Menace of Religion

"After all, we live in a time when blowing children to bits is an increasingly popular form of worship, the most powerful man on earth thinks he's got a hotline to God, and much of the electorate who gave that man his power would never consider replacing him with someone who does not believe the son of a carpenter who died 2,000 years ago sits in heaven advising presidents, fixing football games, and waiting for the day he will return to the Earth to brutally murder all unbelievers and erect a worldwide dictatorship." ¬ Those Fanatical Atheists by Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen (posted by Skavar)

"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

"No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism." ¬ Annie Wood Besant

"As people become more intelligent they care less for preaches and more for teachers." ¬ Robert G. Ingersoll

"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church." ¬ Ferdinand Magellan

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
world, & the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the
people." ¬ Karl Marx

"The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." ¬ HL Mencken

"People say we need religion when what they really mean is we need police." ¬ HL Mencken

"The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.
...True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can't disarm their enemy." ¬ HL Mencken

"In the absence of fear there is little faith." ¬ Michael Pain

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

"It is said that men may not be the dreams of the Gods, but rather that the Gods are the dreams of men." ¬ Carl Sagan

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means." ¬ George Bernard Shaw

“Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things – that takes religion." ¬ Steven Weinberg.

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