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Pitrim
Sorokin (1889-1968), Harvard University
sociologist -
Gore Vidal (1925 - ) American writer and
historian - From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three antihuman religions have evolved --Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal --God is the omnipotent father-- hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family home. Evangelical Christian groups have traditionally drawn strength from the suppressed. African slaves were allowed to organize heavenly sky-god churches, as a surrogate for earthly freedom. White churches were organized in order to make certain that the rights of property were respected and that the numerous religious taboos in the New and Old Testaments would be enforced, if necessary, by civil law.
George
Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), irish author
and playwright: I see little divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity when you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense! The churches must learn humility as well as teach it. No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. Martyrdom is the only way in which a person with no ability can become great.
Karl Kautsky (1854-1938) Czech writer and theoretician:
Bertrand
Russell (1872-1970) British philosopher
- I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
Aldous
Huxley (1894-1963) the English novelist
- The greatest evil the church has brought forth; it raises in every communion a selfish and partial orthodoxy, which consists of defending all that it has and condemning all that it has not. Most European and American authors of books about religion and metaphysics write as though nobody had ever thought about these subjects except Jews, the Greeks Christians of Mediterranean Basin and western Europe... Like any other form of imperialism, theological imperialism is the threat to world peace.
Charles
Dickens (1812-1870), British author
- I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degredation left in the world.
George Santayana (1863-1952) American philosopher and professor:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931 -), S. African cleric and peace activist:
Annie Besant (1847-1933), British Theosophist:
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American writer - Christian, n.: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), Emperor of France : As for myself, I do not believe that such a person as Jesus Christ ever existed; but as the people are inclined to superstition, it is proper not to oppose them.
Alistair Crowley (1875-1947), British occultist: Charles Darwin (1809-1882), English naturalist:
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), American president:
Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French novelist: There is in every village a torch-the teacher;
and an extinguisher-the clergyman.
Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), English biologist:
The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible
is no more self-evident than is that of the
infallibility of the popes.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), American president:
General Marquis De Lafayette (1757-1834), French Revolutionary:
Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), Portuguese explorer:
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), English playwright and novelist:
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher: In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point. (Addressing anti-semitic Christians) You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion? One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this. Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity. The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all price, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation... War to the death against depravity-depravity is Christianity. ... an absurd problem came to the surface: How COULD God permit that [crucifixion of Jesus Christ]!...the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE...The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form-the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism! The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his doctrine. One should not go into church if one wants to breathe pure air. The last Christian died on the cross. Christianity makes suffering contagious. A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the noble, that is also Christian. Hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the sense, of the joy of the senses, of joy in general is Christian.
George Orwell (1903-1950), British author:
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), American Stateswoman: Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), French philosopher:
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) German theologian:
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), English poet:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), British poet:
Gregory Dix (1901-1952), British Benedictine monk: It is no accident that the symbol of a bishop is a crook, and the sign of an archbishop is a double-cross.
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During
the past few centuries the most belligerent,
the most aggressive, the most rapacious,
the most power-drunk section of humanity
has been precisely, the Christian Western
world. During these centuries western Christendom
had invaded all other continents; its armies
followed by priests and merchants have subjugated,
robbed or pillaged most of the non-Christians.
Native Americans, African, Australian, Asiatic
populations have been subjugated to this
peculiar brand of Christian "love" which
has generally manifested itself in pitiless
destruction, enslavement, coercion, destruction
of the cultural values, institutions, the
way of life of the victims and the spread
of alcoholism, venereal disease, commercial
cynicism and the like.
When the white race broke out of Europe 500
years ago,... inspired by a raging sky-god,
the whites were able to pretend that their
conquests were in order to bring the One
God to everyone, particularly those with
older and subtler religions... what prosperity
we have ever enjoyed in the past was usually
based on slave or near slave labor.
The Bible is hopelessly pre-evolutionary;
its descriptions of the origin of life and
morals are obviously fairy tales; its astronomy
is terracentric; its notions of the starry
universe are childish; its history is epical
and legendary: in short, people whose education
in these departments is derived from the
Bible are so absurdly misinformed as to be
unfit for public employment, parental responsibility,
or the franchise.
Christianity
has been distinguished from other religions
by its greater readiness for persecution. "The
whole contention that Christianity has had
an elevating moral influence can only be
maintained by wholesale ignorance or falsification
of the historical evidence.
The religions whose theology is least preoccupied
with events in time and most concerned with
eternity, have been consistently less violent
and more humane in political practice. Unlike
early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism
(all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism
have never been persecuting faiths, have
preached almost no holy wars and have refrained
from that proselytizing religious imperialism
which has gone hand in hand with political
and economic oppression of colored people.
When
the missionaries came to Africa they had
the Bible and we had the land. They said, "Let
us close our eyes and pray." When
we opened our eyes we had the Bible and
they had the land.
Evangelist, n., A bearer of good
tidings, particularly (in a religious sense)
such as assure us of our own salvation
and the damnation of our neighbours.
I
am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly
that their kingdom is not of this world,
and yet they lay their hands on everything
they can get.
I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish
Christianity to be true; for if so the plain
language of the text seems to show that the
men who do not believe, and this would include
my Father, Brother and almost all my best
friends, will be everlastingly punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.
Hell
is an outrage on humanity. When you tell
me that your Deity made you in his own
image, I reply that he must have been very
ugly.
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 parishoners
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.
...I
couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking
at the cruel wars that Christianity has
occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures
Christian has inflicted on Christian, the
unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance,
must consider the balance sheet with complacency.
And when he remembers that it has laid upon
mankind the bitter burden of the sense of
sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry
night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing
plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must
chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his
due.
I
call Christianity the one great curse,
the one great intrinsic depravity, the
one great instinct for revenge for which
no expedient is sufficiently poisonous,
secret, subterranean, petty-I call it the
one mortal blemish of mankind.
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.
There
is nothing more negative than the result
of the critical study of the life of Jesus.
The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly
as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of
the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom
of God upon earth, and died to give his work
its final consecration, never had any existence.
His image has not been destroyed from without,
it has fallen to pieces, cleft and disintegrated
by the concrete historical problems which
come to the surface one after another...
He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed
with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern
theology in a historical garb. 
