RELIGION: QUOTES: FAMOUS PEOPLE
Miles Williams Mathis: Who WAS George Washington? – Library of Rickandria
Confucius (孔子; pinyin: Kǒngzǐ; lit. ‘Master Kong’; c. 551 – c. 479 BCE), born Kong Qiu (孔丘), was a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Much of the shared cultural heritage of the Sinosphere originates in the philosophy and teachings of Confucius. His philosophical teachings, called Confucianism, emphasized personal and governmental morality, harmonious social relationships, righteousness, kindness, sincerity, and a ruler’s responsibilities to lead by virtue.
“How should I know anything about another world when I know so little of this?” Confucius
Protagoras (/proʊˈtæɡərəs, -æs/ proh-TAG-ər-əs, -ass; Greek: Πρωταγόρας; c. 490 BC – c. 420 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and rhetorical theorist. He is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with inventing the role of the professional sophist.
“As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist.” Protagoras
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” Oz
From an ancient Roman tombstone:
“Do not pass by my epitaph, traveler.
But having stopped, listen and learn, then go your way.
There is no boat in Hades, no ferryman Charon,
no caretaker Aiakos, no dog Cerberus.
All we who are dead below
have become bones and ashes, but nothing else.
I have spoken to you honestly, go on, traveler,
lest even while dead I seem loquacious to you.”
Miles Williams Mathis: ROME – Library of Rickandria
Agnosticism
Atheism
Catholic Church
Christianity and Family Values
Christianity and Slavery
Morality and Religion
New Testament
Old Testament
Problem of Evil
Protestantism
Religion’s Arbitrary Moral Standards
Religion and Charity
Religion and Individuality
Religion and Science
Religion Promotes Ignorant and Barbaric Ideas about Morality
Religious Cultures are not Highly Moral
Solace of Religion
The Age of Faith
The Pope
Virgin Birth
“Claims of virgin birth were a common way of glorifying famous people and mythological heroes of ancient times.
For example, Julius Caesar, Augustus, Aristomenes, Alexander the Great, Plato, Cyrus, the elder Scipio, Egyptian Pharaohs, the Buddha, Hermes, Mithra, Attis-Adonis, Hercules, Cybele, Demeter, Leo, and Vulcan – all were thought of as virgin-born in at least some traditions.” Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent
“The delegates of the annual conference are decidedly opposed to modern Abolitionism and wholly disclaim any right, wish, or intention to interfere in the civil and political relation between master and slave as it exists in the slave-holding states of the union.” Methodist Episcopal Church, 1836 General Conference, Cincinnati
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 13th Marquess of Groppoli, KCVO, DL (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902), better known as Lord Acton, was an English Catholic historian, Liberal politician, and writer. A strong advocate for individual liberty, Acton is best known for his timeless observation on the dangers of concentrated authority. In an 1887 letter to an Anglican bishop, he famously wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” underscoring his belief that unchecked power poses the greatest threat to human freedom. His works consistently emphasized the importance of limiting governmental and institutional power in favor of individual rights and personal liberty.
“The principle of the Inquisition was murderous.
The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation.” Lord Acton
Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) was an American television and radio personality, comedian, musician, composer, writer, and actor. In 1954, he achieved national fame as the co-creator and first host of The Tonight Show, which was the first late-night television talk show.
“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
(g) as well as assorted pogroms (‘ethnic cleansing’ wars) between rival religions, capital punishment for literally hundreds of offences, and countless other daily imposed moral outrages. . . .
[I]t 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
“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
“Millions of Germans had absolute faith in Hitler.
Miles Williams Mathis: Hitler & Top Nazi Genealogy – THEY WERE JEWS! – Library of Rickandria
Millions of Russians had faith in Stalin.
NWO: RUSSIA: Joseph Stalin was Jewish – Library of Rickandria
Millions of Chinese had faith in Mao.
Billions have had faith in imaginary gods.” Steve Allen
“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
Susan B. Anthony (born Susan Anthony; February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and women’s rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
“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
François-Marie Arouet (French: [fʁɑ̃swa maʁi aʁwɛ]; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire (/vɒlˈtɛər, voʊl-/, US also /vɔːl-/; French: [vɔltɛːʁ]), was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Roman Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
“Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.” Francois Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
“Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.” Voltaire
“In all the disputes which have excited Christians against each other, Rome has invariably decided in favor of that opinion which tended most towards the suppression of the human intellect and the annihilation of the reasoning powers.” Voltaire
Isaac Asimov (/ˈæzɪmɒv/ AZ-im-ov; c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as popular science and other non-fiction.
“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.
NWO: GLOBAL ELITE: DRUG MANAGEMENT – Library of Rickandria
Judge by solace and comfort only and there is no behaviour we ought to interfere with.” Isaac Asimov
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, PC (/ˈbeɪkən/; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of natural philosophy, guided by the scientific method, and his works remained influential throughout the Scientific Revolution.
“The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.” Sir Francis Bacon
Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887) was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God’s love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His rhetorical focus on Christ’s love has influenced mainstream Christianity through the 21st century.
“The God of the Bible is a moral monstrosity.” Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – c. 1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book The Devil’s Dictionary was named one of “The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature” by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” has been described as “one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature”, and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (also published as In the Midst of Life) was named by the Grolier Club one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.
“Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.” Ambrose Bierce
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called “probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world”. After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom’s books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
“More even than Southern Presbyterians and Southern Methodists, the Baptists provided the great mass of Confederate enlisted men.” Harold Bloom
Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led a series of military campaigns across Europe during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars from 1796 to 1815. He led the French Republic as First Consul from 1799 to 1804, then ruled the French Empire as Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1814, and briefly again in 1815. He was King of Italy from 1805 to 1814 and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine from 1806 to 1813.
“Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” Napoleon Bonaparte
“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.” Napoleon Bonaparte
Miles Williams Mathis: Was Napoleon Jewish? – Library of Rickandria
LOR:
Also, the French Revolution was orchestrated by “Jews” (actually Canaanites)
Miles Williams Mathis: The French Revolution – Library of Rickandria
John Burroughs (April 3, 1837 – March 29, 1921) was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the conservation movement in the United States. The first of his essay collections was Wake-Robin in 1871. In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs’ special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of “a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world.” The result was a body of work whose resonance with the tone of its cultural moment explains both its popularity at that time, and its relative obscurity since.
“Science has done more for the development of Western civilization in 100 years than Christianity did in 1,800 years.” John Burroughs
Louis Dembitz Brandeis (/ˈbrændaɪs/ BRAN-dysse; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an American lawyer who served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.
“The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles.” Louis Brandeis
Luther Burbank (March 7, 1849 – April 11, 1926) was an American botanist, horticulturist, and pioneer in agricultural science who developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank primarily worked with fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed (but did not create) a spineless cactus (useful for cattle-feed) and the plumcot.
“Let us read the Bible without the ill-fitting colored spectacles of theology, just as we read other books, using our judgment and reason. . . .” Luther Burbank
Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human condition. Campbell’s best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.
“The usual marriage in traditional cultures was arranged for by the families.
It wasn’t a person-to-person decision at all.
In the Middle Ages, that was the kind of marriage that was sanctified by the Church.
And so the troubadour idea of real person-to-person Amor was very dangerous.
It is in direct contradiction to the way of the Church.
The word AMOR spelt backwards is ROMA, the Roman Catholic Church, which was justifying marriages that were simply political and social in their character.
And so came this movement validating individual choice, what I call following your bliss.” Joseph Campbell
RESEARCHER: JOSEPH CAMPBELL – Library of Rickandria
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the “greatest humorist the United States has produced,” with William Faulkner calling him “the father of American literature.” Twain’s novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the “Great American Novel.” He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) and Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. The novelist Ernest Hemingway claimed that “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.
If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian. – Mark Twain
“Man is the religious animal.
He is the only religious animal.
He is the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them.
He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn’t straight.
He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.” Mark Twain
“It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.” Mark Twain
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Mark Twain
“In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them.
There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was doing in all this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do.
So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery.” Mark Twain
“There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave.
No place in all the land but one – the pulpit.
It yielded at last; it always does.
It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession – at the tail end.
Slavery fell.
The slavery text in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all.” Mark Twain
“She [the Catholic Church] worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.
Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches and never had been.
RELIGION: WITCH – Library of Rickandria
One doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch – the priest, the parson?
No, these never discover anything.” Mark Twain
Miles Williams Mathis: What About Mark Twain? – Library of Rickandria
Baron d’Holbach (/ˈdoʊlbɑːk/; French: [dɔlbak]; 8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789), known as d’Holbach, was a Franco-German philosopher, encyclopedist and writer, who was a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He helped in the dissemination of “Protestant and especially German thought”, particularly in the field of the sciences, but was best known for his atheism, and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being The System of Nature (1770) and The Universal Morality (1776).
“The atheist is a man who destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.” Baron d’Holbach
“Since we do not know the extent of all the laws of nature, we cannot say an event lies outside those laws.
About all that can intelligently be said about any modern-day ‘miracle’ is that it is an event that cannot be explained by presently known laws.
If the course of the last ten thousand years holds true, however, it will simply be a matter of time before the explanation is discovered.” Joseph Daleiden
“By inflaming and justifying the worst of human instincts as the will of God, theistic religions have resulted in countless millions of people being tortured and murdered.” Joseph Daleiden
“To date, despite the efforts of millions of true believers to support this myth, there is no more evidence for the Judeo-Christian god than any of the gods on Mount Olympus.” Joseph Daleiden
“The consequences of the popes’ ill-conceived dictates [about contraception] are as catastrophic as the persecution of heretics in bygone years.
The result will be, in effect, to sentence millions to face starvation and hundreds of millions more to a marginal, subhuman existence.” Joseph Daleiden
“Ironically, the pope’s opposition to contraceptives results in hundreds of thousands of abortions, most in illegal and unsafe conditions that threaten women’s lives.
Due primarily to the lack of readily available contraception, 55 million abortions are performed in the world annually.
Worldwide, 182,000 women die each year from dangerous abortions.
In the United States, where . . . women’s right to abortion has been recognized since 1973 (over the Church’s strenuous opposition), the death rate for women who obtain abortions has dropped almost 90%.
So, by opposing contraceptives and legalized abortion, the pope is in effect sentencing many women to die.” Joseph Daleiden
“J. M. Robertson has estimated that from the first crusade launched by Pope Urban II in 1095 to the fall of Acre . . . in 1291, nine million lives were lost.
This may be an overestimation, but the number is certainly in the millions and represents only the beginning of the carnage which places the Catholic Church in the same league with the Third Reich and the purges of Stalin or Mao.
Before the crusades against the ‘heathens’ were concluded, the popes began an internal crusade against heretics within Christendom.
The resulting Inquisition lasted officially almost 600 years and resulted in the loss of additional millions of lives.” Joseph Daleiden
Joseph Daleiden Obituary (1942 – 2024) – Woodstock, IL – Northwest Herald
Charles Robert Darwin (/ˈdɑːrwɪn/ DAR-win; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honored by burial in Westminster Abbey.
“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.” Charles Darwin
Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the only president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857.
“Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God – let him go to the Bible.
I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation.
Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come.
You find it in the Old and New Testaments – in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized – sanctioned everywhere.” Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America
“We the Confederate States of America, with God on our side in the defense of slavery for now and forever, do hereby declare ourselves independent.” The Confederate Constitution
LOR:
regarding slavery:
BOOK: EXCERPT: THE ONE WORLD TARTARIANS – THE GREATEST CIVILIZATION EVER TO BE ERASED FROM HISTORY: Chapter 4 The Tartarian Culture – Library of Rickandria
Also, this:
Miles Williams Mathis: Lincoln’s Assassination was a Manufactured Event – Meaning it NEVER Happened – Library of Rickandria
Alan Morton Dershowitz (/ˈdɜːrʃəwɪts/ DURR-shə-wits; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law School, where he was appointed as the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law in 1993. Dershowitz is a regular media contributor, political commentator, and legal analyst.
“I read in the newspaper that the Catholic Church finally decided that it had been theologically improper to try to convert the Jews.
CIVILIZATION: WHO ARE THE MODERN JEWS? – Library of Rickandria
Whoops!
Sorry for all those inquisitions, crusades, and autos-da-fe.
Miles Williams Mathis: Philip III the Bold & the Crusades – Library of Rickandria
Previous popes were wrong – infallible, perhaps, but wrong.” Alan Dershowitz
Marie Magdalene “Marlene” Dietrich (/mɑːrˈleɪnə ˈdiːtrɪx/, German: [maʁˈleːnə ˈdiːtʁɪç] ⓘ; 27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) was a German and American actress and singer whose career spanned nearly seven decades.
“If there is a supreme being, he’s crazy.” Marlene Dietrich
John Dewey (/ˈduːi/; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
“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
Merton Lynn Dillon (April 4, 1924 – May 3, 2013) was a history professor and author in the United States. He wrote about slavery and abolitionism. He wrote books about abolitionists including Elijah P. Lovejoy and Benjamin Lundy.
“Abolitionists failed to win the churches to their cause. In 1837, the Presbyterian General Assembly ‘excised’ from the church its most thoroughly antislavery synods.
No major denomination endorsed abolitionism.
This reluctance on the part of clergymen and church bodies was to have profound consequences for the course of the antislavery movement.
It helped push Garrison and others into taking militant anti-clerical stands, and it caused the movement in the later 1830s and 1840s to adopt increasingly secular policies.” Merton L. Dillon
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or “Tory democracy”. He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British prime minister to have been born Jewish.
“Where knowledge ends, religion begins.” – Benjamin Disraeli
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.
“I prayed for freedom twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” Frederick Douglass
“I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes – a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection.
Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me.
I hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” Frederick Douglass
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
“The endeavor to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in.” Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called “the world’s most famous equation”. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
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
“[R]eligion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein
LOR:
Was the [R] secret code for a RESET?
“As the Church assumed leadership, activity in the fields of medicine, technology, science, education, history, art and commerce all but collapsed.
Europe entered the Dark Ages.” Helen Ellerbe
“The losses in science were monumental.
In some cases the Christian church’s burning of books and repression of intellectual pursuit set humanity back as much as two millennia in its scientific understanding.” Helen Ellerbe
“By far the cruelest aspect of the inquisitional system was the means by which confessions were wrought:
the torture chamber.
Torture remained a legal option for the Church from 1252 when it was sanctioned by Pope Innocent IV until 1917 when the new Codex Juris Canonici was put into effect.
Thus, with license granted by the Pope himself, inquisitors were free to explore the depths of horror and cruelty.
The Inquisition invented every conceivable device to inflict pain by slowly dismembering and dislocating the body.
Many of these devices were inscribed with the motto ‘Glory be only to God.'” Helen Ellerbe
Albert Ellis (September 27, 1913 – July 24, 2007) was an American psychologist and psychotherapist who founded rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT). He held MA and PhD degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University and was certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). He also founded, and was the President of, the New York City-based Albert Ellis Institute He is generally considered to be one of the originators of the cognitive revolutionary paradigm shift in psychotherapy and an early proponent and developer of cognitive-behavioral therapies.
“Religious creeds encourage some of the craziest kinds of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and favor severe manifestations of neurosis, borderline personality states, and sometimes even psychosis.” Albert Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939) was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, as well as on transgender psychology. He developed the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis. Ellis was among the pioneering investigators of psychedelic drugs and the author of one of the first written reports to the public about an experience with mescaline, which he conducted on himself in 1896. He supported eugenics and served as one of 16 vice-presidents of the Eugenics Society from 1909 to 1912.
“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.” Havelock Ellis
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was “the most gifted of the Americans,” and Walt Whitman called Emerson his “master”.
“The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
Every influx of atheism, of scepticism, is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Epicurus (/ˌɛpɪˈkjʊərəs/, EH-pih-KURE-əs; Ancient Greek: Ἐπίκουρος Epikouros; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy.
“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. . . .
If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent.
If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. . . .
If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?” Epicurus
Charles William Faulkner was a printer and publisher who initially produced Christmas cards with a partner. He then became sole proprietor of the business which was incorporated as the limited company, C. W. Faulkner & Co., in 1905. The business expanded to produce a variety of printed products including calendars, diaries, games, playing cards and postcards. It was based at number 79, Golden Lane, London while much of the high-quality printing was done in Germany.
“When people expect God to plan their lives for them, and protect them, they tend to lose their motivation to guide and control their own lives.” Charles W. Faulkner
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (/ˈfɔɪərbɑːx/; German: [ˈluːtvɪç ˈfɔʏɐbax]; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Engels, Mikhail Bakunin, Richard Wagner, Frederick Douglass,[12] and Friedrich Nietzsche.
“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
Henry Martyn Field (April 3, 1822 – January 26, 1907) was an American author and clergyman. He was the publisher and editor of The Evangelist for 44 years. He traveled extensively and his travel books were unusually popular. Field married Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, a former governess who has been named in the murder-suicide of the Praslin family of Paris. She left Europe for New York City and Field and Desportes were married.
“It makes that a virtue which is not a virtue, and that a crime which is not a crime.
Religion consists in a round of observances that have no relation whatever to natural goodness, but which rather exclude it by being a substitute for it.
Penances and pilgrimages take the place of justice and mercy, benevolence and charity.
Such a religion, so far from being a purifier, is the great corrupter of morals.” Henry M. Field
Sigmund Freud (/frɔɪd/ FROYD; Austrian German: [ˈziːgmʊnd frɔʏd]; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
“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
Matilda Joslyn Gage (née Joslyn; March 24, 1826 – March 18, 1898) was an American writer and activist. She is mainly known for her contributions to women’s suffrage in the United States, but also campaigned for Native American rights, abolitionism, and freethought. She is the eponym for the Matilda effect, which describes the tendency to deny women credit for scientific invention. She influenced her son-in-law L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
“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
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India’s independence from British rule. He inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (from Sanskrit, meaning great-souled, or venerable), first applied to him in South Africa in 1914, is now used throughout the world.
“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
Miles Williams Mathis: Was the Fakir a Faker? Notes on the Gandhi PSYOP – Library of Rickandria
William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, which Garrison founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. He supported the rights of women and in the 1870s, Garrison became a prominent voice for the women’s suffrage movement.
“It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church.
With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven.
They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh.” William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist leader
Anne Nicol Gaylor (November 25, 1926 – June 14, 2015) was an American atheist and reproductive rights advocate. She co-founded the Freedom from Religion Foundation and an abortion fund for Wisconsin women. She wrote the book Abortion Is a Blessing and edited The World-Famous Atheist Cookbook. In 1985 Gaylor received the Humanist Heroine Award from the American Humanist Association, and in 2007 she was given the Tiller Award by NARAL Pro-Choice America.
“Nothing fails like prayer.” Anne Gaylor
“Mid-1800’s estimates reported 80,000 slaves owned by Presbyterians, 225,000 by Baptists and 250,000 by Methodists.
Anglicans probably owned most of the rest of the nearly 4 million blacks held in serfdom in the United States at the outbreak of the Civil War.” Anne Gaylor
Pioneers, Homesteaders & the Exodus – The African American Midwest
Edward Gibbon FRS (/ˈɡɪbən/; 8 May 1737 – 16 January 1794) was an English essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical criticism of organized religion.
“Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.” Edward Gibbon
Ruth Hurmence Green (January 12, 1915 – July 7, 1981) gained notability within the atheist community with the publication of her book The Born Again Skeptic’s Guide to the Bible in 1979. This book has since been the best selling publication from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. She was also the author of many other essays which were published posthumously in The Book of Ruth in 1982.
“There was a time when religion ruled the world.
It is known as the Dark Ages.” Ruth Hurmence Green
We are in the dark ages – The Next Exodus
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS (/ˈhɔːldeɪn/; 5 November 1892 – 1 December 1964), nicknamed “Jack” or “JBS”, was a British-born scientist who later moved to India and acquired Indian citizenship. He worked in the fields of physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biology, he was one of the founders of neo-Darwinism. Despite his lack of an academic degree in the field, he taught biology at the University of Cambridge, the Royal Institution, and University College London. Renouncing his British citizenship, he became an Indian citizen in 1961 and worked at the Indian Statistical Institute until his death in 1964.
“[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
“Of course, say the true believers, religion rests on faith, not intellect.
But if all you need to do to prove I am wrong is to have faith that you are right, then no discussion is possible.
It is only by resort to what the Roman statesman Cicero called ‘right reason’ that men and women can interact with each other amicably in a civilized society.” Philip D. Harvey
“Historian Larry Hise notes in his book Pro-Slavery that ministers ‘wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America.’
He listed 275 men of the cloth who used the Bible to prove that white people were entitled to own black people as work animals.” James Haught
“Through logic, you can see that the church concept of an all-loving heavenly father doesn’t hold water.
If a divine Maker fashioned everything that exists, he designed breast cancer for women, childhood leukemia, cerebral palsy, leprosy, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, and Down’s syndrome.
He mandated foxes to rip rabbits apart (bunnies emit a terrible shriek at that moment) and cheetahs to slaughter fawns.
No human would be cruel enough to plan such horrors.
If a supreme being did so, he’s a monster, not an all-merciful father.” James Haught
“As editor of the largest newspaper in West Virginia, I scan hundreds of reports daily and I am amazed by the frequency with which religion causes people to kill each other.
It is a nearly universal pattern, undercutting the common assumption that religion makes people kind and tolerant.” James Haught
“The U.S. has more churchgoing than any other major democracy and it reports much higher rates of murder, rape, robbery, shootings, stabbings, drug use, unwed pregnancy, and the like, as well as occasional tragedies such as those at Waco and Jonestown. . . .
Miles Williams Mathis: LIFE AFTER WACO – Library of Rickandria
Miles Williams Mathis: San Francisco & Jonestown – Library of Rickandria
There may be no link between the two conditions, but the saturation of religion has failed to prevent the severe crime level.
Societies rife with fundamentalism and religious tribalism are prone to sectarian violence.
In contrast, England, Scandinavia, Canada, Japan, and such lands have scant churchgoing, yet their people are more inclined to live peaceably, in accord with the social contract.
The evidence seems clear:
To find living conditions that are safe, decent, orderly, and ‘civilized,’ avoid places with intense religion.” James Haught
James A. Haught — Freedom from Religion Foundation
Robert Anson Heinlein (/ˈhaɪnlaɪn/ HYNE-lyne; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the “dean of science fiction writers”, he was among the first to emphasize scientific accuracy in his fiction and was thus a pioneer of the subgenre of hard science fiction. His published works, both fiction and non-fiction, express admiration for competence and emphasize the value of critical thinking. His plots often posed provocative situations which challenged conventional social mores. His work continues to have an influence on the science-fiction genre, and on modern culture more generally.
“The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery.
Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.” Robert Heinlein
LOR:
Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Jas 2:17
Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Jas 2:24
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress whose career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned six decades. She was known for her headstrong independence, spirited personality, and outspokenness, cultivating a screen persona that matched this public image, and regularly playing strong-willed, sophisticated women. She worked in a varied range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, which earned her various accolades, including four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer.
“I’m an atheist and that’s it.
Miles Williams Mathis: The ILLOGIC of ATHEISM – Library of Rickandria
I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people.” Katharine Hepburn
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (/hoʊmz/; August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894) was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the “Breakfast-Table” series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He was also an important medical reformer. In addition to his work as an author and poet, Holmes also served as a physician, professor, lecturer, and inventor.
“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.
Miles Williams Mathis: H. H. HOLMES: America’s First (Fake) Serial Killer – Library of Rickandria
Miles Williams Mathis: SHERLOCK HOLMES – Library of Rickandria
Elbert Green Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. Raised in Hudson, Illinois, he had early success as a traveling salesman for the Larkin Soap Company. Hubbard is known best as the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement. Among Hubbard’s many publications were the fourteen-volume work Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great and the short publication A Message to Garcia. He and his second wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, died aboard the RMS Lusitania when it was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine SM U-20 off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915.
Miles Williams Mathis: The Sinking of the Lusitania was Faked – Library of Rickandria
“Faith is the effort to believe what your common sense tells you is not true.” Elbert Hubbard
Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo (French: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo] ⓘ; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms.
“Hell is an outrage on humanity.
When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.” Victor Hugo
LOR:
Ouch, I’d hate to have Vic’s seat in Hell.
The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. Psa 9:17
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul:
but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Mat 10:28
And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity:
so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. Jas 3:6
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. Rev 20:14
David Hume (/hjuːm/; born David Home; 7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist who was best known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism. Beginning with A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume followed John Locke in rejecting the existence of innate ideas, concluding that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an empiricist.
“It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors.” David Hume
“The many instances of forged miracles and prophecies and supernatural events, which, in all ages have been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and marvelous, and ought reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind” David Hume
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, an autobiography, ethnographies, and many essays.
“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
Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist who specialized in comparative anatomy. He has become known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his advocacy of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.” Thomas H. Huxley
“Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.” Thomas H. Huxley
“. . . I fail to find a trace [in Protestantism] of any desire to set reason free.
The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters.
From being a slave of the papacy, the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible.” Thomas H. Huxley
Robert Green Ingersoll (/ˈɪŋɡərˌsɔːl, -ˌsɒl, -səl/; August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899), nicknamed “the Great Agnostic”, was an American lawyer, writer, and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, who campaigned in defense of agnosticism.
“Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.” Robert G. Ingersoll
“If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal.
If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.” Robert Ingersoll
“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
Miles William Mathis: The SOCIETY of FRIENDS Looks Like Another JEWISH FRONT – Library of Rickandria
“According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left.
The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one we have but one.
Each one is equal to himself and the other two.
Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity.” Robert Ingersoll
“The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.” Robert Ingersoll
“It is like most other ancient books – a mingling of falsehood and truth, of philosophy and folly – all written by men, and most of the men only partially civilized.
Some of its laws are good – some infinitely barbarous.
None of the miracles related were performed. . . .
Take out the absurdities, the miracles, all that pertains to the supernatural – all the cruel and barbaric laws – and to the remainder I have no objection.
Neither would I have for it any great admiration.” Robert Ingersoll
“Prayer is of no avail.
The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws.” Robert Ingersoll
“The priests of one religion never credit the miracles of another religion.
Is this because priests instinctively know priests?” Robert Ingersoll
“The old doctrine that God wanted man to do something for him, and that he kept a watchful eye upon all the children of men; that he rewarded the virtuous and punished the wicked, is gradually fading from the mind.
We know that some of the worst men have what the world calls success.
We know that some of the best men lie upon the straw of failure.
We know that honesty goes hungry, while larceny sits at the banquet.
We know that the vicious have every physical comfort, while the virtuous are often clad in rags.” Robert Ingersoll
“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
“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 idea that there is a God who rewards and punishes, and who can reward, if he so wishes, the meanest and vilest of the human race, so that he will be eternally happy, and can punish the best of the human race, so that he will be eternally miserable, is subversive of all morality.” Robert Ingersoll
“With soap, baptism is a good thing.” Robert Ingersoll
“There is no difference.
The Agnostic is an Atheist.
The Atheist is an Agnostic.
The Agnostic says:
‘I do not know, but I do not believe there is any God.’
The Atheist says the same.” Robert Ingersoll
“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 lodgement where there [are] harps and haloes.
Too much for me.” Robert Ingersoll [From a newspaper account of a conversation between Ingersoll and a Spiritualist who accosted him after a speech.]
“As a matter of fact, no one knows that God exists, and no one knows that God does not exist.
To my mind there is no evidence that God exists – that this world is governed by a being of infinite goodness, wisdom and power, but I do not pretend to know.” Robert Ingersoll
“The Catholic Church is a thousand times better than your Protestant Church upon that question [of damnation].
The Catholic Church believes in purgatory – that is, a place where a fellow can get a chance to make a motion for a new trial.” Robert Ingersoll
RELIGION: VATICAN: THE DARK HISTORY OF THE DIVINING SERPENTS – Library of Rickandria
“The Catholics have a pope.
Protestants laugh at them, and yet the pope is capable of intellectual advancement.
In addition to this, the pope is mortal, and the church cannot be afflicted with the same idiot forever.
The Protestants have a book for a pope.
The book cannot advance.
Year after year, and century after century, the book remains as ignorant as ever.” Robert Ingersoll
“That church teaches us that we can make God happy by being miserable ourselves; that a nun is holier in the sight of God than a loving mother with her child in her thrilled and thrilling arms; that a priest is better than a father; that celibacy is better than that passion of love that has made everything of beauty in this world.
That church tells the girl of sixteen or eighteen years of age, with eyes like dew and light; that girl with the red of health in the white of her beautiful cheeks – tells that girl, ‘Put on the veil, woven of death and night, kneel upon stones, and you will please God.’
I tell you that, by law, no girl should be allowed to take the veil and renounce the joys and beauties of this life.” Robert Ingersoll
“Catholicism is contrary to human liberty.
Catholicism bases salvation upon belief. Catholicism teaches man to trample his reason under foot.
And for that reason, it is wrong.” Robert Ingersoll
“Just to the extent that the Bible was appealed to in matters of science, science was retarded; and just to the extent that science has been appealed to in matters of religion, religion has advanced – so that now the object of intelligent religionists is to adopt a creed that will bear the test and criticism of science.” Robert Ingersoll
“The Christians, in this case, as in many others, were anticipated by the pagans; for virgin-born gods who sacrificed themselves for the good of the race were quite common in the myths and legends of the heathen nations of antiquity. =
The Reverend Charles H. Vail, in a scholarly study, The World’s Saviors, records the stories of miraculous births of fifteen other saviors, who lived before the Christian era.” John G. Jackson
John G. Jackson – Wikipedia – Which one?
Thomas Jefferson (April 13 [O.S. April 2], 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was the nation’s first U.S. secretary of state under George Washington and then the nation’s second vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism, and natural rights, and he produced formative documents and decisions at the state, national, and international levels.
“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
“It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one.” Thomas Jefferson (on the Trinity)
“[T]he 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
Miles Williams Mathis: Thomas Jefferson – Part I – Library of Rickandria
Miles Williams Mathis: Thomas Jefferson – Part II – Library of Rickandria
Sunand Tryambak Joshi (born June 22, 1958) is an American literary critic whose work has largely focused on weird and fantastic fiction, especially the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft and associated writers.
Miles Williams Mathis: H. P. Lovecraft – Spook Baby – Library of Rickandria
“At a conservative estimate, ten million witches were killed throughout Europe. . . .
[T]he decline of witch-belief was . . . entirely the product of religious scepticism. . . .
The Catholic Church did not reform itself on this matter; it was forced by outside pressure to reform.
To be sure, the Protestant churches were no better in this regard; it is simply that they had less time – only two or three centuries – to engage in the torching of witches.
After all, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, stated quite correctly that disbelief in witches meant a disbelief in the Bible.” S. T. Joshi
“[M]ore 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
When Religion Becomes Evil – Wikipedia
Walter Savage Landor (30 January 1775 – 17 September 1864) was an English writer, poet, and activist. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem “Rose Aylmer,” but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equalled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament. Both his writing and political activism, such as his support for Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Garibaldi, were imbued with his passion for liberal and republican causes. He befriended and influenced the next generation of literary reformers such as Charles Dickens and Robert Browning.
“The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.” Walter Savage Landor
William Edward Hartpole Lecky, OM, PC, FBA (26 March 1838 – 22 October 1903) was an Irish historian, essayist, and political theorist with Whig proclivities. His major work was an eight-volume History of England during the Eighteenth Century.
“There are some poisons which, before they kill men, allay pain and diffuse a soothing sensation through the frame.
We may recognize the hour of enjoyment they procure, but we must not separate it from the price at which it was purchased.” William E. H. Lecky
“Contraction of theological influence has at once been the best measure, and the essential condition of intellectual advance.” William E. H. Lecky
“In proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism.” William E. H. Lecky
“The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind.
The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man.
Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and classical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin.” William E. H. Lecky
“The slave trade flourished with the approval of the Church, and in Britain and America it was the established churches that fought most vigorously against abolition.
Bible texts were used constantly to support slavery.
Opponents of slavery, including Wilberforce and Paine, were savagely attacked by the churches for presuming to know better than the Bible, and the antislavery attitude of the Quakers made them unpopular with orthodox Christians.
Wilberforce complained that his supporters were nonconformists and atheists, while church people generally opposed him.” Carl Lofmark
“Once married, a man is positively encouraged to desert his wife for Jesus’ sake, for that is a virtuous deed (Matthew 19:29),
And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.
but there is no possibility of divorce, which is absolutely prohibited in Mark’s gospel (Mark 10:2-12)
and is allowed by Matthew only ‘for the cause of fornication’ (Matthew 5:31-32).
It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:
But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery:
and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
The New Testament sees marriage as the only permissible outlet for sex, which is a thing of this world and does not exist in heaven (Mark 12:25; Galatians 3:28).
For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female:
for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
If he possibly can, a man should also avoid sex in this world (even if he is married, I Cor. 7:29):
But this I say, brethren, the time is short:
it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none;
Jesus himself teaches that the best thing a man can do is castrate himself (Matthew 19:12).
For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb:
and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men:
and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.
He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
St. John the Divine says that only men ‘which were not defiled with women’ will be saved (Rev. 14:4).” Carl Lofmark
These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins.
These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.
These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.
“The command of Jesus that you should desert your family for his sake has led thousands and thousands of people to desert their families and join crusades or monasteries or missions, and to feel virtuous for what they have done.” Carl Lofmark
Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer best known for having planned and led the 1519–22 Spanish expedition to the East Indies. During this expedition, he also discovered the Strait of Magellan, allowing his fleet to pass from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean and perform the first European navigation to Asia via the Pacific. Magellan was killed in battle in the Philippines and his crew, commanded by the Spanish Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the return trip to Spain in 1522 achieving the first circumnavigation of Earth in history.
“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
Karl Marx (German: [ˈkaʁl ˈmaʁks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (written with Friedrich Engels), and his three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894), a critique of classical political economy which employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his life’s work. Marx’s ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence.
Religion is the opiate of the people. – Karl Marx
Miles Williams Mathis: Reading the Signs – Today’s Lesson: Karl Marx – Library of Rickandria
Miles Williams Mathis: Marx’s Wife & other things – Library of Rickandria
“According to The World Health Report 1996, most of the 17 million people who died of infectious diseases in 1995 were young children.
Think of it!
The death of each of those millions of children constitutes a ‘rebuttal of the notion of the almighty and kindly God in heaven.’
How many rebuttals does it take to rid the world of belief in the omnipotent, omnibenevolent God?
And how much stronger is the case against God when we consider the overwhelming amount of animal suffering.” A. J. Mattill Jr.
“According to 2 Samuel 12:7-8, God himself gave David Saul’s wives.
Here again is the divine stamp of approval upon bigamy, concubinage, and polygamy – a whole regiment of wives!
Nowhere in the sacred book does God issue a command against these practices.
Little wonder that among Jews in Moslem countries polygamy continues to the present day, and that Mormons originally practiced polygamy.” A. J. Mattill Jr.
A. J. Mattill, Jr., Author at Internet Infidels
law – Was 20 (Numbers 32:11, Deuteronomy 1:39) the age from which God would consider an Israelite accountable for his sins? – Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange
Joseph Martin McCabe (12 November 1867 – 10 January 1955) was an English writer and speaker on freethought, after having been a Roman Catholic priest earlier in his life. He was “one of the great mouthpieces of freethought in England” Becoming a critic of the Catholic Church, McCabe joined groups such as the Rationalist Association and the National Secular Society. He criticised Christianity from a rationalist perspective, but also was involved in the South Place Ethical Society which grew out of dissenting Protestantism and was a precursor of modern secular humanism.
“Not material or economic conditions in the ordinary sense, but perverse religious ideas explain the suspension of civilization in Europe from the 5th to the 12th century, and in the Mohammedan world after the 15th century.” Joseph McCabe
“The Papacy was corrupt for whole centuries:
especially from about 880 to 1050 and (with a short decent pontificate at rare intervals) 1290 to about 1660.
No ‘primacy’ in any other organized religion has so disgraceful a record.” Joseph McCabe
Claud Dennis McKinsey (March 5, 1940 – June 23, 2009, in Ohio was an American atheist and author of works on the subject of biblical inerrancy from a critical perspective.
“If you really delve into the Bible, you will see that it is a maze, a mass, a veritable labyrinth of contradictions, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, poor mathematics, bad science, erroneous geography, false prophecies, immoral comments, degenerate heroes, and a multitude of other problems too numerous to mention.
It may be somebody’s word, but it certainly isn’t the product of a perfect, divine being. The Bible has more holes in it than a backdoor screen.
In a society dominated by the Book’s influence, all freethinkers should do what Adam and Eve did when they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.
They went out and raised Cain.” C. Dennis McKinsey
“Biblical backing for Mormon behavior is easy to find, although Mark Twain is reported to have denied its legitimacy to a Mormon.
The Mormon claimed polygamy was perfectly moral and he defied Twain to cite any passage of Scripture which forbade it.
‘Well,’ said Twain, ‘how about that passage that tells us no man can serve two masters at the same time?'” C. Dennis McKinsey
RELIGION: MORMONISM – Library of Rickandria
“The Bible, taken as a whole, can be used to praise or condemn practically any human activity, thought, belief, or practice.” Peter McWilliams
Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the “Monkey Trial”, also earned him attention. The term Menckenian has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose styles
“Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.” Henry Mencken
“I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.” H. L. Mencken
“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.” H. L. Mencken
“Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.” H. L. Mencken
“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
“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
Charles Austin Miles (January 7, 1868 – March 10, 1946) was a prolific American writer of gospel songs, who is best known for his 1912 hymn “In the Garden”.
“Countless victims whose marriages have been destroyed by the church have told me that this is the Scripture verse that a pastor cited to convince their spouse to break up their marriage.
During radio interviews in various parts of the United States I have received several on-air telephone calls from the hapless survivors of such sabotaged marriages.
They all tell me the same story:
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:
for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 2 Corinthians 6:14
Perhaps the Bible should be subtitled:
‘Words to Break Up a Family By.’” Austin Miles
Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French judge, man of letters, historian, and political philosopher.
“The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being too upset nature on our behalf.” Baron de Montesquieu
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest professor to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel. Plagued by health problems for most of his life, he resigned from the university in 1879, after which he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, aged 44, he suffered a collapse and thereafter a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years under the care of his family until his death in 1900. His works and his philosophy have fostered not only extensive scholarship but also much popular interest.
“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
“The only excuse for God is that he doesn’t exist.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Sir James Paget, 1st Baronet FRS HFRSE (11 January 1814 – 30 December 1899) (/ˈpædʒət/, rhymes with “gadget”) was an English surgeon and pathologist who is best remembered for naming Paget’s disease and who is considered, together with Rudolf Virchow, as one of the founders of scientific medical pathology. His famous works included Lectures on Tumours (1851) and Lectures on Surgical Pathology (1853).
“I know of no book which has been a source of brutality and sadistic conduct, both public and private, that can compare with the Bible.” Sir James Paget
Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809) was an English-born American Founding Father, French Revolutionary, inventor, and political philosopher. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he helped to inspire the colonial era patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of human rights.
“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
“If thou trusteth to the book called the Scriptures, thou trusteth to the rotten staff of fables and falsehood.” Thomas Paine
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness 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.” Thomas Paine
“It raises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is, is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie?
We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one that the reporter tells a lie.” Thomas Paine
Elihu Palmer (1764 – April 7, 1806) was an author and advocate of deism in the early days of the United States.
“The obscurity, incredibility and obscenity, so conspicuous in many parts of it, would justly condemn the works of a modern writer.
It contains a mixture of inconsistency and contradiction; to call which the word of God, is the highest pitch of extravagance:
it is to attribute to the deity that which any person of common sense would blush to confess himself the author of.” Elihu Palmer
Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Blaise Pascal
Vladimir Vladimirovich Pozner (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович По́знер; born 1 April 1934) is a French-born Russian-American journalist and presenter.
“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
“The great god Ra, whose shrine once covered acres, is filler now for crossword puzzle makers.” Keith Preston
Maria Louise Ramé (1 January 1839[1] – 25 January 1908), going by the name Marie Louise de la Ramée and known by the pseudonym Ouida (/ˈwiːdə/ WEE-də), was an English novelist. Ouida wrote more than 40 novels, as well as short stories, children’s books and essays. Moderately successful, she lived a life of luxury, entertaining many of the literary figures of the day.
“Let us, also, endeavor to realize the unutterable torments endured by men and maidens in their efforts to subdue the natural desires of their senses and their affections to the unnatural celibacy of the cloister, and we shall see that the tortures inflicted by Christianity have been more cruel than the cruelties of death.
Christianity has ever been the enemy of human love; it has forever cursed and expelled and crucified the one passion which sweetens and smiles on human life.
It made of this, the angel of life, a shape of sin and darkness, and bade the woman whose lips were warm with the first kisses of her lover believe herself accursed and ashamed.
Even in the unions which it reluctantly permitted, it degraded and dwarfed the passion which it could not entirely exclude and permitted it coarsely to exist for the mere necessity of procreation.
Love, the winged god of the immortals, became, in the Christian creed, a thrice damned and earth-bound devil, to be exorcised and loathed.
This has been the greatest injury that Christianity has ever done to the human race.
Love, the one supreme, unceasing source of human felicity, the one sole joy which lifts the whole mortal existence into the empyrean, was by it degraded into the mere mechanical act of reproduction.
It cut the wings of Eros.” Ouida (Maria Louisa de la Ramee)
George Agnew Reid RCA who signed his name as G. A. Reid (July 25, 1860 – August 23, 1947) was a Canadian artist, painter, influential educator and administrator. He is best known as a genre painter, but his work encompassed the mural, and genre, figure, historical, portrait and landscape subjects.
“Probably in all history there is no instance of a society in which ecclesiastical power was dominant which was not at once stagnant, corrupt and brutal.” George A. Reid
Ira Leonard Reiss (December 8, 1925 – January 9, 2024) was an American sociologist with primary interests in studying the way society impacts sexual attitudes and behaviors and how people respond to those pressures. He also had interests in the study of gender and family, particularly as they relate to sexuality. He attended Syracuse University for his B.S. degree and the Pennsylvania State University for his M. A. and Ph. D. degrees. His major area in graduate school was sociology and his minor areas were cultural anthropology and philosophy. His doctoral course work in sociology and philosophy was done at Columbia University and his French and German language study was taken at Yale University.
“Perhaps what is really being proposed by the Evangelical fundamentalists is a return not to the 1950s family but to the family of biblical days.
The Old Testament is clear that this was a strong patriarchal family.
Men were permitted several wives and concubines.
Children were legitimately conceived by these concubines outside of marriage. . . .
Is this the Evangelical’s idea of an ideal family?” Ira L. Reiss
Joseph Ernest Renan (/rəˈnɑːn/; French: [ʒozɛf ɛʁnɛst ʁənɑ̃]; 27 February 1823 – 2 October 1892) was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, writing on Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar, and critic. He wrote works on the origins of early Christianity, and espoused popular political theories especially concerning nationalism, national identity, and the alleged superiority of White people over other human “races”. Renan is known as being among the first scholars to advance the debunked Khazar theory, which held that Ashkenazi Jews were descendants of the Khazars, Turkic peoples who had adopted the Jewish religion and allegedly migrated to central and eastern Europe following the collapse of their khanate.
An Agnostic’s Prayer:
“O Lord – if there is a Lord; save my soul – if I have a soul.
Amen.” Ernest Renan
Marilla Marks Ricker (née Young; March 18, 1840 – November 12, 1920) was a suffragist, philanthropist, lawyer, and freethinker. She was the first female lawyer from New Hampshire, and she paved the way for women to be accepted into the bar in New Hampshire. She was also the first woman to run for governor in that state, and the first woman to apply for a federal foreign ambassadorship post. She made significant and lasting contributions to the issues of women’s rights and irreligion through her actions and her writings.
“Religion is not the hero of the day, but the zero. In any exposition of the products of brains, the Sunday-School takes the booby prize. . . .
Man has asked for truth and the Church has given him miracles.
He has asked for knowledge, and the Church has given him theology.
He has asked for facts, and the Church has given him the Bible.
This foolishness should stop.
The Church has nothing to give man that has not been in cold storage for two thousand years. Anything would become stale in that time.” Marilla M. Ricker
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS[7] (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic philosophy.
“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
“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
“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
“The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend.
For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.” Bertrand Russell
“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
Carl Edward Sagan (/ˈseɪɡən/; SAY-gən; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by exposure to light. He assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, which were universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. He argued in favor of the hypothesis, which has since been accepted, that the high surface temperatures of Venus are the result of the greenhouse effect.
“[A] multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.” Carl Sagan
George Santayana (born Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States from the age of eight and identified as an American yet always retained a valid Spanish passport. At the age of 48, he left his academic position at Harvard University and permanently returned to Europe; his last will was to be buried in the Spanish Pantheon in the Campo di Verano, Rome.
“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
“Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.” George Santayana
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (/ˈʃlɛsɪndʒər/ SHLESS-in-jər; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a specialist in American history, much of Schlesinger’s work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry S. Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns, he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson II. Schlesinger served as special assistant and “court historian” to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy administration, from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president’s state funeral, titled A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
“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.
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author, muckraker journalist, and political activist, and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair’s work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.
“Turn over the pages of history and read the damning record of the church’s opposition to every advance in every field of science.” Upton Sinclair
Barbara Mary Smoker (2 June 1923 – 7 April 2020) was a British humanist activist and freethought advocate. She was also President of the National Secular Society (1972–1996), Chair of the British Voluntary Euthanasia Society (now known as Dignity in Dying) (1981–1985) and an Honorary Vice President of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association in the United Kingdom.
“To say grace, knowing that people on this globe are starving, indicates a highly selfish acquiescence in the arrogantly supposed favoritism of the almighty.
A really decent god-believer, far from giving thanks for the food and good health and fortune enjoyed by himself and his family and close friends, would surely curse God for his neglect of the hungry, the sick and the tormented, throughout the world.” Barbara Smoker
Gerald Leonard Spence (born January 8, 1929) is a semi-retired American trial lawyer and author. He is a member of the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame and is the founder of the Trial Lawyers College. Spence has never lost a criminal case before a jury either as a prosecutor or a defense attorney and did not lose a civil case between 1969 and 2010. He is considered one of the greatest lawyers of the 20th century, and one of the best trial lawyers ever. He has been described by legal scholar Richard Falk as a “lawyer par excellence”.
“The so-called godly man may be more likely to do serious wrong than a man who deeply questions himself.
The ‘godly man’ often zealously follows religious precepts that, in the end, justify an unjust injury to others, while the questioning man, addressing his own conscience, may have the better chance to consider all the circumstances and come to the just decision.” Gerry Spence
“Under any religion, the pre-established 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
“Susan Boggs, a black runaway interviewed in Canada in 1863, said of the religious slave masters:
‘Why the man that baptized me had a colored woman tied up in his yard to whip when he got home that very Sunday and her mother . . . was in church hearing him preach.
He preached,
“You must obey your masters and be good servants.”
That is the greater part of the sermon, when they preach to the colored folks. . . .'” Gerry Spence
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (née Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women’s rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first convention to be called for the sole purpose of discussing women’s rights, and was the primary author of its Declaration of Sentiments. Her demand for women’s right to vote generated a controversy at the convention but quickly became a central tenet of the women’s movement. She was also active in other social reform activities, especially abolitionism.
“I can truly say, after an experience of seventy years, that all the cares and anxieties, the trials and disappointments of my whole life, are light, when balanced with my sufferings in childhood and youth from the theological dogmas which I sincerely believed…
The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“All the men of the Old Testament were polygamists, and Christ and Paul, the central figures of the New Testament, were celibates, and condemned marriage by both precept and example.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Charles Welton Sutherland (March 28, 1860 – December 7, 1943) was an American newspaper editor and politician from New York.
“For every morsel of bread given to a stranger in need, hundreds have died from diseases whose cures were thwarted by organized religion’s traditional opposition to science.
For every word soothing the tempers of men, there have been calls to arms resulting in the death and maiming of thousands.
The United Nation’s Children’s Emergency Fund estimates that forty thousand children die each day even as religious organizations obstruct the distribution of birth control devices in poor countries.
The resultant daily pain and torturous deaths by starvation far outstrip the almsgiving and generosity religion has always claimed to espouse.
Whatever percentage of this toll is attributable to church practices, surely it has added up to far more accrued pain and death over the centuries than the atrocities of Stalin and Hitler combined.” Charles W. Sutherland
Miles Williams Mathis: Hitler & Top Nazi Genealogy – THEY WERE JEWS! – Library of Rickandria
“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
Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay “Civil Disobedience” (originally published as “Resistance to Civil Government”), an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. Henry David Thoreau
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (/ˈtoʊlstɔɪ, ˈtɒl-/; Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой, IPA: [ˈlʲef nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj] ⓘ; 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time.
“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
“One may say with one’s lips:
‘I believe that God is one, and also three’ – but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.” Leo Tolstoy
Barbara G. Walker (born July 2, 1930, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American author and feminist. She is a knitting expert and the author of over ten encyclopedic knitting references, despite “not taking to it at all” when she first learned in college. Other topics she has written about are religion, New Age, the occult, spirituality, and mythology.
“Because religious training means credulity training, churches should not be surprised to find that so many of their congregations accept astrology as readily as theology, or a channeled Atlantean priest as readily as a biblical prophet.” Barbara G. Walker
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells’s science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the “father of science fiction”.
“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
Steven Weinberg (/ˈwaɪnbɜːrɡ/; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.
Good people can do good and bad people can do evil.
But for good people to do evil — that takes religion. Steven Weinberg
Andrew Dickson White (November 7, 1832 – November 4, 1918) was an American historian and educator who co-founded Cornell University, one of eight Ivy League universities in the United States, and served as its first president for nearly two decades. He was known for expanding the scope of college curricula. A politician, he had served as New York state senator and was later appointed as U.S. ambassador to Germany and Russia. He was one of the founders of the conflict thesis, which states that science and religion have historically been in conflict and tried to prove it over the course of approximately 800 pages in his History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.
“The establishment of Christianity . . . arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years.” Andrew Dickson White
Alfred North Whitehead OM FRS FBA (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology.
“I consider Christian theology to be one of the greatest disasters of the human race.” Alfred North Whitehead
CONTINUE
Miles Williams Mathis: What I Finally Understood about Famous People – Library of Rickandria
SAUCE
Famous Peoples Religious Quotes (it needed to be converted)