To sell their product, god-talking salesmen do everything possible to prevent the believer from growing up emotionally and psychologically, manipulating the greedy egocentric infant in us all with preposterous promises of eternal bliss in the hereafter. Wendell W Watters, Deadly Doctrine: Health, Illness, and Christian God-Talk
An existential soother to which individuals, having been born atheists, are encouraged to become addicted as they grow up in our theistic society … Christianity is the pacifier PAR EXCELLENCE, claiming to alleviate cosmological fear – fears largely of its own creation – and to relieve guilt that has been stimulated in the believer by Christian god-talk. ibid.
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
Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe. Albert Einstein, attributions inc Humphry Davy
Science without religion is lame, religion with science is blind. Albert Einstein, ‘Science, Philosophy and Religion: A Symposium’ 1941
Religion is God’s attempt to communicate with the profoundly mentally retarded. Author unknown
A reign of piety and iron. Robert Lowell
How is it that any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought’? The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. ‘No, no, no!’ they say, ‘My God is a little god and I want him to stay that way.' 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. Professor Carl Sagan
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. Carl Sagan, In the Valley of the Shadow, cited Parade magazine 10 March 1996; viz also, Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium 1997 p245
You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence; it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe. Carl Sagan
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 something like that happened in politics or religion. Carl Sagan, address CSICOP 1987, cited J Poling ‘Do Science and the Bible Conflict?’
Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever it has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved? Carl Sagan, interview Charlie Rose 27th May 1996
The question arises, Might there have been a visit to the Earth in historical times? ... It’s a kind of modern dress for old-time religion ... You can’t exclude the possibility but there is not a smidgen of evidence that is compelling. Carl Sagan, interview In Search of Ancient Astronauts, 1973
The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can’t all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It’s a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I’m not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they’re called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation. Carl Sagan, Contact
Would you roll with a Church if you were God or would you settle for a nice plump philosophy? ...
Your favoured few will pervert your Church with a virus of contaminated opinion within five seconds of you opening the doors. You might think you should provide a weekly sanctuary for the more weak-minded of your copious brood, but if you run with Faith as the decisive factor, how will you prevent your sheeple straying off the straight and narrow? ...
For when your favoured flavour of Church stews in its own corrupted juices, you’ll have trouble dividing the sheep from the goats. And into the boiling pot your bona fides God fishes for the Kool-Aid the fake religions dish up with relish. esias, ‘Hi, I’m Elohim: The Trouble With God’
Embalmed with a baptismal light, our soul-burning brothers and sisters soak in the sublime satisfaction and hot ecstasy enjoyed by the favoured few: far from a sinking feeling of abandonment in a cold, friendless universe they are part of a plan, a child of God and essentially speshul. ibid.
Religion adulterates the human brain with so powerful a drug to persuade rational men and women to babble peculiar words and songs and to enact strange rituals that in any other context would be evidence of an unsound mind and likely to land the performer in hospital for a spell of psychiatric assessment. Chanting, the flailing of arms, self-flagellation and the addressing of an imaginary friend pass unchallenged and are mild compared to the more sinister acts of religious devotion. ibid.
The brain of the believer builds a bulwark of faith against the canons of corrupt popes, the chains of the Inquisition, the queues of escaping Nazis, the crooked cross, the silliness of saints, the reliance on relics, the persecution of scientists, the sale of Indulgences, the war against condoms, the restriction of scripture, the tears of the abused, the false-flag terrorism of P2 lodge, and the protection of priests decked in their finery of purple, scarlet and gold, and drunk with the blood of martyrs. ibid.
Plato pursued the platitude of good,
Aristotle urged we do what we should.
The Cynics rejected wealth, fame and power,
The Hedonists were a party-going shower.
Epicureans wanted a life pain free,
Stoics were patient and sighed c’est la vie.
The Enlightenment taught natural rights,
Liberal wimps practised politics light.
Bentham’s ‘greatest happiness principle’
Utilitarianism is the title.
Kant can’t abide the unprincipled fool,
Nihilists think God is dead as a rule.
Pragmatists struggle through practical strife,
Existentialists create their own Life.
Absurdists expect a disharmony,
Secular humanists claim we are free.
Logical positivism doesn’t ask,
For Postmodernists scrutiny’s the task.
Pantheists nurture the environment,
Confucius was an ordinary gent.
Buddhists are hippies and seek nirvana,
Mohists give free love in their pyjamas.
Legalists pursue natural knowledge,
Christians on Sunday like to trim their hedge.
Catholics prefer love au natural,
The Mormons collect a harem of gals.
The Jewish God loves a wild killing spree,
The Baha’i faith seeks human harmony.
Zoroastrianism divides right from wrong,
Quakers are silent, never sing a song.
Islamists worship Allahu Akbar,
Hinduists seek karma and sansara.
Janists are veggies, never hurt a fly,
Sikhs wear headscarves but never wear a tie.
Taoists maintain natural truth in tune,
Shintoists watch sumo from April to June.
Don’t let the bastards tell you what to do,
Ask a computer you’ll get forty-two.
Never be hoodwinked, never bend the knee,
And most important — never give money. esias, The Meaning of Life, 2012
All religion is a foolish answer to a foolish question. Peaky Blinders s3e3, BBC 2016
There is no God ... Earth groans beneath Religion’s iron age, and priests dare babble of a God of peace. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab VII
The dust of creeds outworn. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
All the Western theologies are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent. Tennessee Williams
During these two years (i.e. October 1836 to January 1839) I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished, — is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, would he permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, & c., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament. This appeared to me utterly incredible ...
I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can hardly be denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.
But I was very unwilling to give up my belief. Charles Darwin, Autobiography: Religious Belief