A Few Quotes About The Christian Problem

[YakRider]

It's been a minute since I last posted articles and engaged the great discussions. It's good to be back.

Over time I have compiled a list of quotes from all times and sources that describe or are commentary on the nature of the epidemic of toxic religion.

I want to share some of them with my fellows who are getting their lives back and minds free.

 

The "omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent" characteristics of a god are regularly spouted by those who are still caught up in toxic religion. We learn in real life, however, that the truth is exactly opposite as the stranglehold by religion on the news is progressively broken. Here's an ancient truth:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

 

—Epicurean Trilemma, quoted by David Hume (1779)

 

 

Nothing Special In Their Claims:

 “They say you walk on water?"

“A piece of wood can do that too,” he replied.

“They say you travel to Mecca at night and return by dawn?" he was asked.

 “But a bird at flight can do that too” was his answer…”

 

—Risalah Qashiriyah

 

Arrogance vs. Humility: The Final Arbiter of the Argument of Life

“The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that’s what man needs to be because human history is a litany of getting shit dead wrong.”

 

—William (Bill) Maher, from his documentary, "Religulous"

 

 Where do gods come from? Right here.

The Universe can be defined as everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist. It consists of space-time, forms of energy (including electromagnetic radiation and matter), and the physical laws that relate them. The Universe encompasses all of life, all of history, and ideas such as mathematics and logic. Even ideas like a god come from and are contained in this Universe

 

 

Misotheism: “To me, the word connotes a heroic stance of humanistic affirmation and the courage to defy the powers that rule the Universe.”

 

 

—Bernard Schweizer

 

No truer statement of actual experience was ever uttered about what, if anything may have created Life

“This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.”

—Arthur Schopenhauer

 

Getting our priorities straight: What Are we Thinking and Concerned with?

“You can’t predict what a myth is going to be any more than you can predict what you are going to dream tonight. Myths and dreams come from the same place; they come from a realization of some kind that find expression in symbolic form. The only myth that’s going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the planet: not the city, not the people, but the planet and everybody on it.”

—Joseph Campbell 1988

 

No Perfection Anywhere...

“The most perfect being in the universe might be very imperfect, and not at all a suitable candidate for existence as a deity.”

 

—A. C. Grayling

 

 

The United Nations broke the evil spell of religion, especially those that use intimidation and force, namely christianity and Islam

“protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief…” “…the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one’s current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views.” Signatories to the convention are barred from “the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or nonbelievers”

 

—Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political

                Rights, United Nations 1993. Old Earth Archive

 

'Nuff said:  

“…a man who does not believe in himself is an atheist.”

—S. Vivekananda

 

A commentary on the origins of periodic destruction wrought in our solar system

“There is nothing in the successful application of Newton’s or Einstein’s laws of motion to the solar system that prevents us from supposing that every once in a while some comet gets a small shove from a divine agency.”

 

—Steven Weinberg

 

The truth again, we created any gods that there are out of our own minds and inchoate desires of early times. Luckily, we have scientific thinking that replaced it.

“[R]eligion did not arise in the minds of men and women who speculated about infinitely prescient first causes but in the hearts of those who longed for the continual intervention of an interested God.”

—Steven Weinberg

 

“When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity.

When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.”

—Robert Pirsig

 

I have no need of that hypothesis...

“Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là”

—Pierre Simon LaPlace

 

And, one of America's Founding Fathers keeping it real:

“As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin.”

 

— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

 

I hope these are useful.

Yak.

[sdelsolray]

Thanks for the list.