Who do you think the Banbury Baptists wanted to be protected against at the time? ... The Banbury Congregationalists. Christopher Hitchens, lecture Islam and the West
I would submit that the doctrine of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is utterly immoral ... Compulsory love is another sickly element of Christianity ... I’m told that I have to have a share in this human sacrifice. Christopher Hitchens
Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise! Christopher Hitchens, Letter to a Young Contrarian 2001
I have to accept that I am responsible for the flogging and mocking and crucifixion, in which I had no say and no part, and agree that every time I decline this responsibility, or that I sin in word or deed, I am intensifying the agony of it. Furthermore, I am required to believe that the agony was necessary in order to compensate for an earlier crime in which I also had no part, the sin of Adam. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p209
However, I am still granted free will with which to reject the offer of vicarious redemption. Should I exercise this choice, however, I face an eternity of torture much more awful than anything endured at Calvary, or anything threatened to those who first heard the Ten Commandments. ibid. pp209-210
You have to imagine that all this mass extinction and death and randomness is the will of a being … and all of this should happen so that one very imperfect race of evolved primates should have the opportunity to become Christians … that all of that was done with us in view – it’s a curious kind of solipsism; it’s a curious kind of self-centredness … there’s a certain arrogance to this assumption … the tremendous wastefulness of it, the tremendous cruelty of it, the tremendous caprice of it, the tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it – never mind, at least we’re here and we can be people of faith. Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens is a kind of a friend to the Church and the Christians: he forces us to deal with things that are hard things about faith. Dr Mark Roberts v Christopher Hitchens, debate 2007
Christianity along with all other theist belief systems is the fraud of the age. It serves to detach the species from the natural world, and likewise each other. It supports blind submission to authority. It reduces human responsibility to the effect that God controls everything, and in turn, awful crimes can be justified in the name of divine pursuit. And most importantly, it empowers those who know the truth to use the myth to manipulate and control societies. The religious myth is the most powerful devise ever created and serves as the psychological soil upon which other myths can flourish. Peter Joseph, Zeitgeist, 2007
To be a Mormon is to believe some really crazy stuff ... You kind of have to up the ante ... The idea that Christianity is American I think is an amazing entitlement. Bill Maher, Religulous, 2008
You see, Christians use Hell as a way to scare people into believing what they believe. But to believe in something just because you’re afraid of the consequences of not believing in something is no reason to believe in something. South Park
There are as many Christianities as there are Christians. Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith, co-president Freedom from Religion Foundation, lecture 2001
I’ve debated some liberal Christians and it’s like trying to nail jello to the tree. ibid.
Thousands of Christians are executed and become celebrated as martyrs. Mankind: The Story of All of Us III, History Channel 2012
A new Christian capital rises in the east of the empire: Constantinople. Today: Istanbul … the Church of the Holy Wisdom. ibid.
A world connected like never before. Christianity – the lasting legacy of the Roman empire. ibid.
A Christian knight on a mission from God in the Holy Land waging war on Islam. Mankind: The Story of All of Us IV
The Pope calls on Christians to take up arms. ibid.
The Crusades will continue for two centuries and will cost more than a million lives. ibid.
Are you a Christian, miss? But are you a Christian though? Right, but are you a Christian? Is the Lord your Shepherd, miss? But is he your shepherd though? Have you got Jesus in your heart, miss? Is he in your heart though? Why do wear clothes like that then? Do you like Cliff Richard, miss? Are you the vicar of Dibley, miss? But are you the vicar of Dibley though? Are we your flock? Are we your flock though? Is it that we are your flock? Have you got a friend in Jesus, miss? Does he want you for a sunbeam? Does he want you for a sunbeam though? Am I bovvered? Am I bovvered though? The Catherine Tate Show s2e1
Growing up going to Christian school and the concept that you’re born a sinner and you don't really have a choice to change who you are has been hammered into my head and created the entire reason why I made art and made a band and made records called ‘Antichrist Superstar’. Marilyn Manson
John Lennon once said that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ. He was wrong. That honor belongs to Santa Claus. An estimated 85% of American four-year-olds believe in Santa. Only 82% of adults in a recent poll told Gallup that they were Christians. Among their respective target audiences, Santa out-pulls Jesus by a nose. Tom Flynn, The Trouble with Christmas
During World War II, labor leader John L Lewis called a coal miners’ strike just before Christmas. NBC opened its radio newscast with the words, ‘John L Lewis just shot Santa Claus’. In the next hour, thirty thousand calls inundated the network’s switchboards. A Texas boy despaired and downed a bottle of castor oil. So frightening was the reaction that NBC hurriedly staged an ‘interview with Santa Claus’ to reassure Americans that the jolly old elf was still alive. ibid.
Reason #1: To Teach and Perpetrate the Santa Claus Myth, Parents Must Lie to Their Children. Reason #2: The Santa Claus Myth Exploits Characteristic Weakness in Young Children’s Thinking, Perhaps Obstructing Their Passage to Later Stages of Cognitive Development. Reason #3: To Buoy Belief, Adults Stage Elaborate Deceptions, Laying Traps for the Child’s Developing Intellect. Reason #4: The Myth Encourages Lazy Parenting and Promotes Unhealthy Fear. Reason #5: The Number of Characteristics that Santa Claus Shares with God and Jesus Verges on the Blasphemous. ibid.
What price are we paying for lying to children about Santa Claus? It may be steeper than we think. Because the myth panders to childhood credulity, some have implicated it in the rising incidence of scientific illiteracy among the young. Because it encourages children to build their world views on authority, not on independent thinking, others have related it to the abysmal judgment supposedly displayed by young adults. Can parents honestly be surprised when children do not consult them before experimenting with sex, drugs, crime, or destructive relationships – so soon after their parents have made it clear that children cannot trust them to provide accurate knowledge of the world? A Christian parent put the issue clearly in a letter to the editor:
‘Certainly we can’t get away with lies for seven to ten years and then expect children to ‘outgrow’ Santa ... then suddenly expect them to believe us when we mention high intensity moral issues.
‘Simply being honest with our children, in my opinion, would outweigh anything Santa ever brought’. ibid.
For the first few centuries of Christianity there were no Christian images. Waldemar Januszczak, The Dark Ages: An Age of Light I: The Clash of the Gods, BBC 2012
The first churches were ordinary houses. ibid.
Christianity arrived in Britain from three directions at once, in a three-pronged religious assault. Waldemar Januszczak, The Dark Ages: An Age of Light IV: The Men of the North
Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yoghurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever. Sam Harris
If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: ‘Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being’. Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver-lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves – socially, economically, environmentally, or geo-politically ... According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the US government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religion dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency. ibid.
There would also be a monumental challenge from within: a breakaway form of Judaism called Christianity. Empires Special: Kingdom of David: