"You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason."Voltaire
"The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason."
Benjamin Franklin – 'Poor Richard'
"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."
Carl Sagan
"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."
Albert Einstein
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
Albert Einstein
"For my part I would as soon be descended from a baboon as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, treats his wives like slaves and is haunted by the grossest superstitions."
Charles Darwin – Descent of Man (1871)
"The Vatican is against surrogate mothers. Good thing they didn't have that rule when Jesus was born."
Elayne Boosler
"The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum."
Havelock Ellis 1859-1939
"The most common of follies is to believe passionately in the palpably untrue; it is the chief occupation of mankind."
H.L.Mencken
"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin."
Cardinal Bellarmine, during the trial of Galileo, 1615
"The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each other on account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about botany and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father and mother. It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about. Science will bring, not a sword, but peace."
Robert G. Ingersoll
"The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages – as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already."
Edward Abbey
"Fantastic doctrines require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions. Thus the fear and hate; thus the torture chamber, the iron stake, the gallows, the labor camp, the psychiatric ward."
Edward Abbey
"Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination."
Edward Abbey
"The world holds two classes of men – intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri (973-1057; Syrian poet)
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That unalterable rule applies both to God and man."
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (Lord Acton)
"Sensible men no longer believe in miracles; they were invented by priests to humbug the peasants."
King Alfonso
"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."
Woody Allen
"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
Woody Allen
"Imagine encouraging a child to participate in such 'twisted' rituals and worshiping of tortuous crucifixes and such like this from birth. No wonder we have so many hateful and sadistic people in our society."
Brent Allsop
"This whole Christian theology thing is that god came down to experience life through his son. Well, how's he experiencing life if he doesn't get laid? Give me a break. And why would he not get laid, as he created the apparatus in the first place?"
Tori Amos – interview in Vox
"I got enough guilt to start my own religion."
Tori Amos
"Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is."
Jean Anouilh
"I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless infirmity of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is largely responsible for the calamities the world is at present enduring."
William Archer – Theology and War
"'Theocracy' has always been the synonym for a bleak and narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained tyranny."
William Archer (1667-1735)
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider godfearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
Aristotle, "Politics"
"All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science."
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men."
Francis Bacon
"So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong."
Walter Bagehot, Literary Studies
"The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice. He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity."
Mikhail Bakunin
"All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete personality of their intellectual powers."
Mikhail A. Bakunin
"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge."
Mikhail A. Bakunin – God and the State (1874)
"The Bible as we have it contains elements that are scientifically incorrect or even morally repugnant. No amount of "explaining away" can convince us that such passages are the product of Divine Wisdom."
Bernard J. Bamberger – The Story of Judaism
"Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present."
Iain M Banks
"God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning."
Imamu Amiri Baraka, "Home", 1966
"There is no such thing as a god. If such a creature existed, belief would be rendered unnecessary, and the entire system of organized religion would collapse."
Ron Barrier, Rbargodnow@aol.com
"All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them."
Simone de Beauvoir, "The Second Sex"
"Christ came, and Christianity arose... But originating in Judaism, which knew woman only as a being bereft of all rights, and biased by the Biblical conception which saw in her the source of all evil, Christianity preached contempt for women."
August Bebel, "Woman and Socialism"
"Christianity is the enemy of liberty & civilization"
August Bebel
"Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the kind of life he led there before joining the family circle."
Samuel Beckett
"We are told by the church that we have accomplished nothing... Is it a small thing to make men truly free, to destroy the dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power, the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of earth the fiend of fear?"
D.M. Bennett – Champions of the Church
"Faith – the ability to believe the ridiculous for the sublime."
Rich Bennett
"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God."
Martin Luther
"Reason is not one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox. To advocate that reason be discarded in some circumstances is to advocate that thinking be discarded – which leaves one in the position of attempting to do a job after throwing away the required instrument."
George H. Smith, from "Atheism: The Case Against God,"
"I call him free who is led solely by reason."
Spinoza
"The Age of Reason was responsible for making more people into infidels than any other book except the Bible."
Gordon Stein
"The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact."
Sir Leslie Stephen, "Essays on Freethinking and Plainspeaking"
"What I conclude is that religion has nothing to do with experience or reason but with deep and irrational needs."
Richard Taylor, "Will Secularism Survive?", Free Inquiry
On capital punishment: "Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years, with time off for good behavior?"
New York Senator James H. Donovan