Addendum: He Who Has Ears, Let Him Hear

"The United States is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles and beliefs."
-pres George W. Bush

"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion."
-PRESIDENT George Washington

"I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature."
-PRESIDENT Thomas Jefferson

"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion."
-PRESIDENT Abraham Lincoln

"A just government has no need for the clergy or the church."
-PRESIDENT James Madison

"I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end... where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice."
-PRESIDENT John F. Kennedy

"I don’t know that atheists should be considered patriots, nor should they be considered citizens".
-pres George "Daddy" Bush

"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 god-fearing and pious. On the other hand they do less easily move against him believing that he has the gods on his side."
-Aristotle

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
-Seneca

"We admit of no government by divine right....The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed"

-William Henry Harrison

"The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum"
-Havelock Ellis

"Civilization will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest"
-Emile Zola

"Nature and nature’s laws lay hid by night

God said "let there be Newton and all was light"

-Alexander Pope

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not Omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is God both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"

AND
"Why should I fear death?
If I am, then death is not.
If Death is, then I am not.
Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
Long time men lay oppressed with slavish fear.

Religious tyranny did domineer.
At length the mighty one of Greece
Began to assent the liberty of man."

-Epicurus

"There is in every village a torch and an extinguisher: the schoolteacher and the priest."
-Victor Hugo

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the reasoning of a single individual"
AND
"To command their professors of astronomy [or even, gasp, evolution] to refute their own observations is to command them not to see what they do see and not to understand what they do understand."
-Galileo Galilei

"All the religions are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent."
-Tennessee Williams

"The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not."
-Eric Hoffer

"Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works."
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself."
AND
"Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws."
-Sir Richard Francis Burton

"To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself."
-Sophy Burnham

"What about the statue in California currently said to be crying bloody tears? Why worry about the alleged weeping of a plaster effigy when so many actual human beings have reason to cry?"
-Anna Quindlen

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-Steven Weinberg

"A cult is a religion with no political power."
-Tom Wolfe

"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
-Chuck Palahniuk

Comments

[Gary]

You're Mr. Quotey McQuotester.

I don't really care for Epicurus' argument from evil. It makes sense and all but it's too easily dismissed by anyone just by saying that we can't know God's reasons. Maybe evil is a necessary negative force in nature. I don't know. Maybe evil is just evil because we don't like it. Is it evil when a cheetah takes down a gazelle? We would say no, but if the gazelle could think like we do it probably would think cheetahs were evil. Is a shark evil if it bites your legs off or is it just doing what it does? It's a tough one anyway. I wonder what the world would be like if nothing bad could ever happen. It would be unrecognizable. At what point would God have to draw the line? No person would have the ability to hurt anyone, but sharks still get to bite your legs off? OK maybe, I'd have to think about it. Maybe no one can kill anyone or have a reason to we can still hurt each other's feelings. I guess it would be cool if the religious actually followed their own commandments, like the thou shalt not kill one. They really think that one is conditional for some reason.

[messiestobjects]

Yeah I really like quotes. They're things I would say if I was as smart as the people who said them.

Thou shalt not kill actually is conditional... It meant that Moses didn't want his people killing each other, but only each other. God commanded him to kill and drive out loads of people from their homelands who weren't Hebrews, such as the Canaanites, Amonites, and Midianites. He actually even DID kill some of his own people, almost directly after bringing down the Ten Commandments. He killed a bunch of the ones who were busy praying to a golden calf. So, 'Thou Shall Not Kill' only applies to people who worship Moses' God.

I agree with you about Epicurus' argument, except that the fact of the matter is that there is NO argument which can convince the Religious anyway. They will always try to use "logical" arguments to convince non-believers (the banana theory i.e.) and then when it gets knocked down, they'll always fall back on 'God is testing my faith' or 'God works in mysterious ways' or 'God put those bones there to fool atheists.'... It's not an argument meant to convert the Religious because no argument really can, they've always got a back-up. It's pretty fool-proof. ALL rational arguments are too easily dismissed by some priest just by saying that we can't know God's reasons.

"Those ensnared by religion have lost their ears."
-messiestobjects

[Oliver Stone]

Be sure to catch my new film W, starring Josh Brolin as Dubya! Opening just in time for the inauguration of the new one! There'll be stunt casting and awful wigs! And retroactive 'nam blaming! I'll put lotsa quotes at the beginning and end for ya, Mike! Probably!

Power to the peeps - and keep on truckin'!
Oliver

[messiestobjects]

You're silly.

[Oliver Stone]

Just because I'm silly doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

-Oliver

[Miss Luongo]

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." -Albert Einstein

[messiestobjects]

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form."

-Albert Einstein

[messiestobjects]

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

-Albert Einstein

[Albert Einstein]

Quit it - that tickles!