Talk:Irreligiousness

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A Christian is one who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. ~ Ambrose Bierce

A clergyman can hardly ever allow himself to look facts fairly in the face. It is his profession to support one side; it is impossible, therefore, for him to make an unbiased examination of the other. ~ Samuel Butler

A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. ~ Ambrose Bierce

A man is not moral because he is obedient through fear or ignorance. Morality lives in the realm of perceived obligation... ~ Robert Ingersoll

Adults have imaginary friends too. ~ Alan Jay Weiner

All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise. ~ Lord Byron

All religion begins with the cry "Help!" ~ William James

All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance, ferocity; and modern religions are only ancient follies. ~ Paul Henri Thiry

All religions are auld wives' fables, but an honest man has nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come. ~ Robert Burns

All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice — that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. ~ Protagoras

At all times, in every century, every age, there has been such a connection between despotism and religion that it is infinitely apparent and demonstrated a thousand times over, that in destroying one, the other must be undermined, for the simple reason that the first will always put the law into the service of the second. ~ Marquis de Sade

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Belief, like any other moving body, follows the path of least resistance. ~ Samuel Butler

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Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor. ~ H. L. Mencken

[Children] are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without adequate evidence, which leaves them a prey to quacks of every kind in later life, and makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought which are successful in science. ~ J.B.S. Haldane

Children are naïve — they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble. ~ Frank Zappa

[speaking of religion] Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race. What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you. ~ Marquis De Sade

Christianity has a built-in defense system; anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It is a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it, and believe me I was raised Southern Baptist, is to take heroic doses of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, "Show me." ~ Bill Hicks

Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions .... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing. ~ George Santayana

Christians always write to me threatening me with Hell. Strange how they think this vindicates them and their religion. Threats are the hallmark of a wicked creed. ~ Richard C. Carrier, Jr.

Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. ~ H. L. Mencken

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Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. ~ H. L. Mencken

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"Each of those churches (Christian, Judaic and Islamic) accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all." ~ Thomas Paine

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For cats and witches are hard to kill;
They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die —
Books said they did, but they lie! ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Fundamentalism means never having to say "I'm wrong." ~ Anonymous

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Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. ~ Chapman Cohen

Going to Church doesn't make a man Christian any more than going to a garage makes him an automobile. ~ Billy Sunday

Good represents the reality of which God is the dream. ~ Iris Murdoch

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Heaven: The Coney Island of the Christian imagination. ~ Elbert Hubbard

Here's another question I've been pondering — what is all this shit about angels? Have you heard this? Three out of four people believe in angels. Are you fucking stupid? Has everybody lost their mind? You know what I think it is? I think it's a massive, collective, psychotic chemical flashback for all the drugs smoked, swallowed, shot, and absorbed rectally by all Americans from 1960 to 1990. Thirty years of street drugs will get you some fucking angels, my friend! ~ George Carlin

How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is sick from overeating, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares It is God's will. Religion is excellent stuff for keeping people quiet. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

How should I know anything about another world when I know so little of this? ~ Confucius

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I am deeply frightened by ritual, because it implies mind-numbing repetition, obedience and the mysticism of action without thought. ~ Jonathan Wallace

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. ~ H. L. Mencken

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

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, and the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough — I call it the one immortal blemish on the human race. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. ~ Albert Einstein

I cherish the fantasy, even the hope, of adventures in other realms to come. But how can we choke out that most precious of all gifts, life, with the rope of religion around our necks? It chokes out freedom with dogma. It pinions us to the stake of superstition. ~ Gerry Spence

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

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

I do not pray... I do not expect God to single me out and grant me advantages over my fellow men... Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

I do not support religion because it demands that we give up our most important human asset, the ability to question. It demands that we simply believe. Isn't that true of any dictator, of any totalitarian society? Insofar as social development is concerned, nothing is of greater importance than the human function of questioning... Questioning led to the development of civilization. ~ Vladimir Pozner

I don't mind born-agains being born again, but why do they always have to come back as themselves?! ~ Robin Tyler

I don't see any god up here. ~ Yuri Gagarin

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 Edison

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell. ~ Lord Byron

I keep a conscience uncorrupted by religion, a judgment undimmed by politics and patriotism, a heart untainted by friendships and sentiments unsoured by animosities. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I know I feel this way and I know a lot of educators feel this way, and a lot of parents feel this way, that religion is a “gateway psychosis.” ~ Dave Foley

I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless. ~ Robert Ingersoll

I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research....A contemporary has said not unjustly that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people. ~ Albert Einstein

I pray every single second of my life; not on my knees but with my work. My prayer is to lift women to equality with men. Work and worship are one with me. I know there is no God of the universe made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him "great". ~ Susan B. Anthony

I prayed for freedom twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. ~ Frederick Douglass

I say if you're going to go for the Angel bullshit, you might as well go for the Zombie package as well. ~ George Carlin

If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker. ~ Robert Ingersoll

If Christ was executed today, I bet Christians would wear little electric chairs around their necks. ~ Dick Gregory

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom. ~ Lord Byron

If thou trusteth to the book called the Scriptures, thou trusteth to the rotten staff of fables and falsehood. ~ Thomas Paine

If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity. ~ Umberto Eco

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

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable. ~ H. L. Mencken

Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity. ~ Ambrose Bierce

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

In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable. ~ Sigmund Freud

Isn't it ironic that Christians keep repeating, "Civilization will fail without Christianity" on computers built by Buddhists in Japan? ~ Anonymous

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists, it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money. ~ H. L. Mencken

It is no defense of superstition and pseudoscience to say that it brings solace and comfort to people... If solace and comfort are how we judge the worth of something, then consider that tobacco brings solace and comfort to smokers; alcohol brings it to drinkers; drugs of all kinds bring it to addicts; the fall of cards and the run of horses bring it to gamblers; cruelty and violence bring it to sociopaths. Judge by solace and comfort only and there is no behavior we ought to interfere with. ~ Isaac Asimov

It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. ~ H. L. Mencken

It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses, but how do you know that God spake unto Moses? Because, you will say, the Bible says so. The Koran says, that God spake unto Mahomet, do you believe that too? No. Why not? Because, you will say, you do not believe it; and so because you do, and because you don't is all the reason you can give for believing or disbelieving except that you will say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how do you know Moses was not an impostor? ~ Thomas Paine

It is usually argued that we need religion in order to get humanity to behave and work together. All evidence is to the contrary. Religion has not notably improved human behavior. The pagan Romans were far kinder than the Inquisition Christians. Nor has religion united Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or Jews. It has divided them. In fact, religion will never unite them, because religion requires that they share the same beliefs, without offering any reliable evidence that their ideas are correct. Reason, on the other hand, is the only thing that can unite people of diverse opinions. Reason bases its decisions on evidence available to everyone, and allows people to disagree when evidence is lacking. Religion will never do that. ~ Richard C. Carrier, Jr.

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Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant. ~ Edward Gibbon

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. ~ H. L. Mencken

Men have never fully used the powers they possess to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing. ~ John Dewey

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. ~ Blaise Pascal

More wars have been waged, more people killed, and more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history. The sad truth continues in our present day. ~ Charles Kimball

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Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion. ~ John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

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

Of religion I know nothing — at least, in its favor. ~ Lord Byron

Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages. ~ Richard Lederer

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it ... You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. ~ Bertrand Russell

One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing. ~ H. L. Mencken

Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business. ~ Jesse Ventura

Organized religion: The world's largest pyramid scheme. ~ Bernard Katz

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works. ~ Carl Sagan

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Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws. ~ Robert Ingersoll

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them seriously. ~ Samuel Butler

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. ~ H. L. Mencken

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Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. ~ Thomas Jefferson

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Religion... comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form nowhere else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. ~ Sigmund Freud

Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage. ~ H. L. Mencken

Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man... living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money. ~ George Carlin

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
- Steven Weinberg, Freethought Today, April 2000

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. ... A good world needs knowledge, kindness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. ~ Bertrand Russell

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth. ~ H. L. Mencken

Religion is the brainchild of fear, and fear is the parent of cruelty. The greatest evils inflicted on humankind are perpetrated not by pleasure-seekers, self-seeking opportunists, or those who are merely amoral, but by fervent devotees of religion. ~ Emmanuel Kofi Mensah

Religion is a kind of mental disease. ~ Benito Mussolini

Religion is a neurological disorder. ~ Bill Maher

Religion is poison. ~ Mao Zedong

Religion is the last frontier of men beaten in life. ~ Anonymous

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis. ~ Sigmund Freud

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

[Religions are] ...conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Religion, like poetry, is simply a concerted effort to deny the most obvious realities. ~ H. L. Mencken

Religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few. ~ Stendhal

Religious believers of the world, you are free to continue to debate the simple, narrow question that divides you from atheists, but you have no right, in so doing, to treat the Humanists of the world with contempt. You owe them a deep debt of gratitude, for not only have they shed much light on a naturally dark world but they have very probably helped civilize your own specific religion. ~ Steve Allen

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Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them. ~ H. L. Mencken

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor — but they have few followers now. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. ~ Bertrand Russell

So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk. ~ Thomas Edison

Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. ~ Clarence Darrow

Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. ~ H. L. Mencken

Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell. ~ H. L. Mencken

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That fear created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject. ~ George Santayana

The atheist realizes that every selfish or cruel act and its consequences would remain uncomfortably remembered by himself, believing that no divine forgiveness is available to assuage the pangs of a guilty conscience. ~ Frank Swancara

The basis of your religion is injustice. The Son of God the pure, the immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed for the guilty. This proves his heroism, but no more does away with man's sin than a school boy's volunteering to be flogged for another would exculpate a dunce from negligence. ~ Lord Byron

The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked... ~ H. L. Mencken

The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it. ~ Matilda Joslyn Gage

The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails. ~ H. L. Mencken

The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. ~ Bertrand Russell

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The Christians say, that among the ancient Jews, if you committed a crime you had to kill a sheep. Now they say "charge it." "Put it on the slate." The Savior will pay it. In this way, rascality is sold on credit, and the credit system in morals, as in business, breeds extravagance. ~ Robert Ingersoll

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. ~ Ferdinand Magellan

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. ~ Thomas H. Huxley

The endeavor to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in. ~ Thomas Edison

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is: all the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just keep your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions. ~ Frank Zappa

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the thirteenth century. ~ H. L. Mencken

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

The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights ... not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justifications for slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide.... Moreover, religion enshrined hierarchy, authority, and inequality.... It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake. ~ Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

The harm that theology has done is not to create cruel impulses, but to give them the sanction of what professes to be lofty ethic, and to confer an apparently sacred character upon practices which have come down from more ignorant and barbarous times. ~ Bertrand Russell

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists — that is why they invented hell. ~ Bertrand Russell

The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe — that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent. ~ H. L. Mencken

The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn’t worth a damn. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. ~ Sir Richard Burton

The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called "faith." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music. ~ George Carlin

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers. ~ Denis Diderot

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.... Every influx of atheism, of skepticism, is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion, and making way for truth. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God's chillun, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil. ~ H. L. Mencken

The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.
- E. O. Wilson (2 November 2005). "Can biology do better than faith?". NewScientist.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-10.

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The web of this world is woven of Necessity and Chance. Woe to him who has accustomed himself from his youth up to find something necessary in what is capricious, and who would ascribe something like reason to Chance and make a religion of surrendering to it. ~ Goethe

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum. ~ Havelock Ellis

...the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind and pitiless indifference. ~ Richard Dawkins

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. ~ H. L. Mencken

There was a time when I believed in the story and the scheme of salvation, so far as I could understand it, just as I believed there was a Devil.... Suddenly the light broke through to me and I knew this God was a lie.... For indeed it is a silly story, and each generation nowadays swallows it with greater difficulty.... Why do people go on pretending about this Christianity? ~ H.G. Wells

Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself. ~ George Carlin

The more faith one has, the less freedom they have. ~ Anon

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Under any religion, the preestablished impersonal code transcends the right of the individual to explore, experience, and marvel at the mysteries of his own life and death. Religions introduce us not to God but to slavery. They deprive us of our freedom to explore our own souls and to discover the endless and wondrous possibilities presented to us by an infinite universe. And most often the method of religions is fear, not love. They demand blind obedience and often obedience to dreadful dogma. ~ Gerry Spence

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Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience. ~ Adam Smith
- I was unable to find any published attribution. It appears on p. 884 of 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1968) by Evan Esar but with no attribution to anyone. See Talk:Adam_Smith under the heading "suggestion". --Hughh (talk) 21:05, 5 June 2017 (UTC)Reply

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. ~ Richard Dawkins

We have become so accustomed to the religious lie that surrounds us that we do not notice the atrocity, stupidity and cruelty with which the teaching of the Christian church is permeated. ~ Leo Tolstoy

We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one can understand, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for inspiration and style themselves Evangelicals? ~ Lord Byron

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. ~ H. L. Mencken

"Well," she said finally, "what would Jesus do?" My mind hit a brick wall and slid down it. No one I considered entirely sane had ever said something like that to me before. ~ Elizabeth Nickson

When the churches literally ruled society, the human drama encompassed: (a) slavery; (b) the cruel subjection of women; (c) the most savage forms of legal punishment; (d) the absurd belief that kings ruled by divine right; (e) the daily imposition of physical abuse; (f) cold heartlessness for the sufferings of the poor; as well as (g) assorted pogroms ("ethnic cleansing" wars) between rival religions, capital punishment for literally hundreds of offenses, and countless other daily imposed moral outrages.... It was the free-thinking, challenging work by people of conscience, who almost invariably had to defy the religious and political status quo of their times, that brought us out of such darkness. ~ Steve Allen

When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there are no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force. ~ Bertrand Russell

Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.... Morality is then surrendered to the groundless arbitrariness of religion. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach

Where is the soul? ... I refuse to believe anything of that kind without proof. The idea that, as soon as a man's breath leaves his body, the soul flops out like a chicken's head and flies off into space to find a lodgment where there [are] harps and haloes. Too much for me. ~ Robert Ingersoll

Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers. ~ H. L. Mencken

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You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. 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

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