The mixing of government and religion can be a threat to free government, even if no one is forced to participate. . . . When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion, it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs. A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.
This hideous doctrine of eternal torment after death has probably caused more terror and misery, more cruelty and more violation of natural human sympathy, than any belief in the history of mankind. Yet this doctrine was taught unambiguously by Jesus.
Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.
There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.
The atheist has no hope.
I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew.
In this infinite space is placed our universe (whether by chance, by necessity, or by providence I do not now consider).
If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good.
Those who lift their hats shall see Nature as devout do God.
The supernatural does not exist.
Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and nonfiction. And even there, who can be sure?
God's little Blond Blessing we have long deemed you, and hope his so-called Will will not compel him to revoke you.
I do not expect that the mere fact that I was once an evangelical apologist and now see things differently should itself count as evidence that I must be right. That would be the genetic fallacy. It would be just as erroneous to think that John Rankin must be right in having embraced evangelical Christianity since he had once been an agnostic Unitarian and repudiated it for the Christian faith.
The cruelty of a Fijian god, who, represented as devouring the souls of the dead, may be supposed to inflict torture during the process, is small compared with the cruelty of a God who condemns men to tortures which are eternal.
They address an Eclipse every morning, whom they call their "Father. "
When reputable scientists correct flaws in an experiment that produced fantastic results, then fail to get those results when they repeat the test with flaws corrected, they withdraw their original claims. They do not defend them by arguing irrelevantly that the failed replication was successful in some other way, or by making intemperate attacks on whomever dares to criticize their competence.
Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change His future mind?
And when the Old Man wished to kill someone, he would take him and say: "Go and do this thing. I do this because I want to make you return to paradise. " And the assassins go and perform the deed willingly.
Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.
If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.
