WRITERS
ON RELIGION



"The tragedy is that every brain cell devoted to belief in the supernatural is a brain cell one cannot use to make life richer or easier or happier." - Kay Nolte Smith

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion.

"Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises." - Ambrose Bierce.

"Most religions represent artless attempts at philosophy and science, embracing superstitions: ancient guesswork and myths bonded together by the Crazy Glue of Faith." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Religion poisons everything." - Christopher Hitchens, god Is Not Great.

"It is the religious duty of all Muslims to acquire and use weapons of any type." - Osama Bin Laden.

The "Good Book" - one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined. - Ashley Montagu.

Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. (Ambrose Bierce.)

"I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world." - Bertrand Russell

"The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it." - Robert G. Ingersoll.

"It is despite the Bible, not because of it, that people have done good deeds." - Red Ipson.

"The celebrated 2,000 year history of Christianity has an incalculable volume of blood on its hands, as well as continuous, wicked suppression of the human spirit." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose." - Clarence Darrow.

"I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it." -Edith Sitwell.

"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men." - Bertrand Russell.

"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration-courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." - H.L. Mencken.

"Religion: It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion." - Jon Stewart.

"If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little Electric Chairs around their necks instead of crosses." - Lenny Bruce.

"In 1976 the Vatican finally responds to the many ongoing suggestions to sell some of its priceless treasures to help the poor. The Vatican refuses. Bishop Giovanni Fallani, president of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Art explains that to sell the Vatican's riches would be tantamount to 'the triumph of materialism over spiritualism'..." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"There is no wild beast so ferocious as Christians who differ concerning their faith." - William E. H. Lecky.

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy .

"All thinking men are atheists." - Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.

"Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead." - Kurt Vonnegut.

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt.

"Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?" - Friedrich Nietzsche.

"But Lot's wife continually turning back to view the city ... although God had forbidden her so to do, was changed into a pillar of salt; for I have seen it, and it remains at this day." (Josephus, Antiquities, 1, XI:4.)This first-century con artist claims to have witnessed the amazing salt-henge. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." - Mark Twain.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg.

"No one comes back as anything, except for Jesus, as bread" - Ned Flanders.

Suetonius - "Christians... a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition" - Suetonius, 125.

Beginning around 1280 the Inquisitor of Verona begins pronouncing sentences against heretics who had long been dead, ordering their bodies dug up from their graves and subsequently burned. That'll teach 'em. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"Christianity is a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths," being "wretched." - Pliny, 111 CE in a letter to Rome.

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." - Bertrand Russell.

It is reported that before their genocidal incursion, one Christian soldier asked Arnaud how one may determine which are heretics and which are good Christians. The Abbot responded "Kill them all, God will recognize his own!" - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"No man ought to make a living by religion. It is dishonest so to do." - Thomas Paine.

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." - Nietzsche.

"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." - Isaac Asimov.

Emperor Charlemagne (742-814) "constantly attributed his imperial dignity to an act of God, made known, of course, through the agency of the Vicar of Christ..." Under Charlemagne, Saxons are forced to undergo baptism, executed if they refuse. In one day in 783, revered Charlemagne beheads 4,500 Saxons at Verdun because they resisted Charlemagne's concept of "God." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." - Isaac Asimov.

"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." - Napoleon Bonaparte.

"One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad." - Aleister Crowley.

"A cult is a religion with no political power." - Tom Wolfe.

"Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions god's infinite love." - Bill Hicks

"The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes." - Dave Barry

Hitler claimed to be on a mission from his Christian god: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord" (Mein Kampf, vol. 1 ch. 2, "Wiener Lehr - und Leidensjahre").

"There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites." - Thomas Jefferson.

"Religion is the source of untold misery to the human race." - Bertrand Russell

Robert Ingersoll had commented on the ignorant and immoral nonsense of Matthew 25:41, Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Ingersoll responds to the scriptures, writing "These are the words of eternal love." - The works of Robert G. Ingersoll.

"Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own?" - Robert G. Ingersoll.

"Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions." - Frater Ravus.

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion." - Robert M. Pirsig.

"Prayer has no place in the public schools, just like facts have no place in organized religion." - Superintendent Chalmers, The Simpsons.

"Do I think I’m going to paradise? Of course not; I wouldn’t go if I was asked. I don’t want to live in some fucking celestial North Korea, for one thing, where all I get to do is praise the Dear Leader from dawn till dusk. I don’t want this; it would be hell for me." - Christopher Hitchens.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. 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?" - Epicurus.

"It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living." - Sinclair Lewis.

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen Henry Roberts.

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." - Blaise Pascal.

"I cannot believe in a God who has neither humor nor common sense." - W. Somerset Maugham.

"Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses." - Sigmund Freud.

"Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs." - Sam Harris.

"Jesus believed in Noah's Ark... Adam & Eve, Jonah living in a fish or whale, and Lot's wife turning into salt. Jesus even bought into the absurd notion (Jn 3:14) that a magical pole proffered by the OT could cure snakebites merely by gazing upon it. ...Was Jesus smarter than a fifth grader?" - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"You believe in a book which has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd, and primitive stories; and you say that I am the one who is mentally ill?" - Dan Barker

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the philosophers as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Seneca the Younger

"One's convictions should be proportional to one's evidence." - Sam Harris

"A faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets." - Arthur C. Clarke.

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." - Benjamin Franklin.

"Once you become aware of the gulf between what people profess to believe and how they actually behave, it’s hard to take any of it seriously." - Pat Condell.

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise" - James Madison.

"Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it." - Thomas Paine.

In 529 Emperor Justinian closes all non-Christian schools of philosophy including the Academy of Athens. The CE1907 admits "From that date Christianity had no rival in Athens." Justinian rules the Empire from 527 to 565, outlawing and closing libraries, schools of philosophy, and all Gentile institutions. Thousands of Pagans are thus persecuted-arrested, tortured and murdered. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words." - Ethan Allen.

Mary "had no other children after the virginal birth," we are told by the Catholic Encyclopedia. One must wonder, then, how they would explain "James the Lord's brother" (Gal 1:19); and especially, what a frustrated and confused husband Joseph must have been. Moreover, Matthew 1:25 implies that after Jesus was born, Joseph and Mary did, in fact, get it on. - Beyond the Crusades. p. 29.

"How on earth can religious people believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash?" (Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, 215.)

"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." - A. Einstein.


JESUS OUR SAVIOR:

JESUS GIVES IMMORAL ADVICE
"For instance, Moses gave you this law from God: 'Honor your father and mother,' and 'Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be PUT TO DEATH.'" - Jesus Christ, Mark 7:10.

JESUS THREATENS TO HAVE YOU TORTURED FOR ETERNITY
"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not SHALL BE DAMNED." - Jesus Christ, Mark 16:16

JESUS IS VIOLENT
"And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be BEATEN with many stripes." - Jesus Christ, Luke 12:46-48.

JESUS DEMANDS HATE
"If any man come to me, and HATE NOT his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." - Jesus Christ, Luke 14:26

JESUS WAS KNOWN WORLD-WIDE
Jesus' fame "went throughout all Syria" (Matt 4:24), and "all Galilee" (Mark 1:28). Why didn't some of those people write of him?

JESUS IS VIOLENT
"And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple [Jesus whipped them! ], and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables." - John 2:15

BIBLE ZOMBIES
"Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour..." "and the earth did quake" "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose" "And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." - Matt 27


From Beyond the Crusades:

Saul writes, around 55 CE, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things" (1 Cor 13). One wonders why Saul could not put away the childish notion of a prophesied savior, sent on a mission to redeem mankind from what Saul called "Adam's transgression" (Rom 5). -Beyond the Crusades. p. 39.

No doubt you are aware of the sanctimonious psalmist who belched the words, "the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." ... Here is my proposed correction:
The fool hath said in his heart, "I know there is a God, and just one God. I know his name, I know his mind and his plans for me. I know where we came from and what happens after we die. I know if I merely believe in God I shall live forever in paradise. And all I have to do is pray to God, and all my wishes will come true." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

"[Emperor] Justinian declares death to be the punishment for anyone baptized who then adopts pagan ways: 'this we do in all mercy' - or so goes the compassionate Christian decree..." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

In 1823 the Monroe Doctrine pronounced that the United States would no longer interfere with existing European colonies in the New World, and proclaimed that European powers were to leave American colonies alone. Then the U.S. took Florida from the Spanish and forged westward disputing with Great Britain over Oregon's border, taking Texas in 1837, and New Mexico, Arizona, and California in 1848. When the Spanish-American war broke in 1898, America leveraged Manifest Destiny to annex Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

In 1209 town leaders in Béziers, France refuse to hand over 222 of their own followers of Jesus to the Christian forces that invade their humble hamlet. Crusaders thus attack Béziers and massacre every person they find. First, soldiers drag seven thousand refugees out of churches, homes and fortresses and summarily execute them. Others are mutilated, blinded, dragged behind horses, and used for target practice. The town is then set ablaze. Proud of his accomplishment, papal legate Arnaud Amaury writes to Pope Innocent III, "Today your Holiness, twenty thousand heretics were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

The Cathars did not merely "disappear" as CE1986 claims. The Christian colossus exterminated them, then annexed much of the beautiful Languedoc region of France-some for the Church, some from northern French nobles. The extravagant Palais de la Berbie (construction began in 1228) and the Catholic fortress-cathedral Sainte Cécile (began 1282) are just two examples that remain to this day. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

In 1382 John Wycliffe translates the Bible into English. He dies in 1384, then is posthumously declared a heretic in 1415 with orders that his books be burned and his bodily remains exhumed, burned, and discarded. Another example of justice, Christian style: they'll come and get ya, whether you're dead or alive. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII orders witch hunters to burn all witches' pet cats along with the supposed witches. As a result, superstitious Christians begin ritual burning of cats every Easter, Lent and Shrove Tuesday, sanctioned by most every pope throughout Christendom. It seems if you are a cat-lover you cannot possibly be a good Christian. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

In 1525 William Tyndale completes his translation of the New Testament into English; Tyndale would be executed in 1536 for the crime of "illegal possession of the Bible in English." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

In 1555 Pope Paul IV issues papal bull cum nimis absurdum, relegating Jews to live in a special ghetto, and "subject to other harassing disabilities" (Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 14, 762). In the same year, church reformers John Rogers and Thomas Cranmer are burned at the stake by Christian forces, for heresy. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

The righteous Church of Christ in 1557 creates an "Index of Prohibited Books" whose purpose is, purportedly, "to shield the community from intellectual and moral poison." I insist upon including the "Holy Bible" in my list of books promoting intellectual and moral poison. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

In 1600 scientist Giordano Bruno agrees with Copernicus' theory that the planets orbit the sun, as well as proposing there may be an infinite number of other worlds, some likely inhabited. The peaceful and gentle Christian Church burns Bruno alive for his thought crimes. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

The "Thirty Years War" takes place from 1618 to 1648. Once again, Protestants versus Catholics warring throughout most of Europe-yet another example of "you love Mister Jesus differently than we do, so you must die." Estimated deaths: seven to eight million. As Dave Barry explained, it ended in 1648 because "the combatants realized that they would either have to stop fighting or change the name of the war." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia. The Bosnian War lasts from 1992 to 1995. Here we have more religious fighting, characterized by Christian oppression, mass rape, murdering of innocent men, women and children. At least 100,000 are killed. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

Fanatic Christian Paul Jennings Hill murders Dr. John Britton along with his clinic escort James Barrett in 1994. Hill is later found guilty of murder, and sentenced to death. Prior to Hill's 2003 execution, he said he expected "a great reward in Heaven... I am looking forward to glory." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

In November 2001 Ashley Appoo learned that John Leslie McDonald and his wife were atheists. What would Jesus do? Appoo murdered John with an axe, then hacked John's wife nearly to death. A devout Christian, Appoo had Christ on his side, and could do no wrong. The judge disagreed, sentencing him to eighteen years. - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.

High on gerin oil for far too long, parents Leilani and Dale Neumann watch reverently and with faith as their daughter of eleven years sinks into a diabetic coma. Her parents do the most they consider reasonable: they pray to God. Their daughter Kara Madeline dies... They parents show no emotion and had no sadness in losing their daughter, nor when they are found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide; they claim they have "peace in God." - Michael Paulkovich, Beyond the Crusades.



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