no. 472

"it quickly becomes clear that your party is so focused on born again Christians that you have forgotten those of us who were born once and got it right the first time."

Helen @ "Margaret and Helen" talking about the Republican Party

no. 454

"It doesn't take much cruelty, to make people afraid of your kindness"

a softer world, no. 1171

no. 444

"We’ve separated religion and politics, and this was a great innovation. But so deeply embedded in our consciousness is the desire to give our lives some meaning and significance that no sooner did we do this than we infused the new nation-state with a sort of quasi-religious fervor. If you regard the sacred as something for which we are willing to give our lives, in some senses the nation has replaced God, because it’s now not acceptable to die for religion, but it is admirable to die for your country."

Karen Armstrong

no. 390

“If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

no. 350

"I think there’s a lot to be said for the JudeoChristian idea of absolute good and evil. But sometimes it’s just easier to believe, as the ancient Greeks did, that this universe is being run by drunken, skirt-chasing, egotistical morons."

this guy's English professor

no. 341

“Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none.”

Herbert Spencer, The Development Hypothesis (1852)

no. 339

“In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’”

Carl Sagan

no. 324

"If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

no. 284

via

no. 234

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no. 233

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no. 232

via

no. 229

"The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance, but to overcome it."

Lawrence Krauss

no. 198

Your god is Old. He killed children
in Egypt, murdered lovers in the night,
swept sinners dead in a righteous wave.
He told Eve she would die
if she ate the apple, knowing
that he had already planted the seed
of the tree of Knowledge inside her.
He lied. He stole. He coveted.
Just because you create something,
doesn’t make it yours.

I will not be Job. If god tries
to tear down my house, I will
not weep. I will build it up again myself,
with my own hands.
That god is not my god. I am New.
I will walk with children.
I will love and learn to swim.
I will eat apples and drink coffee
and build towers.
I will wear flowers
from that old tree
in my hair.

whatladybird

via

no. 190

Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. If it did, you wouldn’t get a shot of penicillin, you’d pop a leach down your trousers and pray. Whatever you “believe,” this is not as effective as medicine. Again you can say, “It works for me,” but so do placebos. My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith.” If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”

Ricky Gervais


via

no. 182

"So to punish the Devil for trying to overthrow him - which wouldn’t have happened anyway because HE’S GOD and he could just will him out of existence - God decides to throw him out of heaven, but just let him have total freedom otherwise. So the Devil can run around completely fucking up everything God tries to do from then on, meaning that millions of souls will be tortured in hell for all eternity.

This is like if you threw a wad a paper at your Dad, and he “punished” you by signing the house over to you and not doing anything as you set fire to the lawn.

Come on. Zeus turned into a cow to have sex with married women, and even his plans were more rational than this.

And before you guys say “GOD’S MIND IS SO GREAT WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND HIS WAYS,” I just want to point out that God intentionally made us too stupid to understand him, and yet, even in that state, the stuff he does looks to us like arbitrary, short-sighted, nonsensical bullshit.

Which demonstrates a larger point. He made us idiots, and then set the Devil loose on us. And the only salvation we get from this is after we die a miserable death, he won’t torture us forever.

I don’t believe in God, so to me, this is all just goofy Iron Age mythology. But to those of you who do believe in him…what, do you just not think about all this?"

Fat, Angry, Godless Freak. via The Virgin Prince

no. 174

"He considered his beautiful, complicated daughter. How did he ever consider anything to be worth losing her? 'Do you believe in God?', he says.
She smiles, like she's the parent and he's the child, and makes a gesture designed to incorporate herself, him, adn the world at large. 'Who else could throw together such an insane shit show?'"

Jonathan Tropper, from One Last Thing Before I Go

no. 172

"Frankly, slap 'Christian' on any item - comics, toys, puppets, gum - and it either becomes 50% crappier, 50% creepier, or 50% more expensive."

Davan McIntyre, in Randy Milholland's Something Positive

no.171

from Randy Milholland's Something Positive.

no. 167

Really, God really needs to be less petty than a human, doesnt He? Otherwise, it's simply a case of Might Makes Right.