Seven Words That Can Change the World

Pope Benedict XVI attacked the rise of aggressive secularism in Western societies, warning them that they risked drifting into a ‘desert of godlessness’.  He used his Good Friday meditations to compare deliberate attempts to remove religion from public life to the mockery of Jesus Christ by the mob as he was led out to be crucified.

Like everyone else, the Pope is entitled to his opinion. Many disagree with him. Through the ages, the church and monarchies controlled the flow of information. Not anymore. We live in the Post-Industrial High-Tech Information Age that allows us to disseminate information nearly anywhere instantly.

Reflect on the following small sample of thoughts about religion. These are found, among many others, in one of my books, The Skeptic’s Book of Religious Quotes and Anecdotes.

The death of dogma is the birth of reason. ~ Immanuel Kant

Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable … and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place. ~ Sir Julian Huxley, “The New Divinity”

In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable. ~ Sigmund Freud

If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone. ~ Robert Ingersoll

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of. ~ Clarence Darrow

It is often said…that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal’s wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies? ~ Richard Dawkins

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. ~ Carl Sagan

The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation. ~ Emma Goldman, 1869-1940

Education must be founded upon knowledge, not upon faith; and religion itself should be taught in the public schools only as religious history… ~ Friederich Buchner, Man in the Past, Present, and Future

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters. ~ H. L. Mencken

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. ~ Chapman Cohen

I want no heaven for which I must give my reason; no happiness in exchange for my liberty, and no immortality that demands the surrender of my individuality. Better rot in the windowless tomb, to which there is no door but the red mouth of the pallid worm, than to wear the jeweled collar of a god. ~ Robert Ingersoll

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. ~ Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983

The whole conception of god is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. ~ Bertrand Russell

One might be asked ‘How can you prove that a god does not exist?’ One can only reply that it is scarcely necessary to disprove what had never been proved. ~ David A. Spitz

In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests.

In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task. ~ Albert Einstein

To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like ‘God was always there’, and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say ‘DNA was always there’, or “Life was always there’,  and be done with it. - Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

Religious ideas are subject to the same laws of evolution that govern everything else in the universe. ~ Gandhi

The beginning of wisdom is the awareness that there is insufficient evidence that a god or gods have created us and the recognition that we are responsible in part for our own destiny. Human beings can achieve this good life, but it is by the cultivation of the virtues of intelligence and courage, not faith and obedience, that we will most likely be able to do so. ~ Paul Kurtz

To insist on a spiritual practice that served us in the past is to carry the raft on our backs after we have crossed the river. ~ Buddha

Religion has become divisive, quarrelsome and idiotic. Religion is the reason we have all this conflict in the world….If we continue to combine our ancient habits with our modern capacities, we risk totally destroying ourselves. ~ Deepak Chopra, Time Magazine, January 24, 2005

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