QUOTABLE QUOTES
"Words are to a theologian what grease is to a pig: They make him
very slippery."
~~ Me
"It's been said that faith can move mountains, but experience has
shown
that dynamite is much better."
~~ Unknown
"All things dull and ugly, all creatures short and squat;
All things rude and nasty, the Lord God made the lot.
Each little snake that poisons, each little wasp that stings;
He made their brutish venom, He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous, all evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous, the Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet, each beastly little squid.
Who made the spiky urchin? Who made the shark? He did.
All things scabbed and ulcerous, all pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous, The Lord God made them all. Amen."
~~ Monty Python, "The Meaning of Life" movie
"My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in
1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible
under English law at that time."
~~ Garrison Keilor
"The Puritans. Our ancestors. People so uptight the
English kicked them out. How fucking anal do you have to be for the
English to say 'get� the fuck out!'"
~~ Robin Williams
CHRISTIAN n. One
who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired
book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who
follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent
with
a life of sin.
FAITH n. Belief without evidence in what is told by
one who speaks without
knowledge, of things without parallel.�
PRAY v. �To ask that the laws of the universe
be annulled in behalf of a
single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
REDEMPTION n. Deliverance of sinners from the
penalty of their sin, through
their murder of the deity against whom they sinned. The doctrine of
Redemption
is the fundamental mystery of our holy religion, and whoso believeth in
it
shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to try to
understand
it.
~~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"You know, the frustrating thing about debating with Christians in
general, and you are typical of the genre dear [Somebody], is that when it
has all been said you come waltzing back in as if no one had said a sensible word about the matter previously. All has to be repeated in the hope that something might eventually go "Click!!" in the Christian brain. But like you I am disinclined to repeat everything."
~~ Sid Green, on the YahooGroups Xianity Discussion List
"If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves
in
a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that's okay, he's God. He can do
whatever
he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of
morality,
decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very
book
that is supposedly preaching the opposite."
~~ Dennis McKinsey, of the
newsletter Biblical Errancy
"Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad,
yet preferred
to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily
cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy
times
seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none
himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man
without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s
acts upon
man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself;
and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor,
abused
slave to worship him! "
~~ Mark Twain
"All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any
reasonable
person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention -- of
barbarian
invention -- is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think
of
it as you would of any other, get the bandage of reverence from your
eyes;
drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your
brain
the cowled form of superstition -- then read the Holy bible, and you
will
be amazed that you ever, for one moment,� supposed a being of
infinite wisdom,
goodness and purity to be the author of such ignorance and such
atrocity."
~~ Robert Ingersoll, from his essay "The Gods"
"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do
irrational
things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the
principle
behind lotteries, dating, and religion. ... The psychological
explanation
for this phenomenon is that life sucks and we'd all rather fantasize
about
being someplace else."
~~ Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle
"Man has never been the same since God died. He has taken it very
hard...
He gets along pretty well, as long as it is daylight,... but it's all
no use.
The moment it begins to get dark, as soon as it is night, he goes out
and
howls over the grave of God."
~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay, Conversation At
Midnight
"Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to
themselves.
Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein
"If every instance of evil is
to be rectified by an appeal to an afterlife,
the claim that God is all-good has no relevance whatsoever to our
present
life."
"God is an exaggeration run amuck."
"To accept omnipotence, we must accept effects without causes and
consequences
without means. And this is tantamount to magic."
"Consider the basic concepts which you need to comprehend reality
and
understand the world around you. Now contradict each of those
concepts--and
there you have the nature of God. God is that which you cannot
understand."
"The negative way [of describing God] is a cardboard prop of
Christianity
to conceal its unknowable God. When this prop collapses, theistic
agnosticism
emerges, complete with its package of contradictions and non-sensical
utterances."
~~ George H. Smith, Atheism The Case Against
God
"The theist is caught in a crossfire. Either human language is allowed
to retain its meaning, drawn from human experience of the finite, in
which
case it cannot be about the God of theism, who is not supposed to be
finite
or to be properly describable in finite terms; or language, 'purified'
of
its anthropocentric roots, is emptied of meaning for human beings, in
which
case it can be neither human language nor--for us--'about' God."
~~ Frederick Ferr�, Language
Logic and God
"Womanhood
was insulted in verse after verse of the Torah. The woman
was thought to be incompetant to make a vow, so her father was given
veto
power (Num. 31:1-5). Later in her life, her husband had to approve of
her
utterances if they werte to have any force (Num. 30:8)."
"The war that went on between what he desired with his mind and
what
he desired with his body, his drivenness to a legalistsic religion of
control,
his fear when that system was threatened, his attitude toward women,
his refusal
to seek marriage as an outlet for his passion--nothing else accounts
for
this data as well as the possibility that Paul was a gay male."
"Hell is a favorite theme in the evangelistic preaching of the
literalist,
of course, where behavior control by means of reward and punishment is
prominent."
"In a world of premodern unsophistication, such images were
literally
believed. They still are believed, but by a smaller and smaller number
of
people, who appear incapable of thinking outside concrete images."
"The attempt to make either Bible or "tradition" infallible is an
attempt
to shore up ecclesiastical power and control. It is never an attempt to
preserve
truth."
"Religion almost inevitably tries to take our anxiety away from us
by
claiming that which religion can never deliver--absolute certainty."
~~ John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from
Fundamentalism
"Criticism has whittled away
the evidential value of religious documents,
natural science has shown up the errors in them, and comparative
research
has been struck by the fatal resemblance between the religious ideas
which
we revere and the mental products of primitive peoples and times."
"In every age immorality has found no less support in religion
than morality
has."
"Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of
every
possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor."
"There is no appeal to a court above that of reason."
The third point is bound to rouse our strongest suspicions. After
all,
a prohibition like this [the prohibition to raise the question of the
truth
of religious teachings] can only be for one reason--that society is
very well
aware of the insecurity of the claim it makes on behalf of its
religious doctrines."
"For the principal task of civilization, its actual raison
d'�tre,
is to defend us against nature."
~~ Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
"If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is
made
for their destruction."
~~ Percy Bysshe Shelly, The Necessity of
Atheism
"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot;
Or he can, but does not want to;
Or he cannot and does not want to.
If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent.
If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked.
But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil,
Then how come evil in the world?"
~~ Epicurus
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