"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictivness with which more than half the bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind" ---Thoman Paine ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ê"Faith is believing in something you know ain't true." -Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ê"The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it." -Robert G. Ingersoll ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." -Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "It has been discovered that the man who was lost in thoughtÊwas not a church member." -Lemuel K. Washburn ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice....". ÊÊ-Thomas Paine ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!" [Clark Adams] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "If you love god, burn a church" [Jello Biafra] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were Êachieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and Êbeliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no Êfire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an Êindividual life beyond the grave." ÊÊÊ[Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Why I Am Not a Christian"] ÊÊ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers." [Oscar Wilde] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Why should the residence of a preacher be untaxed? Useful citizens must pay Êtaxes on their homes. Yet the Preacher -- actually and notoriously the least Êuseful member of the community -- lives in a tax-free dwelling." ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ[E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNot a Benefit, In Social Life"] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Whenever I think of how religion started, I picture some frustrated Êold man making out a list of all the ways he could gain power, until Êhe finally came up with the great solution of constant fear and guilt, Êthen he leaped up and started planning a new wardrobe." ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ[Steve Blake]ea of an incarnation of God is absurd: ÊÊÊ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ê "They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may Êoppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had Êno trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy Êof the new doctrine from the very pulpit..." [Galileo Galilei, 1615] ÊÊ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ê "To hate man and worship god seems to be the sum of all the creeds." ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ[Robert G. Ingersoll] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I refuse to be labeled immoral Êmerely because I am godless." Ê[Peter Walker on alt.atheism] ÊÊÊ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history" ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ[Noam Chomsky] ÊÊÊ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ê "It has been discovered that the man who was lost in thought Êwas not a church member." ÊÊÊÊ-Lemuel K. Washburn Ê ÊÊ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ê "It is a just retribution for improper sexual misconduct" ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ[Mother Teresa, on AIDS] ÊÊÊÊ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The Bible is the authoritative Word of God and contains all truth." ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ[Pres. Bill Clinton, at a prayer breakfast] ÊÊÊ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ê "Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. ÊOnly a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only Êatheists could accept this Satanic theory." ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ[Rev. Jimmy Swaggart] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." -Ð Stephen Roberts ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the person who reads it." --Robert G. Ingersoll ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense." --Chapman Cohen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I don't believe in God for the same reason I don't believe in Mother Goose." --Clarence Darrow ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." --Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ÊLike all religions, the Holy Religion of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is ÊÊÊÊÊÊbased upon both Logic and Faith. We have Faith that She is Pink; and ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊwe Logically know that She is Invisible, because we can't see Her. For many, faith is a suitable substitute for knowledge, as death is for a difficult life. ÊÊÊ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊas to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ-Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The pure and simple is rarely pure and never simple. -Oscar Wilde ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I don't think we're [here] for anything, we're just products of evolution.ÊYou can say 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose' but I'm anticipating a good lunch. -Dr. James Watson, Nobel laureate Biophysicist, co-discoverer of DNA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. -James Thurber ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I don't intend to achieve immortality through my work.ÊI intend to achieve it through not dying. -Woody Allen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If only God would give me some clear sign!ÊLike making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank. -Woody Allen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. -Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let us be thankful for the fools.ÊBut for them the rest of us could not succeed. -Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations.ÊThe Christian god is a three headed monster, cruel, vengeful and capricious.ÊIf one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him.ÊThey are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites." -Thomas Jefferson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity." -Thomas Jefferson,ÊNotes on Virginia, 1782 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Religion is excellent stuff for keeping the common people quiet. -Napoleon Bonaparte ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All religions have been made by men. -Napoleon Bonaparte ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Creationist make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -Isaac Asimov ------------------------------------------------------------------------ When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it. -Oscar Wilde ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Fundamentalists] never wonder why, if herpes is sent by 'god' to scourge "adulterers," whooping cough and measles weren't purposely created to lambaste children." -Fred Woodworth ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I was born a heretic.ÊI always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows. -Susan B. Anthony ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ê ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All those who possess in its pure state the love of their neighbour and the acceptance of the order of the world, inclucing affliction-all those, even should they live and die to all appearances atheists, are surely saved. -Simone Weil ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believerr caught up in his own false image of God. -Martin Buber ------------------------------------------------------------------------ An illusion shared by everyone becomes a reality. -Erich Fromm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe. -Carl Gustav Jung ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All contemporary religions and churches, all and every kind of religious organization, Marxism has always viewed as organs of bourgeois reaction, serv- ing as a defense of exploitation and the doping of the working-classes. -Nikolai Lenin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. -Karl Marx ------------------------------------------------------------------------ God is dethroned; and although the incognizant masses are tardy in realizing the event, they feel the icy draught caused by that vacancy. Man enters upon a spiritual ice age; the established churches can no longer provide more than Eskimo huts where their shivering flock huddles together -Arthur Koestler ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Then, father," he [Dives] replied, "will you send him to my father's house, where I have five brothers, to warn them, so that they too may not come to this place of torment?" But Abraham said, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them listen to them." "No, father Abraham," he replied, "but if someone from the dead visits them, they will repent." Abraham answered, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets they will pay no heed even if someone should rise from the dead." -Luke 16:26-31 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We believing Christians need the same honesty and courage in admitting our own responsibility for the thundering advance of atheism in a world in which for two thousand years the Gospel has been preached. It is because our individual and collec- tive conduct as Christians has so seldom conformed to the evangelical spirit that peoples and individuals, awakened to their dignity by Christianity, believe they must declare themselves its enemy. -Ignace Lepp ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The real, the deepest, the sole theme of the world and of history, to which all other themes are subordinate, remains the conflict of belief and unbelief. -Goethe ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be." -Sigmund Freud ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . 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. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." [quoted in Holy Horrors] -Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. . . . A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill." -Henry Lewis "H.L." Mencken ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc." -Sir Julian Sorell Huxley ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I don't need God because I want neither paradise nor hell." -Aziz Nesin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain." -Gene Roddenberry ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "All thinking men are atheists." -Ernest Hemingway ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it." -William A. Orton ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Mom and dad say I should make my life an example of the principles I believe in. But every time I do, they tell me to stop it." -Calvin & Hobbes ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous.ÊIf a man really wants to make a million dolars, the best way would be to start his own religion." -Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, 1949, then just a writer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man." -Thomas Paine ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "We found a great number of books...and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the Devil we burned them all." -Catholic Bishop Diego De Landa, after burning priceless books of Mayan history and science, July 1562 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The order of creation in the Bible is woefully incorrect and violates even the most simple and obvious rules of natural science." -Charles Cazeau, U.S. professor of geology ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept." -Henry George ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong." -Thomas Jefferson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "That's why the religious people are so freaked out about the Internet, not because of the smut but because NO religion can stand up to access to information." -Robert Carr, Lamprey Systems http://members.aol.com/lampreysys/index.html (ed.note: Please go to the above site, it has some of the best games i've ever seen such as "MacJesus Pro Gold" and Operation Rescue-- funney as hell) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Puritanism- The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." -H.L. Mencken ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "We cannot hope for a society in which formal organized religion dies out. But we can stop behaving as if it was worthy of our collective respect." -A. N. Wilson, "Against Religion" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "No country or people who are slaves to dogma and the dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded." -Jawaharlal Nehru - a Biography vol. I, by Sarvepalli Gopal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ê Ê Ê taken from "http://www.continet.com/miller4/bibquo.htm"