Quotes from Famous Freethinkers

[Bob the Unbeliever]

If there ever was an example of the temerity of the religious it is the letter of JOHN CITIZEN. Here we have an individual who believes in virgin birth, the rising of the dead, the ability of priests to magically turn wine into blood and bread into flesh, Holy ghosts, angels and spirits.

We have an individual who can rationalise the death of millions as god's mysterious will and at the end of the day kneel by his bed and telepathically communicate with this same supposed creator of the universe.

Could I suggest that such a person has absolutely no right to claim that one who loves someone of the same gender has a "mental disorder"?
-Anon

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

“We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a 'higher answer'--but none exists.”

— Stephen J. Gould,

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t."

- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

“Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?”

~ Carl Sagan

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

nb: page 26, #514

 

[Thumper]

Religion ought to be studied rather than practiced. ~ Daniel Dennett

 

[Thumper]

As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect. - Richard Dawkins.

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"Why would God give every man two heads, but only enough blood supply to use one at a time?"

~ Robin Williams on Intelligent Design

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."

~ Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 - 1890)

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"We Mexicans have had three hundred years of the Spaniards ... They thrust on us the greatest superstition the world has ever known--the Catholic Church. They ought to be killed for that alone."
~ General Francisco Villa

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"Indeed Christianity passes. Passes—it has gone! It has littered the beaches of life with churches, cathedrals, shrines and crucifixes, prejudices and intolerances, like the sea urchin and starfish and empty shells and lumps of stinging jelly upon the sands here after a tide. A tidal wave out of Egypt. And it has left a multitude of little wriggling theologians and confessors and apologists hopping and burrowing in the warm nutritious sand. But in the hearts of living men, what remains of it now? Doubtful scraps of Arianism. Phrases. Sentiments. Habits."
— H.G. Wells,

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

“No legal ceremony--no election of the woman--no penalty for the perfidy of the man--no law to compel him to do his duty, no compensation for the poor woman who is turned adrift like the girl of the street, penniless, to sell herself on the best possible terms. This is Divine marriage, or Moses and the Bible lie; and this is Bible divorce--putting away!”

— Victoria Woodhull's spirited response to Thomas Nast's famous cartoon of her as "Mrs. Satan." Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly, Feb. 24, 1872

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible."

~ Jomo Kenyatta

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught"
Lyrics from South Pacific

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
~ Susan B. Anthony

"I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."
~ Susan B. Anthony

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever."
— Robert Green Ingersoll

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." ~ Anne Lamott

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"Every christian who tries to escape the path of a speeding bullet with fear in his eye is an example of a "foxhole conversion" to atheism and proves they don't really believe in a heavenly paradise in the hereafter. There are a hell of a lot more of those conversions than there are of atheists to christians." ~ anonymous

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"Man is a marvelous curiosity … he thinks he is the Creator's pet … he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea."

~ Mark Twain

 

[Bob the Unbeliever]

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

~ Aristotle