A selection of my favourite quotations. Enjoy.
"It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved."
Galileo
Galilei
"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."
Frederick
Douglass, escaped slave
"Two hands working do more than a thousand clasped in prayer"
Anonymous
"Religions are all alike -
"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
"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist
for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say
that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow
it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to
prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't
want to waste my time."
Isaac Asimov
"To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion
that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the
existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there
is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval
dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-
"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."
Sigmund Freud, German-
"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good
and for the Christian church [...]a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful
lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them."
Martin Luther cited
by his secretary, in a letter in Max Lenz, ed., "Briefwechsel Landgraf Phillips des
Grossmüthigen von Hessen mit Bucer", vol. I.
"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all
reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and
... know nothing but the word of God."
Martin Luther
"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual
things, but -
"Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness,
to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe
that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious
faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing
with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb."
Richard Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
"If 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
"If you were taught that elves caused rain, every time it rained, you'd see the proof
of elves."
Ariex
"Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy confronts every day the devastation
wrought by the teachings of religion."
Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D.
"Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common
sense."
Chapman Cohen
"If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then
we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction."
Judith Hayes
"Religious belief is not a precondition either of ethical conduct or of happiness."
Dalai Lama, "Ethics for the New Millennium"
"Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely
knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about
my sex life."
Andrew Lias
"It is becoming quite clear that religion is at the heart of so many civil wars and
international struggles. People seem willing to kill, maim, torture and die for a
religious or spiritual belief which moves them to believe that their source of the
divine is the only source...Consider: In the name of God, a fatwa against Salman
Rushdie. In the name of God, murder in the Balkans. In the name of God, the bombing
of the World Trade Center. In the name of God, the siege at Waco, Texas. In the name
of God, Hindus and Muslims kill each other in India. In the name of God, bloody warfare
between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. In the name of God, Shi'ites and Sunnis
are at each other's throats in Iraq and Iran, as are Arabs and Jews in the Middle
East. In the name of God, a doctor is murdered because he believed in a woman's right
to choose. In the name of God, what is going on?"
Shirley MacLaine, quoted in "2000
Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt", by James A. Haught,
Prometheus Books, 1996
"The invisible and the non-
Delos B. McKown, Ph.D.
U.S. professor, philosopher, author Former clergyman
"...the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both
by precept and example; Had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be
supposed that the inspired Apostles would have tolerated it for a moment in the Christian
Church. In proving this subject justifiable by Scriptural authority [Luke 12:47],
its morality is also proved; for the Divine Law never sanctions immoral actions".
Richard
Furman of the Baptist State Convention, Letter to South Carolina Governor, 1822
"There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it.
It is not then, we conclude, immoral".
Rev. Alexander Campbell
"All things foul and ugly
All creatures short and squat
Putrid, foul and gangrenous
The
Lord God made the lot."
Monty Python
