Anarchist Sampler: Religion

torture of alleged heretics in Medieval Europe

If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does not exist.
I defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle; now, therefore, let all choose.
Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
And so a Christian cannot promise to do another person's will without knowing what will be required of him, nor can he submit to transitory human laws or promise to do or abstain from doing any specified thing at any given time, for he cannot know what may be required of him at any time by that Christian law of love, obedience to which constitutes the purpose of his life. A Christian, by promising unconditional obedience to the laws of men in advance, would indicate by that promise that the inner law of God does not constitute the sole law of his life.
Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You
A Christian anarchist has no business belonging to such a reactionary organization [the Catholic Church]. I do not believe in original sin, indulgences, the infallibility of the pope, or obedience to any church official if it is against my conscience. I am not interested in earning "merit" or in being saved by priestly incantation.
Ammon Hennacy, The Book of Ammon
Religion is a superstition that originated in man's mental inability to solve natural phenomena. The Church is an organized institution that has always been a stumbling block to progress.
Emma Goldman, "What I Believe"
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/whatibelieve.html Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter.
Everything sacred is and must be perverted by perverters of the law; therefore our present time has multitudes of perverters in all spheres.
Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own
What is the priest? we have asked. An intermediary between the People and God. What is God himself? Another supernatural and imaginary intermediary between the natural instincts of man and his reason. Cannot man do what his reason points to, without being constrained by respect for a Creator? That would be a contradiction. In any case, faith being free and optional, and each one constructing his own religion, worship becomes a matter for the inward tribunal, an affair of conscience, not of material use.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, ch. 3
They [religious idealists] say in a single breath: "God and the liberty of man," "God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity of men" -- regardless of the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God exists, all these things are condemned to nonexistence. For, if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master. And if such a master exists, man is a slave. Now, if he is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity are possible for him. In vain, flying in the face of good sense and all the teachings of history, do they represent their God as animated by the tenderest love of human liberty. A master, whoever he may be and however liberal he may desire to show himself, remains none the less always a master.
Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
Voltairine de Cleyre, "Anarchism and American Traditions"
The priest accustoms the child to the idea of law, to make it obey better what he calls the "divine law," and the lawyer prates of divine law, that the civil law may be the better obeyed.
Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist Morality, sect. I
At times of general malaise and social breakdown, it is not uncommon for millenarian movements to arise to replace lost hopes by idle dreams: dreams of a savior who will lead us from bondage, or of the return of the great ships with their bounty, as in the cargo cults of South Sea islanders. Some may yearn for a lost golden age, or succumb to the blandishments of the new Messiahs who come to the fore at such moments. Those more cognizant of the institutional causes of discontent may be attracted to an image of hope destroyed by dark and powerful forces that stole from us the leader who sought a better future. The temptation to seek solace, or salvation, is particularly strong when the means to become engaged in a constructive way in determining one's fate have largely dissolved and disappeared.
Noam Chomsky, "Vain Hopes, False Dreams," Z Magazine, Sept. 1992

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page