent, but invariable. 'Free thought' means thinking freely -- as freely, at least, as is possible for a human being. The person who is free in any respect is free from something; what is the free thinker free from? To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things: the force of tradition, and the tyrannt of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, but in the measure of a man's emancipation he deserves to be called a free thinker." Bertrand Russell, "The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-Seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery" Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus), p. 239.
"What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful though, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem." Bertrand Russell, "The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-Seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery" Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus), pp. 239-40.
"It is the things for which there is no evidence that are believed with passion. "Nobody feels any passion about the multiplication table or about the existence of Cape Horn, because these matters are not doubtful. "But in matters of theology or political theory, where a rational man will hold that at best there is a slight balance of probability on one side or the other, people argue with passio and support their opinions by physical slavery imposed by armies and mental slavery imposed by schools." Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 106.
"The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences." Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 118.
"I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them." Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 138.
"Roughly, science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know." Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 219.
"We must therefore ask ourselves: What sort of thing is it reasonable to believe without proof? I should reply: The facts of sense experience and the principles of mathematics and logic -- including the inductive logic employed in science." Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 253.
"If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. "But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'" Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 261.
"When one admits that nothing is certain, one must, I think, also add that some things are much more nearly certain than others." Bertrand Russell, The Quotable Bertrand Russell (ed. Lee Eisler, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1993), p. 294.
"Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good." Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1988), p. 161.
"Theology still tries to interfere in medicine where moral issues are supposed to be specially involved, yet over most of the field the battle for the scientific independence of medicine has been won. No one now thinks it impious to avoid pestilences and epidemics by sanitation and hygiene; and though some still maintain that diseases are sent by God, they do not argue that it is therefore impious to try to avoid them. The consequent improvement in health and increase of longevity is one of the most remarkable and admirable characteristics of our age. Even if science had done nothing else for human happiness, it would deserve our gratitude on this account. Those who believe in the utility of theological creeds would have difficulty in pointing to any comparable advantage that they have conferred upon the human race." Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 108-09.
"But in the present state of psychology and physiology, belief in immortality can, at any rate, claim no support from science, and such arguments as are possible on the subject point to the probable extinction of personality at death. We may regret the thought that we shall not survive, but is a comfort to think that all the persecutors and Jew-baiters and humbugs will not continue to exist for all eternity. We may be told that they would improve in time, but I doubt it." Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 108-09.
"From a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes. Each is in an abnormal physical condition, and therefore has abnormal perceptions. Normal perceptions, since they have to be useful in the struggle for life, must have some correspondence with fact; but in abnormal perceptions there is no reason to expect such correspondence, and their testimony, therefore, cannot outweigh that of normal perception." Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 188.
"Man, as a curious accident in a backwater, is intelligible: his mixture of virtues and vices is such as might be expected to result from a fortuitous origin. But only abysmal self-complacency can see in Man a reason which Omniscience could consider adequate as a motive for the Creator. The Copernican revolution will not have done its work until it has taught men more modesty than is to be found among those whink Man sufficient evidence of Cosmic Purpose." Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 222.
"In any case, the argument against the persecution of opinion does not depend upon what the excuse for persecution may be. The argument is that we none of us know all truth, that the discovery of new truth is promoted by free discussion and rendered very difficult by suppression, and that, in the long run, human welfare is increased by the discovery of truth and hindered by action based on error." Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 250.
"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do." [Bertrand Russell]
"William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.' ... What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite." [Bertrand Russell, _Skeptical_Essays_, 1928]
"I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world." [Bertrand Russell]
"It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no reason whatsoever for supposing it to be true." [Bertrand Russell]
"If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather then by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless and will therefore result to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education"." [Bertrand Russell]
"There is something feeble and a little contemptable about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not real, he becomes furious when they are disputed." [Bertrand Russell, "Human Society in Ethics and Politics"]
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." [Bertrand Russell]
"He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a certain pleasure in contemplating the wailing and gnashing of teeth, or else it would not occur so often." [Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian"]
"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." [Bertrand Russell]
"What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer." [Bertrand Russell]
"There has been a rumor in recent years to the effect that I have become less opposed to religious orthodoxy than I formerly was. This rumor is totally without foundation. I think all the great religions of the world- Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism- both untrue and harmful." [Bertrand Russell, 1957]
"I think that in philosophical strictness at the level where one doubts the existence of material objects and holds that the world may have existed for only five minutes, I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptic orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely." [Bertrand Russell]
"We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions." [Bertrand Russell]
"The conquering of fear is the beginning of wisdom" [Bertrand Russell]
"The splendour of human life, I feel sure, is greater to those who are not dazzled by the divine radiance." [Bertrand Russell]
"People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true." [Bertrand Russell]
"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown, and partly the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand" [Bertrand Russell, 6/3/27]
"... when people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid." [Bertrand Russell in "Theory of Knowledge"]
"To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true." [Bertrand Russell, "The Prospects of Industrial Civilization"]
"Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales." [Bertrand Russell]
"I was told that the Chinese said that they would would bury me by the Western lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very _chic_ for an atheist." [Bertrand Russell, Autobiography]
"The question of the truth of a religion is one thing, but the question of its usefullness is another. I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue." [Bertrand Russell, _Why I Am Not A Christian_, 1957]
"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones." [Bertrand Russell]
"At the age of eighteen ... I read Mill's Autobiography, where I found a sentence to the effect that his father taught him that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question 'Who made God?'. This led me to abandon the 'First Cause' argument, and to become an atheist. Throughout the long period of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject." [Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, chap. 2]
"I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must of course admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it." [Bertrand Russell, _Sceptical Essays_]
"The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours." [Bertrand Russell]
"Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave." [Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian"]
"I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting." [Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)]
"Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation or creed." [Bertrand Russell]
"I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them. The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible." [Bertrand Russell, _A History of Western Philosophy_, 1945]
"We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it." [Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not A Chris