If any of the following quotes offend you too fucking bad. Thank you and have a nice day!
Quotes
“I observe that a very large portion of the human race doesn’t believe in God and suffers no visible consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.”
“Christians hold that their faith does good, but other faiths do harm. At any rate, they hold this about the Communist faith. What I wish to maintain is that all faiths do harm. We may define ‘faith’ as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. When there is evidence, no one speaks of ‘faith'. We do not speak of faith that two and two is four or that the earth is round. We only speak of ‘faith’ when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.”
“If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Indian’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, ’How about the tortoise?’ the Indian said ‘Suppose we change the subject.’ The argument is really no better then that.”
“There is one very serious defect in my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in Hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching – an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers.”
"Although we are taught the Copernican astronomy in our textbooks, it has not yet penetrated to our religion or our morals, and has not even succeeded in destroying belief in astrology. People still think that the Devine Plan has special referance to human beings, and that a Special Providence not only looks after the good,but also punishes the wicked. I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious- for instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, they reply: 'Oh, but you forget the good God'. Apparently they conceive of the Diety as a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes. This view strikes me as curious."
“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown, and partly the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing-fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look round for imaginary supports, no longer to invent aliens in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the Churches in all these centuries have made it.”
