About Religion

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” – Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD)

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.   ~  Gene Roddenberry

In the year 584 CE, in Lyons, France, forty-three Catholic bishops and twenty men representing other bishops, held a most peculiar debate: “Are Women Human?” After many lengthy arguments, a vote was taken. The results were: thirty-two, yes; thirty-one, no. Women were declared human by one vote! ~ Council of Macon

Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect. – Salman Rushdie.

To truly belong, the Yaghan (of Tierra del Fuego) remind us, is to know your place on this Earth. Their creation stories tell them, over and over, nothing is free on the land and sea, they have to work hard to live in balance with the sacred world around them, and their reward is not an afterlife, it’s the unquantifiable, almost infinite generations of life.

I respect Atheists, they have no invisible means of support

The best thing about having Pagan friends? They worship the ground you walk on…

“Why is it that when we talk to God it’s ‘prayer;’ But when God talks to us it’s ‘schizophrenia?'”

~Lily Tomlin

God is a gentleman. He prefers blondes. ~ Joe-Orton

Men make the gods; women worship them.~ Sir James Frazer

“I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made. There are … some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry — the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth.” ~—Emma Goldman, 1898 speech titled “Living My Life” in Detroit

”To be told that the life we are living is a forerunner or introduction to better one serves only to devalue the one we have.” ~ John Lord

Strange how only religious leaders get to have a conversation with their god, nobody else hears a murmur.

If God had intended men and women to be married, He’d have put a priest into the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. ~ Giovanni Guareschi

We have a way of thanking God for anything that falls in with our plans, as if it had come to pass just for our pleasure. Giovanni Guareschi

“Belief in heaven is very difficult without a greedy desire for it: All scams need a hook.”

“What do you get if you cross a man with 2 planks of wood ? A fairy tale that lasts for 2000 years.”

“If God is against adultery, why did he have a child with a married woman ?”

“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.”

“All Bibles are man-made.”    — Thomas Edison.

“If you believe everything you read, you’d better not read.”    — Japanese proverb.

“If the Bible proves that God exists then comic books prove the existence of Superman.”

“The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.”

Nine out of ten priests who have tried Camels, prefer young boys.

“The Pope has it backwards: he kisses the ground, and walks on the women !”

Morals are for people not intelligent enough to have ethics.

A zealot’s stones will break my bones, but gods will never hurt me.

I will respect any religion you practice as long as you never knock on my door to tell me about it.

Who are we to say why humans want to kill people? Humans have killed in the name of every religion. No religion has copyrighted killing.

Terrorism‬ has no religion

“May the solstice moon bring you blessings of peace and happiness.” Happy Yuletide

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” – Voltaire

“Elohim,” the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as “God,” but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean “goddesses.” Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still. ~ RAS

Civilization will not reach perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest ~ NIETZSCHE

Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day;
Give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. ~ Nietzsche

“If we’re going to teach creation science as an alternative to evolution,
then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to
biological reproduction” Judith Hayes

Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1914)

Religions change; beer and wine remain. ~ Hervey Allen

History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it. ~ Robert Heinlein (1907 – 1988)

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think. ~ Arthur Shopenhauer

If you look through all the different cultures. Right from the earliest, earliest days with the animistic religions, we have sought to have some kind of explanation for our life, for our being, that is outside of our humanity. ~ Jane Goodall

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. ~ Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

If a `religion’ is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Godel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one. ~ John D. Barrow (1952 – )

I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593)

We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition. ~ Cicero

In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion. ~ Carl Sagan (1934 – 1996),

Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.
Richard Dawkins (1941 – )

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.
Bill Gates (1955 – )

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
Carl Sagan (1934 – 1996)

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ~ Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)

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 (1933 – ), quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

Life as a Christian taught me two things: One is that God loves you
and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most
awful, filthy thing on earth. And you should save it for someone you
love.

“..the prayer cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next.” ~ -Mark Twain

“A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many
regrets.” -Arthur C. Clarke

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes. ~James Feibleman

A Theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme Court will ensure church and state are joined at the hip like clergy and altar boys.

And Jesus said unto them, “And whom do you say that I am?”
They replied, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed.”
And Jesus replied, “What?”

As the dominant world religion is now Hatred & Violence, this new form of morality is soon destined to solve ALL our problems.

“But honestly, astrology is crap, just ask the I Ching.”

If a picture paints a thousand words could the Bible then become 36 collectable bubblegum cards?

Creationism is a gift to atheists, because it helps to highlight the divide between a magical world-view and a reasonable one.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamed up after being drunk all night.
Isaac Asimov

Did anyone else feel that Mel Gibson’s remake of the classic Life of Brian wasn’t anywhere near as funny as the original?

Eskimo: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?”
Priest: “No, not if you did not know.”
Eskimo: “Then why did you tell me?”
Annie Dillard

Fanatics/fundamentalists don’t have much faith — that’s why they constantly have to assert themselves violently.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing. ~ H. L. Mencken

God created lamprey, cockroaches, maggots, mosquitos, fleas, ticks, slugs, leeches, and intestinal parasites… If He didn’t create spammers He at least gave them role models.

“In the beginning the world was without form, and void. And God said ‘Let there be light’. And God separated the light from the dark. And did two loads of laundry.”

“I think I’ll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don’t believe in Gosh too, you’ll be darned to heck.”

“He is YOUR God. They are YOUR Rules. YOU burn in Hell!”

“I don’t mind born again Christians as long as they realize they don’t get twice as many rights.”

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” Kurt Vonnegut

How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter ~ Woody Allen

I disturbed a burglar the other night… I told him there is no god…

“I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.” ~ Oscar Wilde

I’m an atheist, thank God.

“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 he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” ~ Epicurus

Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity; you don’t realize how irritating it was ’til it’s gone…

Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil.
Henry Fielding

Ærchie – Member #666 of S.M.A.S.H. (Sarcastic Middle-aged Atheists with a Sense of Humor)

Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer conglomerates. Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? It’s a beautiful world all right. ~ Calvin’s Father

One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh. ~ – Lazarus Long

Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat. ~ Sir Julian Huxley (1887 – 1975)

People have tried many ways of fighting evil. They’ve tried celibacy, they’ve tried charms, but, until Doom, they hadn’t tried a double-barrelled, pump-action shotgun. It works quite well

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” ~ – Isaac Asimov

Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand. ~ Frederick the Great

“Sex is God’s joke on human beings.” ~ Bette Davis

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other “sins” are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful – just stupid.)
– Lazarus Long

“Stripped of his powers following the collapse of Ancient Egypt, former God of Death Anubis is reduced to begging for Beef Treats. (And if you think _that’s_ funny, wait and see what fate has in store for _your_God.)”.

The Bible was written by the same people who said the Earth was flat.

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. ~ Sir Richard Francis Burton

The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest and least productive industry in all history. ~ – Lazarus Long

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 (1902 – 1983)]

The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. ~ Thomas Macaulay

The real snag in the Christian, or any other religion, is the belief in God. If you can swallow God, you can swallow anything.
Bishop Charles Gore.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire

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.

Here cash is all powerful, the idol placed highest, whether one sweat, thieve, grind others down, or scheme for it.
Fafhrd, Fritz Leiber’s “Ill Met In Lankhmar”

“The moment you understand why you reject all other gods, you will understand why we go one god further.”

By definition a religion is something centred on belief in the existence of supernatural agencies or entities in the universe; and not merely their existence, but their interest in human beings on the planet; and not merely their interest, but their particularly detailed interest in what humans wear, what they eat, when they eat it, what they read or see, what they treat as clean or unclean, who they have sex with and how and when; and so for a multitude of other things, like making women invisible beneath enveloping clothing, or strapping little boxes to their foreheads, or iterating formulae by rote five time a day, and so endlessly forth; with threats of punishment for getting any of it wrong. But naturalism (atheism) does not premise such belief. (P.29 in Grayling, A.C., (2007) Against All Gods.)