IN AMERICA,
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HOW WE BELIEVE
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A COMMUNITY OF THINKERS
Whenever Zach did research, he always wanted to know what other people,
especially thoughtful, intelligent people, said about the subject. Through
his constant digging, he had uncovered quite a few thoughts and quotes
discussing religion, many from Acharya S’s website, http://www.truthbeknown.com/,
and many from http://www.infidels.org/, another excellent website.
One of the first quotes on her website that really
caught his eye was one from Albert Einstein, who, by some counts, was
a pretty bright guy!
Teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the archaic
doctrine of a personal God, to give up the source of FEAR which has
placed vast power in the hands of the clergy and priests. Such a doctrine
is not only unworthy, but fatal, and has done incalculable harm to human
spiritual progress.
—Albert Einstein
Then there was this quote from another brilliant man, the author Mark
Twain:
Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet
preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet
stingily cut it short; mouths golden rules and forgiveness multiplied
seventy times seven and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people
and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who
created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility
for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs,
upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites
this poor, abused slave to worship him!
—Mark Twain
And from www.infidels.org, we have this quote from Thomas Edison (genius
inventor):
"Religion is all bunk."
-- Thomas Edison
And there were many, many more. Just a few of these from www.truthbeknown.com
included the following:
Hell is useless to sages, but necessary to the blind and brutal
populace.
—Polybius
...In religion, they become "holier than thou" types filled
with terrible hatreds which in turn cause guilt complexes that drive
them deeper into their religious frame of reference. The outlet for
their scrambled emotions is to try to foist their beliefs—and
their fears—onto the rest of us.
—John Keel
Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men,
women and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions,
and tortures unto death, and religious wars, that since that time have
laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but the impious thing
called religion and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?
—Cardiff
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience
to remain silent.
—Thomas Jefferson
It seems to me that those who fear knowledge in favor of belief
do so to pacify their own insecurity and "weakmindedness"
and have no interest in establishing any relationship with reality...
for their reality is founded in a group worship wherein the chant replaces
thought. The hospital of religion needs to protect its code to prevent
the masses from finding out that it was only a form of psychotherapy
all along... Knowledge has always had a way of undoing secrets; after
all, the dark ages ended when the age of enlightenment began.
—Mike Conner
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from religious conviction.
—Blaise Pascal
... Christianity is a monstrous fraud and delusion, that has desolated
the earth and filled the spirit world with demons. . . . there is not
a tenet, dogma, doctrine, ceremony, form or prayer, fast or feast, title
of deity, form of church government, official rank or religious observance
of any kind, that is not identical with some prototype to be found in
one or more of the more ancient religious systems. . . . no such person,
man, or God, as Jesus Christ, had anything to do with establishing the
religion that has been taught in his name. . . . To get rid of the damning
fact that there is no historical basis for their theological fictions,
the Christian priesthood have been guilty of the heinous crime of destroying
nearly all traces of the concurrent history of the first two centuries
of the Christian era. What little of it they have permitted to come
down to us, they have so altered and changed, as to destroy its historical
value.
—JM Roberts, Esq.
Emotionals don't have to read, they just react on a snake's level...
they strike out at whatever they perceive to be a threat or food. I
sometimes think that belief-ism is a cop out which assigns its active
participation in life to empowering an external authority and blindly
accepting it as a know all, omnipotence wherein decisions are alleviated
and unnecessary... it is a method by which a herd moves in concert.
It would be wise to watch out for their fear that we do not get caught
in the mindless stampede. Fanatics easily become something less than
human. Here are some examples of where this happens:
Genesis 6:5-9... or Deuteronomy 7:1-2 or Joshua 6:21 or Joshua 10:40-41,
or Genesis 19: Genesis 19:12-26, Joshua 7:20-25, Joshua 8:24, Joshua
10:26, Joshua 10:28, Joshua 10:29, Joshua 10:31, Joshua 10:33, Joshua
10:34, Joshua 10:37, Joshua 10:38, Numbers 21:2-3, Numbers 21:33-35,
Numbers 31:1-18, Deuteronomy 2:21-24, Deuteronomy 2:26-35, Judges 4:16
, Exodus 7:3, Exodus 7:13-14, Exodus 12:29-30, King 18:17-40, 2 Kings
2:23-24, Samuel 6:19, Samuel 6:6-11, Samuel 24:1-15, Chronicles 13:7-11,
Chronicles 21:1-14.
Or am I looking at the wrong bible?
—Mike Conner
The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and
omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and
misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of
it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin.
In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers
to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt.
—Frederik Bendz
It would seem, that the three human impulses embodied in religion
are fear, conceit, and hatred.
—Frederik Bendz
In addition to Acharya S's website, Zach found some excellent material
at http://www.infidels.org/, a collection of thoughtful words from a
variety of free thinkers.
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions
of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity]
one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology.
--Thomas Jefferson,
letter to William Short, _Six_Historic_Americans_ by John E. Remsberg
The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine
for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into
a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves...these clergy,
in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
--Benjamin Franklin, _Poor_Richard_, 1758
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity
been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places,
pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity;
in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
--James Madison,
_A_Memorial_ and_Remonstrance, _2000_Years_of_Disbelief_ by James A.
Haught
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian,
or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
--Thomas Paine, _The_Age_of_Reason
Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is
the worst.
--Thomas Paine
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by
the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the
Protestant Church, not by any Church that I know of. My own mind is
my own Church.
--Thomas Paine,
_Excerpts_from_The_Age_of_Reason:_Selected_Writings_of_Thomas_ Paine_,
edited by Richard Emery Robers, NY Everybody's Vacation Publishing Co,
1945, p.342
The United States of America should have a foundation
free from the influence of clergy.
--George Washington, _2000_Years_of_Disbelief_, James A. Haught
One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century
champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents
of the United States was an orthodox Christian.
--The Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968, p. 420
Religion is based . . . mainly upon fear . . . fear of the mysterious,
fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore
it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand . . .
. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease
born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
--Bertrand Russell
The following six Adolf Hitler quotes are included here to show that
he was in fact Christian and not, as many Christians have claimed, an
atheist. For more information, see Hitler's Religious Beliefs and Fanaticism
(off-site).
I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself
with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only
natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed
to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.
--Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I thank Heaven that a portion of the memories of those days still
remains with me. Woods and meadows were the battlefields on which the
'conflicts' which exist everywhere in life were decided.
--Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
...God have mercy!
--Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I was not in agreement with the sharp anti-Semitic tone, but from
time to time I read arguments which gave me some food for thought. At
all events, these occasions slowly made me acquainted with the man and
the movement, which in those days guided Vienna's destinies: Dr. Karl
Lueger and the Christian Social Party.
--Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
How many of my basic principles were upset by this change in my
attitude toward the Christian Social movement! My views with regard
to anti-Semitism thus succumbed to the passage of time, and this was
my greatest transformation of all.
--Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of
the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting
for the work of the Lord.
-- Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator.
By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work.
--Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936
More quotes from http://www.infidels.org/include:
Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed.
Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and
whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the
word of God.
-- Martin Luther
…the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the
Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example…Had the holding of
slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be supposed that the inspired Apostles…would
have tolerated it for a moment in the Christian Church. In proving this
subject justifiable by Scriptural authority [Luke 12:47], its morality
is also proved; for the Divine Law never sanctions immoral actions.
--Richard Furman
of the Baptist State Convention, Letter to South Carolina Governor,
1822
People who are bitter and hateful about slavery are obviously bitter
and hateful against God and his word, because they reject what God says
and embrace what mere humans say concerning slavery. This humanistic
thinking is what the abolitionists embraced.
-- Alabama State Senator Charles Davidson, citing biblical defenses
of slavery, 1996
There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many
regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral.
--Rev. Alexander Campbell
Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other. They
slander each other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse and cannot
come to any sort of agreement in their teaching. Each sect brands its
own, fills the head of its own with deceitful nonsense, and makes perfect
little pigs of those it wins over to its side.
-- Celsus (2nd Century C.E.)
The equal toleration of all religions...is the same as atheism.
--Pope Leo XIII, "Imortale Dei"
We must not hold back in the battle for children's minds.
--Church of England spokesman
Religion is a means of exploitation employed by the strong against
the weak; religion is a cloak of ambition, injustice and vice.
--Georges Bizet, letter to Edmond Galabert, 1866
I do further promise and declare, that I will, when opportunity
presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly or openly, against
all heretics, Protestants and Liberals, as I am directed to do and to
extirpate and exterminate them from the face of the whole earth, and
that I will spare neither sex, age nor condition and that I will hang,
waste, boil, flay,strangle and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip
up the stomachs and wombs of their women and crush their infants' heads
against the wall, in order to annihilate forever their execrable race.
--Pope Paul III, 1576
To affirm that the Sun...is at the centre of the universe and only
rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous
attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers
and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the
Scriptures.
--Cardinal Bellermine,
17th century Church Master Collegio Romano,
who imprisoned and tortured Galileo for his astronomical works
To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous
as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.
--Cardinal Bellermine 1615, during the trial of Galileo
In addition to quotes from numerous thinkers and leaders listed above
from http://www.infidels.org/, Zach was especially interested is some
speeches and articles by the American Robert Green Ingersoll, an outspoken
writer, philosopher and orator of the 1800s. Portions of Ingersoll's
article, Why I Am Agnostic, include:
For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are
the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion
of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned
by our surroundings.
*****
If we had been born in Constantinople, then most
of us would have said: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed
is his prophet." If our parents had lived on the banks of the Ganges,
we would have been worshipers of Siva, longing for the heaven of Nirvana.
*****
Like the most of you, I was raised among people
who knew --who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They
had no doubts. They knew that they had the truth. In their creed there
was no guess -- no perhaps. They had a revelation from God. They knew
the beginning of things. They knew that God commenced to create one
Monday morning, four thousand and four years before Christ. They knew
that in the eternity -- back of that morning, he had done nothing. They
knew that it took him six days to make the earth -- all plants, all
animals, all life, and all the globes that wheel in space. They knew
exactly what he did each day and when he rested. They knew the origin,
the cause of evil, of all crime, of all disease and death.
They not only knew the beginning, but they knew
the end. They knew that life had one path and one road. They knew that
the path, grass-grown and narrow, filled with thorns and nettles, infested
with vipers, wet with tears, stained by bleeding feet, led to heaven,
and that the road, broad and smooth, bordered with fruits and flowers,
filled with laughter and song and all the happiness of human love, led
straight to hell. They knew that God was doing his best to make you
take the path and that the Devil used every art to keep you in the road.
They knew that there was a perpetual battle waged
between the great Powers of good and evil for the possession of human
souls. They knew that many centuries ago God had left his throne and
had been born a babe into this poor world -- that he had suffered death
for the sake of man -- for the sake of saving a few. They also knew
that the human heart was utterly depraved, so that man by nature was
in love with wrong and hated God with all his might.
At the same time they knew that God created man
in his own image and was perfectly satisfied with his work. They also
knew that he had been thwarted by the Devil, who with wiles and lies
had deceived the first of human kind. They knew that in consequence
of that, God cursed the man and woman; the man with toil, the woman
with slavery and pain, and both with death; and that he cursed the earth
itself with briers and thorns, brambles and thistles. All these blessed
things they knew. They knew too all that God had done to purify and
elevate the race. They knew all about the Flood -- knew that God, with
the exception of eight, drowned all his children -- the old and young
-- the bowed patriarch and the dimpled babe -- the young man and the
merry maiden -- the loving mother and the laughing child -- because
his mercy endureth forever. They knew too, that he drowned the beasts
and birds -- everything that walked or crawled or flew -- because his
loving kindness is over all his works. They knew that God, for the purpose
of civilizing his children, had devoured some with earthquakes, destroyed
some with storms of fire, killed some with his lightnings, millions
with famine, with pestilence, and sacrificed countless thousands upon
the fields of war. They knew that it was necessary to believe these
things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except
by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.
All who doubted or denied would be lost. To live
a moral and honest life -- to keep your contracts, to take care of wife
and child -- to make a happy home -- to be a good citizen, a patriot,
a just and thoughtful man, was simply a respectable way of going to
hell.
God did not reward men for being honest, generous
and brave, but for the act of faith. Without faith, all the so-called
virtues were sins, and the men who practiced these virtues, without
faith, deserved to suffer eternal pain.
All of these comforting and reasonable things were
taught by the ministers in their pulpits -- by teachers in Sunday schools
and by parents at home. The children were victims. They were assaulted
in the cradle -- in their mother's arms. Then, the schoolmaster carried
on the war against their natural sense, and all the books they read
were filled with the same impossible truths. The poor children were
helpless. The atmosphere they breathed was filled with lies -- lies
that mingled with their blood.
*****
I concluded that all religions had substantially
the same origin, and that in fact there has never been but one religion
in the world. The twigs and leaves may differ, but the trunk is the
same.
*****
There have been many sun-gods, and they seem to
have been the chief deities in the ancient religions. They have been
worshiped in many lands, by many nations that have passed to death and
dust.
Apollo was a sun-god and he fought and conquered
the serpent of night. Baldur was a sun-god. He was in love with the
Dawn -- a maiden. Chrishna was a sun-god. At his birth the Ganges was
thrilled from its source to the sea, and all the trees, the dead as
well as the living, burst into leaf and bud and flower. Hercules was
a sun-god and so was Samson, whose strength was in his hair -- that
is to say, in his beams. He was shorn of his strength by Delilah, the
shadow -- the darkness. Osiris, Bacchus, and Mithra, Hermes, Buddha,
and Quetzalcoatl, Prometheus, Zoroaster, and Perseus, Cadom, Lao-tsze,
Fo-hi, Horus and Rameses, were all sun- gods.
All of these gods had gods for fathers and their
mothers were virgins. The births of nearly all were announced by stars,
celebrated by celestial music, and voices declared that a blessing had
come to the poor world. All of these gods were born in humble places
-- in caves, under trees, in common inns, and tyrants sought to kill
them all when they were babes. All of these sun-gods were born at the
winter solstice -- on Christmas. Nearly all were worshiped by "wise
men." All of them fasted for forty days -- all of them taught in
parables -- all of them wrought miracles -- all met with a violent death,
and all rose from the dead.
The history of these gods is the exact history
of our Christ.
This is not a coincidence -- an accident. Christ
was a sun-god. Christ was a new name for an old biography -- a survival
-- the last of the sun-gods. Christ was not a man, but a myth -- not
a life, but a legend.
I found that we had not only borrowed our Christ
-- but that all our sacraments, symbols and ceremonies were legacies
that we received from the buried past. There is nothing original in
Christianity.
*****
Suppose we had a man in this country who could
control the wind, the rain and lightning, and suppose we elected him
to govern these things, and suppose that he allowed whole States to
dry and wither, and at the same time wasted the rain in the sea. Suppose
that he allowed the winds to destroy cities and to crush to shapelessness
thousands of men and women, and allowed the lightnings to strike the
life out of mothers and babes. What would we say? What would we think
of such a savage?
And yet, according to the theologians, this is
exactly the course pursued by God.
*****
Let us be true to ourselves -- true to the facts
we know, and let us, above all things, preserve the veracity of our
souls.
If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our fellow-men.
We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife and child and
friend.
We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is
beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know. We
can tell the truth, and we can enjoy the blessed freedom that the brave
have won. We can destroy the monsters of superstition, the hissing snakes
of ignorance and fear. We can drive from our minds the frightful things
that tear and wound with beak and fang. We can civilize our fellow-men.
We can fill our lives with generous deeds, with loving words, with art
and song, and all the ecstasies of love. We can flood our years with
sunshine -- with the divine climate of kindness, and we can drain to
the last drop the golden cup of joy.
- Robert Green Ingersoll
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