The proper place for the study of religious beliefs is in a church or temple, at home, or in a course on comparative religions, but not in a biology class. There is no place in our world for an ideology that seeks to close minds, force obedience, and return the world to a paradise that never was. Students should learn that the universe can be confronted and understood, that ideas and authority should be questioned, that an open mind is a good thing. Education does not exist to confirm people’s superstitions, and children do not learn to think when they are fed only dogma. Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism
Religion is a set of rules and beliefs concocted by the few to take control of the many. Richard D Hall, RichPlanet online: UFOs and Religion
My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can. Frank Zappa
Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God. Victor Hugo
There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being. James Joyce
No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism. Annie Besant
The forces holding back progress were fiercely religious. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! From St Peter’s to St Paul’s III, BBC 2013
I’m sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don’t think there’s any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock. Howard Stern
Even supposing some Greeks are so foolish as to think that the gods dwell in the statues, even that would be a much purer concept (of religion) than to admit that the Divine Power should descend into the womb of the Virgin Mary, that it became an embryo, and after birth was wrapped in rags, soiled with blood and bile, and even worse. Porphyry of Tyre, Against the Christians
This was a religious age deeply divided. Adam Nicolson, When God Spoke English: The Making of the King James Bible, BBC 2013
There’s no hint in these rules of any divine inspiration. ibid.
It is therefore a profound truth that Socialism is the natural enemy of religion. A Christian socialist is in fact an anti-socialist. Christianity is the antithesis of Socialism. Socialist Party of Great Britain, pamphlet 1911, ‘Socialism & Religion’
Jesus never once expressed the intention of starting a new religion. Howard Jacobson, Christianity: A History: Jesus the Jew, Channel 4 2009
Every religion finds itself in condemnation of another. ibid.
Christianity spread. Its teachings touched the conscience of the most powerful man on Earth. Invited in from the cold, Christianity is to be enthroned as a religious and political force without compare. Michael Portillo, Christianity s1e2: A History: Rome
Historians and churchmen have for centuries debated whether Constantine’s conversion was more political than sincere. We’re still guessing. ibid.
There had already been attacks on power-crazed bishops, ignorant priests, and fake holy relics. Luther targeted a set of corrupt documents called Indulgences. In 1517 he made them the launch pad of his religious rebellion. Ann Widdecombe, Christianity: A History s1e5: Reformation
What Luther was unleashing was one of the greatest political and religious revolutions in history. ibid.
For me this is the triumph of the Reformation: the Luther Bible. With his own notes hand-written in the margin. ibid.
The Pope was the official head of the Church in England. And gave Henry the title Defender of the Faith for his loyal zeal. Yet it was this same Henry that eventually brought the Reformation to England. ibid.
It continued for five days. The River Seine ran red with blood and copy-cat attacks occurred throughout France ... The Reformation had led ordinary Christians to butcher one another. ibid.
Christianity needed a reformation, but I think the way it worked out in practice was the most appalling tragedy. ibid.
A Rockefeller-endowed survey, chaired by Harvard’s distinguished philosopher Professor W E Hocking, concluded that Christianity is merely the highest of the High Religions, a stage in the universal quest for ‘righteousness’, a precious component in the religion of the future that will represent the New Testament of every existing Faith and serve the soul of a coming common world culture. Edward Duff, World Council of Churches
I told my mum that I was going to become a Catholic and she said with a big sigh, Well it’s better than a Jehovah Witness or a Mormon I suppose. Catholics III: Women, Catholic woman, BBC 2012
Heaven, Hell and everlasting life and all that – you’re not meant to take it seriously, Ted. Father Ted s1e1: Good Luck, Father Ted, Dougal, Channel 4 1995
So God, does He really exist? I mean, who knows? I don’t know. I mean personally I don’t even believe in organised religion. ibid. Dougal’s television interview
The whole religion thing – I just don’t buy it. Father Ted s2e9: Tentacles of Doom, Bishop sees the light
It’s a competitive market: you’ll be up against Billy Graham and those Nation of Islam guys. Father Ted s3e8: Going to America, Buzz
New religions are filling the void ready to exploit vulnerable people looking for that spiritual guidance. Exposed: Ireland’s Secret Cults, TV3 2011
I think there’s no difference at between a cult and a religion. Francesca Stavrakopoulou
True religion is now a thing of the past. The Magnificent Seven 1960 starring Steve McQueen & Yul Brynner & Charles Bronson & Robert Vaughn & Brad Dexter & Eli Wallach & Horst Buchholz & Vladimir Sokoloff et al, director John Sturges, Calvera
You’ve never been one to put much trust in religious ceremonies. Star Trek: Voyager s3e7: Sacred Ground, Chakotay to Janeway
A specter haunts the world – the specter of religious fanaticism. Against a backdrop of economic and social woes, theocratic ideologies have declared a cold war on the democracies. Fanatical Christian, Jewish and Muslim cults are proliferating along with related associations and criminal organizations. Those endowed with faith have a common goal: to end the separation of church and state, politics and religion, belief and citizenship. They have a horror of the republican exception. Richard Labeviere, Dollars for Terror p13
Four changes of religion in a single lifetime. Michael Wood, The Great British Story: A People’s History V: Lost Worlds & New Worlds, BBC 2012
It was still state religion tied to the monarchy and backed by force. ibid.
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. Oliver Cromwell, letter to Church of Scotland 3rd August 1650
In 2001 almost 400,000 people listed their religion as Jedi. This is Britain with Andrew Marr, BBC 2011
Whilst we have been building our churches and solacing ourselves with our religion and dreaming that the millennium was coming, the poor have been growing poorer, the wretched more miserable, and the immoral more corrupt; the gulf has been daily widening which separates the lowest classes of the community from our churches and chapels, and from all decency and civilisation. W C Preston 1883, ‘The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Conditions of the Abject Poor’, attributed
Traditional Christianity, that institutional form of Christianity is probably dying ... We’ve blessed slavery with the Christian scriptures, we’ve blessed anti-Semitism with the Christian scriptures, we stood by and watched Hitler destroy six million Jews, and then we were negative about women, and then we were negative about gay people, and we’ve been negative about left-handed people, we’ve been negative about mentally ill people, and we’ve been negative about divorced people, the Church has victimised a great many people in this world. Rt Reverend John Shelby Spong, interview Bruce Burgess, Bloodline, New Jersey March 2007
In no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments. Jeremy Bentham, ‘Constitutional Code; For the Use all Nations and all Governments Professing Liberal Opinions’ I