Talk:God Is Not Great

Great Article!

Not to be confused with the below comments, this is a great article and it is in much better form following the split from Christopher Hitchens. Good work MDD and editors! ELApro (talk)

Article History

This article was originally transferred from the Christopher Hitchens article at 21:45, 18 May 2014‎ Mdd: see https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Christopher_Hitchens&diff=1735890&oldid=1735885. There should be a formal procedure similar to the one at Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:Splitting) for leaving a historical trail to the article's origination and prior history in order to prevent sloppy transfers of information such as has occurred here and elsewhere. Although there is no template such as Wikipedia's Template:Copied at Wikquote, there could still be a procedure defined so that editors are aware of the problems created by not indicating the article's proper history track and the possible confusion between the creation of an article, and the transfer of information from a previous article. ELApro (talk) 13:06, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Qualifications for Unsourced Category?

What sort of qualifications were used to categorize quotes as unsourced here? I don't think that simply an unlisted page number qualifies a quote as unsourced. Maybe a section "Unlisted page numbers" under the main article might have served a better purpose rather than moving these quotes to the Discussion page without researching whether or not they were sourced. Every quote that I have checked (5) so far in the Unsourced section below has been in the book and I moved them back to the article page... 4 left and getting a little tired. Maybe the person who categorizes the quotes as unsourced should take it upon themselves to check the book out of the library and read the index, or do an internet search, or simply not categorize quotes with unlisted page numbers as "unsourced" without investigating the source? ELApro (talk) 16:45, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Unsourced

• We atheists do not require any priests, or any hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine. Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics of worship of any images or objects ... To us no spot on earth is or could be "holier" than another: to the ostentatious absurdity of the pilgrimage, or the plain horror of killing civilians in the name of some sacred wall or cave or shrine or rock, we can counterpose a leisurely or urgent walk from one side of the library or the gallery to another, or to lunch with an agreeable friend, in pursuit of truth and beauty.

• The Old Testament, as Christians condescendingly call it, has woman cloned from man for his use and comfort. The New Testament has Saint Paul expressing both fear and contempt for the female. Throughout all religious texts, there is a primitive fear that half the human race is simultaneously defiled and unclean, and yet is also a temptation to sin that is impossible to resist.

• Then there is the very salient question of what the commandments do not say. Is it too modern to notice that there is nothing about the protection of children from cruelty, nothing about rape, nothing about slavery, and nothing about genocide? Or is it too exactingly ‘in context’ to notice that some of these very offenses are about to be positively recommended?

• [W]e ought to be glad that none of the religious myths has any truth to it, or in it. The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.