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Beware of the man of one book.
(Timeo hominem unius libri.)
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-Thomas Aquinas
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*But he that is spiritual
judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
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-I Corinthians 2:15
KJV
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Science has done more for the development of
western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen
hundred years.
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-Jeff Burroughs
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Today the higher the educational attainment, or
the higher the scores earned on intelligence or achievement tests, the less
likely are individuals to be Christians.
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-Paul K. Conkin
Qtd. in "Scientists and Religion in America", by Edward J Larson and
Larry Witham
Scientific American, September 1999
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Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his
martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?
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-Jules Feiffer
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The churches can well afford to pay fair
taxation. But supposing they couldn't. Would not that be a very significant
evidence that the churches were not really wanted?
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-E. Haldeman-Julius
"The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"
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Why should the residence of a preacher be
untaxed? Useful citizens must pay taxes on their homes. Yet the Preacher
-- actually and notoriously the least useful member of the community --
lives in a tax-free dwelling.
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-E. Haldeman-Julius
"The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life"
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The nearer to the church, the further from
God.
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-John Heywood
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God looked upon His work and saw that it
was good. That is where the clergy take issue with him.
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-Elbert Hubbard
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~With soap baptism is a
good thing.
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-Robert G. Ingersoll
"My Reviewers Reviewed" lecture in San Francisco, June 27, 1877
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~Suppose, however, that God
did give this law to the Jews, and did tell them that whenever a man preached
a heresy, or proposed to worship any other God that they should kill him; and
suppose that afterward this same God took upon himself flesh, and came to
this very chosen people and taught a different religion, and that thereupon
the Jews crucified him; I ask you, did he not reap exactly what he had sown?
What right would this god have to complain of a crucifixion suffered in
accordance with his own command?
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-Robert G. Ingersoll
"Some Mistakes of Moses"
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The more fervent opponents of Christian
doctrine have often enough shown a temper which, psychologically considered,
is indistinguishable from religious zeal.
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-William James
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I believe in Christianity as I believe in the
sun--not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
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-C.S. Lewis
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A converted cannibal is one who, of Friday,
eats only fisherman.
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-Emily Lotney
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Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear
the eye out of his Reason.
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-Martin Luther
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What I got in Sunday-School. . .was simply a
firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities,
and the Christian God preposterous. . .The act of worship, as carried on by
Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves
groveling before a Being who, if He really exists, deserves to be renounced
instead of respected.
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-H.L. Mencken
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Christian theology is not only opposed to the
scientific spirit; it is opposed to every other form of rational thinking.
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-H.L. Mencken
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Making fun of born-again Christians is like
hunting dairy cows with a high-powered rifle.
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-P.J. O'Rourke
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The age of ignorance commenced with the
Christian system.
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-Thomas Paine
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Going to church doesn't make you a Christian
any more than going to a garage makes you a car.
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-Laurence J. Peter
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*Since I reject the basic
premises of the Bible and of Christianity as untenable, I do not consider it
incumbent upon me to discuss or refute (or even to study) the particular
interpretation of every one of the three-hundred-some sects. And if I were
to discuss the issue with a philosophically-minded Christian, it is the basic
premises that I would discuss.
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-Ayn Rand
Private correspondence to John Hospers (academic philosopher), January 3,1961
Letters of Ayn Rand, 1995
Chapter 7, "Letters to a Philosopher"
Michael S. Berliner, ed.
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*All their identifications
consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say---and
proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge---God is non-man, heaven is
non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit, A is non-A, perception is
non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason.
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-John Galt, the hero in Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Part Three, "A is A", Chapter VII, "'This is John Galt Speaking'"
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*The name of this monstrous
absurdity is Original Sin.
A sin without volition is a slap at morality and
insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of
choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has
no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor
evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice
is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of
nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a
mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists
is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by
means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet
that is the root of your code.
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-John Galt, the hero in Ayn Rand's
Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Part Three, "A is A", Chapter VII, "'This is John Galt Speaking'"
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The Christian view that all intercourse outside
marriage was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the
view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A
view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded
by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in
Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force
tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life.
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-Bertrand Russell
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Simpson succeeded in proving that there was
no harm in giving anesthetics to man, because God put Adam into a deep sleep
when He extracted his rib. But male ecclesiastics remained unconvinced as
regards the sufferings of women, at any rate in childbirth.
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-Bertrand Russell
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*What really moves people to
believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe
in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is
the main reason.
Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the
wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look
after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people's desires
for a belief in God.
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-Bertrand Russell
Why I Am Not a Christian, and other essays
on religion and related subjects, 1957
"Why I Am Not a Christian", "The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice"
Paul Edwards, ed.
Originally presented as a lecture at the Battersea Town Hall, March 6, 1927
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*I know a parson who
frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming
was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found out that
he was planting trees in his garden.
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-Bertrand Russell
Why I Am Not a Christian, and other essays
on religion and related subjects, 1957
"Why I Am Not a Christian", "Defects in Christ's Teaching"
Paul Edwards, ed.
Originally presented as a lecture at the Battersea Town Hall, March 6, 1927
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*The teaching of
Christ, as it appears in the Gospels, has had extraordinarily little to do
with the ethics of Christians.
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-Bertrand Russell
Why I Am Not a Christian, and other essays
on religion and related subjects, 1957
"Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?", 1930
Paul Edwards, ed.
Originally presented as a lecture at the Battersea Town Hall, March 6, 1927
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For a priest to turn a man when he lies
a-dying, is just like one that has a long time solicited a woman, and cannot
obtain his end; at length makes her drunk, and so lies with her.
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-John Selden
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Whenever a Christian tells me he/she will
'pray for me,' I respond thusly: You pray for me, and I'll think for
you.
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-Unknown (Buddika, in alt.atheism.moderated)
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A Christian is a man who feels repentance
on Sunday for what he did on Saturday and is going to do on Monday.
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-Thomas Ybarra
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