Quotations: Religious Skepticism

Creationism & Creation Science
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. ~Ashley Montague

Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time. Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of squeezing one's eyes shut and wailing "Does not!" ~Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org

[Creation science is] an attempt to give credibility to Hebrew mythology by making people believe that the world's foremost biologists, paleontologists, and geologists are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops. ~Ron Peterson

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. ~Isaac Asimov

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. ~Stephen J. Gould

If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction. ~Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One?

The order of creation in the Bible is woefully incorrect and violates even the most simple and obvious rules of natural science. ~Charles Cazeau, U.S. professor of geology

Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our entire intellectual heritage - good teaching - than a bill forcing honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any general understanding of science as an enterprise? ~Stephen Jay Gould, The Skeptical Inquirer

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. ~Aldous Huxley

No doubt a sizeable majority of Americans believe in the concept of a Creator or, at least, are not opposed to the concept and see nothing wrong with teaching school children about the idea. The application and content of First Amendment principles are not determined by public opinion polls or by a majority vote. Whether the proponents of Act 590 constitute the majority or the minority is quite irrelevant under a constitutional system of government. No group, no matter how large or small, may use the organs of government, of which the public schools are the most conspicuous and influential, to foist its religious beliefs on others. ~U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton, overturning Arkansas Act 590, requiring public schools to teach creation science

Louisiana's [1981] creationism law, which requires creationism to be taught wherever the theory of evolution is explained, is unconstitutional, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.... "The act's intended effect is to discredit evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of creationism, a religious belief," the U.S. Court of Appeals said. ~Associated Press article in the San Francisco Chronicle, 9 July 1985

More than half the college students polled in three states, including California, said they are creationists who believe that God created Adam and Eve, while about one-third believe in aliens, Big Foot and the lost city of Atlantis. The poll results, released yesterday by Texas researchers, also indicated that students who believe in creationism are less likely to read books, tend to be more politically conservative and have a lower grade-point average than students who dispute that God created Earth in six days. Last fall, about 1000 students attending colleges in Texas, Connecticut and California filled out detailed questionnaire on their beliefs. In Texas, 71 percent of students said they believe in the story of Adam and Eve, while 51 percent in Connecticut and 47 percent in California said they believed in the biblical first couple. An average of 44 percent of the students in the three states said the story of Noah's Ark is true. About one-third of all the students surveyed believed that Big Foot, a hairy man-like creature reputed to live in the mountains of northwest America, actually exists. An equal number believed in the lost city of Atlantis, a legendary island of advanced civilization that supposedly sank into the ocean. Thirty percent of the students responding to the survey said aliens from outer space visited Earth in ancient times. Overall, 37 percent said they believed in ghosts, and 39 percent said it is possible to communicate with the dead. ~San Francisco Chronicle, 3 November 1986 (UPI)

If you're looking for a little background reading on scientific creationism, it's best not to take the word scientific too seriously. A three-year database search of 4,000 scientific publications - focusing on the names of people associated with the Institute for Creation Research and on phrases and keywords such as 'creationism' - didn't turn up a single paper. A follow-up study of 68 journals found that only 18 of 135,000 total manuscript submissions concerned scientific creationism, and all 18 were rejected. Reasons cited included 'flawed arguments,' 'ramblings,' and 'a high-school theme quality.' ~Science, September 1985

The "dropping of context" - deliberately and deceitfully - by Creationist "spokesmen" is part of their game of fraud in the "use" of quotations from scientists. And it "works" (rhetorically, for the kinds of audience in front of which they use it) when the readers do NOT have the basic background in critical reading. ~Michael Siemon

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another. ~John Burroughs

Another possible danger is that in presenting the gospel to the lost and in defending God's truth we ourselves will seem to be false. It is time for Christian people to recognize that the defense of this modern, young-Earth, Flood-geology creationism is simply not truthful. It is simply not in accord with the facts that God has given. Creationism must be abandoned by Christians before harm is done. The persistent attempt of the creationist movement to get their points of view established in educational institutions can only bring harm to the Christian cause. Can we seriously expect non-Christian educational leaders to develop a respect for Christianity if we insist on teaching the brand of science that creationism brings with it? Will not the forcing of modern creationism on the public simply lend credence to the idea already entertained by so many intellectual leaders that Christianity, at least in its modern form, is sheer anti-intellectual obscurantism? I fear that it will. ~Davis Young, Christianity and the Age of the Earth, 1982

Facts & Refutations:

The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example, while loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine? ~Judith Hayes, In God We Trust: But Which One?

God tells Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If this was the only way they could understand the difference between good and evil, how could they have known that it was wrong to disobey God and eat the fruit? ~Laurie Lynn

Not only might one-quarter to one-half of the weight be lost in planing, whereas with iron only a minute fraction was lost in this way, but half of the weight of timber in a wooden ship was wasted, its only use being to hold the other half in position. Even so, a wooden ship had great stresses as a structure. The absolute limit of its length was 300 feet, and it was liable to "hogging" and "sagging" in addition to being unable to withstand the local strain of the screw propeller. ~Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870-1914

Jesus was almost certainly not 'of Nazareth.' An overwhelming body of evidence indicates that Nazareth did not exist in biblical times. The town is unlikely to have appeared before the third century. ~Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy

If God is love, and if God is also omnipresent, then the Devil cannot exist. If the Devil exists, God cannot be love and also be omnipresent. Yet, an omnipresent God of love and the Devil are both said to exist. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure that there is something wrong here! ~Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian

It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin. ~H.L. Mencken

It has been contended for many years that the Ten Commandments are the foundations of all ideas of justice and law. Nothing can be more stupidly false. Thousands of years before Moses, the Egyptians had a code far better. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion? ~Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-Semitic Christians

The problem with fundamentalists insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible is that the meaning of words change. A prime example is 'Spare the rod, spoil the child.' A rod was a stick used by shepherds to guide their sheep to go in the desired direction. Shepherds did not use it to beat their sheep. The proper translation of the saying is 'Give your child guidance, or they will go astray.' It does not mean 'Beat the shit out of your child or he will become rotten' as many fundamentalist parents seem to belive. ~Unknown

A sin [original sin] without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If a man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. ~Ayn Rand

A religious conservative is a fanatic about a dead radical. ~Unknown

The Bible:

The Bible as we have it contains elements that are scientifically incorrect or even morally repugnant. No amount of 'explaining away' can convince us that such passages are the product of Divine Wisdom. ~Bernard J. Bamberger, The Story of Judaism

If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going? ~Unknown

The Bible may be the truth but it's not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. ~Samuel Butler

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. ~George Bernard Shaw

The Bible is literature, not dogma. ~George Santayana

Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speaking, there is no such book. To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound into one volume. These books are written by many people at different times, and no one knows the time or the identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin of things. Between the first and the last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passed since the discovery of America by Columbus. ~Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic

All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention - of barbarian invention - is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the coiled form of superstition - then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity. ~Robert G. Ingersoll, The Gods, 1872

The Bible is a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology. ~Mark Twain, Mark Twain and the Bible

The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it. ~George Santayana, 1863-1952, U.S. philosopher, writer, and professor

The Bible was a collection of books written at different times by different men - a strange mixture of diverse human documents - and a tissue of irreconcilable notions. Inspired? The Bible is not even intelligent. It is not even good craftsmanship, but is full of absurdities and contradictions. ~E. Haldeman-Julius, The Meaning Of Atheism

The book, called the Bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! ~Robert G. Ingersoll, The Gods, 1872

Few intelligent Christians can still hold to the idea that the Bible is an infallible Book, that it contains no linguistic errors, no historical discrepancies, no antiquated scientific assumptions, not even bad ethical standards. Historical investigation and literary criticism have taken the magic out of the Bible and have made it a composite human book, written by many hands in different ages. The existence of thousands of variations of texts makes it impossible to hold the doctrine of a book verbally infallible. Some might claim for the original copies of the Bible an infallible character, but this view only begs the question and makes such Christian apologetics more ridiculous in the eyes of the sincere man. ~Elmer Homrighausen, Christianity in America

There are many extraordinary tales from antiquity, including women with snakes for hair, creatures whose gaze turns you to stone, creatures with equine bodies and human torsos, many accounts of people rising from the dead, lots of tales of magic, and numerous accounts of physical encounters with fantastic beings. Ancient people were a superstitious, scientifically primitive lot, and believed in many things that today we know are silly. I find it bizarre that so many people see nothing suspicious about the extraordinary or supernatural claims of the Bible, yet don't hesitate to express disbelief in equally well documented claims of minotaurs, basilisks, and wizards. ~Scott Brown

A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism. ~Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian

The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs. ~Bill Maher

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind. ~Thomas Paine

The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does rapture, or second coming, or original sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add omniscience, omnipresence, supernatural, transcendence, afterlife, deity, divinity, theology, monotheism, missionary, immaculate conception, Christmas, Christianity, evangelical, fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, pope, cardinal, catechism, purgatory, penance, transubstantiation, excommunication, dogma, chastity, unpardonable sin, infallibility, incarnation, epiphany, sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday school, Dead Sea, golden rule, moral, morality, ethics, patriotism, education, atheism, apostasy, conservative (liberal is in), capital punishment, monogamy, abortion, pornography, homosexual, lesbian, fairness, logic, republic, democracy, capitalism, funeral, Decalogue, or Bible. ~Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist

One final snag in the "Bible only" view is this: the Bible itself teaches that moral truths are revealed outside the Scriptures. ~C. Stephen Layman, The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the Foundation of Ethics

Remember that millions of Christians still base their belief in a God upon the words of the Bible, which is a collection of the most flabbergasting fictions ever imagined - by men, too, who had lawless but very poor and crude imagination. Ingersoll and numerous other critics have shot the Christian holy book full of holes. It is worthless and proves nothing concerning the existence of a God. ~E. Haldeman-Julius, The Meaning Of Atheism

If the Bible is telling the truth, then God is either untruthful or incompetent. If God is truthful, then the Bible is either untruthful or erroneous. ~Rev. Donald Morgan, Atheologian

As it happens, Josephus, who mentions John the Baptist, does not mention Jesus. There is, to be sure, a paragraph in his history of the Jews which is devoted to Jesus, but it interrupts the flow of the discourse and seems suspiciously like an afterthought. Scholars generally believe this to have been an insertion by some early Christian editor who, scandalized that Josephus should talk of the period without mentioning the Messiah, felt the insertion to be a pious act. ~Isaac Asimov, Asimov's Guide To The Bible

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. ~Mark Twain

One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this. ~Fredrich Nietzsche

Science:

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ~J. Robert Oppenheimer, Life, 10 October 1949

The truths which God revealed have been overthrown by the truths which man has discovered. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911

Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as sentimental wishful thinking. ~P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science," Nature's Imagination, edited by John Cornwell, 1995

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science. ~Heinz Pagels, The Dreams of Reason

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. ~Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood. ~Elbert Hubbard

The chief characteristic of the religion of science is that it works. ~Isaac Asimov

Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny. Through fear of being shown to be vacuous, religion denies the awesome power of human comprehension. It seeks to thwart, by encouraging awe in things unseen, the disclosure of the emptiness of faith. Religion, in contrast to science, deploys the repugnant view that the world is too big for our understanding. Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great questions of being to rational discussion, to discussion with the prospect of resolution and elucidation. Science, above all, respects the power of the human intellect. Science is the apotheosis of the intellect and the consummation of the Renaissance. Science respects more deeply the potential of humanity than religion ever can. ~P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science," Nature's Imagination, edited by John Cornwell, 1995

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it. ~Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Science is the record of dead religions. ~The Oscariana of Oscar Fingall O'Flaherty Will Wilde [1856-1900] for George Bernard Shaw

Separation of Church and State:

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion - except for the sect that can win political power. ~Supreme Court Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson, dissenting opinion in Zorach v. Clauson (343 US 306 - 1952)

The United States is not a Christian nation. It is a great nation with Christians, among others, in it. But our greatness is based on the fact that there is no official religion. ~Senator Lowell Weicker

So many Christians long for integration of church and state because they know it would be a Christian influence on government and politics. But would they still want religion's interference in the state if that religion were Buddhism or some other belief system that differed from their own? If the government were run by Muslim tenets, they'd be crying out for separation of church and state just as atheists always have. ~T. Sachs

The greatest achievement ever made in the cause of human progress is the total and final separation of church and state. If we have nothing else to boast of, we could lay claim with justice that the first among the nations we of this country made it an article of organic law that the relations between man and his maker were a private concern, into which other men have no right to intrude. To measure the stride thus made for the Emancipation of the race, we have only to look back over the centuries that have gone before us, and recall the dreadful persecutions in the name of religion that have filled the world. ~David Dudley Field, 1805-1894

I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. ~Original Pledge of Allegiance, 1892

It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon that book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them. ~Frank Herbert, Dune

Give the church a place in the Constitution, let her touch once more the sword of power, and the priceless fruit of all ages will turn to ashes on the lips of men. ~Robert G. Ingersoll, Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1

In addition, the New York Supreme Court, in a well known case (Miami Military Institute v. Leff 129 Misc. 481, 220 N.Y.S. 799, 810) said of the principle of religious freedom that it, 'has always been regarded by the American people as the very heart of its national life.' This would be difficult to maintain in a democracy without institutional separation of church and state. ~Anson Phelps Stokes, Church And State In The United States Vol. I

Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law. Government may not interfere with organized or individual expressions of belief or disbelief. Propagation of belief - or even of disbelief - in the supernatural is protected, whether in church or chapel, mosque or synagogue, tabernacle or meeting-house. ~Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court justice, majority decision, Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 1940

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote - where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference - and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. ~John F. Kennedy

Taxation & Money:

Church tax exemption means that we all drop our money in the collection boxes, whether we go to church or not and whether we are interested in the church or not. It is systematic and complete robbery, from which none of us escapes. ~E. Haldeman-Julius, The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life

Churches should look to their members and friends only for the financing of their undertakings, and no church should engage in any undertaking, no matter how laudable it may be, that its members and friends are unable or unwilling to finance. ~Senator Sam Ervin

The divorce between church and state ought to be absolute. It ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no church property anywhere, in any state, or in any nation, should be exempt from taxation, for if you exempt the church property of any church organization, to that extent you impose tax upon the whole community. ~U.S. President James A. Garfield, address to Congress

The money man gives to get him into heaven is what he ought to use to improve the earth. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays

It takes the shingles from the widow's cottage to put paint on the house of God. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays

Send me money, send me green, Heaven you will meet, Make a contribution and you'll get a better seat. ~Metallica