GodAnon

“I read the Book of Job last night—I don't think God comes well out of it.” Virginia Woolf, quote cited by Warren Allen Smith in Who's Who in Hell Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

“I do not believe in God. I see no need of such idea. It is incredible to me that there should be an after-life. I find the notion of future punishment outrageous and of future reward extravagant. I am convinced that when I die, I shall cease entirely to live; I shall return to the earth I came from.”  W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook (1949) Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

“Man enjoys the great advantage of having a God endorse the codes he writes; and since man exercises a sovereign authority over woman, it is especially fortunate that this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being. For the Jews, Mohammedans, and the Christians, among others, man is master by divine right; the fear of God, therefore, will repress any impulse toward revolt in the downtrodden female.” Simone de Beauvoir, "Situation and Character," "The Second Sex" (1949, translated and edited by H.M. Parshley, 1953) Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

“The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief—call it what you will—than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.” A.A. Milne, cited in "2,000 Years of Disbelief," by James A. Haught Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

If your god brought the utmost suffering to the world tomorrow for 3 hours, would that be good? Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

“All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but which is based on observed facts.” Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

“I persist in preferring philosophers to rabbis, priests, imams, ayatollahs, and mullahs. Rather than trust their theological hocus-pocus, I prefer to draw on alternatives to the dominant philosophical historiography: the laughers, materialists, radicals, cynics, hedonists, atheists, sensualists, voluptuaries. They know that there is only one world, and that promotion of an afterlife deprives us of the enjoyment and benefit of the only one there is. A genuinely deadly sin.”  Michel Onfray, Atheist Manifesto Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” President Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, Jan. 1, 1802 Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

“Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.” John Morley, "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

“It was only when I finally undertook to read the Bible through from beginning to end that I perceived that its depiction of the Lord God--whom I had always viewed as the very embodiment of perfection--was actually that of a monstrous, vengeful tyrant, far exceeding in bloodthirstiness and insane savagery the depredations of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Attila the Hun, or any other mass murderer of ancient or modern history.” Steve Allen, Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion & Morality, 1990 Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

“As the years went on I gradually transmogrified from being an evolutionary biologist to an evolutionary biologist atheist and now I'm more of an atheist than an evolutionary biologist.  I realized that creationism, the opposition to evolution, is the least of our worries that religion promulgates, compared to someone throwing acid in the face of a schoolgirl in Afghanistan.” Jerry Coyne, acceptance speech of Emperor Has No Clothes Award, October 2011 Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

Why is sin bad? Why is disappointing your god bad? Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

What would your life look like if you left Christianity? What's the worst that can happen if someone leaves Christianity? Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

Six days may work be done; but in the seventh  is  the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth  any  work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Exodus 31:15 Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. - Karl Marx Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering

Is there anything your god has done in the past that makes you uncomfortable? Promoting Understanding of Religious Suffering