Moderation / Criticism / Exposition / Exposés

David Aaronovitch

• Catholics try, rather unconvincingly, to show how conferring sainthood is different in principle to the pagan apotheosis (the process that made Claudius, for instance, into a God), but the distinction doesn't quite wash. … For people with God on their side, monotheists are a touchy lot. … in Exodus, Moses comes back down off the mountain with the ten commandments, only to find that the wicked Israelites have (with the connivance of his brother, Aaron) built a golden calf to worship and are busy having an orgy round it. So Moses gets the tribe of Levi to go with "sword at side" and massacre 3,000 calf-worshippers. And we are supposed to celebrate such a violation of the freedom to worship. [never mind ignoring the whole "Thou shalt not kill" thing, but then it was in God's name so it was all right]… Why are they so touchy? The problem is partly that all monotheisms are, by their nature, anti-pluralistic. They've got the one true God, and the very latest valid version of his thoughts. It is asking a lot of monotheisms to coexist with other faiths and views. Paganism, on the other hand, is much better suited to modern ideas of tolerance and human rights. Under polytheism you can choose your own god overtly. And it is hard to imagine a group of water-worshippers getting upset because one of their priests was gay. In fact, in shamanistic cultures, homosexuality is much-valued among the holy men. … Actually, it is all about sex. Pagan religions tend to be about a respect for, and a connection with, nature. So, as the Catholic Encyclopaedia notes, it was in the pagan fertility cults associated with the "dying and rising god" that the "worst perversions existed". Old Ishtar, Cybele (later Artemis, later Diana) and Astarte all had their temple whores, and their lewd rites. … Lewd rites: that's exactly what I'd like more of on Thought For The Day. [The Guardian, 15 July 2003]
• Why Jerry [Springer] is such a good show is that it does, in fact, treat what seems to be a light thing – popular culture – seriously. But doesn't it, on the way, cause offence, and cause it a little selectively? … Could we imagine a Prophet in diapers? The Bezhti affair gives this question real salience. The editor of Granta, Ian Jack, writing following the Sikh demonstrations that forced the play's closure, seemed to suggest that some lines were unlikely to be crossed, and crystallised the argument: 'The state has no law forbidding a pictorial representation of the Prophet,' he wrote, 'but I never expect to see such a picture. On the one hand, there is the individual's right to exhibit or publish one; on the other hand, the immeasurable insult and damage to life and property that the exercise of such a right would cause. In this case, we understand that the price is too high.' Back came a furious Salman Rushdie, pointing out that there was a tradition of depictions of the Prophet, and then asking, 'should we now censor ourselves because the current potentates of the Islamic faith are more repressive than their predecessors? Do we have no principles of our own?' This seems to be one of the biggest questions of the moment, given additional topicality because of the proposed 'incitement to religious hatred' law. … When Sikh leader Mohan Singh pointed out that only 5,000 people would have seen Bezhti and asked, 'are you going to upset 600,000 Sikhs in Britain and maybe 20 million outside the UK for that?' he laid down a challenge that it is hard to refuse. And the answer is, 'yes, we probably ought to'. What we are offended by depends mostly on us, not on the person doing the offending. Some Christians decided to be offended, but Jerry also features tap-dancing klansmen and The Producers, famously, features balletic storm-troopers. Blacks and Jews could easily decide that such levity was appalling. Instead they've decided that it's not just tolerable, but wonderful. The subjectivity of offensiveness explains why our race laws are not based on suppressing offensive expression, but actions calculated to incite hatred. … And, if we keep our nerves and carefully explain to all citizens that being offended is an occupational hazard in a free society, then my guess is that in 10 years' time – if it's good enough – Bezhti will be playing to audiences of unoffended Sikhs all over Britain, and Germaine Greer: The Naked Ballet will be premiering on BBC16. [The Guardian, 09 January 2005]

Edward Abbey

• A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

AbuManga

• As an ex-muslim myself, I am baffled by the number of Muslims who believe it is acceptable that apostates should be punished. It is beyond being absurd: why not just let God punish me? Why would he need someone else to do the dirty work for him? It is obvious that the killing of apostates is just a way of containing free thought and preventing its spread within the community. [A Question Of Belief, The Guardian, 30 April 2008] Ah, but they're doing God's work, and they know what what is because someone wrote it down. It's the only reason they have for doing anything, after all, for their lives are so empty otherwise.
• I think the problem is not the lack of suitable black role models but the belief that your role models can only be of the ethnicity that you happen to be part of. There are a lot of people that I look up to and I couldn't care less about the colour of their skin or about their ethnic background or religious beliefs. Their achievements in themselves are enough to inspire me. The formula is very simple: work hard and you'll get somewhere. I am black by the way. [Less Notorious BIG, More PhDs, The Guardian, 23 September 2008]
• Religion stifles curiosity, the driving force behind scientific and technological advancement. I remember asking myself, when growing up as a Muslim, why study Nature and the Universe and how everything came about when we "know" that God created everything? All we're left with are nonsensical claims about scientific "truths" in the Quran and about Mecca being the centre of the Earth. An Egyptian friend of mine, who has a PhD in Engineering from one of the UK's top universities once asked me, after his house got broken into : "How can this happen? There are (framed) Quran verses all over the house"(!!!) [Pave With Good Inventions, The Guardian, 25 June 2008]
• Inayat, as an ex-muslim these are the questions I used to ask myself and maybe you should too: - why would an omniscient god create us to judge us afterwards? He knows the future and whether we will be good or evil people long before we were born, so it would be quite unfair of him to punish me for let's say drinking or even not believing in him. Islam juggles the issue of free will and fate (or "maktoub" i.e. "written") with difficulty. - would it make sense to be punished eternally in the most gruesome way (remember that this is the flip side of eternal life) for a finite, time-limited sin, no matter how great? - what is God/Allah getting out of this? What is he trying to prove and to whom? I was a muslim for the first 25 years of my life and I can tell you this: once you realise that all these stories that used to scare us as kids are really man-made myths, life suddenly becomes even more beautiful and enjoyable. [Is Death The End?, The Guardian, 18 March 2008]
• One should not forget to mention that "Islamic" science, philosophy and arts bloomed within a context that would be considered liberal and secular even by today's standards. Unfortunately the Muslim World (if there is such a thing) today is completely devoid of such propitious conditions. We're left to bask in past glories and vacuous talk of "Scientific Miracles of the Quran", (i.e how everything from the atom to the Big Bang theory and even Evolution, while we're at it, has been mentioned in the Holy Book). Conservatism, superstition and religious prevalence in Muslim countries contribute to stifling scientific progress and freethinking. Why search for answers when the Quran provides them all? Why develop technology to make our lives better if God wanted it to be this way? There was some great science done by great scientists who happen to be Muslim, in Muslim countries. It is not, however, "Islamic Science"; not more than gravity is "Christian" and general relativity is "Jewish". [It's Time To Herald The Arabic Science That Prefigured Darwin And Newton, The Guardian, 30 January 2008]

Martha Ackelsberg

• Hierarchies make some people dependent on others, blame the dependent for their dependency, and then use that dependency as a justification for further exercise of authority.

Lord Acton

• Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. [26 February 1877]

Clark Adams

• If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease.

Douglas Adams

• Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Henry Brooks Adams

• The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where the interests are involved.

John Adams

• As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? [letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, 27 December 1816]
• As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext, arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. [Treaty Of Peace And Friendship With Tripoli, Article XI]
• The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolised learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes. [letter to John Taylor]
• God has infinite wisdom, goodness and power; he created the universe; his duration is eternal, a parte ante and a parte post. His presence is as extensive as space. What is space? An infinite spherical vacuum. He created this speck of dirt and the human species for his glory; and with deliberate design of making nine-tenths of our species miserable for ever for his glory. This is the doctrine of Christian theologians, in general, ten to one. Now, my friend, can prophecies or miracles convince you or me that infinite benevolence, wisdom, and power, created, and preserves for a time innumerable millions, to make them miserable forever, for his own glory? Wretch! What is his glory? Is he ambitious? Does he want promotion? Is he vain, tickled with adulation, exulting and triumphing in his power and the sweetness of his vengeance? Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions. My answer to them is always ready. I believe no such things. My adoration of the author of the universe is too profound and too sincere. The love of God and his creation – delight, joy, triumph, exultation in my own existence – though but an atom, a molecule organique in the universe – are my religion. [letter to Thomas Jefferson, 14 September 1813]

Wayne Adkins

• So ask yourself what you believe. Is it that every species of animal once survived for a year on a single wooden boat? That the earth is only 10,000 years old? That God divided people by race and language because people were "too united"? That Samson killed thousands of men with a jawbone because he didn't cut his hair? That unicorns once existed? That Jonah lived in a whale for three days? That after 2,000 years of waiting, Jesus is going to return? Why do you believe these things? It's time to grow up and put the God fairy-tale where it belongs, in your past alongside Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the monster under your bed. [24 April 2005]

'Adonis' (Ali Ahmad Said Asbar)

• The Muslims today – forgive me for saying this – with their accepted interpretation, are the first to destroy Islam, whereas those who criticize the Muslims – the non-believers, the infidels, as they call them – are the ones who perceive in Islam the vitality that could adapt it to life. These infidels serve Islam better than the believers. [11 March 2006]
• … the religious interpretations that compel Muslim women to wear the veil in secular countries where church and state have long been separated and where equality of the sexes is firmly established, reveals a mentality that is not content merely with veiling woman, but seeks to shroud man, society, life in general – to pull the veil over the eyes of reason itself. [Index On Censorship, 4/2003]
• There can be no living culture in the world if you cannot criticize its foundations – the religion. We lack the courage to ask any question about any religious issue. For example, as a Muslim, I cannot say a single word about the Prophet Moses. The Prophet Moses did not say anything to me as a Muslim, whereas the Israeli Jew can criticize Moses and all the prophets in the Torah, and he can even question the divinity of the Torah. [26 November 2006]

Theodore Adorno

• If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.

Tanveer Ahmed

• As long as Muslims view their religion as sitting above history and culture – with the Koran as the literal word of God, which in their view makes Islam undebatable – there will always be Hilalis who can point to certain texts and argue for a social and legal structure consistent with 7th-century Arabia. Let's not forget that a senior British cleric lavished praise on Hilali in response to this incident, saying Australia was lucky to have him, and suggesting he was "one of the greatest Islamic scholars in the world". This is a man who knows the Koran in intimate detail and his views are consistent with a strict reading of the Muslim holy book. And if you believe the Koran is the literal word of God, how is anything other than a strict interpretation appropriate? All the world's religions have passages that are abhorrent or inappropriate to the modern age. But they were revolutionary in their time and can still inspire us today. If Islam is seen in its context, as a product of history and not above it, there could be a meaningful debate about whether a version of the religion, inspired by but not chained to its past, can and contribute to modernity and human progress. The Hilali incident and the loud chorus of his defenders suggest this is still some way off. [The Australian, 30 October 2006]

Zalikha Ahmed, Director, Apna Haq Refuge, Yorkshire

• We have to be careful with the police, especially the Asian ones. We don't visit the station where certain Asian officers are on because some of them are perpetrators and one of them on the record said he would not arrest someone who used force on his wife. [The Telegraph, 29 June 2008]

Decca Aitkenhead

• Christian faith in its modern Church of England incarnation is a stunningly senseless belief system. A few weeks ago, an almighty row broke out about the teaching of creationism in a Gateshead school. "Rational" Christians fell over themselves to make it plain that they were much too sensible to believe such fairy tales. "Modern" churchgoers were frantic to distance themselves from the crazies and their mad ideas about God creating the world in six days. What a preposterous suggestion! Where was the science in that? Everyone knew the story of Genesis was just a rhetorical flourish. God created evolution. Now, not a month later, the same Christians ask us to believe the story of Easter. One churchman, mourning the Queen Mother, spelt it out: "Hers was a faith that rested strongly on the glorious story of Easter," he assured us. And what did the story tell us? "Death is not the last word." In other words, we are supposed to believe that we will live for ever – rather than stop and ask, for instance: "Where is the science in that?" The disputes among Christians regarding interpretation are presented as evidence of what a tolerant, robust and enlightened church we have. Arguments over whether to take Genesis or the resurrection – or the feeding of the 5,000, or the healing of the blind, or all the other miracles in the Bible – as factually accurate accounts, or as spiritual metaphors, exhaust an enormous amount of Christians' intellectual energy. But who cares? What difference does it make if the world took a week to build, or billions of years; if the body of Jesus rose from the grave, or only his spirit? Attributing God's authorship to either version of events comes down to the same thing: you believe in a supernatural power. If you believe in God, you believe in a supernatural power which does not have to obey the laws of science. Trying to discredit it by pointing out scientific implausibility is futile. Believers shouldn't need science to justify their belief in God. They have faith. I'm with the creationists on this point – or, at least, I'm as much with them as with the self-styled "rational" Christians. Christianity is non-rational. It is a historical invention, and once the assumption that everyone should believe in it is removed, no amount of reshuffling the details can alter its essential absurdity. Trying to defend religion by invoking science is like claiming that three plus four equals ice cream. The monarchy is built on no sounder foundation. Modern royalists may couch their defence of the crown in secular terms – constitutional continuity, keeping Britain special, generating tourist revenue – but God's role remains as central now as it ever did. Without a divine being to anoint the royal family, how can we be expected to think of them as different? [The Guardian, 02 April 2002]

Sadiq Jalal al-Azm

• But it is obvious that the literal text of the Koran simply cannot be applied in modern society. Take for instance the corporal punishments prescribed in the Koran. Radical Islamists want to impose them, but they are a minority. The majority of Muslims have split personalities on this matter: They insist that this is the penal law of Islam and at the same time they admit that it is inapplicable. [Radio Netherlands, 27 March 2007]
• In the Muslim world, Islamists present themselves as an alternative for western culture, but they do not really have an alternative: Their slogan 'Islam is the solution' is an illusion. Islam simply cannot solve the problems of the 21st Century. That becomes clear as soon as the Islamists come to power: All islamist regimes end up in dramatic failure. That some Islamists today turn violent and even suicidal, is only an indication of their failure to realise their plans. Eventually Muslims will have to wake up to the reality that they are no longer the masters of history, but a deprived and underdeveloped minority in the global community. Only when Muslims face this reality, they will be able to proceed. [Radio Netherlands, 27 March 2007]

Aaron Alexovich

• i have this goofy idea in my head that doing a good job working on something i love is more important than cracking open the skulls of my competitors and feasting upon the runny brainmeats within. i know, i know… I'm such a commie. but in a dimension where barbra streisand and george w. bush are both considered to be at the pinnacle of their respective fields, playing the ranking game seems, to me, pretty devoid of 'meaning'. [Serenity Rose, vol 2]
• according to our best bumper sticker analysis, america is currently the country holding the coveted NUMBER ONE position among nations. (of course you remember when the U.N. prize patrol drove up to the white house and presented the president with that oversized novelty check. good times, good times…) it must suck to live someplace like australia, where everyone's constantly miserable on account of they aren't NUMBER ONE. not like here, where we're all just vomiting all over ourselves we're so fucking happy all the time. [Serenity Rose, vol 2]
• the 10 commandments according to my television (by a potato, aged 16)
  1. thou shalt not resist booze.
  2. thou shalt not disparage money.
  3. thou shalt not refuse sexual relations, as sexual relations are the only important thing in the whole wide world ever.
  4. thou shalt never be average in the looks department. (ugly is right out)
  5. thou shalt never deny the existence of some sort of god or something.
  6. thou shalt never fail to defend your friends and family (those similiar to you) regardless of the facts.
  7. thou shalt never fail to attack your enemies (those dissimiliar to you) regardless of the facts.
  8. thou shalt have a whole mess of spawn (min. 2)
  9. thou shalt never be alone.
  10. america rocks!!
  [Serenity Rose, vol 1]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

• Everyone followed the cartoon crisis, or the crisis about the cartoon drawings of Mohammed in Denmark. That led to an explosion of violence because large groups of Muslims still will not accept criticism of their religion. Over and over again, when in the name of Islam, human blood is shed, Muslims are very quiet. When drawings are made or some perceived slight or offences given by writing a book, or making a drawing, or in some way criticising the dogmas of Islam, people take to the streets. We have all these leaders of the organisation of Islam, the countries who oppressed on people, coming to demand the people apologise. And I think it's this discrepancy that more and more people see as violence and intolerance and the lack of freedom inherent in the creed of Islam. [ABC Interview, 05 August 2008]
• It is often said that Islam has been "hijacked" by a small extremist group of radical fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims are said to be moderates. But where are the moderates? Where are the Muslim voices raised over the terrible injustice of incidents like these? How many Muslims are willing to stand up and say, in the case of the girl from Qatif, that this manner of justice is appalling, brutal and bigoted — and that no matter who said it was the right thing to do, and how long ago it was said, this should no longer be done? … I wish there were more Islamic moderates. For example, I would welcome some guidance from that famous Muslim theologian of moderation, Tariq Ramadan. But when there is true suffering, real cruelty in the name of Islam, we hear, first, denial from all these organizations that are so concerned about Islam's image. We hear that violence is not in the Koran, that Islam means peace, that this is a hijacking by extremists and a smear campaign and so on. But the evidence mounts up. Islamic justice is a proud institution, one to which more than a billion people subscribe, at least in theory, and in the heart of the Islamic world it is the law of the land. But take a look at the verse above *: more compelling even than the order to flog adulterers is the command that the believer show no compassion. It is this order to choose Allah above his sense of conscience and compassion that imprisons the Muslim in a mindset that is archaic and extreme. If moderate Muslims believe there should be no compassion shown to the girl from Qatif, then what exactly makes them so moderate? When a "moderate" Muslim's sense of compassion and conscience collides with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion. Unless that happens much more widely, a moderate Islam will remain wishful thinking. [New York Times, 07 December 2007] [* Qur'an 24:2 = "The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by God, if ye believe in God and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment."]

Imam Ali

• Look into what is said, not at who says it.

Alikhat

• What do I dislike about theism?…
  Let me count the ways…
  I dislike the hypocrisy, the corruption, the greed and the lies.
  I dislike the veneration of ignorance, the glorification of idiocy, the wild-eyed hatred of progress and the fear of education, which send the faithful shrieking, vampire-like, from the light of knowledge.
  I dislike the way in which prejudice is passed off as piety.
  The way superstition is peddled as wisdom.
  The way intolerance is raised to the lofty heights of "Truth".
  I dislike how hatred is taught as love, how fear is instilled as kindness, how slavery is pressed as freedom, and how contempt for life is dressed up and adored as spirituality.
  I dislike the shackles religions place on the mind, corrupting, twisting and crushing the spirit until the believer has been brought down to a suitable state of worthlessness.
  So lost and self-loathing, so bereft of hope or pride, that they can look into the hallucinated face of their imaginary oppressor and feel unbounded love and gratitude for the additional suffering it has declined, as yet, to visit upon them.
  I dislike people's need for a communal delusion, like drug addicts who unite just to share the same needle.
  I dislike the way reason is reviled as a vice and reality is decreed to be a matter of convenience.
  The way common sense and ordinary human decency get re-named "holy law" and advertised as the sole province of the faithful.
  I dislike religions' wholesale theft of any number of ancient mythologies, only to turn around and proclaim how "unique their doctrine is.
  I dislike how intelligence is held as suspect and inquiry is reviled as a high crime.
  I dislike the pillaging of the impoverished, the extortion of the gullible, the manipulation of the ignorant and the domination of the weak.
  I dislike the invention of sins for the satisfaction of those who desire to punish.
  I dislike the demonization of unbelievers,
  The ill-concealed hate of proselytisers,
  The hysterical rants of holy rollers,
  The wigged-out warnings of psychic healers,
  The dismantling of public education via religious school vouchers,
  The erosion of civil rights by theocratic right-wingers,
  The righteous wrath of gun-toting true believers,
  The destruction wrought by holy warriors,
  The blood-drenched fatwas of ayatollas, and the apocalyptic prophesies of unmedicated messiahs.
  Most of all, though, I dislike the certain knowledge that religion, in one grotesque form or other, will be with us so long as there is a single dark, cobwebbed corner of the human imagination that a believer can stuff a god into.
  (And, oh yeah, what do I like about theism? Some nice art, some pretty music and some photogenic buildings.)
  [alt.atheism, 20 November 1998]

Ethan Allen

• While we are under the tyranny of Priests … it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith. [Reason The Only Oracle Of Man, 1784]
• In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue. [Reason The Only Oracle Of Man, 1784]
• There is not any thing, which has contributed so much to delude mankind in religious matters, as mistaken apprehensions concerning supernatural inspiration or revelation; not considering that all true religion originates from reason, and can not otherwise be understood, but by the exercise and improvement of it. [Reason The Only Oracle Of Man, 1784]
• Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principles that they are labouring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument. [Reason The Only Oracle Of Man, 1784]

Paula Allen

• Being an activist means being aware of what's happening around you as well as being in touch with your feelings about it – your rage, your sadness, your excitement, your curiosity, your feeling of helplessness, and your refusal to surrender. Being an activist means owning your desire. [An Activist Love Story]

Eric Alterman

• The public supports the [Iraq] war, of course: Once the bombs begin to fall, Americans support every war, believing it unpatriotic to do otherwise. [The Nation, 11 January 1999]

John Amaechi

• It's the inconsistency [of bible-bashers] I can't stand. If you're going to quote Leviticus, then don't eat shellfish or wear mixed fabrics. Poke your eye out if you look at women other than your wife … then come to me. [The Guardian, 28 June 2007]
• Here in the US they say, "He's black and English and a basketball player and clever and gay ..." It's all a bit overwhelming. They can only deal with one thing at a time and that one thing now is the gay bit. It's disappointing, because you spend all that time studying, researching, training, and after all that work I'm just that "big gay bloke". [The Guardian, 28 June 2007]

Walid Amayreh, Editor, Hebron Times

• It is lamentable that the United States which values press freedom at home is bullying the Palestinian Authority to suppress freedom in Palestine. What happened to the American First Amendment, or maybe it doesn't apply to non-Americans? [responding to CIA 'recommendations' his paper be closed for being critical of the US & Israel, Muslim News, 29 March 2002]

Henri Frédéric Amiel

• We are always making God our accomplice so that we may legalise our own inequities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity. [Journal Intime, 1866]

Martin Amis

• It will also be horribly difficult and painful for Americans to absorb the fact that they are hated, and hated intelligibly. How many of them know, for example, that their government has destroyed at least 5% of the Iraqi population? How many of them then transfer that figure to America (and come up with 14m)? Various national characteristics – self-reliance, a fiercer patriotism than any in western Europe, an assiduous geographical incuriosity – have created a deficit of empathy for the sufferings of people far away. Most crucially, and again most painfully, being right and being good support the American self to an almost tautologous degree: Americans are good and right by virtue of being American. Saul Bellow's word for this habit is "angelisation". On the US-led side, then, we need not only a revolution in consciousness but an adaptation of national character: the work, perhaps, of a generation. … Our best destiny, as planetary cohabitants, is the development of what has been called "species consciousness" – something over and above nationalisms, blocs, religions, ethnicities. During this week of incredulous misery, I have been trying to apply such a consciousness, and such a sensibility. Thinking of the victims, the perpetrators, and the near future, I felt species grief, then species shame, then species fear. [The Guardian, 18 September 2001]

Anaxagorus

• Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock. [c475 BCE]

David Anderson

• Perhaps the greatest outrage about the new New York City government's policy of random bag searches in the subway is the lack of outrage about it. … We hear comparisons between this policy and airport searches. For a start, catching planes is optional, for most New Yorkers, catching public transport isn't. … courts have held that magnetometers and metal detectors are not "searches". By any standard, a policeman poking through your handbag or back pack is a search. … The final horror here is that there's nothing to suggest this is the government's last demand. Freedom is usually destroyed in a gradual manner, it is less noticeable then. It is a short step from random subway bag searches, to random street searches, from making it optional to making it compulsory, from not asking for ID, to demanding it. And this latest policy has been put in place without even any terrorist actions against the United States! Imagine how few rights we'll have left when something does happen here? What freedom do we have when the government can do exactly what it wishes because it has manufactured a climate of fear like this administration has, and what freedom do we deserve when we as a society and as individuals just lie down and take it? [Counterpunch, 26 July 2005]

Gillian Anderson

• How would you feel about a co-star who earns more than you for no discernable reason and feels he's worth it? [speaking of David Duchovny]

Anemones

• Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

Kofi Annan's Astonishing Facts [New York Times, 29 September 1998]

• The richest fifth of the world's people consumes 86 percent of all goods and services while the poorest fifth consumes just 1.3 percent. Indeed, the richest fifth consumes 45 percent of all meat and fish, 58 percent of all energy used and 84 percent of all paper, has 74 percent of all telephone lines and owns 87 percent of all vehicles.
• Since 1970, the world's forests have declined from 4.4 square miles per 1,000 people to 2.8 square miles per 1,000 people. In addition, a quarter of the world's fish stocks have been depleted or are in danger of being depleted and another 44 percent are being fished at their biological limit.
• The Ganges River symbolises purification to Hindus, who believe drinking or bathing in its waters will lead to salvation. But 29 cities, 70 towns and countless villages deposit about 345 million gallons of raw sewage a day directly into the river. Factories add 70 million gallons of industrial waste and farmers are responsible for another 6 million tons of chemical fertiliser and 9,000 tons of pesticides.
• The three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries.
• The average African household today consumes 20 percent less than it did 25 years ago.
• The world's 225 richest individuals, of whom 60 are Americans with total assets of $311 billion, have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion – equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the entire world's population.
• Americans spend $8 billion a year on cosmetics – $2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide basic education for everyone in the world.
• Of the 4.4 billion people in developing countries, nearly three-fifths lack access to safe sewers, a third have no access to clean water, a quarter do not have adequate housing and a fifth have no access to modern health services of any kind.
• Americans each consume an average of 260 pounds of meat a year. In Bangladesh, the average is six and a half pounds.
• By 2050, 8 billion of the world's projected 9.5 billion people – up from about 6 billion today – will be living in developing countries.
• Of the estimated 2.7 million annual deaths from air pollution, 2.2 million are from indoor pollution – including smoke from dung and wood burned as fuel which is more harmful than tobacco smoke. 80 percent of the victims are rural poor in developing countries.
• Two thirds of India's 90 million lowest-income households live below the poverty line – but more than 50 percent of these impoverished people own wristwatches, 41 percent own bicycles, 31 percent own radios and 13 percent own fans.
• Sweden and the United States have 681 and 626 telephone lines per 1,000 people, respectively. Afghanistan, Cambodia, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have only one line per 1,000 people.
• Europeans spend $11 billion a year on ice cream – $2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide clean water and safe sewers for the world's population.
• At the end of 1997 nearly 31 million people were living with HIV, up from 22.3 million the year before. With 16,000 new infections a day – 90 percent in developing countries – it is now estimated that 40 million people will be living with HIV in 2000.
• More than 110 million active landmines are scattered in 68 countries, with an equal number stockpiled around the world. Every month more than 2,000 people are killed or maimed by mine explosions.
• Americans and Europeans spend $17 billion a year on pet food – $4 billion more than the estimated annual additional total needed to provide basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world.
• It is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and clean water and safe sewers for all is roughly $40 billion a year – or less than 4 percent of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world.

Anon / Unknown

• It's your hell, you burn in it.
• Only sheep need a shepherd.
• Blasphemy is a victimless crime.
• I'll go my way and you go yahweh.
• Don't vote, it only encourages them.
• INRI = Idiots Need Reassuring Ideologies.
• If forgiveness is divine, why is there a hell?
• Fundamentalism means never having to say "I'm wrong."
• Anyone who says God is on their side is dangerous as hell.
• The Religious Right aren't, and Scientific Creationism isn't.
• Ubi dubium ibi libertas. (Where there is doubt, there is freedom.)
• Fundamentalism = fund (to give money) + amentalism (without brains).
• It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets elected.
• Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. (There is no salvation within the church.)
• The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
• Faith is that quality which enables us to believe what we know to be untrue.
• The only difference between a delusion and a religion is the number of believers.
• Proof that cats are smarter than dogs: you cannot get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
• Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely; God is all-powerful. Draw your own conclusions.
• Christian: "I'll pray for you."
  Atheist: "Then I'll think for both of us."
• Traveller: "God has been mighty good to your fields, Mr. Farmer."
  Farmer: "You should have seen how he treated them when I wasn't around."

Anonymous Gay Vicar In Northern England

• Come on – it's 2003, and anyone who has done any half-decent theological thinking in the last 50 years knows that Leviticus is irrelevant and St. Paul, for all his redemption, never quite escaped the expectations of his culture. Only the utterly sex-obsessed would show the slightest interest in what I do in bed. I have a great home life and a great supportive relationship – permanent, faithful and stable – and Christian people rejoice in that. Including our parishioners, apparently. Three years ago a move to a new post was cancelled at the last minute because the bishop in the new area insisted on asking questions that Issues forbids him to ask, and which in any case should never be asked of any Englishman, gentleman or priest. As I told them the news before the service, making something up about problems with the appointment, they cheered because I would be staying. And afterwards, to the surprise of both of us, they were hugging my partner and saying: "You must be so upset," because nobody had ever said, but they knew. It should be getting better – but it isn't, it's getting worse. … The thoroughly English, thoroughly Anglican policy of "don't ask, don't tell" has been torn up by the Carey bishops who seem bent on turning the national church into some weird puritanical sect: the only officially anti-homosexual organisation in the country, and the only organisation with an exemption – that's right, an exemption – from the new Human Rights Act, for the very special purpose of retaining their right to persecute and eliminate their gay staff, one by one. … We know who we are, we know what it is to be fully human, we know what it is to discover love, we know that love is costly, we know what it is to know our Saviour and to have our lives transformed – and we seek to share God's compassion in a needy world. And so to find some calm at the eye of the storm, and get on with the week ahead … [The Guardian, 24 June 2003]

Anonymous Iranian woman

• Indignant Muslims all over the world justify the violent reactions to cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad by emphasizing the sanctity of Allah's messenger. Islam's devotees argue that these cartoons have desecrated a symbol of their faith, a pillar of their belief. As members of free, democratic and civilized societies, we too have our sacred principles: liberty, dignity and humanity (including the right to be secure against cruel and unusual treatment). We believe that ALL human beings not only are entitled to these rights, but are obliged to respect and protect these basic values. Muslims demanded apology, prosecution, and even assassination of artists and editors who allowed the publication of these cartoons. I too demand the apology and prosecution of those who are behind the belligerent violation of human rights in Islamic nations. I demand appropriate actions to be taken against those responsible for the arrest, torture, and death of political and religious dissidents. Where is our rage after William Sampson and Zahra Kazemi were subjected to medieval torture and, in the case of the latter, murdered viciously in the prisons of Islamic world? I demand apology for the amputations that are carried out in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Severing hands and legs and removing eyes as forms of punishment are deeply offensive to the collective conscience of humanity; it is a desecration of dignity, and it fills us with disgust. I demand prosecution of all those who commit heinous crimes in the name of honour. I want accountability from the parents of the Jordanian girl who burned and disfigured their own daughter "because she was dating a boy." I want the father of Nobahar, the young Iranian woman who gave birth to a baby boy out of wedlock, to be tried for torching his own daughter to death, and poisoning his own infant grandson. I demand that all prisoners of conscience be released from the dungeons of Islamic countries where they are kept in dreadful and inhumane conditions. I am outraged by clerics in the Middle East and elsewhere who preach violence against Westerners. The cartoons in question are harmless (unless, of course, the offended Muslims decide to bring harm upon themselves by resorting to violence). Preaching death and violence, as has been proven by the deadly terrorist attacks, is going to cost the lives of innocents. This is but a small fraction of abuses committed almost daily by governments and people in the Muslim world. These actions are far more ruthless than depicting a sacred character in a few cartoons. It is time we stood up to these perpetrators of brutality. I am offended. And I demand justice. [March 2006]

Anonymous Young Muslim Man

• These people, ladies and gentleman, have a good look at them. They actually believe if you kill women and children, you will go to heaven. This is not ideology. It's a mental illness. [speaking of radical Islam, Trinity College, Dublin, October 2006]

Peter A. Angeles

• What was God doing (in His Time) for an eternity into His past before He Created the Universe Ex Nihilo? God existed by Himself through an Eternity before the Creation without needing a Universe. Why did He suddenly desire to create the Universe? [The Problem Of God: A Short Introduction, 1986]
• To say that this Timeless God began Time along with the Universe at a time when there was no Time implies that at that moment when He initiated this Unique Event He was engaged in a Time, or at a time in order to bring this Event about. He did something. What brought that Event about? [The Problem Of God: A Short Introduction, 1986]

Natalie Angier

• Among the more irritating consequences of our flagrantly religious society is the special dispensation that mainstream religions receive. We all may talk about religion as a powerful social force, but unlike other similarly powerful institutions, religion is not to be questioned, criticised or mocked. [Confessions Of A Lonely Atheist, New York Times Magazine, 14 January 2001]
• I don't believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don't believe in life after death, channelled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. I believe that the universe abides by the laws of physics, some of which are known, others of which will surely be discovered, but even if they aren't, that will simply be a result, as my colleague George Johnson put it, of our brains having evolved for life on this one little planet and thus being inevitably limited. I'm convinced that the world as we see it was shaped by the again genuinely miraculous, let's even say transcendent, hand of evolution through natural selection. [Confessions Of A Lonely Atheist, New York Times Magazine, 14 January 2001]

Susan B. Anthony

• I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. [1896]

Hussein Ahmed Amin, former Egyptian Diplomat

• Such behaviour comes to undermine the image of Islam and even to make some Muslims sceptical whether their faith can face the challenges of modernism. [protesting the Afghanistan Taliban's destruction of the 1500 year-old statues of Buddha, March 2001]

Bert Archer

• Would we allow teachers in publicly funded schools to tell students that they should believe Zeus, a god who lives on a mountain in Greece, gave birth to a daughter from his head? It can be taught as a myth, sure; as an underpinning to much rich culture. But as fact? I hope we'd turf whoever tried. Because it's not true. True, many good and brilliant people believed it once. … Our constitution says that one religion gets its own schools, where its belief in impossible things can be propagated. But it's mostly nonsense. If there were even one shred of provable truth, the world would shake. But of course there isn't. … It's circular logic, and I don't want to subsidize it. Ordinarily, all this twaddle would be protected under the general principle of freedom of expression. But there are limits on this freedom, and uttering a threat is one of the most basic. When your boss of bosses is believed to hold the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and when you are believed to speak for that boss, the words you utter carry special weight. … In the case of priests and imams, the weight they carry when they speak in religious terms puts them in a different category from anyone else standing on a soapbox or writing in a newspaper. We do, occasionally, see religion reasonably: when a religion is new we call it a cult. We then seek to protect our children from it. If children are born to cultists, we feel sorry for them, but there is little we can do. It ought to be the same for all cults, no matter how old or popular they are. Lamentable a use of the right though it may be, parents ought to be able to spread whatever untruths to their children, under the rubric of faith, they see fit. We shouldn't stand in their way. But we certainly shouldn't approve, or, as we so often do, applaud it as some sort of moral good. It is the opposite of moral good. Misleading children is quite bad, whether the justification is that you're Catholic, Anglican, Muslim or Jewish. A baseless belief, so long as it doesn't harm others, is a benign social ill. When it does harm others, it must be exposed for what it is and dealt with. With religious leaders of all stripes, most recently Catholic bishops, Muslim leaders and President Bush, all seeking to abrogate the rights of people in love with people of the same gender in the name of their beliefs, it does no one any good to continue to treat religion with the exceptionalism it's used to. People are allowed to believe whatever they like, and listen to whatever crackpot they choose. But when those crackpots issue veiled threats to try to sway government policy, we should lose whatever tolerance we had for the general foolishness of religions and those who follow their leaders. [07 August 2003]

William Archer

• 'Theocracy' has always been the synonym for a bleak and narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained, tyranny.
• I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-idea is not a harmless infirmity of human thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is largely responsible for the calamities the world is at present enduring. [Theology & War]

Aristophanes

• Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?

Aristotle

• Prayers and sacrifices are of no avail.
• Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
• A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. [Politics]
• The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one, or of the few, or of the many, are perversions. For the members of a state, if they are truly citizens, ought to participate in its advantages. [Politics]

Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta

• Knowledge has to be socialised to democratise power.

Malene Arpe

• They were upset. Their feelings were bruised. As sullenly explained by Pakistani regional chief minister Akram Durrani, "Nobody has the right to insult Islam and hurt the feelings of Muslims." Hurt feelings? Are you fragging kidding me!? It used to be mommy would get you a cookie when your feelings got hurt if nobody wanted to play with you because you wore the wrong clothes or had stupid hair. It is sort of cute and appropriate when you're a toddler. It's not so cute when grown men call for shows to be shut down or for the hands of artists to be chopped off, because they've been offended! … And let us not forget the music teacher in Colorado who showed students clips of the opera Faust. It "glorifies Satan," an outraged and offended parent said. Well, of course it does, dear. … Just spare us the nonsense about the hurt feelings and the offence taken. What are you? Five? … Consider carefully the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. … Or check out those videos of people getting their heads sawed off. … If being offended is such a necessity to your enjoyment of life or your sense of self, think about the censorship you implicitly advocate. Consider that you may not be the one who gets to decide what is offensive and should be banned. [Toronto Star, 12 February 2006]

Timothy Garton Ash

• One is still gobsmacked by things American Republicans say. Take the glorification of the military, for example. In his speech [Fort Bragg, 28 June 2005], Bush insisted "there is no higher calling than service in our armed forces". What? No higher calling! How about being a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, an aid worker? Unimaginable that any European leader could say such a thing. [The Guardian, 30 June 2005]
• The erosion of liberty. Four words sum up four years. Since the attacks of September 11 2001, we have seen an erosion of liberty in most established democracies. If he's still alive, Osama bin Laden must be laughing into his beard. For this is exactly what al-Qaida-type terrorists want: that democracies should overreact, reveal their "true" oppressive face, and therefore win more recruits to the suicide bombers' cause. We should not play his game. In the always difficult trade-off between liberty and security, we are erring too much on the side of security. Worse still: we are becoming less safe as a result. [The Guardian, 17 November 2005]
• On the contrary, in free countries every faith must be allowed – and every faith must be allowed to be questioned, fundamentally, outspokenly, even intemperately and offensively, without fear of reprisal. Richard Dawkins, the Oxford scientist, must be free to say that God is a delusion and Alistair McGrath, the Oxford theologian, must be free to retort that Dawkins is deluded; a conservative journalist must be free to write that the Prophet Muhammad was a paedophile and a Muslim scholar must be free to brand that journalist an ignorant Islamophobe. That's the deal in a free country: freedom of religion and freedom of expression as two sides of the same coin. We must live and let live – a demand that is not as minimal as it sounds, when one thinks of the death threats against Salman Rushdie and the Danish cartoonists. The fence that secures this space is the law of the land. [The Guardian, 21 December 2006]

Thomas R. Asher

• Americans' anxiety has been magnified by our insularity. We are notoriously, often proudly, uninformed about the rest of the world. Our ignorance is geographic, cultural and historical; indeed, we regard the study of history, especially non-American history, as largely irrelevant. [Index On Censorship, 3/2003]
• American's self-absorption and narcissism are reinforced by a steady media stream of propagandist euphemism: the Bush slogan 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' was used as a 24/7 'news' banner by at least two TV networks. We stand for 'liberty' yet tolerate the USA Patriot Act, a blunt expansion of arbitrary police powers; the 'Axis of Evil' obscures a world of nuance; we 'liberate' Iraq and will bring 'democracy' to the Middle East; a skimpy 'coalition of the willing' morphs into 'the allies', a false echo of World War II, accepted uncritically by most US media, including the authoritative New York Times. [Index On Censorship, 3/2003]

Alan Ashley-Pitt

• The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.

Isaac Asimov

• Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
• Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
• Anger is the common substitute for logic among those who have no evidence for what they desperately want to believe. [The Tyrannosaurus Prescription]
• Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
• I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
• Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularised version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
• The fundamentalists deny that evolution has taken place; they deny that the earth and the universe as a whole are more than a few thousand years old, and so on. There is ample scientific evidence that the fundamentalists are wrong in these matters, and that their notions of cosmogony have about as much basis in fact as the Tooth Fairy has.
• Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug superstition to their breasts. [on why he opposes religion]
• It is precisely because it is fashionable for Americans to know no science, even though they may be well educated otherwise, that they so easily fall prey to nonsense. They thus become part of the armies of the night, the purveyors of nitwittery, the retailers of intellectual junk food, the feeders on mental cardboard, for their ignorance keeps them from distinguishing nectar from sewage. [The Armies Of The Night]
• I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
• Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. [Canadian Atheists Newsletter, 1994]
• To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social establishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps, as part of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however, is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave, without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group of astronomers denounces it.

Lodewijk Asscher, Alderman, Amsterdam

• A primary school in Amsterdam-Noord has decided no longer to teach about living on a farm. Various pupils began to demolish the classroom when the pig came up for discussion. Apparently it has gone that far. These children, 9, 10 years old, have not been given even the most elementary rules at home about why they must go to school. [De Volkskrant, 27 April 2007]

Prof. Catherine Atherton

• As a subscriber of long standing I was outraged by the low quality of the letters from subscribers expressing outrage at the cover of issue 1121. Mind you, if you'd published that cover in parts of the US that voted heavily for Bush, – known to the rest of us over here as "Jesusland", "Dumbfuckistan", or, more simply, "The former slave states" – you'd have all been strung up double quick and no mistake. [replying to letters of protest at Private Eye's Christmas issue (#1121) which complained at the use of Breugel's Adoration Of The Magi with a caption of "Apparently, it's David Blunkett's.", Private Eye #1123, 07-20 January 2005]

Brooks Atkinson

• People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know. [Once Around The Sun,1951]

Rowan Atkinson

• The freedom to criticise ideas – any ideas even if they are sincerely held beliefs – is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. And the law which attempts to say you can criticise or ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness – and the other represents oppression. [commenting on the proposal to introduce a law that would outlaw incitement to racial hatred (covered by existing laws), but whose knock-on effect would be to ban all criticism of religion and its believers, 07 December 2004]

Marcus Aurelius

• The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrong doer.
• Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.
• No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.
• The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.
• The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
• Imagine every man who is grieved at anything or discontented to be like a pig which is sacrificed and kicks and screams.
• He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad.
• There is but one thing of real value – to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.
• All existing things soon change, and they will either be reduced to vapour, if indeed all substance is one, or they will be dispersed.
• What kind of people are those whom men wish to please, and for what objects, and by what kind of acts? How soon will time cover all things, and how many it has covered already.
• If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.
• Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.

Aviva

• You mean you like the thought that you've been created especially to worship your creator, and after you die you'll honour it throughout eternity? That's your purpose in existence – to be a cosmic cheering squad for a deity so vain and insecure that it needs constant reassurance that it's supreme? No thank you! [alt.atheism]

Francis Bacon

• Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
• It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty. [Of Great Places, Essays, 1625]
• Truth can never be reached by just listening to the voice of an authority.
• Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

Roger Bacon

• The whole clergy is given up to pride, luxury, and avarice. [Compendium Studii Philospohiae, 1272]

Joe Bageant

• As the elections proved for once and for all, Christian fanatics are plenty thick in the good ole U S of A these days and can no longer be written off as Dogpatch religionists. Historically, they have always been around and in about the same numbers too, just less visible. But currently they are hopped up about god giving them their own president and even their own political party. … It is one thing for them to have it in for their enemies, and quite another to have their own president, cabinet, Supreme Court, and newly established Department of Fatherland Surveillance backing them up. … And as usual, the fundies have blood in their eye, this time for liberal humanism, free thought, Trojan rubber products and the number 666. … Meanwhile, it's hard to tell who is controlling whom. Do the Christian Fundamentalists in this country now have significant control of the Republican Party? Or were they simply duped into backing the latest U.S. capitalist imperialist grab for empire and exploitation of ordinary working Americans. My guess is that the big Republican capitalists do not give a fuck, so long as they can grab the money and run when the lights are shot out, and that the Christians don't care as long as they get a shot at swapping the Constitution with the Bible. On one hand the Republicans want to own the world. On the other the godwacks want to dominate it, or destroy it if they can't: "Ya bow to my god buddy, or we blow this whole pop stand off the map… take everybody out… startin' with the Middle East." As near as I can tell, fundamentalists in every religion have this in common – destroying the world to bring on their brand of paradise. The majority of Americans disagree with Christian or Jewish fundamentalist ideas, but there is no way to call the fundies on it because their agenda is couched in religious language and symbols. And we all know for crap sake that America stands for religious freedom. Even fruitcake religious freedom. So we do not challenge the Christian or right wing Zionist freaks among us (It's open season on Muslims however.) We few who do challenge religion are declared satanic secular humanists, anti-Semitic or anti-Islamic. All of which works well for only one group – the rightwing political crazies who, in their quest for oil, capital, territory, or whatever, use god rhetoric to drive these zealots like a pack of blind slobbering dogs. This story is so old that it is sometimes hard to have much faith in the human race at all, isn't it? … When your mythology happily calls for the end of the world to bring on a paradise no one has ever seen, well, it makes for some piss poor politics. I think we can all agree on that. And as if that weren't enough of a headache for the rest of us, it calls for our conversion to their delusion, elsewise be destroyed as infidels. You are either with them or against them. Most of us would rather be away from them, but the world is too small to run from these days. At the same time, the faithful presume themselves to be aggrieved holy victims, every last damned one of them. And when you are a victim, whether it be of the removal of the Ten Commandments from your white cracker court house by onanist liberal heathens "frum up nawth," or the refusal of the Great Satan Kansas School board to add humus and sheep's eyes to the school lunch program, you are entitled to revenge in the form of taking down the entire world. What the hell? God is gonna do it anyway at the end time, which anybody who reads the Good Book knows is any day now. Just look around at the amount of thigh showing these days, or the lesbians jumping little school girls in the Oklahoma high school restrooms (according to republican Senate candidate Tom Coburn.) Sure signs of the end times. About the only thing all three gods agree on is that exposed belly buttons and young folks having too much fun leads to the end of the world. So blow it the fuck up now. Start a nuclear war, then watch Jesus return to earth and turn feckless liberal eyeballs to jelly. Just like in the Left Behind series. And even if these turn out not to be the end times (again) what the hell good is a religion if you don't get to kill somebody or at least have a certified infidel to make miserable? [Hung Over In The End Times, Dissidentvoice, 16 November 2004]

Vanessa Baird

• If you believe – as more than half of the US population does – that your particular religion is the one and only true faith sanctioned by the Almighty, you are carrying around with you one hell of a pious power charge. And while not all religions evangelize, the two most widely held to in the world today – Christianity and Islam – seem to have had great difficulty distinguishing between spreading the word and spilling the blood. Today we are witnessing a new evangelical crusade coming from the West which has been dubbed 'evangelical capitalism'. This is more than laissez-faire economics: it sees 'the hand of God' in economic liberty, which in reality turns out to be the unfettered freedom of huge corporations to dominate national and global markets. The gospel according to Halliburton. Pitch this against the surge of Saudi-financed Wahabist fundamentalism imposing its all-conquering version of the only true Islam, and it's hard not to get trampled underfoot. … For some nothing can redeem religion, except possibly its demise. … Many humanists and sceptics take a less hostile view and respect the existence of diverse philosophies and belief systems. But if such faiths do not themselves respect human life or basic rights, then respect for religion is likely to be withdrawn. [New Internationalist, August 2004]

Carolyn Baker

• Axiomatic in the worldview of the fundamentalist, born-again Christian is: "I have the truth, I'm right; you don't have the truth, you're wrong." As a result, critical thinking, research, or intellectual freedom of exploration are not only unnecessary, they are dangerous and potentially heretical. … Moreover, because of one's "superior" spiritual status, one has the so-called "divine authority" to subvert, by whatever means necessary, the very machinery of government in order to establish a theocracy in which one's worldview is predominant. Scoop Independent News, 12 May 2005]
• The mainstream media does not seem to comprehend the inherent danger of the religious right let alone report it accurately. All of us need to challenge the addictive tyranny of Christian fundamentalism at every turn – for the sake of our sanity and for the sake of our civil liberties. We don't allow street junkies into the halls of Congress, the Supreme Court, or the pulpits of America to admonish us how we should live and why we should demolish our Constitution. In fact, we confront the insanity and criminality of such individuals. Similarly, it's time to confront the domination drug for what it is – a grave and perverse spiritual and moral illness. [Online Journal, 19 May 2005]
• One of the most significant aspects of my abandonment of Christian fundamentalism was the awareness that born-again Christians worship the Bible and not God. They argue that the only way to know God is through the Bible. They are forced to believe this because if they concede that God might speak through an inner voice, through a tree, or through a particular life experience, their entire belief system is toast. When I realized that contrary to their much-touted Ten Commandments, Bible worship is nothing less than "having other gods before me," I finally realized the depth of the hypocrisy of their system. Part of my, and anyone's recovery from fundamentalism is a commitment to develop a relationship with a Higher Power – whatever that may be – and not with a book. [Online Journal, 19 May 2005]
• The convert to fundamentalist Christianity must be convinced that his / her thinking is irreparably in error. The underlying message is: "You don't believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God because your mind has been occupied by Satan. This has happened principally because you are a human being, but also because you have made the enormous mistake of trying to think for yourself. Of course you think there are contradictions in the Bible because Satan controls your mind. If you surrender your mind to Jesus (actually to me / us / the enlightened flock of believers), you will understand that there are no contradictions in the Bible and that your life should be guided only by the Bible and nothing else. What you cannot now understand, you must take on faith, and more will be revealed to you later. It may not be revealed on this earth, but by accepting Christ as your personal saviour and having faith, you will be guaranteed eternity in heaven where everything you never understood will be completely revealed to you." Curiously, as stated in the above definition of addiction, under ancient Roman law, addiction was grounds for slavery. I found this detail particularly significant because obviously, addicted people are "enslaved" people. [Online Journal, 19 May 2005]
• The religious right of twenty-first century America is anti-American, inherently violent, and a cruel, tyrannical, punitive, force of death and destruction. In its mindset, adult human lives do not matter because the human condition itself is inherently evil resulting in eternal and everlasting punishment in hell unless its members are redeemed in a prescribed manner by the fundamentalist God/man/saviour, Jesus Christ. Moreover, with an embarrassingly adolescent flamboyance, Dominionists shamelessly rape, pillage, and desecrate the earth because in the first place, their Bible has given them authority over all things human and in the second place, their "imminent" apocalyptic rapture, transporting them from the human "veil of tears" to live happily ever after in heaven, entitles them to do so. Meanwhile, we the unredeemed, the unbelievers, the poor, the feminists, the gay and lesbian, the disabled, the homeless, the mentally ill, the addicted, and those who are conscientiously following divergent spiritual paths of their choice, are suffering in the wake of Christian fundamentalism's devastation of the economy, the earth, and the human race. But this is what we deserve for not becoming born-again devotees of their Jesus. And we deserve even worse-to burn in hell for all of eternity. Hence, we are expendable, inconsequential, and a force to be conquered, broken, imprisoned, or killed. [Scoop Independent News, 12 May 2005]

Robert A. Baker

• What happens when the same number of people pray for something as pray against it? How does God decide whose prayer to answer? Does the total number of people praying for or against something matter? How about the righteousness of the supplicants? Are positive prayers answered more frequently than negative ones? Does God take the positive ones and Satan the negative? Does the intensity of the praying have any effect on the outcome? Does the length of time one devotes to praying have any effect on the frequency with which one's prayers are answered? Do the words and phrases used in the prayer – either positive or negative – have any bearing on the success rate? Does the nature of the thing or things prayed for have any bearing on the prayer's success rate – either positive or negative prayers? Why or why not? [Skeptical Briefs, September 1997]

Tom Baker

• Philosophy asks questions but religion provides answers. The function of religion is to console us, so we swallowed all that guff. [TV Times, 07-11 July 2003] The first part is based on Anemones
• I mean if you can believe in the Christian religion you can believe in anything, you know it's so utterly preposterous. [UK TV show about Dr. Who]

Joan Bakewell

• The Pope is, of course, held to be infallible by the Catholic church. Islam's response to all this – "if you dare to say we're a violent religion, then we'll kill you!" – compounds not only the idiocy of rival dogmas but also the dangers. Islam's sharia law invests the law of the land with its own religious and often brutal priorities. Apostasy is punishable by death, as is homosexuality. Christian observance is put under increasing pressure. Dawkins is right to be not only angry but alarmed. Religions have the secular world running scared. This book is a clarion call to cower no longer. primed by anger, redeemed by humour, it will, I trust, offend many. [review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, The Guardian, 23 September 2006]
• But why are religions so tough on women? In the Victorian heyday of muscular Christianity, the rules of feminine dress would have met the highest standards of the Qur'an. It was in religiously devout America that Janet Jackson's breast caused so much fuss. Only as we have become more secular have we shed our clothes and our inhibitions. Who are these gods that they should require their own creatures to be ashamed of their bodies? Granted, there are limits of polite society. An attempt to have topless newsreaders was only ever a porno joke. But the notion that the supposed creator is offended by the natural beauty of his own creation is well nigh blasphemous. Shaima Rezyee was at the crossroads of a punitive tradition that fears and resents women and the new tradition of global music and universal entertainment that celebrates them. If religious extremists of all faiths now want to put the clock back, they will have to reconfigure the role of women as we have, within my lifetime, come to enjoy it. The control of dress might seem a petty matter, but it is loaded with significance. It is for individual women to decide for themselves where along the cultural spectrum – from the easy ways of western display to the comfort of regular concealment – they choose to live. [on the murder of TV and radio presenter Shaima Rezyee, The Guardian, 17 June 2005]

Mikhail Bakunin

• Religion is a collective insanity.
• Theology is the science of the divine lie.
• We are materialists and atheists, and we glory in the fact.
• … if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. [God And The State]
• If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does not exist. [God And The State]
• Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker. [God And The State]
• No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker.
• [An anarchist] takes his stand on his positive right to life and all its pleasures, both intellectual, moral and physical. He loves life, and intends to enjoy it to the full. [The Philosophy Of Freedom]
• Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
• All religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. [God And The State]
• Until now all human history has been only a perpetual and bloody immolation of millions of poor human beings in honour of some pitiless abstraction – God, country, power of State, national honour, historical rights, judicial rights, political liberty, public welfare. [God And The State]
• What I preach then is, to a certain extent, the revolt of life against science, or rather against the government of science, not to destroy science – that would be high treason to humanity – but to remand it to its place so that it can never leave it again. [God And The State]
• God admitted that Satan was right; he recognised that the devil did not deceive Adam and Eve in promising them knowledge and liberty as a reward for the act of disobedience which he had induced them to commit; for, immediately they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, God himself said (see Bible [Genesis 3:22]): "Behold, the man is become as one of the gods, to know good and evil; prevent him, therefore, from eating of the fruit of eternal life, lest he become immortal like Ourselves." [God And The State]
• What is permitted to the State is forbidden to the individual. Such is the maxim of all governments. Machiavelli said it, and history as well as the practice of all contemporary governments bear him out on that point. Crime is the necessary condition of the very existence of the State, and it therefore constitutes its exclusive monopoly, from which it follows that the individual who dares commit a crime is guilty in a two-fold sense: first, he is guilty against human conscience, and, above all, he is guilty against the State in arrogating to himself one of its most precious privileges. [Ethics : Morality Of The State]
• Every time a State wants to declare war upon another State, it starts off by launching a manifesto addressed not only to its own subjects but to the whole world. In this manifesto it declares that right and justice are on its side, and it endeavours to prove that it is actuated only by love of peace and humanity and that, imbued with generous and peaceful sentiments, it suffered for a long time in silence until the mounting iniquity of its enemy forced it to bare its sword. At the same time it vows that, disdainful of all material conquest and not seeking any increase in territory, it will put and end to this war as soon as justice is re-established. [Ethics : Morality Of The State]
• The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle – a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak – and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighbourhood States – it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice. [Ethics : Morality Of The State]
• For there is no terror, cruelty, sacrilege, perjury, imposture, infamous transaction, cynical theft, brazen robbery or foul treason which has not been committed and all are still being committed daily by representatives of the State, with no other excuse than this elastic, at times so convenient and terrible phrase Reason of State. A terrible phrase indeed! For it has corrupted and dishonoured more people in official circles and in the governing classes of society than Christianity itself. As soon as it is uttered everything becomes silent and drops out of sight: honesty, honour, justice, right, pity itself vanishes and with it logic and sound sense; black becomes white and white becomes black, the horrible becomes humane, and the most dastardly felonies and most atrocious crimes become meritorious acts. [Ethics : Morality Of The State]
• The state then is the most flagrant negation, the most cynical and complete negation of humanity. It rends apart the universal solidarity of all men upon earth, and it unites some of them only in order to destroy, conquer, and enslave all the rest. It takes under its protection only its own citizens, and it recognizes human right, humanity, and civilization only within the confines of its own boundaries. And since it does not recognize any right outside of its own confines, it quite logically arrogated to itself the right to treat with the most ferocious inhumanity all the foreign populations whom it can pillage, exterminate, or subordinate to its will. If it displays generosity or humanity toward them, it does it in no case out of any sense of duty: and that is because it has no duty but to itself, and toward those of its members who formed it by an act of free agreement, who continue constituting it on the same free bases, or, as it happens in the long run, have become its subjects. [Ethics : Morality Of The State]
• The immense advantage of positive science over theology, metaphysics, politics, and judicial right consists in this – that, in place of the false and fatal abstractions set up by these doctrines, it posits true abstractions which express the general nature and logic of things, their general relations, and the general laws of their development. This separates it profoundly from all preceding doctrines, and will assure it for ever a great position in society: it will constitute in a certain sense society's collective consciousness. … Positive science, recognizing its absolute inability to conceive real individuals and interest itself in their lot, must definitely and absolutely renounce all claim to the government of societies; for if it should meddle therein, it would only sacrifice continually the living men whom it ignores to the abstractions which constitute the sole object of its legitimate preoccupations. [God And The State]
• Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty – Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve, to satisfy we know not what caprice; no doubt to while away his time, which must weigh heavy on his hands in his eternal egoistic solitude, or that he might have some new slaves. He generously placed at their disposal the whole earth, with all its fruits and animals, and set but a single limit to this complete enjoyment. He expressly forbade them from touching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished, therefore, that man, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal beast, ever on all-fours before the eternal God, his creator and his master. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge. [God And The State]
• Christianity is precisely the religion par excellence, because it exhibits and manifests, to the fullest extent, the very nature and essence of every religious system, which is the impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity for the benefit of divinity. God being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave. Incapable of finding justice, truth, and eternal life by his own effort, he can attain them only through a divine revelation. But whoever says revelation says revealers, messiahs, prophets, priests, and legislators inspired by God himself; and these, once recognised as the representatives of divinity on earth, as the holy instructors of humanity, chosen by God himself to direct it in the path of salvation, necessarily exercise absolute power. All men owe them passive and unlimited obedience; for against the divine reason there is no human reason, and against the justice of God no terrestrial justice holds. Slaves of God, men must also be slaves of Church and State, in so far as the State is consecrated by the Church. … The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice. [God And The State]

James Baldwin

• Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. [Letter From A Region In My Mind, New Yorker, 17 November 1962]

Balor

• Freedom of religion also should include freedom FROM religion. This is coming from a Protestant. I believe in my beliefs. I don't believe in forcing my beliefs on others, because, frankly, it isn't going to make them believe… Conversion by force ain't conversion… it's oppression. [alt.atheism, August 1999]

Judith Bandsma

• Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a religion and he'll starve to death praying for a fish.

Benjamin R. Barber

• The victory of the dollar over every other conceivable interest, public or private, entails not just a crass commercialism in the place where quality information and diversified entertainment should be, but also a monopoly antipathetic to democratic society and free civilisation, if not also to capitalism itself. [Jihad vs. McWorld, 1995]
• The ancient capitalist economy in which products are manufactured and sold for profit to meet the demand of consumers who make their unmediated needs known through the market is gradually yielding to a postmodern capitalist economy in which needs are manufactured to meet the supply of producers who make their unmediated products marketable through promotion, spin, packaging, and advertising. [Jihad vs. McWorld, 1995]
• Choosers are made, not born. For free markets to offer real choice, consumers must be educated choosers and programming must proffer real variety rather than just shopping alternatives. Much of McWorld's strategy for creating global markets depends on a systematic rejection of any genuine consumer autonomy or any costly program variety – deftly couple, however, with the appearance of infinite variety. [Jihad vs. McWorld, 1995]
• The elementary theory of markets argues that with the dismantling of state communication monopolies, monopoly will go while the public interest stays; in fact, the public interest has gone and monopoly has persisted, in new privatised and thus unaccountable forms. There is nothing wrong with profit. As the engine of capitalism, it is a good thing for shareholders, consumers, and society at large. but it has turned out to exercise a sovereignty no less coercive but far less public-spirited than the state's. It imposes a uniformity all its own, but one hidden behind the screen of free-market competition. [Jihad vs. McWorld, 1995]
• Go into a Protestant church in a Swiss village, a mosque in Damascus, the cathedral at Reims, a Buddhist temple in Bangkok, and though in every case you are visiting a place of worship with a common aura of piety, you know from one pious site to the next you are in a distinctive culture. The sit in a multiplex movie box — or, much the same thing, visit a spectators sports arena or a mall or a modern hotel or a fast-food establishment in any city around the world — and try to figure out where you are. You are nowhere. You are everywhere. Inhabiting an abstraction. Lost in cyberspace. You are chasing pixels on a Nintendo: the world surrounding you vanishes. You are in front of or in or on MTV: universal images assault the eyes and global dissonances assault the ears in a heart-pounding tumult that tells you everything except which country you are in. Where are you? You are in McWorld. [Jihad vs. McWorld, 1995]
• Markets are simply not designed to do the things democratic polities do. They enjoin private rather than public modes of discourse, allowing us as consumers to speak via our currencies of consumption to producers of material goods, but ignoring us as citizens speaking to one another about such things as the social consequences of our private market choices (too much materialism? too little social justice? too many monopolies? too few jobs? what to do we want?). They advance individualistic rather than social goals, permitting us to say, one by one, "I want a pair of running shoes" or "I need a new VCR" or "but yen and sell D-Marks!" but deterring us from saying, in a voice made common by interaction and deliberation, "our inner city community needs new athletic facilities" or "there is too much violence on TV and in the movies" or "we should rein in the World Bank and democratise the IMF!" Markets preclude the "we" thinking and "we" action of any kind at all, trusting in the power of aggregated individual choices (the invisible hand) to somehow secure the common good. Consumers speak the elementary rhetoric of "me," citizens invent the common language of "we." [Jihad vs. McWorld, 1995]

Dan Barker

• If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray? [Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist, 1992]
• You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time, But I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime. [Friendly Neighbourhood Atheist]
• I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief. [Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist, 1992]
• Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
• You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say "God is love" they will claim that you are taking things out of context! [Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist, 1992]
• Freethinkers reject faith as a valid tool of knowledge. Faith is the opposite of reason because reason imposes very strict limits on what can be true, and faith has no limits at all. A Great Escape into faith is no retreat to safety. It is nothing less than surrender. [Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist, 1992]
• Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, "yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.
• To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance. That implies that everyone else (such as the opposing football team, driver, student, parent) is de-selected, unfavoured by God, and that I am special, above it all. [Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist, 1992]

Ronald J. Barrier, National Spokesperson, American Atheists

• In the unreal world of supernaturalism, myth is more productive than fact. Myth-conception is an endless function of faith. Who it hurts or how much it costs is incidental. As long as religious purposes are served, ethics, inquiry and reason are abandoned. Does anyone care about truth? Are we becoming a country of mindless followers, content to wallow in a world full of concocted hysteria and senseless sensationalism? Is it that easy to believe fantastic claims rather than it is searching for truth? The truth is not always comfortable. Ascertaining truth takes work, lots of it. But let's not waste what little precious time we have. Let's not quibble over facts. Truth is anathema to religious exploitation and hysteria. And so is reason. [30 August 1998]

Simon Barrow, Ekklesia

• Creationists and IDers keep saying, 'teach the controversy'. But there is no such controversy among those with a proper grasp of science and theology. The call for 'debate' is a phony way of keeping discredited ideas alive and distorting the search for truth. [10 April 2006]
• Churches do not need the protection of blasphemy laws, which violate free expression in plural cultures. They can expect and hope to be safeguarded against violence and intimidation, and will also feel called to express solidarity with all people (whatever their faith or lack of it) who experience threat and oppression. But in following Christ they will not want or need to claim special forms of protection denied to others. This is not where their security can or should lie. [Redeeming Religion In The Public Square, 24 July 2006]
• According to polls some 45 percent of US citizens now deny evolutionary theory and advocate 'creationism', a farrago of nonsense based on an ideologically fallacious misreading of the Genesis narratives. Millions also believe that America's right to remake the world militarily in its own image is divine will. For this new 'moral majority' ethics begins in the bedroom, stalks the classroom and apparently ends as soon as someone is able to accumulate, kill and pollute on behalf of 'God's nation'. [13 January 2005]
• At the moment Christianity seems obsessed with sex and self-preservation. Institutionally, it has lost touch with the radical nature of the Gospel and has become, for many, an irrelevant cultural artefact. The result is massive decline. The idea of 'a Christian nation' is collapsing – but this notion, which some church leaders still try to cling on to, has nothing to do with the person of Jesus, whose message remains a huge challenge to both religious and political establishments. … Sadly, many would affirm Gandhi's observation that "we like your Christ, but not your Christians". The onus on churches now is to wake up and dream a new future after Christendom. [23 December 2006]
• People of faith should embrace this truth. But they must also recognise that it has a cost, and be prepared to pay it. In a plural society Christians are no longer sole owners of their symbols and words. They can be used against us, too. We can get angry if we like. But such energy might be better used offering practical alternatives to a culture of contempt, violence and 'porn-utopia'. Above all our willingness to embrace sometimes painful free speech should flow from understanding that following Jesus isn't about taking offence or demanding control. Rather, it means learning how to absorb hurts so that they can be turned into concrete expressions of love – not fear. [15 June 2006]
• What people are rejecting is religion as a coercive, arbitrary and esoteric force over and against full human flourishing and understanding. Rightly understood, the Gospel rejects this too. Christians should be seeking to renew their intellectual, spiritual and social justice traditions through openness and hospitality towards others, rather than by being defensive or expecting special favour. The idea that we are all going to agree if religion goes away is as naïve as the view that you cannot have morality without religion. Difference is here to stay. The challenge is how to establish ground rules for fairness and equal treatment in social life and public debate. All people, whether religious or non-religious, as conventionally defined, have a role to play in that. [24 November 2006]
• The response of some Christian groups to natural and human disasters like AIDS, the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina provides ample evidence of the disturbingly dark and irrational side of faith to which Dawkins refers. Indeed their talk of God using such occurrences to punish those they do not like serves to remind us just how vindictive, superficial, confused and facile our presumptions about God can be. The difficulty is compounded by widespread public ignorance of even the basic categories of religious language (that it is inescapably metaphorical, for example), by the prominence of forms of religion that justify themselves through narrow zeal, and by the struggle of more thoughtful theologians to communicate in a sound-bite media culture. [04 November 2006]
• Creationism and ID are in no way comparable to scientific theories of origins and have no place in the modern science classroom. They also distort mature Christian understandings of the universe as coming into being through the whole world process, not through reversals or denials of that process. The roots of creationism, whether in its 'hard' form, or in attenuated ID ideas, lie not in science but in misinterpretations of the Bible. Claims that such notions can be justified from a 'literal' reading of Genesis are nonsensensical. This book has not one, but two 'creation stories'. They differ widely in detail, are highly figurative, and were written to combat fatalistic Ancient Near East cosmogonies by stressing the underlying goodness of the world as a gift of God, not to comment on modern scientific matters. [25 September 2006]
• The comprehensive and integrated equalities agenda across Britain's public institutions is no threat to freedom of religion, diversity or tolerance. On the contrary, equal treatment is a cornerstone of fair access and open expression for all – including people of faith and those of non-religious outlook. It is sad that some faith organisations seem fearful of equal rights, especially when it applies to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered persons. But there is a clear distinction to be made between the moral stipulations of a community of commitment, and the obligation on public institutions to ensure far treatment. Religious bodies do not have to take public money, run schools and work in cooperation with community and public services. But if they do so, they need to occupy the same level playing field as others. [07 September 2007]
• What is entailed here is not a simple disagreement about taste (that in itself is no bad thing), but the attempt by some Christians – and those of allied convictions – to impose their view on such matters through public policy. This attempt comes in two forms. The old-fashioned kind is about making Britain "a Christian country" once again. In other words, seeking to restore religious hegemony in public life. The new-fashioned kind claims to be about "the rights of communities rather than individuals", but is actually about some members of a community imposing their claims on others within and without that community. This is symptomatic of widespread confusion about the distinction between maintaining religious liberty on the one hand and seeking religious control on the other. Some evangelical groups, for instance, wish to defend their right to offend other faiths or outlooks, but protest strongly when anyone does the same to their beliefs. [13 January 2005]
• Church reactions to the Equality Act, which most people see as a matter of consistency and fairness, hark back to the Christendom era when the action of government was based solely or largely on principles determined by the churches. However, we are no longer in that era. Britain is a plural society in which the great majority of the population are no longer regular Christian adherents. The churches can therefore no longer assume that their definitions of what is right will be accepted by everybody, especially when public money is going into service intended for the whole community. Church agencies are reported to have adopted children to remarried divorcees, to lone parents who are gay, and to cohabiting couples. These all contravene official church teaching. If you are an atheist, a Muslim or a Buddhist you can adopt, but not if you are a faithful Christian couple who happen to be homosexual. People are bound to argue that this is discrimination, not religious principle. [30 January 2007]
• Most of those who condemn Jerry Springer - The Opera have little evident appreciation for irony, satire or the comedic portrayal of darkness, danger and confusion. Either that or they think that their fellow adults need nannying away from such things on pain of corruption. Many of them probably still think that Monty Python's Life Of Brian is blasphemous, failing to understand that what is being laughed at in the film is not Jesus but mindless messianism, political or religious. I still cringe when I recall those TV debates when the Python movie first came out, with self-styled Christian campaigners completely missing the theological point that was only too apparent to the filmmakers they were attacking. Talk about irony. To put it bluntly, the religiously offended are bad at interpreting texts – which is why they also make unreliable, rigid and unimaginative expositors of the Bible. The Word made flesh, taking on the mess of humanity, is too much for them to bear. They prefer something safe, prescriptive and sanitised. [13 January 2005]
• Blasphemous libel is difficult to define and privileges only the established church. It is unfair in a plural society, harms free speech, discriminates against people of other or no religion, and has recently (and rightly) been described by the former Archbishop of Canterbury as "redundant". Ekklesia opposes a law of blasphemy not on pragmatic grounds alone, but centrally on theological ones. Christian faith (and indeed any faith) is corrupted when its allegiance or defence is legally required by the state. Instead of being a liberating tradition rooted in God's favour-free love, it becomes a matter of coercion and oppression. It is not without significance that Jesus himself was tried and executed by a coalition of political and religious forces who objected to his subversive message. Moreover, blasphemy laws in other parts of the world (Pakistan is a good example) have become a threat to life and limb not just for Christians, but for a variety of minority groups. [24 October 2005]
• Making profession of religious belief mandatory for participation in a supposedly open public body which receives statutory funding is surely unjust, objectionable and unacceptable in a plural society. It also violates of the freedom of belief which many Christians and others hold to be key to the integrity of faith as something that can never be imposed, because it is a matter of grace and gift. I hope people of faith will join with non-religious people in courteously but persistently pointing out to the Scout Association, and to the statutory bodies that give them public money, how wrong and unacceptable their stance is - a clear and regrettable abrogation of 'Scout's honour'. The exclusion of the non-religious is also classic example of the 'Christendom mentality' that faith should be made normative in public life, irrespective of the beliefs and convictions of others. Such an approach is deeply counter-productive. It brings genuine, free religious conviction into disrepute, associating it with compulsion and injustice, rather than love, truthfulness and peaceableness. [speaking about the Scouts, 02 February 2007]

Alan Barth

• Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions. [The Loyalty Of Free Men, 1951]

Bruce Bartlett

• Just in the past few months, I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do. This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts, he truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence. But you can't run the world on faith. [New York Times, 17 October 2004]

Basilides

• Those who confess Jesus as the crucified one are still enslaved to the God of the Jews. He who denies it has been freed and knows the plan of the unbegotten Father.

Pierre Bayle

• In matters of religion it is very easy to deceive a man, and very hard to undeceive him. [Dictionary, 1697]

Bert B. Beach, Religious Liberty Executive, Seventh-Day Adventist

• Freedom of religion also implies the right not to have or profess a religion. This is sometimes overlooked. It is a sad commentary on religion that religionists, probably quite well-meaning at times, have throughout history tried to force fellow human beings into a required religious mould. Apart from the very wrong theological assumptions involved, this is a flagrant violation of the dignity of the human person. Coerced religion is demeaning and of little value. [Bright Candle Of Courage, 1989]

Simone de Beauvoir

• I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe.

August Bebel

• Christianity is the enemy of liberty and of civilisation. It has kept mankind in chains. [Reichstag speech, 31 March 1881]
• Christ came, and Christianity arose … But originating in Judaism, which knew woman only as a being bereft of all rights, and biased by the Biblical conception which saw in her the source of all evil, Christianity preached contempt for women. [Woman And Socialism]

John Beevers

• I do not know that Christianity holds anything more of importance for the world. It is finished, played out. The only trouble lies in how to get rid of the body before it begins to smell too much. [World Without Faith, 1935]

Catherine Bennett

• With rival churches monitoring balance and airtime with a jealous watchfulness that used to be the monopoly of the Scottish Nationalists, an intervention by the cardinal is inevitably followed, pronto, by one from the chief rabbi depicting abortion as "mere convenience", and then, not to be outdone, by the increasingly familiar figure of Iqbal Sacranie telling us that we should be "alarmed". Nowadays the melancholy, long withdrawing roar is all but drowned out by the angry squawks of marginal churches demanding that this play be banned, or this book pulped, or that musical taken off, or this broadcaster mobbed, or that charity boycotted, such is the intolerable hurt and offence that would otherwise be sustained by sensitive practitioners of their particular faith. As pre-election debate degenerates into a Thought for the Day abortion special, it can be seen that the indulgence shown by this government to those who demand public recognition of their private spiritual beliefs when it should have been advocating disestablishment – and in particular its decision to present fundamentalists with their own special schools and a dedicated zealot's law so that no one can ever be rude about them – are already having an effect. So too, no doubt, is Tony Blair's promotion of his own faith-based, prayer-fuelled politics. [The Guardian, 17 March 2005]
• It is strange, isn't it, to think that this fine-looking couple [the Travoltas], recently seen experiencing spiritual ecstasy in East Grinstead, presumably believe in Scientologist founder Ron L Hubbard's story of Xenu, the galactic tyrant who froze his victims and stored them in the Earth's volcanos? It can't be more absurd to venerate a turtle than to follow Hubbard (who also prohibits psychiatry and making a noise in childbirth). Or a Kabbalist who thinks "all created things are directly affected by their Hebrew names, as well as by the component letters of their names". Or a Muslim who believes in a paradise full of willing virgins. Or a Christian who thinks God's got it in for Jerry Springer: the Opera. When he hasn't got it in for Pakistanis, New Orleans or the unfortunate US minister recently electrocuted in the act of baptism. If, as Madonna says, she has been ridiculed for professing her beliefs, her best expedient would be to stop professing them, at length, to a British public that is already wearied by haranguing, complaints and demands from rival believers whose only common ground is their indifference to the fact that most other people don't share their faith. On men, on sex, even on the correct raising of a mannerly nine-year-old, I would be delighted to hear anything Madonna has to say. Concerning religion, we can only hope she soon alights on the joys of trappism, and subsequently takes all the other faith communities in this country with her. [The Guardian, 03 November 2005]
• In parts of Bradford, there must be great rejoicing over Blunkett's updating of Voltaire's defend-to-the-death doctrine, which might be summarised as follows: "I don't know whether I agree with you or not, as I have devised a law denying you the right to speak." At last, 12 years after they first burned copies of the Satanic Verses, Rushdie's fiercest opponents finally have a chance to ban the book in Britain for ever. Maybe Rushdie, his publishers and distributors will end up with seven years in prison! To adherents of the less popular or established creeds and cults, Blunkett's bold repudiation of the Enlightenment offers no end of benefits. Once he has, in effect, extended the blasphemy laws to include all religions, Christians will no longer have the monopoly on taking offence. To be sure, British Christians have not often acted on the opportunity to persecute their detractors – there has been only one prosecution for blasphemy in more than 70 years – but that is no reason why more thin-skinned believers should not move to have their critics tried and imprisoned. … Blunkett's law may be of no immediate benefit to red-haired people, fat people, Welsh people, estate agents, journalists and politicians, to name just a few routinely ridiculed and slighted minorities, but they should also take heart. Soon they, too, may see their tormentors in court, accused of saying horrid things. Why should the objects of religious hatred be privileged over all the other victims of insults and harsh words? But the principal beneficiaries of Blunkett's law will be lawyers, so much so that the more enterprising among them may wish to establish new specialist chambers, just as Mrs Blair did with Matrix in time for the human rights act, especially dedicated to wrangling, at tremendously lucrative length, over the subtle distinctions between ridicule and inciting hatred, speaking your mind and inciting hatred, writing a novel and inciting hatred and following your religion and inciting hatred. Of course, Blunkett's law is not good news for everyone. Imagine how tricky, if not impossible, it is going to be for the clerics who must soon find forms of worship that do not demean or insult all those who belong to other, contradictory faiths. Think of the difficulties for the new, faith-based schools. And then, spare a thought for all those who still cherish the right to say what one thinks in a free society. Rowan Atkinson has already drawn attention to the threat Blunkett's law would constitute to comedians – which may have had some people racking their brains for examples of sketches or sitcoms making fun of Muslims, an Islamic equivalent to the Vicar of Dibley, say, or Father Ted. The lack of any recent instances of comical Mullah-baiting suggests that the charge of Islamophobia has not, for some time, been lightly sought. Blunkett's enforced extension of this self-censorship may not, in practice, even be much of a blessing to the Muslims it is designed to protect. They also enjoy freedom of expression. Until quite recently, more colourful Muslim enthusiasts such as Omar Bakri Mohammed, formerly of Saudi Arabia, joyfully exercised that freedom, calling for, among other things, a holy war in Britain. Won't they, too, miss it when it's gone? [The Guardian, 18 October 2001] No, they won't, because they don't want freedom of any kind for their people, and they are the ones who set the rules and decide what is 'permissible'. These are precisely the people who want it.

Bernard Berenson

• Miracles happen to those who believe in them. Otherwise why does not the Virgin Mary appear to Lamaists, Mohammedans, or Hindus who have never heard of her?

Isaiah Berlin

• As for the meaning of life, I do not believe that it has any. I do not at all ask what it is, but I suspect that it has none and this is a source of great comfort to me. We make of it what we can and that is all there is about it. Those who seek for some cosmic all-embracing libretto or God are, believe me, pathetically mistaken.

David K. Berninghausen

• In order to get the truth, conflicting arguments and expressions must be allowed. There can be no freedom without choice, no sound choice without knowledge. [Arrogance Of The Censor, 1982]

Dennis Bernstein, Radio KPFA

• Any US journalist, columnist, editor, college professor, student-activist, public official or clergy member who dares to speak critically of Israel or accurately report the brutalities of its illegal occupation will be vilified as an anti-Semite. His reward for was to receive emails: You mother-fucking-asshole-self-hating Jewish piece of shit. Hitler killed the wrong Jews. He should have killed your parents, so a piece of Jewish shit like you would not have been born. God willing, Arab terrorists will cut you to pieces Daniel Pearl-style, AMEN!!!, God willing a Palestinian will murder you, rape your wife and slash your kids' throats.", and I hope that you, Barbara Lubin and all other Jewish Marxist Communist traitors anti-American cop haters will die a violent and cruel death just like the victims of suicide bombers in Israel..

Ernest Bevin

• There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented. … The common man, I think, is the great protection against war. [Speech in the House of Commons, 23 November 1945]

John Bice

• In e-mail discussions, religionists often ask why, as an atheist, I bother to behave morally. It's as though, to them, the only thing stopping humanity from morphing into sadistically selfish malevolent monsters is belief in an invisible being who holds us responsible for fulfilling his/her/its moral expectations. Usually, I turn the question around and ask, "Would your behavior change if you no longer believed in the existence of god? Is belief in that "eye in the sky," the only thing that keeps you from raping, pillaging, plundering and killing your parents or children?" If so — which I don't believe for a moment — what a sad contrast it would be to the ethical behavior of nonbelievers who adhere to social and personal moral standards with no expectation of otherworldly reward. An entirely god-dependent morality is nothing but child-like obedience, a shallow ethical framework informed only through fear of punishment or anticipation of reward. [The State News, 17 April 2007]
• The details of the [Xenu] story are outrageously funny. … Amusement aside, weird beliefs are important to consider. Most significantly, these beliefs demonstrate how extraordinarily gullible and irrational people can be. If approached at the right time, with the right message, by a charismatic spokesperson, people are capable of all sorts of bizarre and utterly unsubstantiated beliefs. However, it's important to stress that this observation isn't limited to fringe cult beliefs. As bumper-sticker philosophy points out, "religions are just cults with more members." One reason the beliefs of Scientologists seem so bizarre, in addition to the fact they are freakishly nutty, is because they are exotic and unfamiliar. It's important to bear in mind, however, that Scientology doctrine is no more absurd than many other widely embraced religious concepts. The core beliefs of well-known world religions are equally devoid of supporting evidence, and are just as farfetched and fanciful. What's the difference, rationally speaking, between believing in body-infesting souls and ancient galactic confederations, or in the stories of virgin birth, Vishnu, the Garden of Eden, transubstantiation, Noah's ark, judgment day, or the baseless concept of the Trinity? The answer: not much. … Tom Cruise and Scientology offer amusing reminders that a critical and rational examination of one's core beliefs just might be a good idea. Any story or concept requiring religious faith to be accepted, due to a complete lack of substantiating evidence, ought to be approached with a healthy skepticism. [Statenews, 28 June 2005]

Joe Biden

• I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad, and I was telling the president of my many concerns [growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields]. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?' Bush stood up and put his hand on [my] shoulder. 'My instincts,' he said. 'My instincts.' I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!' [March 2004, quoted in New York Times, 17 October 2004]

Ambrose Bierce

• Faith. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of thing