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Bill Maher and Richard
Dawkins Discussing Someone wrote: > "God's will be done. I am in His hands." -Abraham Lincoln - - - - - - - From Abraham Lincoln, US President: "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." - - - - - - - From James Madison, US President: "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." - - - - - - - From William Howard Taft, US President: "I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe." - - - - - - - From John Adams, US President: "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." - - - - - - - From Thomas Jefferson, US President: "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." "Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies." - - - - - - - "Not one of the first six [U.S.] presidents was an orthodox Christian. Most of the founders were Deists, who "doubted that Christ was a god" and equated God with "the power behind nature, as discerned by science." " --- Robert Sherrill, James A. Haight - - - - - - - Someone wrote: > "I am almost ready to say this is probably true--that > God wills this contest (the Civil War), and wills that > it shall not end yet" - Abraham Lincoln God and war, quite a combo, with both sides in every contest calling upon their God (or Gods) to win, and no evidence that any God played any role in any of them (or in any natural disaster, for that matter). - - - - - - - From Jimmy Carter, US President: "In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions. Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope of God's mercy and grace, their lives lose all value." - - - - - - - From Abbot Arnaud-Amalric in 1209, when his army asked their commander how they were to distinguish between those captives still faith- ful to the Holy Church and those deserving of punishment - they followed his instructions exactly: "Kill them all! God will recognize his own." - - - - - - - From Osama bin Laden, after the 9-11 mass murders by his followers, a God not mentioned much by religious devotees, as they tend to dis- believe in the following as strongly as the non- religious do: "Thanks to God, he who God guides will never lose. And I believe that there's only one God. And I declare I believe there's no prophet but Mohammed. This is America, God has sent one of the attacks by God and has attacked one of its best buildings. And this is America filled with fear from the north to south and east to west, thank God." - - - - - - - Someone wrote, in reply to a poster who asserted that God exists: > Prove to me there is a god "The Christian-Judaic God does not exist, and if He did exist as described in the Bible, He would certainly not be a good role model." --- Robert Sherrill "RELIGION: A set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual." --- Bertrand Russell "Man is the religious animal...He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven." --- Mark Twain "The Church worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry." --- Mark Twain "Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them." --- Mark Twain "The deepest sin of the human mind is to believe things without evidence." --- Thomas Henry Huxley "When religion ruled the world, they called it the Dark Ages." --- Anonymous - - - Someone wrote: > I know a lot of religious people that I am very fond of > and so long as they don't force their beliefs on me, I am > fine with them > Many politicians profess a belief in god when they really > don't as indicated by Abraham Lincoln [...] And some speak as if God has spoken to them, or as if they 'know' what the supposed God wants, just like the mostly anonymous writers of the jewish/christian bible did many years ago. Think of the following as the modern- day bible (the following just a sampling of the multitude of Godspeak that comes from the minds of believers): - - - Post-Revelation 1:1 "Freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world" --- George Bush, US President Difficult to support that if you view death and disease and torture and pain as parts of God's gift. Try to support that following a sermon about God drowning almost every man, woman, child, and baby on the planet, and I doubt the word 'freedom' would be readily thought of. Perhaps the words 'slavery' and 'fear' and 'vi- cious' and 'evil' might come to mind. - - - Post-Revelation 1:2 "When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" --- Martin Luther King Jr. Inspiring words, at first glance. However, notably absent, a mention of Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists and the non-religious and secular humanists and others who have decided that the evidence does not support the existence of any God or Gods or other 'magic beings'. Also notably absent, a mention of the female gender. Also no longer socially acceptable, the use of the word 'Negro'. As for the advances in relative equality, notable that most churches are highly segregated, one of the most segregated realms that remain in a country that has made great advances in ending segregation and in ending discrimination based on race. Also notably absent, acknowledgement of the negative role that religion played in racism and in the plight of humankind when christianity ruled the western world for over 1,000 years of the darkest period in human history (see inquisition, witch trials, crusades, heretic laws, torture practices, Catholic-Protestant wars, and other details for reasons why it's unwise to hold God up as the ideal to center notions like freedom and equality around). - - - Post-Revelation 1:3 "There could not have been a better scenario to this disaster (referring to the geese-caused aircrash in New York City in 2009, or to any disaster in which lives are 'spared' for that matter). It could have been much worse. God really had to be with him as well." --- Shae Childers, 38, of Gaffney, SC, who was recovering from hypothermia Friday at a New York hospital As you pointed out, difficult to interject God as involved and then ignore the supposedly all-power- ful God allowing the geese to fly into the engines. Typical of believers, they simply 'spin' stuff to try to prop up their fantasies of a particular God-centric 'heaven', and in the worst cases, they 'spin' stuff to prop up their fantasies of a supposedly God-ordained 'hell'. God stuff, every last ounce of it, from the old- est to the newest, from the most negative to the most positive, is just 'make believe' and 'spin'. - - - |
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