viernes, 5 de septiembre de 2008

Great Thinkers on God and Religion (Part II)

(First Part)

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
Stephen Roberts

"I distrust those peole who know so well what god wants them to do because I notice it always concides with their own desires."
Susan B. Anthony

"Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when whe's drunk." (hahahaha)
Tom Waits

"If it turns out there is a god, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst thing that you can say about him is that he's an underachiever."
Woody Allen

"We must respect other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
Henry Louis Mencken

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
Benjamin Franklin

"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church."
Attributed to Ferdinand Magellan by R. G. Ingersoll. Veracity debated.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Carl Sagan

"And if there were a god, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence."
Bertrand Russell

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

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
Samuel Clemence "Mark Twain"

"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 good part of Christmas is not always christian, it is generally Pagan, that is to say human, natural."
Robert G. Ingersoll

"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered, religion is answers that may never be questioned."
Anonymous

"In no instance have the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people."
James Madison

"The atheist does not say 'there is no god', but he says 'I know not what you mean by god, I am without idea of god'; the word 'god' is to me a sound conveying no clear or disctint affirmation... The bible god I deny, the christian god I disbelieve in, but I am not rash enough to say there is no god as long as you tell me you are unprepared to define god to me."
Charles Bradlaugh

"God created man on his image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor."
Jean Jaques Rousseau

"If atheists are deaf to the word of god, then theists are blind to the ways of man."
Michael Pain

"Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it."
John Adams

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

"Men who believe absurdities will commit atrocities."
Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire"

"I have never made but one prayer to god, a very short one: 'lord, make my enemies ridiculous'. And god granted it."
Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire"

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but I have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbound admiration for the structure of the world as far as our science can reveal it."
Albert Einstein (from a letter he wrote in English dated 24th march 1954, for those who love to misquote him)

"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same god who has given us our senses, reason and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them."
Galileo Galilei

"What Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt after being drunk all night."
Isaac Asimov

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the gospel in praise of intelligence."
Bertrand Russell

"God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive."
Ayn Rand

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason and more contradictory to itself that this thing called christianity."
Thomas Paine

"Theocracy has always been the synonym for a bleak and narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained tyranny."
William Archer

"Christian, n. One who follows the teaching of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
Heathen, n. A benighten creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.
Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does." (hahahaha)
Ambrose Bierce

"The bible is one of the most genocidal books of all history."
Noam Chomsky

"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses."
Arthur C. Clarke

"A nun, at best, is only half a woman; just as a priest is only half a man."
Henry Louis Mencken

"Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen."
Michel de Montaigne

"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is they are not even superficial."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"Few people are worthy to believe in nothing."
Jean Rostand

"God or Nature."
Baruch Spinoza

"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to the church we're just making him madder and madder."
Homer Simpson (Pascal's Wager)

"A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen."
Oscar Wilde

2 comentarios:

Vicente Calibo de Jesus dijo...

Magellan quote is a fabrication

The quote is a fabrication of Robert Green Ingersoll. It is found in his essay “Individuality.” This may be accessed at http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individuality.html

It’s in the fourth paragraph of his essay:

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, — some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, “The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.” On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.

This was first pointed out, as far as I know, by Dr. Tom Gorski in his website “Knowing What Ain’t So” at http://www.churchoffreethought.org/cgi-bin/contray/contray.cgi?DATA=&ID=000011010&GROUP=048. Dr. Gorski is one of four founders of the The North Texas Church of Freethought.

There are probably over a hundred sites on the Web with this bogus quote. I hope we all begin to exercise some form of self-correction and cite the real author of those words, Ingersoll.

That the world was round was a fact known for thousands of years before Magellan. The Church had thinkers who knew this, some who doubted. The Church never took a stand. What the Church declared ex cathedra as an article of faith was the idea that the Earth was center of the Universe. It has long discarded this wayward thought.

Vicente Calibo de Jesus ginesdemafra@gmail.com

Dr. Acula dijo...

Thank you very much for your comment and the information Vicente, I had never heard about that. It is a known fact that many ancient civilizations had full consciousness about the world being round.
Anyway, despite the undeniable credibility of the quote you're here sharing, I think that what really matters here is the message, not the messenger. If Magellan said the phrase or not might be irrelevant next to the beauty of the words here quoted.
Thank you very much for your interest.