Hard Core
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."
Senator Goldwater
"Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."
..........Sigmund Freud, "Future of an Illusion". 1927
"Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing 'does not!'"
.......... [email protected]
"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, "Woman, Church and State", 1893
"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion."
..........Robert M. Pirsig
"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians, Your Christians are so unlike your Christ"
..........Mahatma Gandhi
"A disturbing fact continues to surface in sex abuse research. The first best predictor of abuse is alcohol or drug addiction in the father. But the second best predictor is conservative religiosity, accompanied by parental belief in traditional male-female roles. This means that if you want to know which children are most likely to be sexually abused by their father, the second most significant clue is *whether or not the parents belong to a conservative religious group with traditional role beliefs and rigid sexual attitudes*. (Brown and Bohn, 1989; Finkelhor, 1986; Fortune, 1983; Goldstein et al, 1973; Van Leeuwen, 1990). (emphasis in original)
.........."Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches", by Carolyn Holderread Heggen, Herald Press, Scotdale, PA, 1993 p. 73
"The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it is a lovely work if you can stomach it."
..........Lazarus Long, Time enough for Love, by Robert Heinlein
"It never ceases to amaze me at how many religions depend upon circumcised penises.
..........Dawn Henderson
"It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses."
..........Flo Kennedy
"The world holds two classes of men: intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
..........Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri
"If you love God, burn a church"
..........Jello Biafra (ex-Dead Kennedys singer)
"I should like to see, and this will be the last and most ardent of my desires, I should like to see the last king strangled with the guts of the last priest."
..........J. Messelier of Paris, dated 1733:
Faith; noun. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."
..........Ambrose Bierce
"Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
..........Ambrose Bierce
Scriptures; noun. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
..........Ambrose Bierce
"We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake."
..........Catherine Fahringer
"Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things. One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, dirty thing on the face of the earth and you should save it for someone you love."
..........Butch Hancock
"If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction."
..........Judith Hayes
"The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H. 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 A. Heinlein
"Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate."
..........F.M. Knowles
"Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so."
..........Bertrand Russell
"What was it that Adam ate that he wasn't supposed to eat? It wasn't just an apple. It was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The subtle message? 'Get smart and I'll fuck you over' sayeth the Lord. God is the smartest, and he doesn't want any Competition. Is this not an absolutely anti-intellectual religion?"
..........Frank Zappa
"You are never dedicated to do something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt."
..........Robert M. Pirsig, "Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
"If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced."
..........Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (1792-1822)
"A believer is not a thinker and a thinker is not a believer."
..........Marian Noel Sherman, M.D. Interview, Daily Colonist, c. 1969
"Has science ever retreated? No! It is Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be forced to retreat."
..........Emile Zola (1840-1902), French novelist, from Rufus K. Noyes, Views of Religion