Caninist* meditations on Dogs, Gods and Inhumanities from philosophers, scientists, poets, writers, artists, athletes, entertainers, political figures and other intelligent people ~ even clerics

* Caninism - The belief in the superiority of Canines to humans; given to the veneration of Canines

“Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.”

~ ANONYMOUS

"On the sixth day, god created man.
On the seventh day man returned the favor."

~ ANONYMOUS

A drunk, reeking of alcohol and carrying a filthy backpack and an old newspaper, gets on a bus sitting next to a priest. He takes out a bottle and drinks what booze is left in one gulp. Satiated, he hiccups and belches, opens his paper and starts to read.

The priest tries to ignore him and hide his discomfort.

A few moments later the drunk turns to the priest and asks, "Father, can you tell me what the hell causes arthritis?"

Upset, the priest replies sarcastically, "Arthritis is surely brought on by an unholy lifestyle, by frequenting prostitutes, by abusing alcohol and tobacco, by drunken stupors that degenerate into nights of whoring and all that kind of garbage...."

"H-o-o-o-o-oly shshshshshshit!" curses the drunk as he returns to his reading.

The priest, fearing he's been too harsh on the poor man, addresses him apologetically. "My son," he says, "I'm sorry I was so rude. Tell me, how long have you been suffering with arthritis?"

"O-o-o-o-o-o-oh, n-n-not me, Father, never! I was just reading in the paper about how the Pope suffered from arthritis for years....."

~ ANNONYMOUS

God Is a Sock

"I've never felt more generous, nor more selfish; rarely more creative, rarely more indifferent."

~ DENIS ACHACOSO
(as the cancer was slowly killing him)
Polymath: Thinker, artist, wit, gourmand, clown
(1948 - 2005)

"Go to a house of worship. A good sermon helps everyone. At the very least, you can wake up from the thing refreshed."

• • •

"How god could create such a nice [Iguazú] falls and forget to stick in an escalator, I have no idea."

~ CINDY ADAMS
American gossip columnist
(b. ?)

“If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!”

~ CLARK ADAMS
American freethought leader and activist
(1969 – 2007)

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"

• • •

"I shall have liberty to think for myself without molesting others or being molested myself."

• • •

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

• • •

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing god's service when it is violating all his laws."

• • •

"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."

~ JOHN ADAMS
American politician and the second President of the United States
(1735 – 1826)

~ DON ADDIS
Editor, editorial cartoonist and columnist with the St. Petersburg Times
(1935-2009)

 

 

 

"O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray,
To come to me: of cureless ills thou art
The one physician. Pain lays not its touch
Upon a corpse."

In Memoriam

BRITTANY MAYNARD
Advocate for the legalization of aid in dying and assisted suicide
(November 19, 1984 – November 1, 2014)
29-year-old American woman with terminal brain cancer who decided that
she would end her own life "when the time seemed right."

"For it would be better to die once and for all
than to suffer pain for all one's life.

~ AESCHYLUS
(c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BCE)
The father of tragedy; the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians
whose plays can still be read or performed.

AJAMI

CALDWELL

“The new [Muslim] arrivals, timid at first, grew expansive in the claims they made. This was odd: they had fled the fire, and the failure, of their ancestral lands, but they brought the fire with them. Political Islam had risen on its home turf in the Middle East and North Africa, in South Asia, but a young generation in Europe gave its allegiance to the new Islamist radicalism. Emancipated women had shed the veil in Egypt and Turkey and Iran in the 1920s; there are Muslim women now asserting their right to wear the burqa in Paris.

“...The militants took the liberties of Europe as a sign of moral and political abdication. They included “activists” now dreaming of imposing the Shariah on Denmark and Britain. There were also warriors of the faith, in storefront mosques in Amsterdam and London, openly sympathizing with the enemies of the West. And there were second-generation immigrants who owed no allegiance to the societies of Europe.”

~ FOUAD AJAMI
MacArthur Fellowship winning, Lebanese-born American university professor
and writer on Middle Eastern issues
(b. 1945)
reviewing
REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN EUROPE: Immigration, Islam, and the West
By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
American journalist and senior editor at The Weekly Standard; contributor to the Financial Times, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post; contributing editor to the The New York Times Magazine.
(b. n/a)

“I’ve never really been in awe of anyone. When you’re 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds and good lookin’, you know, you’re not in awe of too many people.”

~ LINCOLN ALEXANDER
Canada’s first black member of Parliament first black cabinet minister
and first black lieutenant governor (Ontario)
(1922 - 2012)

"In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue."

~ ETHAN ALLEN
American revolutionary, leader of the "Green Mountain Boys"
Champion of statehood for Vermont
(1738 - 1789)

"It is not hardness of heart or evil passions that drive individuals to atheism, but rather a scrupulous intellectual honesty."

 

“If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.”

~ STEVE ALLEN
American television and radio personality, musician, actor, comedian and writer
(1921 – 2000)

"Believing would be easier if God would show himself by depositing a million dollars in a Swiss bank account in my name."

• • •

"Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."

• • •

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

~ WOODY ALLEN
American film director, screenwriter, actor, comedian, musician and playwright
(b. 1935)

"The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."

~ ABU ALA AL-MA'ARRI
Blind Syrian Arab philosopher, poet and writer;
controversial rationalist of his time, attacking the dogmas of religion
and rejecting the claim that Islam possessed any monopoly on truth.
(? - 1059)

"Since it is no longer permissible to disparage any single faith or creed, let us start disparaging all of them. A religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful."

• • •

“There is a rage which has been building for the past century which is hoping to rebuild its ( Islam's ) superiority through violence.”

• • •

“There are great problems with Islam. The Koran recommends the beating of women. The anti-Semites, the psychotic misogynists and the homophobes are the Islamists.”

~ MARTIN AMIS
English novelist, short story writer and literary critic
(b. 1949)

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."

~ SUSAN B. ANTHONY
American civil rights leader and women's suffragette
(1820 – 1906)

“Of all possible sexual perversions, religion is the only one to have ever been scientifically systematized.”

~ LOUIS ARAGON
French poet, novelist and editor;
long-time political supporter of the Communist Party
and member of the Académie Goncourt
(1897 – 1982)

"There is honor in being a Dog."

• • •

"Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life."

• • •

“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.”

~ ARISTOTLE
Greek philosopher
(384 - 324 BCE)

“A god who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a god who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If god is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect. he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a god is amply justified.”

• • •

"Religion starts with the perception that something is wrong."

~ KAREN ARMSTRONG
British author on comparative religion, former Catholic nun
(b. 1944)

“If there was a god, I’d still have both nuts.”

• • •

"I don’t have anything against organized religion per se. We all need something in our lives. I personally just have not accepted that belief.”

• • •

“At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I’d been baptized. If there was indeed a god at the end of my days, I hoped he didn’t say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you’re going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You’re right. Fine.'”

~ LANCE ARMSTRONG
American professional road racing cyclist,
winner of the Tour de France seven consecutive years, 1999 to 2005
(b. 1971)

"Americans as a whole may not be getting too much religion, but a significant constituency must be getting fed up with being routinely marginalized, ignored and insulted."

~ RONALD ARONSON
American author, editor, journalist
Professor of the History of Ideas, Wayne State University
(b. n/a)

“Emotionally I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”

• • •

"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."

• • •

"Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night"

• • •

"To surrender to ignorance and call it god has always been premature, and it remains premature today."

• • •

"Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition."

~ ISAAC ASIMOV
Russian born American author and professor of biochemistry
best known for works of science fiction and popular science
(1920 – 1992)

What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

• • •

“To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith.”

~ W.H. AUDEN
American poet born in England
(1907 – 1973)

“Life is life - whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.”

• • •

"Man is a transitional being. He is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner spirit and the logic of Nature's process".

~ SRI AUROBINDO
Indian nationalist and freedom fighter,
major Indian English poet, philosopher, and yogi
(1872-1950)

“I don’t try to be balanced. I try and tell the truth as I see it.” • • • “Our job is not to amuse our readers. Our mission is to stir them, inform and inflame them. Our task is to continually hold up our government and our leaders to cleareyed analysis, unaffected by professional spin-meisters and agenda-pushers. In these times, when those of us who are members of the ‘reality-based community’ are under relentless attack from both the right and the left, we must encourage, and our work must reflect, independent and nonideological thinking.”

~ TONY AUTH
American editorial cartoonist for The Philadelphia Inquirer since 1971;
winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 and the Herblock Prize in 2005
(1942 - 2014)

"Truth is a good Dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out."

• • •

“By far the best proof is experience.”

• • •

“I have taken all knowledge to be my province."

• • •

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shal end in doubts; but, if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.”

• • •

"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men."

• • •

“Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tqales, so is the other.”

• • •

”Knowledge is power.”

~ SIR FRANCIS BACON
(1561 - 1626)
English author, courtier and philosopher

"I believe in nothing. You are born, you die and that's it."

• • •

"People seem to be offended by facts, or what used to be called truth."

• • •

"I don't like to see people suffer but, then, they breed at such a rate that they're bound to suffer."

• • •

"The only world that won't disappoint me is the one I make up."

~ FRANCIS BACON
(1909 - 1992)
Irish born British artist

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion 1944	Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1953	Three Studies for a Crucifixion 1962

"If a dog doesn't put you first where are you both? In what relation? A dog needs God. It lives by your glances, your wishes. It even shares your humour. This happens about the fifth year. If it doesn't happen you are only keeping an animal."

~ ENID BAGNOLD
British novelist, playwright
(1889–1981)

"If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.”

• • •

"The idea of god implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and in practice."

• • •

"All religions, with their demigods and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had no t attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but the mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovered his own image, but enlarged and reversed -- that is, divinized."

• • •

"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free-thinker and emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge."

• • •

"Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker."

~ MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism
(1814 - 1876)

“The real arbiter of whether or not a being deserves respect and compassion is sentience. Being sensate to pleasures and especially to pains is the true currency of ethics.”

~ JONATHAN BALCOMBE
Animal behaviorist born in England, raised in New Zeland and Canada, author,
Formerly Senior Research Scientist with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, he is currently Chair of the Animal Studies Department with the Humane Society University
(b. n/a)

"No one is more dangerous than one who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity. By definition is unassailable."

~ JAMES BALDWIN
American novelist, essayist, dramatist, poet and civil rights activist
(1924 - 19870)

"Ireland from 1930 to the late 1990s was a closed state, ruled — the word is not too strong — by an all-powerful Catholic Church with the connivance of politicians and, indeed, the populace as a whole, with some honorable exceptions. The doctrine of original sin was ingrained in us from our earliest years, and we borrowed from Protestantism the concepts of the elect and the unelect. If children were sent to orphanages, industrial schools and reformatories, it must be because they were destined for it, and must belong there. What happened to them within those unscalable walls was no concern of ours."

~ JOHN BANVILLE
Irish novelist, playwright and journalist; Booker Prize in 2005
(b.1945)

"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?"

~ DAN BARKER
Prominent American Atheist activist who served as a Christian preacher
and musician for 19 years but left Christianity in 1984.
(b. 1949)

"The scriptures teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens move."

~ CESARE BARONIO
Italian Cardinal and ecclesiastical historian,
prominent member of the Order of the Oratory
(1538 – 1607)

"The absurd man is he who never changes."

~ AUGUSTE BARTHELEMY
French satirical poet
(1796 – 1867)

"Just in the past few months, I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.

This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts.... He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis.

The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence. But you can't run the world on faith."

~ BRUCE BARTLETT
American historian, supply-side economics,
domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan
and treasury official under President George H.W. Bush
(b. 1951)

"So many get reformed through religion. I got reformed through Dogs."

~ LINA BASQUETTE
American slent screen actress, Zigfiled Follies dancer,
Great Dane breeder, pro handler, and AKC Judge
(1907-1994)

“Forget Memory. Try Imagination.”

~ ANNE BASTING
Director of the Center on Age and Community and an Associate Professor
in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the Peck School of the Arts,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
(b. n/a)

"No entiendo que quieran matarme por una exposición. No entiendo cómo se puede llegar a situaciones de amenaza de muerte por unas imágenes."

"I don't understand their wanting to kill me over an exhibit. I don't understand how a situation gets to the point of death threats over some images."

~ FERNANDO BAYONA
Spanish photographer and graphic designer
(b. 1980)

To view entire series, click on image above and then on extreme right in the resulting window.

“To drink without thirst and to make love all the time, madam, it is only these which distinguish us from the other beasts.”

~ BEAUMARCHAIS
French playwright, Financier and diploma. After beginning as a watchmaker, Beaumarchais rose in French society.
(1732 – 1799)

"Christianity is the enemy of liberty and of civilization. It has kept mankind in chains."

• • •

"When socialism comes into power, the Roman Church will advocate socialism with the same vigor it is now favoring feudalism and slavery."

~ AUGUST BEBEL
German social democrat;
one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
(1840-1913)

"Try again, fail again, fail better."

• • •

“I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.”

• • •

“Absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullness of it and the pomposities of it”

• • •

"Habit is the ballast that chains the Dog to his vomit."

• • •

"How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones."

• • •

“God is a witness that cannot be sworn.”.

• • •

"Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the kind of life he led there before joining the family circle."

• • •

“We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.”

• • •

“Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.”

• • •

“In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.”

• • •

“Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.”

• • •

"The bastard! He doesn't exist!"

~ SAMUEL BECKETT
Irish playwright
(1906-1989)

“I do not know that Christianity holds anything more of importance for the world. It is finished, played out. The only trouble lies in how to get rid of the body before it begins to smell too much.”

~ JOHN BEEVERS
English author, poet; biographer of Catholic saits
(1911-1975)

~ NATE BEELER
(b. n/a)
Award winning editorial cartoonist for The Columbus Dispatch

~ RICARDO BELLVER
Spanish sculptor
(1845 — 1924)
EL ÁNGEL CAÍDO
The Fallen Angel
1877
Only known monument to Lucifer
Parque del Buen Retiro, Madrid

Click √ on Image above to view color enlargement

“What happens as Israel continues to become more religious and conservative, more isolated internationally and less democratic domestically? What happens to the relationship between American Jews and Israel as the face of Israel shifts from that of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres to that of the national religious settlers and the ultra-Orthodox rabbis?”

~ JEREMY BEN-AMI
Executive director of J Street, a liberal advocacy organization in the United States whose stated aim is to promote American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israel-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically
(b. n/a)

"The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"

• • •

"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny."

• • •

"Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse?  But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old.  But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail?  The question is not, 'Can [animals] reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' But, 'Can they suffer?'"

• • •

“No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion ”

• • •

"There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality."

• • •

"The spirit of dogmatic theology poisons anything it touches."

~ JEREMY BENTHAM
English jurist, utilitarian philosopher and social reformer
(1748-1832)

"To be silent in the face of injustice is to be an accomplice to evil. I will not be silent."

~ LORI BERENSON
American convicted in Peru in 1996 of unlawful collaboration with the
Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA)
(b. 1969)

"Me pray? Never! I'm an atheist."

~ SARAH BERNHARDT
French romantic and tragic actress
(1844-1923)

"No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism."

• • •

"Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not palpably self-contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God been described so that a concept of Him was made possible to human thought."

• • •

"The position of the atheist is a clear and reasonable one. I know nothing about God and therefore I do not believe in Him or it. What you tell me about your God is self-contradictory and is therefore incredible. I do not deny "God," which is an unknown tongue to me. I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God."

• • •

"If my interlocutor desires to convince me that Jupiter has inhabitants, and that his description of them is accurate, it is for him to bring forward evidence in support of his contention. The burden of proof evidently lies on him; it is not for me to prove that no such beings exist before my non-belief is justified, but for him to prove that they do exist before my belief can be fairly claimed. Similarly, it is for the affirmer of god's existence to bring evidence in support of his affirmation; the burden of proof lies on him."

• • •

"For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most."

~ ANNIE WOOD BESANT
English philosopher and theosophist
(1847-1933)

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err.

For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

• • •

"Wolves are not our brothers; they are not our subordinates, either. They are another nation, caught up just like us in the complex web of time and life."

~ HENRY BESTON
American writer and naturalist
(1888 – 1968)

"With regard to -- with regard to abortion, I accept my church’s position on abortion as a -- what we call de fide (doctrine ?). Life begins at conception. That’s the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life.

"But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews and -- I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman.

"I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that women, they can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor, in my view."

~ JOSEPH BIDEN
47th Vice President of the United States, former United States Senator from Delaware.
(b. 1942)

~ AMOS BIDERMAN
( b. 1952)
Graphic Designer. Editorial Cartoonist for Haaretz Daily Newspaper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOD TIES ONE ON

It's been a rough day. Ice Age in the morning, Vesuvius after lunch and the loss of God's favorite trattoria in Pompeii.

God rolls a joint, invents the match, and fires up around 5:00, though a fanatical cadre of historians would later insist it was 4:20, and took place in San Rafael California, not Eden, Garden of . Still, it's hard to leave work at the office. God internalizes naturally, obssesses about that pill Ghengis Khan and what went wrong. God creates the Cosmo, and the cocktail glass for good measure. After the second drink, God sees that it's all good. Very good. Very all good.

The world's a beautiful place. Even the cocktail glass is amazing. God's an overachiever, picked by no one to go this far, until others were created and jumped on the bandwagon and started singing the praises. Figures.

Then God gets the munchies. Invents M&M's, Newman's popcorn, and Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia. Having missed out on The Dead due to distractions like Bangladesh, the Beatles, and Marlin Perkins on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, God re-discovers Jerry Garcia. Becomes a deadhead for a day. Supposedly stays away from the Owsley acid, though skeptics in Quebec point to the '89 solar storm that sent compasses spinning as evidence God may have dropped a tab or two at the Montreal show.

The yellow moon rises in the purple sky above Eden, and God, longing for a best friend, creates the basset whose goofy looks bring on a grin.

"I'll call you Absurd," says God. " And I'll call you a turd," replies the bassett.

Awkward. They laugh and discover they're the mirror image of one another. God is dog spelled backwards, and dog is god. And God is good when you add an o. "Oh," says Absurd. " Good God, we're good . . . dog."

God dozes in the adirondak. A screeching owl sails low. Absurd knows his best friend is now dreaming. Lifting his head, the hound cuts loose a mournful howl that echoes off canyon walls, returns as a breeze - a wind - a tropical storm.

God awakes grumpy - rarely a good thing, and just like that, Monday is made.

~ GUY BIEDERMAN
American author, publisher and fiction writing teacher from California
(b. n/a)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

• • •

Christian, adj. 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 insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

• • •

Dog, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.

• • •

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.

• • •

Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

• • •

Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.

• • •

Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.

• • •

Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity.

• • •

Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.

• • •

Koran, n. A book which the Mahammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.

• • •

Mayonnaise, n. One of the sauces that serve the French in place of a state religion.

• • •

Mythology, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

• • •

Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

• • •

Rack, n. An argumentatvie implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false failth to embrace the living truth.

• • •

Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

• • •

Reverence, n. the spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a Dog to a man.

• • •

Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

• • •

Sabbath, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.

• • •

Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

~ AMBROSE BIERCE
American Author and Humorist
(1842-1914)
From: The Devil's Dictionary

"No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion."

~ HUGO L. BLACK
American politician and jurist
U.S. Supreme Court Justice
(1886 – 1971)

"I have no religion because I was born and raised Jewish. And on the first night of Hanukkah, my parents, when I was very young, gave me a top to play with. They called it a dreidel. I knew it was a top. And as I looked at that top, I said, 'You know. I don't think I'm gonna be Jewish for very long.'"

• • •

"You know a religion has no sense of humor, when a guy can stand up and say, ‘you know, if you commit suicide for Allah, after you die you will be met in heaven by 70 virgins,' and nobody in the room just goes, 'AHAHAHA! Son of a bitch! That was great!'"

• • •

"They believe if they kill themselves that they will be met in Heaven by 70 some odd virgins. Imagine that kind of faith. To think that that would happen. When I haven't met one on Earth!"

~ LEWIS BLACK
American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor. He is known for his comedy style, which often includes an increasingly angry rant, ridiculing history, politics, religion, trends and cultural phenomena
(b. 1948)

“A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation.”

• • •

"The Vision of Christ that thou dost see,
Is my vision's greatest enemy.
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind,
Mine speaks in Parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates,
Thy heaven-doors are my hell gates."

~ WILLIAM BLAKE
English poet, painter and printmaker
(1757 – 1827)

"To hold happiness is to hold the understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies. No amount of mockery, no amount of fashionable scowling will keep any of us from knowing and savoring the pleasure of the sun on our faces or save us from the adult understanding that it cannot last forever."

~ AMY BLOOM
American social worker who has practiced psychotherapy;
lecturer of Creative Writing in the department of English at Yale University
and Kim-Frank Family University Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University
(b. 1953)

"Don’t debate the Bible. You can’t win. Religious faith is not defined by logic, it defies it. Instead, decouple the legal right from the religious rite, and emphasize the idea of acceptance without

• • •

“We must all remember that what is right and what is legal don’t always dovetail.” endorsement."

• • •

"Propaganda is one thing; prevarication is another."

• • •

“Illuminate, elucidate and agitate.”

~ CHARLES M. BLOW
American journalist, columnist
(b. n/a)

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

~ DEREK BOK
Former Harvard president; founder of the Curtis Publishing Company
(b. 1930)

“Here, Gentlemen, a Dog teaches us a lesson in humanity.”

• • •

"I cannot believe there is a god who punishes and rewards, for I see honest folk unlucky, and rogues unlucky."

• • •

"If I had to choose a religion, the Sun as the universal giver of life would be my god."

• • •

"There is no place in a fanatic’s head where reason can enter."

• • •

“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”

• • •

"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."

~ NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
Emperor Napoleon I
French military and political leader
(1769 – 1821)

“The Nazis, who had such conspicuous disregard for human rights, felt more strongly about the animals.”

~ DR. JAN BONDESON
Senior lecturer at Cardiff University School of Medicine in Wales
from Amazing Dogs

"The less you know, the more you believe."

• • •

“Lent I’ve always had issues with. I gave it up ... self-denial is where I come a cropper. My idea of discipline is simple — hard work — but of course that’s another indulgence.”

• • •

“I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way. Not all soul music comes from the church.”

~ BONO
Irish singer and musician, lead singer of the band U2;
a co-founder of the advocacy group ONE
(b. 1960)
From "It’s 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?"
New York Times, published April 18, 2009

“Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people. Before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all His children.”

 

“We can’t put shallow celebrity before core decency.”

~ CORY BOOKER
American politician, elected Mayor of Newark, New Jersey,in 2006
(b. 1969)

“Obedience is a two-way street — it involves a great deal of trust, and the trust part is very, very low for me right now. You can’t promise obedience when you feel like you can’t trust the person you’re supposed to obey.”

~ REV. ROBERT J. BOWERS
American. Former diocesan parish priest.
Presently in the Paulist Center, Boston
(b. 1960)

"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 distinct 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
Political activist and one of the most famous English atheists of the 19th century; founder of the National Secular Society in 1866.
(1833 – 1891)

"Interspecies bonding shows just how powerful love is and it opens our eyes to new possibilities. Often people are admonished to stop 'acting like an animal'. But experiences of interspecies love suggest that it may well be time to start acting like animals and for human culture to adopt some important animal ways of compassion and care. As human caregivers, we have the responsibility to live up to animal loyalty and trust and to honor this contract of the heart."

~ GAY ARNDT BRADSHAW
American ecologist, psychology, writer, tteacher and lecturer;
Executive Director & Founder, The Kerulos Center
Co-Founder, International Association for Animal Trauma and Recovery

“True news so you don’t have to invest any money in buying newspapers that charge you for the privilege of keeping your consciousness imprisoned in a tiny box of ignorance and lies.”

~ RUSSELL BRAND
(b. 1975)
English comedian, actor, radio host, author, and activist.

Click √ on TREWS logo for video

"For me, the single word “God” suggests everything that is slippery, shady, squalid, foul, and grotesque"

• • •

"So may night continue to fall upon the orchestra, and may I, who am still searching for something in this world, may I be left with open or closed eyes, in broad daylight, to my silent contemplation."

~ ANDRÉ BRETON
French writer, poet , and surrealist theorist;
principal founder of Surrealism
(1896 – 1966)

“A succesful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”

~ DAVID BRINKLEY
American Journalist and newscaster for NBC and ABC in a career lasting from 1943 to 1997.
(1920 – 2003)

~ CHRIS BRITT
American editorial cartoonist for the State Journal-Register of Springfield, Illinois,
and the Copley News Service
(b. n/a)

[We would] "never be at the mercy of Providence if only we understood that we ourselves are Providence."

~ VERA BRITTAIN
English writer, feminist and pacifist
(1893 – 1970)

"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy."

• • •

"We’re all born late. We’re born into history that is well under way. We’re born into cultures, nations and languages that we didn’t choose. On top of that, we’re born with certain brain chemicals and genetic predispositions that we can’t control. We’re thrust into social conditions that we detest. Often, we react in ways we regret even while we’re doing them."

• • •

"We have a need to tell ourselves stories that explain it all. We use these stories to supply the metaphysics, without which life seems pointless and empty.

"Among all the things we don’t control, we do have some control over our stories. We do have a conscious say in selecting the narrative we will use to make sense of the world. Individual responsibility is contained in the act of selecting and constantly revising the master narrative we tell about ourselves."

• • •

"As you act to combat evil, you wouldn't want to get carried away by your own righteousness or be seduced by the belief that you are innocent. Even fighting evil can be corrupting."

• • •

“If you want to find a good place to live, just ask people if they trust their neighbors.”

• • •

"Often, as we spend more on something, what we gain in privacy and elegance we lose in spontaneous sociability."

• • •

"Buy experiences instead of things; buy many small pleasures instead of a few big ones; pay now for things you can look forward to and enjoy later."

• • •

“Modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most. They have an affinity for material concerns and a primordial fear of moral and social ones.”

• • •

"Last year [2009], the Pew Research Center surveyed the global middle class and found that middle-class people are more likely than their poorer countrymen to value democracy, free speech and an objective judiciary. They were more likely to embrace religious pluralism and say that you don’t have to believe in God to be good."

~ DAVID BROOKS
Canadian born American political
and cultural commentator and columnist
(b. August 11, 1961)

• • •

"I think most of life's problems are too complicated to be solved with a spiritual blotter!"

~ CHARLIE BROWN
Main character in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz;
loveable loser, a child possessed of endless determination and hope
but who is ultimately dominated by his insecurities and a "permanent case of bad luck"
(b. 1950)

"Who knows most, doubts most."

• • •

"The lie was dead, And damned, and truth stood up instead."

• • •

"Ignorance is not innocence, but sin."mm

• • •

"Less is more."

~ ROBERT BROWNING
Victorian English poet and playwright
(1812 – 1889)

"Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to god."

~LENNY BRUCE
American stand-up comedian, writer, social critic and satirist
(1925 – 1966)

“You pronounce sentence upon me with greater fear than I receive it.”

~ GIORDANO BRUNO
to his inquisitors
Italian philosopher, linguist and mathematician;
proponent of heliocentrism and the infinity of the universe;
wrote extensive works on the art of memory,
a loosely-organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles.
Burned at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition
(1548 – 1600)

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."

~ JOHN BUCHAN
1st Baron Tweedsmui
British novelist and Unionist politician born in Scotland
Governor General of Canada 1935 to 1940
(1875 – 1940)

"I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.  Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels."

~ PEARL S. BUCK
(also known as Sai Zhen Zhu)
American sinologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer;
awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938;
described in China as a Chinese writer
(1892 — 1973)

"Too bad ignorance isn't painful."

~ BUMPER STICKER

"I'm still an atheist, thank god."

~ LUIS BUÑUEL
Spanish filmmaker
(1900 – 1983)

Church Bells Ringing, Rainy Winter Night

~ CHARLES BURCHFIELD
American watercolorist and visionary artist
(1893 - 1967)

“'Church Bells Ringing, Rainy Winter Night,' a picture of a steeple looming like a great bug-eyed bird over a squat town as black rain pours down. To Burchfield, at that point simultaneously agnostic and terrified of damnation, the painting expressed the dread that religion instilled in him." - Holland Cotter on Charles Burchfield

“If you are a bad person, a whining enemy or a strong-arm occupier, you are not my brother, even if you are circumcised, observe the Sabbath, and do mitzvahs. If your scarf covers every hair on your head for modesty, you give alms and do charity, but what is under your scarf is dedicated to the sanctity of Jewish land, taking precedence over the sanctity of human life, whosever life that is, then your are not my sister. You might be my enemy. A good Arab or a righteous gentile will be a brother or sister to me. A wicked man, even of Jewish descent, is my adversary, and I would stand on the other side of the barricade and fight him to the end."

~ AVRAHAM BURG
Former Israeli Knesset Speaker and Jewish National Fund Chairman
(b. 1955)

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

• • •

"Falsehood has a perennial spring."

• • •

"The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own."

• • •

"Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." 

~ EDMUND BURKE
Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher
(1729 – 1797)

"God knows I'm not the thing I should be,
Nor am I even the thing I could be.
But twenty times I'd rather would be an atheist clean,
Than under gospel colours hid be,
Just for a screen."

~ ROBERT BURNES
Poet and lyricist regarded as the national poet of Scotland
(1759 – 1796)

“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.”

• • •

There is no Heaven, there is no Hell;
These are the dreams of baby minds;
Tools of the wily Fetisheer,
To fright the fools his cunning blinds.

~ SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON
English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist,
linguist, poet and diplomat
(1821 - 1890)

“To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.”

• • •

"Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.  They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously."

• • •

"All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it."

~ SAMUEL BUTLER
English Victorian novelist
(1612–1680)

"I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains."

~ GEORGE GORDON LORD BYRON
English Romantic poet
(1788-1824)

~ CAGANER OBAMA
(2008)
Caganer ("Shitter") - figurine traditionally placed in Christmas manger scenes in the region of
Cataluña in Spain meaning that, no matter the greatness of an event (i.e.: the birth of the son of god), Nature always must be tended to first.

“Pues el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido.”

“For man’s greatest crime is to have been born.”

~PEDRO CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA
from La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream).
Dramatist, poet and writer of the Spanish Golden Age
(1600-1681)

"When the other girls dropped to their knees to pray,
I took a run for it."

~ ELLEN SHINE CALLAGHAN
New Your City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s grandmother,
Titanic survivour
(1891 - 1993)

“Perhaps this (the ordination of women) is not a human rights issue because women are not human or they do not have rights.”

• • •

“When people work on social justice issues, they don’t win much and wind up dropping out. To laugh at oneself from the beginning is essential.”

• • •

“He [Don Quixote] dreams, he has visions, but he’s basically a silly old man.”

~ WILLIAM R. CALLAHAN
American dissident Jesuit priest who challenged the Vatican and whose activism on behalf of changes in Vatican policy regarding the ordination of women, his ministry to gay Catholics and his activities on behalf of social justice led to his expulsion from the Society of Jesus in 1991, forbidding him to act as a priest.
(1931-2010)

“I don't have to have faith, I have experience.”

• • •

“God is a metaphor for that which trancends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.”

• • •

“What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man's imagination?”

• • •

“Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message.”

• • •

“When we turn from the Iliad and Athens to Jerusalem and the Old Testament [we find] a single-minded single deity with his sympathies forever on one side. And the enemy, accordingly, no matter who it may be, is handled...pretty much as though he were subhuman: not a ‘Thou’ but an ‘It.’”

• • •

“A one sentence definition of mythology? ‘Mythology’ is what we call someone else's religion ”.

• • •

“Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”

• • •

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.“

~ JOSEPH CAMPBELL
American anthropologist
(1904-1987)

"There is but one freedom, to put oneself right with death. After that everything is possible. I cannot force you to believe in God. Believing in God amounts to coming to terms with death. When you have accepted death, the problem of God will be solved--and not the reverse."

• • •

"Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool."

• • •

"Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil."

~ ALBERT CAMUS
Algerian-born French author, philosopher, and journalist
(1913 – 1960)

“Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience.”

~ BENJAMIN CARDOZO
American lawyer and associate Supreme Court Justice
(1870 – 1938)

"Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money."

• • •

"The only good thing to come out of religion was the music."

• • •

"Something is wrong.  War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, crime, torture, corruption and the ice capades.  If this is the best god can do, I am not impressed.  This is not what you expect to find on the resume of a supreme being.  It's what you expect from an office temp with a bad attitude."

• • •

"I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."

• • •

“It’s called the ‘American dream’ but you have to be asleep to believe it.”

~ GEORGE CARLIN
American stand-up comedian, actor and author
(1937 – 2008)

"Not only had I got rid of the theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution."

• • •

"I give money for church organs in the hope the organ music will distract the congregation's attention from the rest of the service."

~ ANDREW CARNEGIE
Scottish born American industrialist, businessman and a major philanthropist
(1835-1919)

“We gave allegedly God-fearing Christians 18 centuries to voluntarily, out of the alleged goodness of miserable hearts, begin making the crooked straight and the rough places plain. And they more often than not did nothing of the sort.”

~ MATTHEW CARNICELLI
New York Times commentator
(b. n/a)

“When all has been considered, it seems to me to be the irresistible intuition that infinite punishment for finite sin would be unjust, and therefore wrong. We feel that even weak and erring Man would shrink from such an act. And we cannot conceive of god as acting on a lower standard of right and wrong.”

• • •

“If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much.”

• • •

"'When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.'"

• • •

“I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet ... you’re so exactly like other people.”

~ LEWIS CARROLL
English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer
(1832 – 1898)

“Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”

• • •

“We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”

• • •

"The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world."

~ JIMMY CARTER
39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981; recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize;
created two new cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education; founded The Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization to advance human rights;
key figure in the Habitat for Humanity project organization
(b. 1924)

~ CARTOON: DONALD RUMSFELD IN ABU GHRAIB
Unidentifiable artist

“Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offence."

• • •

"The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so."

• • •

"We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it."

• • •

"With two thousand years of Christianity behind him... a man can't see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head."

~ LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE
(Louis-Ferdinand Destouches)
French writer and doctor; one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century,
developing a new style that modernized both French and world literature
(1894 – 1961)

"Danger, the spur of all great minds."

• • •

“Ignorance is the mother of admiration.”

~ GEORGE CHAPMAN
English dramatist, translator, and poet
(c. 1559–1634)

"Why is it acceptable that soldiers are unable to serve this nation without attending state-led religious practices they find offensive and false?"

~ SPECIALIST DUSTIN CHALKER
Foxhole Atheists
U. S. Army Medic, awarded Purple Heart, Iraq

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none."

• • •

"I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man."

• • •

“In Philadelphia, I inadvertently came upon an edition of Robert Ingersoll's Essays and Lectures. This was an exciting discovery; his atheism confirmed my own belief that the horrific cruelty of the Old Testament was degrading to the human spirit.”

• • •

“I remember [Vladimir] Horowitz, the pianist... Just before the war [World War II] I dined at his house with his wife, the daughter of Toscanini. Rachmaninoff and Barbirolli were there... It was an intimate dinner, just five of us.

“It seems that each time art is discussed I have a different explanation of it. Why not? That evening I said that art was an additional emotion applied to skillful technique. Someone brought the topic round to religion and I confessed I was not a believer. Rachmaninoff quickly interposed: ‘But how can you have art without religion?’

“‘So is religion,’ he answered. After that I shut up.”

• • •

"Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference."

• • •

"I have no further use for America. I wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ was President."

• • •

"Since the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America's yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States."

Speech from
'The Great Dictator'

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.

Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed,
the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .

Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
"The kingdom of God is within man"

Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!

• • •

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

• • •

"Brunettes are troublemakers. They're worse than the Jews."

~CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin
English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I. Although baptised in the Church of England, Chaplin was thought to be an agnostic for most of his life
(1889 – 1977)

~ PATRICK CHAPPATTE
(b. 1967)
Lebanese-Swiss cartoonist who draws for Le Temps
Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the International New York Times.

~ STÉPHANE CHARBONNIER
(1967 – 7 January 2015)
Charb
French satirical caricaturist and journalist;
among five cartoonists assassinated on 7 January 2015, during the shooting attack on the Charlie Hebdo

< Click √ on clenched fist for CHARLIE HEBDO

NEXT >

"JE SUIS CHARLIE!"
7 January 2015

< Click √ on clenched fist for CHARLIE HEBDO

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“I always like a Dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.”

~ G.K. CHESTERTON
English writer whose prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry,
biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction
(1874 – 1936)

“I consider him a victim. He should have been in the jungle where he’s supposed to be. Not in a house drinking wine and taking Xanax.”

~ FRANK CHIAFARI
Police Officer , Stamford, Connecticut
Shot Travis, the Chimp
(b. n/a)

“I'm what's called here a ‘secular atheist,’ except that I can't even call myself an ‘atheist’ because it is not at all clear what I'm being asked to deny.”

• • •

"[T]he Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon."

• • •

“Three quarters of the American population literally believe in religious miracles. The numbers who believe in the devil, in resurrection, in God doing this and that -- it's astonishing. These numbers aren't duplicated anywhere else in the industrial world. You'd have to maybe go to mosques in Iran or do a poll among old ladies in Sicily to get numbers like this. Yet this is the American population."

~ NOAM CHOMSKY
American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist,
political activist, author and lecturer
(b. 1928)

"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."

• • •

"My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?"

~ JESUS CHRIST
(Jesus of Nazareth)
Jewish philosopher, political thinker and social activist
(c.7–2 - 26–36 BCE)

"The human race had yet to render itself extinct; perhaps the animals were just a dry run. Once you believed animals were insensate things, disposable, of utilitarian value only, it wasn't hard to move on to people."

• • •

"Billions, trillions, of animals had come and gone on this earth, she liked to say, so how could it be otherwise. Their bodies turned to dust, buttheir energy must remain behind, vinding new vessels, new outlets."

• • •

"[The Panther]...said before men started their killing ways, they spoke the same language as all the other animals. There was no boundaries between them. Then the worm of cruelty burrowed into man's heart. The animals needed to protect themselves, so they made up their own languages that only their own kind could understand. The same thing happened when men started killing other men. Everyone felt safer talking their own language. They still do."

• • •

"He was apolitical and unsentimantal, as indifferent to flag-waving as to religious piety."

• • •

"He was a devout Catholic -- a zealot, as it turned out. I left the Church too get divorced. That was the one good thing that came of my marriage."

• • •

"Maybe we need another flood. When life began, the earth was entirely ocean, bombarded with ultraviolet light. Shift a few molecules and everything could evolve differently. Maybe you end up with a planet of insects, or worms. Maybe that's an improvement."

• • •

"When I walked into a forest, I felt that the world of men, of everyone and everything I knew, was falling away from Me."

• • •

"You once told me the book you're researching for is all about the psyche."

"What else could it be about? All our imaginings about animals, the mythmaking, our intense pojections into their world. First, we set them up as our gods; then we made ourselves into their gods and began treating them badly. Many of the animals I've studied were driven into extinction before entering our imagination."

from THE BESTIARY

~ NICHOLAS CHRISTOPHER
American novelist and poet
(b. n/a)

"You have enemies?  Good.  That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."

~ WINSTON CHURCHILL
British Conservative politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War; served as Prime Minister twice (1940–45 and 1951–55). A noted statesman and orator, an officer in the British Army, historian, and writer; received the Nobel Prize in Literature
(1874 – 1965)

2007

 

2011

“When the music stops — when I can’t tie my bow tie, tell a funny story, walk my dog, talk with Whitney, kiss someone special, or tap out lines like this — I’ll know that Life is over. It’s time to be gone.”

• • •

“We obsess in this country about how to eat and dress and drink, about finding a job and a mate. About having sex and children. About how to live. But we don’t talk about how to die. We act as if facing death weren’t one of life’s greatest, most absorbing thrills and challenges. Believe me, it is. This is not dull. But we have to be able to see doctors and machines, medical and insurance systems, family and friends and religions as informative — not governing — in order to be free.”

~ DUDLEY CLENDINEN
from
“The Good Short Life”
Author and journalist; former reporter and editorial writer for The New York Times, suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease
(b. 1944)

 

"Free your mind and your ass will follow."

~ GEORGE CLINTON
FUNKADELIC
American funk band
1970

“While horrific, widespread reports of abuse and cover-up are sadly quite common, the significance here is that a government panel is conclusively saying that the finger-pointing and blame-shifting and excuse-making of the church hierarchy is bogus.”

~ DAVID CLOHESSY
Roman Catholic American activist;
National director and spokesman for the Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)
(b. n/a)

"In Holland, they have come to precisely the same conclusion. There they have adopted a system of secular education, because they have found it impracticable to unite the religious bodies in any system of combined religious instruction."

~ RICHARD COBDEN
British manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman
(1804-1865)

~ SUE COE English artist and illustrator working primarily in drawing and printmaking; Her work is highly political, often directed against capitalism and cruelty to animals (b.1951)

“I know that the Roman Catholic Church repudiates violent forms of homophobia. But to deplore the violence while continuing to proclaim the ideas that undergird it strikes thoughtful people as hypocritical. The teaching of the Church sanctifies the denigration of gays and lesbians.”

~ WILLIAM SLOANE COFFIN
American liberal Christian clergyman and peace activist
(1924 – 2006)

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

~ CHAPMAN COHEN
English freethinker, atheist and secularist essayist and lecturer
(1868 – 1954)

“Although I am nonobservant [Jew] and not particularly stylish or athletic, it is curiously liberating to learn that I would violate no religious strictures if I were to wear mascara while playing football.”

• • •

“Some people might relish a lively discourse on creationism and heart disease: surely that, too, is God’s handiwork, or does he just get credit for the design successes?”

• • •

“Neither on nor off duty did I seek moral guidance from a spiritual leader of any faith. I did consult members of the clergy for their technical expertise when a question impinged on religious doctrine.”

~ RANDY COHEN
American writer and humorist
(b. n/a)

Click √ HERE for “A Conversation with RANDY COHEN upon His Departure from THE NEW YORK TIMES”

“We’ve tried invasions of Muslim lands. We’ve tried imposing new systems of government on them. We’ve tried wars on terror. We’ve tried spending billions of dollars. What we haven’t tried is tackling what’s been rotten in the Arab world by helping a homegrown, bottom-up movement for change turn a U.S.-backed police state into a stable democracy.”

• • •

“It’s precisely the vesting of morality in a nonhuman source that’s dangerous because how then can you apply reason to temper the God-given absolutes that may lead to fanaticism? Ultimately I believe religion stems from humanity’s fear of death, an understandable man-made reaction to the mystery of life and its ending, but no more plausible for being near-universal.”

~ ROGER COHEN
British-born journalist and author, columnist for
The New York Times and International Herald Tribune
(b. 1955)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“All Dogs Go To Heaven? Sorry, kids. It's only the dogs who've accepted Christ.”

 

“There’s a phrase we live by in America: ‘In God We Trust.’ It’s right there where Jesus would want it, on our money.”

• • •

"Remember, Jesus would rather constantly shame gays than let orphans have a family."

• • •

“Christianity is the best way to cure gayness—just get on your knees, take a swig of wine, and accept the body of a man into your mouth.”

• • •

“Here's an easy way to figure out if you're in a cult:If you're wondering whether you're in a cult, the answer is yes.”

• • •

"Agnostics are just atheists without balls.”

• • •

“Atheism, a religion dedicated to its own sense of smug superiority.”

• • •

“A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased. Otherwise, how will children ever understand the concept of God?”

• • •

“I live by syllogisms: God is love. Love is blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God. I don't know what I'd believe in if it wasn't for that.”

• • •

“It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.”

~ STEPHEN COLBERT
American political satirist and television host
(b. 1964)

"One by one, his Schnauzers died of liver disease,except the one that guarded his corpse holding a tumbler of Bushmills."

~ HENRI COLE
American poet
(b. 1956)

“If you complain about Christmas overkill because you are, say, a Muslim or a Jew, the general response is a quick hug and a nervous affirmation that all faiths deserve respect. But atheists do not get that many hugs, and perhaps it is beginning to tell on them.”

• • •

"There are tens of millions Americans who oppose abortion because of deeply held moral principles. But they’re attached to a political movement that sometimes seems to have come unmoored from any concern for life after birth."

• • •

"Then [South Carolina governor Mark] Sanford apologized to his wife, his sons, his friends, his staff, his in-laws, 'anybody who lives in South Carolina' and people of faith 'across the nation.' At this point, I had the terrible feeling that I was the only person in the entire country to whom Sanford was not conveying his personal regrets."

• • •

“What is it with Republicans lately? Is there something about being a leader of the family-values party that makes you want to go out and commit adultery?”

• • •

"One of the truly disturbing parts of our current politics is that we have begun to identify people who want to impose their religious beliefs on millions of women who don’t share them as moderates as long as they’re O.K. with the rape exemption... And if rape victims deserve exemptions because their situation is dire, what about other women with unwanted pregnancies and terrible stories? The real crime of people like Mourdock and Akin is that their inartful language throws a sudden stark light on a stance that sounds so unthreatening when a candidate simply says: 'I’m pro-life.'”

~ GAIL COLLINS
American journalist and editorial columnist
(b. 1945)

“Your life is not lying in wait in the future like a wild animal or some ominous destiny. Nor is it hidden in the heavens, like a paradise or promise. Nor is it shut up in the cave or the prison of your past. It is here and now; it is what you live and what you do. At the heart of being; at the heart of the present; at the heart of everything – in the great current of life, of reality.”

~ ANDRÉ COMTE-SPONVILLE
French atheist existentialist philosopher
(b. 1952)

"The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is; marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotion and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatu8ral, which (take it anyway you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intricate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity."

~ JOSEPH CONRAD
Polish-born British novelist
(1857 – 1924)

"You will never be able to alter your instinctive preferences, because they originate deep down in the recesses of your mind and memories..."

~ HEREWARD LESTER COOKE
American painter; Curator of Painting at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from 1961-1973
(1916 - 1973)

‘There are people who believe in heaven after they die. I believe in heaven on earth.”

~ CORNEILLE
Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo
Belgian-born Dutch painter, printmaker, ceramicist and writer,
co-founder of Cobra WITH Karel Appel and Constant Nieuwenhuys
(1922-2010)

"The idea that He would take his attention away from the universe in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds is just so unlikely I can't go along with it."

• • •

"Well, it [religion] has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion."

~ QUENTIN CRISP
English writer and raconteur
(1908 – 1999)

"There's one thing to be said about masturbation: you certainly don't have to look your best."

~ MART CROWLEY
American playwright.
(b. 1935)

“The fact that people can persist in the information age to take [the Bible] as a fundamental word of God, words to live by, rules to live by, that's really crazy to me.”

• • •

“In the Bible after the flood Noah is in gratitude with God and gives him a burnt sacrifice. God is so touched for some reason by the smell of the meat that he decides that he will never again bring a flood to destroy the human race. It doesn’t quite add up somehow.”

• • •

“In other comic book versions of the Bible they show the people of Sodom and Gomorrah basically having a good time being drunk and carousing in the streets and gambling. These are considered bad things, but to me this isn't bad enough. I was interested in some kind of real cruelty that God had to be truly horrified of, massive amounts of genuine cruelty and inhuman behavior.”

~ ROBERT CRUMB
American artist and illustrator recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings
and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream;
a founder of the underground comix movement
(b. 1943)

“As a kid, I went to church and all I did was look at women’s hats.”

• • •

“You see, if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid. ... Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.”

~ BILL CUNNINGHAM
Fashion photographer for The New York Times
(b. 1928/9)

“I have never been in anything like that in my life, period. Not when I worked with Clinton. Not with my father. In my 30 years in government, I never felt what I felt in that [Gay Pride] parade. Just the difference we made in people’s lives, how we touched people and made them feel good about society. It was really magic.

“A father, maybe 60 years old, came up to me and said, ‘You know, I have a gay son, and I never really accepted him and I shouldn’t have needed you to tell me that it was O.K. to accept my own boy. But I did.’ ”

~ ANDREW CUOMO
56th and current Governor of New York, was the 64th New York State Attorney General
(b. 1957)

“Part of what makes an artist great is having the courage to provoke and challenge.”

~ ANDREW CURRAN
Author, Dean of the Arts and Humanities and professor of French at Wesleyan University
(b. n/a)

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."

~ DALAI LAMA
(Tenzin Gyatso)
The 14th Dalai Lama, head of state and spiritual leader of Tibet
(b. 1935)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Impossible Dream

To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow,
To run where the brave dare not go,
To right the unrightable wrong,
To love pure and chaste from afar,
To try when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star ....

This is my quest, to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far,
To fight for the right, without question or pause, 
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause. 
And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest, 
That my heart will lie will lie peaceful and calm, 
when I'm laid to my rest ....

And the world will be better for this: 
That one man, scorned and covered with scars, 
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage, 
To reach the unreachable star

~ JOE DARION
American musical theatre lyricist, most famous for
"Man of La Mancha"
(1917 - 2001)

“I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.”

• • •

"Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt!"

• • •

"I feel as I always have, that the earth is the home and the only home of man, and I am convinced that whatever he is to get out of his existence he must get while he is here."

• • •

"Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I'm not worried about my soul."

• • •

"When every event was a miracle, when there was no order or system or law, there was no occasion for studying any subject, or being interested in anything excepting a religion which took care of the soul. As man doubted the primitive conceptions about religion, and no longer accepted the literal, miraculous teachings of ancient books, he set himself to understand nature."

• • •

"I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil."

• • •

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

• • •

“I've never killed a man, but I've read many an obituary with a great deal of satisfaction.”

~ CLARENCE DARROW
American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
Best known for defending teenage thrill killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 and defending John T. Scopes in the so-called "Monkey" Trial in 1925.
(1857 – 1938)

“A good Dog never dies, he always stays. He walks besides you on crisp autumn days when frost is on the fields and winter's drawing near. His head is within our hand in his old way.”

~ MARY CAROLYN DAVIES
American poet
(18?? - 19??)

“Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but his memory.”

~ LEONARDO Da VINCI
The archetypal Renaissance man
Italian polymath, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist,
painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer
(1452 – 1519)

"Our history is littered with bleak tableaus that show what happens when righteous certitude is mixed with fearful ignorance."

~ KENNETH C. DAVIS
American popular historian
(b. n/a)

“The problem isn’t the girls in the streets; it’s the men in the pews.”

~ STEPHANIE DAVIS
Policy Advisor on Women's Issues to Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta
(b. n/a)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

• • •

"Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

• • •

“The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.”

• • •

"If you want to believe in a particular one of them -- teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh -- the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't' have to bother saying so."

• • •

“Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason: It gives them something to do.”

• • •

"I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world."

• • •

“Religion teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers, It’s a sort of crime against childhood.”

• • •

“There is a value in teaching children about religion. You cannot really appreciate a lot of literature without knowing about religion. But we must not indoctrinate our children.

“What a child should never be taught is that you are a Catholic or Muslim child, therefore that is what you believe. That's child abuse.”

• • •

“Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?”

• • •

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."

• • •

“I’ve had perfectly wonderful conversations with Anglican bishops, and I rather suspect if you asked in a candid moment, they’d say they don’t believe in the virgin birth. But for every one of them, four others would tell a child she’ll rot in hell for doubting.”

.• • •

“One [young woman in a Muslim school that receives state funds] said her ambition was to be a doctor. But she explicitly said if there is a contradiction between science and the Koran, then the Koran was righ. They were lovely girls, but utterly brainwashed.”

• • •

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference."

• • •

“The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver.”

• • •

“If you look up at the Milky Way through the eyes of Carl Sagan, you get a feeling in your chest of something greater than yourself. And it is. But it’s not supernatural.”

• • •

"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."

• • •

“My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else. What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up.”

 

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.

Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia.

Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

~ RICHARD DAWKINS
British ethologist, zoologist, Neo-Darwinian evolutionary biologist
and theorist and popular science author;
prominent critic of religion ,creationism and a wide variety of pseudoscience;
co-founder of the Out Campaign , as a means of advancing atheism and freethought.
(b. 1941)

~ MICHAEL de ADDER
(b. 1967)
Canadian editorial cartoonist

“I cannot be angry at god, in whom I do not believe.”

~ SIMONE De BEAUVIOUR
French writer and political activist
(1908-1986)

“And of all the plagues with which mankind is cursed, Ecclesiastic tyranny is the worst.”

~ DANIEL DEFOE

“I feel myself to be an old tree from which every day someone cuts off a branch.”

• ••

“There are things in life that one should neither analyze nor go on and on about. Absence is one of these.”

~ LUCIE DE LA TOUR DU PIN
French memoirist
(1770 - 1853)

~ SEAN DELONAS
American political cartoonist and author
(b. n/a)

DEL TORO

HOGAN

 

 

 

 

“In a society that moves as fast as ours, where every week a new ‘blockbuster’ must be enthroned at the box office, or where idols are fabricated by consensus every new television season, the promise of something everlasting, something truly eternal, holds a special allure. As a seductive figure, the vampire is as flexible and polyvalent as ever. Witness its slow mutation from the pansexual, decadent Anne Rice creatures to the current permutations — promising anything from chaste eternal love to wild nocturnal escapades — and there you will find the true essence of immortality: adaptability.

“...Despite our obsessive harnessing of information, we are still ultimately vulnerable to our fates and our nightmares. We enthrone the deadly virus in the very same way that ‘Dracula’ allowed the British public to believe in monsters: through science. Science becomes the modern man’s superstition. It allows him to experience fear and awe again, and to believe in the things he cannot see.

“And through awe, we once again regain spiritual humility. The current vampire pandemic serves to remind us that we have no true jurisdiction over our bodies, our climate or our very souls. Monsters will always provide the possibility of mystery in our mundane ‘reality show’ lives, hinting at a larger spiritual world; for if there are demons in our midst, there surely must be angels lurking nearby as well. In the vampire we find Eros and Thanatos fused together in archetypal embrace, spiraling through the ages, undying.

“Forever.”

~ GUILLERMO DEL TORO
Mexican author and Academy Award-nominated director, producer and designer
(b. 1964)
&
~ CHUCK HOGAN
American novelist
(b. n/a)

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.”

~ DEMOCRITUS
Ancient Greek philosopher born in Abdera in the north of Greece;
the most prolific and most influential of the pre-Socratic philosophers;
his atomic theory may be regarded as the culmination of early Greek thought
(460 - 370 B.C.)

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”

~ MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
French Renaissance writer and essayist
(1533 – 1592)

"I confess that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility."

• • •

"The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight -- that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether."

• • •

"Before you appeal to faith when reason has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side."

• • •

"I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is.

~ DANIEL C. DENNETT
Author, Philosopher; Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University
(b. 1942)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

\

Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man

PRIEST - Come to this the fatal hour when at last from the eyes of deluded man the scales must fall away, and be shown the cruel picture of his errors and his vices - say, my son, do you not repent the host of sins unto which you were led by weakness and human frailty?

DYING MAN - Yes, my friend, I do repent.

PRIEST - Rejoice then in these pangs of remorse, during the brief space remaining to you profit therefrom to obtain Heaven’s general absolution for your sins, and be mindful of it, only through the mediation of the Most Holy Sacrament of penance will you be granted it by the Eternal.
DYING MAN - I do not understand you, any more than you have understood me.

PRIEST - Eh?

DYING MAN - I told you that I repented.

PRIEST - I heard you say it.

DYING MAN - Yes, but without understanding it.

PRIEST - My interpretation -

DYING MAN - Hold. I shall give you mine. By Nature created, created with very keen tastes, with very strong passions; placed on this earth for the sole purpose of yielding to them and satisfying them, and these effects of my creation being naught but necessities directly relating to Nature’s fundamental designs or, if you prefer, naught but essential derivatives proceeding from her intentions in my regard, all in accordance with her laws, I repent not having acknowledged her omnipotence as fully as I might have done, I am only sorry for the modest use I made of the faculties (criminal in your view, perfectly ordinary in mine) she gave me to serve her; I did sometimes resist her, I repent it. Misled by your absurd doctrines, with them for arms I mindlessly challenged the desires instilled in me by a much diviner inspiration, and thereof do I repent: I only plucked an occasional flower when I might have gathered an ample harvest of fruit - such are the just grounds for the regrets I have, do me the honor of considering me incapable of harboring any others.

PRIEST - Lo! where your fallacies take you, to what pass are you brought by your sophistries! To created being you ascribe all the Creator’s power, and those unlucky penchants which have led you astray, ah! do you not see they are merely the products of corrupted nature, to which you attribute omnipotence?

DYING MAN - Friend - it looks to me as though your dialectic were as false as your thinking. Pray straighten your arguing or else leave me to die in peace. What do you mean by Creator, and what do you mean by corrupted nature?

PRIEST - The Creator is the master of the universe, ‘tis He who has wrought everything, everything created, and who maintains it all through the mere fact of His omnipotence.

DYING MAN - An impressive figure indeed. Tell me now why this so very formidable fellow did nevertheless, as you would have it, create a corrupted nature?

PRIEST - What glory would men ever have, had not God left them free will; and in the enjoyment thereof, what merit could come to them, were there not on earth the possibility of doing good and that of avoiding evil?

DYING MAN - And so your god bungled his work deliberately, in order to tempt or test his creature - did he then not know, did he then not doubt what the result would be?

PRIEST - He knew it undoubtedly but, once again, he wished to leave man the merit of choice.

DYING MAN - And to what purpose, since from the outset he knew the course affairs would take and since, all-mighty as you tell me he is, he had but to make his creature choose as suited him?

PRIEST - Who is there can penetrate God’s vast and infinite designs regarding man, and who can grasp all that makes up the universal scheme?

DYING MAN - Anyone who simplifies matters, my friend, anyone, above all, who refrains from multiplying causes in order to confuse effects all the more. What need have you of a second difficulty when you are unable to resolve the first, and once it is possible that Nature may have all alone done what you attrubute to your god, why must you go looking for someone to be her overlord? The cause and explanation of what you do not understand may perhaps be the simplest thing in the world. Perfect your physics and you will understand Nature better, refine your reason, banish your prejudices and you’ll have no further need of your god.

• • •

"Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates."

• • •

"Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced."

 

• • •

"There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author."

• • •

"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind."

• • •

"Religions are the cradles of despotism."

• • •

"Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other."

• • •

“To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.”

• • •

"My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!"

• • •

"It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others."

• • •

“I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?”

• • •

“The entirety of human morals is contained in this one phrase: Render others as happy as one desires oneself to be, and never inflict more pain upon them than one would like to receive at their hands. There you are, my friend, those are the only principles we should observe, and you need neither god nor religion to appreciate and subscribe to them, you need only a good heart.”

• • •

"Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear."

• • •

"Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain."

• • •

“When one is afraid one ceases to reason…when the brain is disturbed, one believes anything and examines nothing. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fear—those are the twin bases of every religion.

• • •

"The more defects a man may have, the older he is, the less lovable, the more resounding his success."

• • •

"One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush."

DONATIEN ALPHONSE FRANÇOIS MARQUIS DE SADE
French aristocrat, revolutionary and novelist
(1740 – 1814)

“I think, therefore I am.”

~ RENÉ DESCARTES

"Let us hope, that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring."

• • •

"Life is a zoo in a jungle."

• • •

"It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us."

• • •

"Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy."

~ PETER De VRIES

Interior of the Old Church in Delft
(Detail)

~ EMANUEL DE WITTE
Dutch painter of church interiors
(1617 - 1692)

Click √ on Images to enlarge

RELIGIOUS MELANCHOLY
(Scrupulosity*)

~ DR. HUGH DIAMOND
Early British psychiatrist and photographer
(1809 – June 21, 1886)

* Scrupulosity is a psychological disorder characterized by pathological guilt about moral or religious issues. It is personally distressing, objectively dysfunctional, and often accompanied by significant impairment in social functioning.[1] It is typically conceptualized as a moral or religious form of obsessive–compulsive disorder

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.“

~ PHILIP K. DICK
American novelist, short story writer and essayist
(1928 – 1982)

“Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it.”

• • •

“I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degredation left in the world.”

~ CHARLES DICKENS
British author
(1812-1870)

"Skepticism is the first step towards truth."

• • •

"A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.”

 

*What difference is there for a blind man, between a man who is urinating, and man who, without crying out, is bleeding?"

• • •

"Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control."

• • •

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”

• • •

"And his hands would plait the priest's entrails, for want of a rope, to strangle kings."

• • •

“The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.”

• • •

“There is only one step from fanaticism to barbarism.”

• • •

"When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music."

• • •

"To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!"

• • •

"There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies."

• • •

“To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature."

• • •

"If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him."

• • •

"It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God."

• • •

“Posterity is for the philosopher what the next world is for the man of religion.”

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~ DENIS DIDEROT
French philosopher and writer of the Enlightenment
(1713 – 1784)

Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"

Priest: "No, not if you did not know."

Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"

~ ANNIE DILLARD
From 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'
Pulitzer Prize-winning American author
(b. 1945)

Dedicated to Sadists

~ OTTO DIX
German painter and printmaker noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society
and of the brutality of war, widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.
1891 - 1969

"The death of a child is the greatest reason to doubt the existence of God.”

• • •

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

• • •

“The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.”

~ FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Russian novelist, short story writer and essayist.
(1821 – 1881)

“Yup, we need a Nope. A nun who is Pope.”

• • •

"We’re trading a dogmatic president [Bush] for one who’s shopping for a Dog [Obama]. It feels good."

• • •

"Republicans are geniuses at getting people to vote against their own self-interest. "

• • •

"The president's certitude - the idea that he can see into people's souls and that god tells him what is right, then W. tells us if he feels like it - is disturbing. It equates disagreeing with him to disagreeing with Him.... America is awash in selective piety, situational moralists and cherry-picking absolutists."

• • •

"As international lunacy goes, itwas hard to beat the pope saying that condoms spread AIDS."

• • •

“Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) devoted his Vatican career to rooting out any hint of what he considered deviance. The problem is, he was obsessed with enforcing doctrinal orthodoxy and somehow missed the graver danger to the most vulnerable members of the flock.

“The sin-crazed “Rottweiler” was so consumed with sexual mores — issuing constant instructions on chastity, contraception, abortion — that he didn’t make time for curbing sexual abuse by priests who were supposed to pray with, not prey on, their young charges.

“American bishops have gotten politically militant in recent years, opposing the health care bill because its language on abortion wasn’t vehement enough, and punishing Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights and stem cell research. They should spend as much time guarding the kids already under their care as they do championing the rights of those who aren’t yet born.”

~ MAUREEN DOWD
Washington DC-based columnist for The New York Times and best-selling author
awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1999
(b. 1952)

"War is the trade of kings."

~ JOHN DRYDEN
English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright
(1631-1700)

"If god were suddenly condemned to live the life which he has inflicted upon men, He would kill himself."

~ ALEXANDRE DUMAS
(père)
French novelist
(1802 – 1870)

"My mother used to say that in our land there were enough gods for women to have at least one on their side, while your religion has three in one and they are all men. Even the bird."

• • •

"I grew up in another language, under another sun. I believe what I need to believe to get by."

• • •

"Rome was the natural home of courtesans. Indeed, it had been their birthplace. A city full of sophisticated clerics, too secular to be saints, especially when it came to matters of the flesh, had soon created its own court, with women as refined out of bed as they were wayward in it."

• • •

"I...am not much of a praying man -- I have never quite understood if I am talking to god or to myself."

• • •

"Imagine it. How would it be if the end was not Heaven or Hell but just the absence of life? I swear that would be Heaven enough for most of us."

• • •

“’Over the years I have come to realize that we nuns are wonderfully adept at seeing what we believe.’ She hesitates. ‘Or rather believing what we want to see, perhaps even when it is not there.’”

~ SARAH DUNANT
English novelist
(b. 1950)

"The trouble with theocracy is that everyone wants to be Theo."

~ JAMES DUNN
For many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham. Since his retirement he has been made Emeritus Lightfoot Professor. He is a leading British New Testament scholar.
(b. 1939)

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

~ CLARENCE W. DUPNlK
Pima County Arizona Sheriff
(b. 1936)

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

~ WILL DURANT
Prolific American writer, author of The Story of Civilization, historian, and philosopher
(1885 – 1981)

"No man, and least of all myself, could ever disentangle the feelings that animated him."

~ THOMAS EAKINS
American realist painter, photographer[2], sculptor, and fine arts educator.
(1844 – 1916)

"Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them."

~ UMBERTO ECO
Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist
(b. 1932)