“Come, let us reason together saith the Lord”. Isaiah
“Be ready to give to everyone who asks you, a reason for the
hope that is in you”. Peter
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade
the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even
perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." - Richard Dawkins
"We may define "faith" as the firm belief in
something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one
speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four
or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute
emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead
to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions." Bertrand Russell
"But some, perhaps, will say: Are we to have no Word of God - no revelation? I answer, Yes; there is a Word of God; there is a revelation. The Word of God is the creation we behold and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.” Thomas Paine
Paine writes, "It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all this is necessary for man to know of God."
Thomas Jefferson
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences...
“I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
“I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed
us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use.” [Galileo
Galilei]
It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.” [Galileo Galilei, The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies]
"The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization." - Robert Anton Wilson
"Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established." - Ludwig Feuerbach
"We owe it to ourselves as respectable human beings, as thinking human beings, to do what we can to make humanity more rational...Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests." - Isaac Asimov
Elihu Palmer- The strength of human understanding is incalculable; its keenness of discernment would ultimately penetrate into every part of nature, were it permitted to operate with uncontrolled and unqualified freedom. It is because this sublime principle of man has been constantly the object of the most scurrilous abuse, and the most detestable invective from superstition, that his moral existence has been buried in the gulf of ignorance, and his intellectual powers tarnished by the ferocious and impure hand of fanaticism. Although we are made capable of sublime reflections, it has hitherto been deemed a crime to think, and a still greater crime to speak our thoughts after they have been conceived.
"The United States is the most religious of all the industrialized nations. Forty-four percent of Americans attend church once a week, compared with 27 percent in Britain, 21 percent in France, 16 percent in Australia, and 4 percent in Sweden. Yet violent crime is not less common in the United States--it's more common. The murder rate here is six times higher than the rate in Britain, seven times higher than in France, five times higher than in Australia, and five times higher than in Sweden. Japan, where Christianity has almost no adherents, has less violent crime than almost any country....Within the 50 states, there is no evidence that a God-fearing populace equals a law-abiding populace. The Bible Belt has more than its share of both praying and killing. Louisiana has the highest churchgoing rate in the country, but its murder rate is more than twice the national average. The same pattern generally holds in the rest of the South..." - Steve Chapman in Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammo.
