Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked. -- Larry Niven, "The Mote in God's Eye" A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. -- Gore Vidal By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. -- R. Emerson -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.") [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to misconstrue all these misquotations?!?" Ed.] Religion is what the common people see as true, the wise people see as false, and the rulers see as useful. -- Seneca The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. -- Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321) [C]ivil disobedience ... is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience... Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. -- Howard Zinn (from Failure to Quit, p. 45) I learnt the lesson on nonviolence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her. -- Gandhi (as quoted in Billions and Billions, p. 183) Before Buddha or Jesus spoke, the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion, the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. -- D. H. Lawrence . . . It may be that there is no God, that "the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good is but the accidental and ineffective byproduct of blindly swirling atoms," that we are alone in a world that cares nothing for us or for the values that we create and sustain--that we and they are here for a moment only, and gone, and that eventually there will be left no trace of us in the universe. A man may well believe that this dredful thing is true. But only the fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true. -- Sterling M. McMurrin Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. -- Horace Walpole . . . Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. -- Thomas Jefferson (from Notes on the State of Virginia, vol. 8, p. 400) The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors. -- Thomas Jefferson . . . Difference of opinion is advantageious in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. -- Thomas Jefferson (from Notes on the State of Virginia) 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 on fables and mythology. -- Thomas Jefferson If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. -- Thomas Jefferson There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world. -- Thomas Jefferson Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. -- Thomas Jefferson (from The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson) The Bible is not my book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma. -- Abraham Lincoln . . . Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man--this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position... Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal. -- Abraham Lincoln (from his speech in Chicago, IL, July 10, 1858) The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity. -- John Adams In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made school boards. -- Mark Twain In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination. -- Mark Twain [The Bible] has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. -- Mark Twain I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what he knows. -- Mark Twain I have seen several entirely sincere people who thought they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. That was the end of the search. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was seeking after political Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on the market. In any case, when he found the Truth he sought no further; but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors. -- Mark Twain (from What is Man?) The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates and tyrannizes over a village of God's empire, but it is not the universal immutable law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism, is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion, and making way for truth. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man's crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. -- Friedrich Nietzsche The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. -- Friedrich Nietzsche I call Christianity the /one/ great curse, the /one/ great intrinsic depravity, the /one/ great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, /petty/--I call it the /one/ mortal blemish of mankind. -- Friedrich Nietzsche You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion? -- Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians Who alone has reason to /lie himself out/ of actuality? He who /suffers/ from it. -- Friedrich Nietzsche Science makes godlike--it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such--it alone is forbidden. Science is the /first/ sin, the /original/ sin. /This alone is morality./ "Thou shalt not know"--the rest follows. -- Friedrich Nietzsche Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders? -- Friedrich Nietzsche Faith: not /wanting/ to know what is true. -- Friedrich Nietzsche To be or not to be. -- Shakespeare To do is to be. -- Nietzsche To be is to do. -- Sartre Do be do be do. -- Sinatra God is Dead. -- Nietzsche Nietzsche is Dead. -- God Nietzsche is God. -- Dead Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders. -- Friedrich Nietzsche The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. -- Friedrich Nietzsche What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you. -- Friedrich Nietzsche Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. -- Friedrich Nietzsche The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal. The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may experience it as such. Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual and stupid. Whoever could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very swift. Thinking of oneself gives little happiness. If, however, one feels much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of oneself but of one's ideal. This is far, and only the swift shall reach it and are delighted. -- Friedrich Nietzsche A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; 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 [My] deep religiosity . . . found an abrupt ending at the age of twelve, through the reading of popular scientific books. -- Albert Einstein (as quoted in Einstein, History, and Other Passions, p. 172) It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which [I] lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely personal," from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. -- Albert Einstein (as quoted in Einstein, History, and Other Passions, p. 172) A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe;" a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compasion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. -- Albert Einstein (as quoted in Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics, p. 250) I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. -- Thomas Edison For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise. -- Benjamin Franklin (from his closing speech at the Constitutional Convention of 1787) 'Tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic. -- Benjamin Franklin (from his letter to Benjamin Vaughan mentioning Dr. Priestley) I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them. -- Galileo Galilei (as quoted in Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography, p. 108) The hypothesis is pretty; its only fault is that it is neither demonstrated nor demonstrable. Who does not see that this is purely arbitrary fiction that puts nothingness as existing and proposes nothing more than simple noncontradiciton? -- Galileo Galilei, referring to the theologians who refused to give up the idea that the moon's surface was smooth, and who said that although it appeared to have mountains and craters, it was really encased in smooth transparent crystal (as quoted in Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography, p. 169) [Galileo's statement can apply to a whole host of ideas that people create in order to hang on to tradition rather than grasp reality.] You go back and tell Brigham Young that I'll give up the Lord's money when he sends me a receipt signed by the Lord, and no sooner. -- Sam Brannan (as quoted in California Saints, p. 153) My young son asked me what happens after we die. I told him we get buried under a bunch of dirt and worms eat our bodies. I guess I should have told him the truth--that most of us go to Hell and burn eternally--but I didn't want to upset him. -- Jack Handey (from Deep Thoughts) If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is, "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did." -- Jack Handey (from Deep Thoughts) Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. -- Umberto Eco I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. -- Umberto Eco If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity. -- Umberto Eco I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing. -- Umberto Eco When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. -- Umberto Eco When we traded the results of our fantasies, it seemed to us--and rightly--that we had proceeded by unwarranted associations, by shortcuts so extraordinary that, if anyone had accused us of really believing them, we would have been ashamed. -- Umberto Eco All of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real. -- Umberto Eco Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. -- Seneca the Younger (4 BCE - 65 CE) The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell. -- Saint Augustine I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt. -- Rene Descartes If God made us in His image we have certainly returned the compliment. -- Voltaire, French philosopher, historian, author, poet There is no sin greater than ignorance. -- Rudyard Kipling How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables. -- Michel E. de Montaigne The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent--slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings. -- H. L. Mencken Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. -- Margaret Mead I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us-- a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole normal evolution of society. -- Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896 The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs; not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision; not to burden memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought. -- William Channing (as quoted in A Chosen Faith, p. 30) It is an important truth that the ultimate reliance of a human being must be on his own mind. -- William Channing (as quoted in Emerson: The Mind on Fire, p. 47) However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." -- Senator Barry Goldwater (from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981) Just once I would like to persuade the audience not to wear any article of blue denim. If only they could see themselves in a pair of brown corduroys like mine instead of this awful, boring blue denim. I don't enjoy the sky or sea as much as I used to because of this Levi character. If Jesus Christ came back today, He and I would get into our brown corduroys and go to the nearest jean store and overturn the racks of blue denim. Then we'd get crucified in the morning. -- Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them. -- Bertrand Russell (as quoted in The Quotable Bertrand Russell, p. 138) The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts. -- Bertrand Russell A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the word uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. -- Bertrand Russell Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. -- Bertrand Russell I've come to the conclusion that there can be little or no dialogue between "proclaimers of truth" (religious and secular ideologues) and "discoverers of truth" (empiricists). The former tend to debate, the latter tend to discuss. -- Edward H. Ashment . . . And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers. No matter how assured we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions. This is true in religion as it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive. As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be advised to leave them to heaven. They will not, unfortunately, do us the same courtesy. They attack us and each other, and whatever their protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword. My own belief in God, then, is just that--a matter of belief, not knowledge. My respect for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth. But even well-educated Christians are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record. Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it. Some Christians, alas, resort to formal lying to obscure such reality. -- Steve Allen, comedian (from an essay in the book The Courage of Conviction, edited by Philip Berman) We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major prophet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God. But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual resources. If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology, the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that much closer to a truly religious situation on earth. -- Norman Cousins (from Human Options) I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense! -- Shaw (from The Devil's Disciple) Perhaps the greatest lesson [Huxley] learned from reading Carlyle was that real religion, that emotive feeling for Truth and Beauty, could flourish in the absence of an idolatrous theology. -- Adrian Desmond (from Huxley, p. 79) Untouched people; not necessarily noble savages, but apparently happy ones. They lived in a land of plenty, ready to share their bananas and guavas and coconuts. They were to be envied for their "primitive simplicity and kind-heartedness." Where was that "malady of thought" afflicting industrial England? [Huxley] realized that "civilization as we call it would be rather a curse than a blessing to them." Huxley knew the fate in store for them, slamming the "mistaken goodness of the 'Stigginses' of Exeter Hall, who would send missionaries to these men to tell them that they will all infallibly be damned." -- Adrian Desmond, describing Huxley's reaction to encountering natives on a remote island (from Huxley, p. 120) Science was tearing through the "fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs" to behold a new cosmos, in which our Earth is merely an "eccentric speck"-- a world of evolution "and unchanging causation." It invited new ways of thinking. It demanded a new rationale for belief. With science's truths the only accessible ones, "blind faith" was no longer admirable but "the one unpardonable sin." -- Adrian Desmond (from Huxley, p. 345) A man got up [after one of Huxley's "sermons"] and said "they had never heard anything like that in Norwich before." Never "did Science seem so vast and mere creeds so little." -- Adrian Desmond (from Huxley, p. 366) So-called Christian rock . . . is a diabolical force undermining Christianity from within. -- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocrite, sexual pervert, TV preacher, and self-described pornography addict (from Two Points of View: 'Christian' Rock and Roll, The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50) I turn on my television set. I see a young lady who goes under the guise of being a Christian, known all over the nation, dressed in skin-tight leather pants, shaking and wiggling her hips to the beat and rythm of the music as the strobe lights beat their patterns across the stage and the band plays the contemporary rock sound which cannot be differentiated from songs by the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, or anyone else. And you may try to tell me this is of God and that it is leading people to Christ, but I know better. -- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocrite, sexual pervert, TV preacher, and self-described pornography addict (from Two Points of View: 'Christian' Rock and Roll, The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50) Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred. -- from Our Sunday Visitor, an American-Catholic newspaper, 1949 The history of the rise of Christianity has everything to do with politics, culture, and human frailties and nothing to do with supernatural manipulation of events. Had divine intervention been the guiding force, surely two millennia after the birth of Jesus he would not have a world where there are more Muslims than Catholics, more Hindus than Protestants, and more nontheists than Catholics and Protestants combined. -- John K. Naland (from The First Easter, Free Inquiry magazine, vol. 8, no. 2) And do you not think that each of you women is an Eve? The judgement of God upon your sex endures today; and with it invariably endures your position of criminal at the bar of justice. -- Tertullian, 2nd century Christian writer, misogynist Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. -- Chapman Cohen Reason is experimental intelligence, conceived after the pattern of science, and used in the creation of social arts; it has something to do. It liberates man from the bondage of the past, due to ignorance and accident hardened into custom. It projects a better future and assists man in its realization. And its operation is always subject to test in experience... The principles which man projects as guides... are not dogmas. They are hypotheses to be worked out in practice, and to be rejected, corrected and expanded as they fail or succeed in giving our present experience the guidance it requires. We may call them programmes of action, but since they are to be used in making our future acts less blind, more directed, they are flexible. Intelligence is not something possessed once for all. It is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn and courage in re-adjustment. -- John Dewey (from Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 96) Intelligent thinking means an increment of freedom in action--an emancipation from chance and fatality. "Thought" represents the suggestion of a way of response that is different from that which would have been followed if intelligent observation had not effected an inference as to the future. -- John Dewey (from Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 144) The author Matt Berry states, "[The search for] Truth does not begin with an answer on behalf of which all questions must constantly rearrange themselves. The [search for] Truth begins with fearless questions." This all seems so basic and self-evident, but large segments of the population haven't been able to (or don't want to) grasp this fundamental Truth. -- Al Case (from http://www.2think.org/2think.shtml) So what is the best methodology to arrive at tentative conclusions? Is it something along the lines of the scientific method? Can Occam's Razor help? Is it based, in part or in total, on faith? If so, how does one know what should be accepted and what should be rejected based on faith? If faith is (part of) the methodology, shouldn't all (unreasonable) claims be accepted to keep one's methodology consistent? To me, this paradox is the most puzzling aspect of human behavior. People require evidence and use scientific methodologies in certain situations but see no contradiction when they rely completely on faith in other situations. -- Al Case (from http://www.2think.org/2think.shtml) For a person to become what they are--rather than what society makes them out to be--individual responsibility and courage are required. To become what you really are, you can't just go along with the flow and do what seems to be the most popular. Certainly, good ideas and such should be borrowed and incorporated into one's personal philosophy. To find those good ideas, however, requires a willingness to think, a willingness to change, and courage to explore. So what's it going to be? Are you going to take my (or someone else's) word for it, or are you going to live your own thoughtful existence? -- Al Case (from http://www.2think.org/2think.shtml) Basically the Bible calls a host of perfectly natural (and frequently helpful, useful, or good) deeds "sin." These include things like not circumcising a penis (Genesis 17:9-14), listening to women (I Corinthians 14:34-6), or maintaining peace in families (Matthew 10:35-6). Once one lets go of a guilt-fostering religion not only does the guilt disappear but actions tend to become less "sinful" in the sense that real "sin" (to quote Robert A. Heinlein) "lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily." -- Al Case The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called "faith." -- Robert G. Ingersoll The very concept of sin comes from the Bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage? -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling--absolutely essential to mental health and happiness. -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost? -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil--you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace, and joy. Trust yourself. -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say "God is love," they will claim that /you/ are taking things out of context! -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being. -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) For my money, I'll bet on reason and humanistic kindness. Even if I am wrong I will have enjoyed my life, the existence of which is under little dispute. -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever believed Christian notions. -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) Without "The Law of Moses" would we all be wandering around like little gods, stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended? -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) [His] challenge to "cry out to God" is nothing less than intellectual dishonesty. One of my friends asked me simply to "pretend that Jesus is real and he will make himself real to you." Have either of them ever "cried out to Buddha" or "pretended that Allah is real" as an acid test of their existence? These people are asking me to lie to myself. Anyway, they should know better. They should know that I had already "cried out to God," that I had frequently prayed and "felt the spirit" within me, that I had many times gone through the motions. They don't seem to realize that I was not seeking inner confirmation--I was seeking objective, external evidence. Besides, even if I did manage to "fake it," would an omniscient god not know this? -- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith) Dan Barker's book was instrumental in my de-conversion. I was brought up in the Missouri Synod Lutheran church, a very conservative but not theologically fundamentalist church. There was never anytime I doubted that Christianity was the true religion. As I got older (high school, college), I started to lean more and more towards Fundamentalism. After graduating from college, I bought my first computer and subscribed to Prodigy. I was always posting on the LDS and other 'cultish' boards, convinced that they were on the road to hell and it was my job to bring them the truth to save them. Eventually I ran into an atheist who suggested that I read "Losing Faith in Faith." I did so with the intention that by better understanding atheists I would be able to convert them to Christianity more successfully. I read the book over a weekend and I was shocked at what I read. I'd never heard that stuff before. I immediately lost my faith in Christianity. -- The "testimony" of an ex-devout Christian upon reading Dan Barker's Losing Faith in Faith Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength. -- Michael Shermer (from Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other Confusions of Our Time, p. 124) Myths are about the human struggle to deal with the great passages of time and life--birth, death, marriage, the transitions from childhood to adulthood to old age. They meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans that has absolutely nothing to do with science. To try to turn a myth into a science, or a science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science. In attempting to do this, creationists have missed the significance, meaning, and sublime nature of myths. They took a beautiful story of creation and re-creation and ruined it. -- Michael Shermer (from Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other Confusions of Our Time, p. 130) It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark. -- Michael Shermer (from Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other Confusions of Our Time, p. 141) The first-cause and prime-mover argument, brilliantly proffered by St. Thomas Aquinas in the fourteenth century (and brilliantly refuted by David Hume in the eighteenth century), is easily turned aside with just one more question: Who or what caused and moved God? -- Michael Shermer (from Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other Confusions of Our Time, p. 146) Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to "African-American." My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check "Other" and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: "African- Greek-German-American." And proud of it. -- Michael Shermer (from Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other Confusions of Our Time, p. 251) Theologian: An uncommon individual who, though possessing finite abilities, has been called by God himself who, though possessing infinite abilities, requires the assistance of the former in explaining Himself to the rest of us. -- Rev. Donald Morgan [Translation: If their god existed, theologians would be out of work.] God: The Preeminent Chameleon; whenever the need is felt by one or more of his followers, He oblingingly recreates himself to suit the occasion. -- Rev. Donald Morgan The biblical concepts of sin and salvation are an integral part of Christian doctrine. Christianity first creates a problem (sin) and then offers a "solution" (salvation). This is not unlike the protection racket; you either buy "protection"--or else! -- Rev. Donald Morgan Jesus' last words on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" hardly seem like the words of a man who planned it that way. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure there is something wrong here. -- Rev. Donald Morgan One man's religion is another man's belly laugh. -- Robert A. Heinlein The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by /H. Sapiens/ is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve 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 Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. -- Robert A. Heinlein All absolute power demoralizes its possessor. To that all history bears witness. And if it be a spiritual power which rules men's consciences, the danger is only so much greater, for the possession of such a power exercises a specially treacherous fascination, while it is peculiarly conducive to self-deceit, because the lust of dominion, when it has become a passion, is only too easily in this case excused under the plea of zeal for the salvation of others. -- Professor J.H. von Dullinger [He was subsequently excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church (1871).] The fundamentalists, by "knowing" the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into their straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science--or of any honest intellectual inquiry. -- Stephen Jay Gould (from 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt) Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency--the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known. -- Stephen Jay Gould (Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other Confusions of Our Time, p. xii) The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis. -- Stephen Jay Gould (from Full House, p. 30) The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best--and therefore never scrutinize or question. -- Stephen Jay Gould (from Full House, p. 57) Look in the mirror, and don't be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival. -- Stephen Jay Gould (from Full House, p. 73) We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction. -- Stephen Jay Gould (from Full House, p. 216) Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. -- Charles Darwin (from The Descent of Man) We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe[s], to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act." -- Charles Darwin (from Darwin, p. 218) I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars. -- Charles Darwin (from Darwin, p. 479) I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions. -- Charles Darwin (from Darwin, p. 644) I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, and I have confined myself to science. I may, however, have been unduly biassed by the pain which it would give some members of my family, if I aided in any way direct attacks on religion. -- Charles Darwin (from Darwin, p. 645) Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. -- Carl Sagan If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our concepts? -- Carl Sagan When you make the finding yourself--even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light--you never forget it. -- Carl Sagan Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works. -- Carl Sagan The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. -- Carl Sagan (from Billions and Billions, p. 215) It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. -- Carl Sagan There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. -- Carl Sagan The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it. -- George Santayana I believe in treating others as I want to be treated--but I certainly don't believe in turning the other cheek and the truth is that I never knew any Christians who did either. -- James Hervey Johnson If you try to impose a rigid discipline while teaching a child or a chimp you are working against the boundless curiosity and need for relaxed play that make learning possible in the first place... Learning cannot be controlled; it is out of control by design. Learning emerges spontaneously, it proceeds in an individualistic and unpredictable way, and it achieves its goal in its own good time. Once triggered, learning will not stop--unless it is hijacked by conditioning. -- Roger Fouts (from Next of Kin, p. 83) Creativity and learning are examples of innate behavior that can only be hindered, not helped, by rewards. -- Roger Fouts (from Next of Kin, p. 84) Every biomedical researcher [who isolates and/or tortures the animal subjects] operates within a contradiction: "We need to experiment on chimpanzees because, physiologically, they are just like us." Why, then, is it acceptable to isolate, torture, and even destroy animals that are just like us? "Because, psychologically, they're not like us." -- Roger Fouts (from Next of Kin, p. 320) I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock. -- Howard Stern 8 A fable: After several painful attempts, an ostrich concluded that it was unable to fly. "Somehow I must account for these feathers," it thought to itself. One day it spotted a gull floating on the sea. "Water is a lot like air and will have to do. Perhaps this is what it would be like to fly!" Struggling up through the beating surf, it grew weary and drowned. Moral: I do not have to account for anything. If I inherit "mind" or "soul" or "quest for meaning" or "the right to act" ... or some other ostrich-feathered desire for something "beyond," I do not have to make an accounting for it ... put it to any kind of use ... prove it or disprove it. Better to laugh at my feathers and hop around a bit ... even show them off maybe. -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 12) 9 Why I should not have to be an atheist: This is not a God-AntiGod world. 10 Why I am an atheist: God is a cultural reality ... just as an eye patch is a reality. 11 Answering the Christian: Why I have not abandoned myself to the Devil: If God is a white eye patch, then the devil is a black one. -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 12) 16 Youth often suffer from an identity crisis because we insist that they be someone else ... that they abandon themselves to become a piece in our jigsaw puzzle. We twist them this way and that in the hope that they might fit into our prespective of ourselves. In short, they suffer /our/ identity crisis ... and then we critize them for it. -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 14) 38 I cannot be an individual without social attachment. How else would I get the training? And from whom would I flee? -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 19) 39 The "Truth" is not something which must be defended. If "Truth" is what is absolutely necessary to well-being, then it need only be pointed out. That which we have been defending at all costs is only what is necessary to the well-being of our group. But the fact that we defend the needs of our group at the very expense of our own well-being, and successfully I might add, damages my argument. For certainly, if my own well-being were pointed out, wouldn't I attempt to secure it? Wrong question. Why don't I try? ... and how did I learn that I should try? From that smaller group, the individualists? It's easy to forget that individualism is a social movement. So, what am I seeking? For I need my group ... -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 19) 61 Sometimes I feel as though I am the last to get the joke--and it took me an inordinately long time just to crack a smile. Now I look around me and find no one else chuckling. But the humor is so obvious to me that I cannot presume to be the first among my acquaintances to have laughed out loud. It can only be that everyone else has, once again, found something more serious than existence. -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 24) 64 Out of hunger we swoop down from the idea, and snatch up our prey, lift it back to our heights ... and find ... just another idea. -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 25) 66 Vanity: How the mighty hunter caught a snake with his ankle. -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 25) 91 In life, as in the kernel of wheat, much of the value lies in the shell, yet everyone wants to show me the "inner" world of man ... to feed me the husked "essence" of experience, and I am to be satisfied today to the same extent that I will be malnourished tomorrow. -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 32) 97 Concluding with the Surface: The "mind" is a fly in a jar. As long as it respects its limits, remains in the center, it can see far and clear and feel its freedom, but as soon as it tries to fly "beyond" its reality ... tries this angle and that ... to get "behind" the fact ... beneath the surface ... "in the world but not of the world" ... as soon as it flies off in a buzzing fury toward the "ultimate," we hear nothing but the frenzied pit-pat of its own scared ideas. Do no misunderstand me here. To be the fly in the jar is not the despair, but quite the contrary, to be the fly and believe that there is not jar is the madness. We need not transcend reality--reality is the goal--we must transcend "mind" ... to see through the glass but never forget that it is there. -- Matt Berry (from A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, p. 34)