#or

They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping or in the keeping of her God the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#politics #religion #separation-of-church-and-state #religion

If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#god #religion #worship #religion

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheist #god #noremorse #science #religion

My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level. ↗

— Michael H. Hart

#phenpomena #religion #social #truth #religion

If he is terrorising the terrorists, if he is terrorising America the terrorist [...] I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist. ↗

— Zakir Naik

#fanaticism #islam #islamism #muslims #osama-bin-laden

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎The mind of God is greater than all the minds of men, so let all men leave the gospel just as God has delivered it unto us. ↗

— Charles H. Spurgeon

#organized-religion #religion #men

The Vatican won't prosecute pedophile priests but I decide I'm not ready for motherhood and it's condemnation for me? These are the same people that won't support national condom distribution that PREVENTS teenage pregnancy. ↗

— Sonya Renee Taylor

#catholic #feminism #feminist #motherhood #organized-religion

It is a better world. A place where we ate responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and becauseit is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment. ↗

— Christopher Paolini

#eragon #oromis #religion #religion

I don’t know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, ‘Why don’t you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?’ And I always say, well, when you say that, you’ve also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that’s got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate… ↗

— David Attenborough

#birds #christian #christianity #creation #god

The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn. ↗

— Martin Luther

#devil #religion #scorn #scripture #religion