#theism

When gods die, self-respect buds', murmured Orland Fank. 'Gods and their examples are not needed by those who respect themselves and, consequently, respect others. Gods are for children, for little, fearful people, for those who would have no responsibility to themselves or their fellows. ↗

— Michael Moorcock

#gods #responsibility #self-respect #respect

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #atheist #christianity #death #god

My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#evolution #feeling #led #me #personal

Atheism is the last word of theism. ↗

— Heinrich Heine

#last #theism #word

Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor. ↗

— James Thurber

#humour #james-thurber #religion #religion

If Jesus had been an actual historical figure we have a thorny paradox. Either this Jesus was a remarkable individual who said and did a host of amazing, revolutionary things – but no one outside his fringe cult noticed for over a century. Or he didn’t – and yet shortly after his death, tiny communities of worshipers that cannot agree about the most basic facts of his life spring up, scattered all across the empire. The truth is inescapable: there simply could never have been a historical Jesus. ↗

— David Fitzgerald

#christianity #history #jesus-myth #death

Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged. ↗

— Czesław Miłosz

#karl-marx #opium-of-the-people #religion #death

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.* ↗

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

#feminism #politics #religion

It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#history #lincoln #religion

En ningún momento de la historia, en ningún lugar del planeta, las religiones han servido para que los seres humanos se acerquen unos a los otros. Por el contrario, sólo han servido para separar, para quemar, para torturar. No creo en dios, no lo necesito y además soy buena persona. ↗

— José Saramago

#saramago #religion