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In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he believes in some Being superior to himself?
It is impossible for me to see why any belief in the supernatural is necessary to have a keen perception of right and wrong.
Nearly all who have tried to answer what I said have been exceedingly careful to misquote me, and then answer something that I never uttered.
About the phantoms called gods and their impossible hells, I have no care, no fear.
The existence of God I neither affirm nor deny, I wait.
What I deny is the immortality of pain, the eternity of torture.
All wish to be happy, to enjoy life; all wish for food and roof and raiment, for friends, and as long as life gives joy, the idea of self-destruction never enters the human mind.
The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the rights of others, the robbers of the poor, those who put wages below the living point, the ministers who make people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain; these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering and the helpless down to death.
It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the grave; a short journey.
The suicide hastens, shortens the path, loses the afternoon, the twilight, the dusk of life's day; loses what he does not want, what he cannot bear.
In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of madness, or in the calm of thought and choice, the beleaguered s...
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When a man is of no use to himself or to others, when his days and nights are filled with pain and sorrow, why should he remain to endure them longer?
When God created the man who was murdered, he knew that he would be murdered, and when he made the man who committed the murder, he knew exactly what he would do. So that the murder was the act of God.
Can we say that he intended that thousands of innocent men should die in dungeons and on scaffolds?
Does God enjoy his agony? Is God thrilled by the music of his moans—the melody of his shrieks?
If he can be of no use to others—if he is of no use to himself—if he is a burden to others—a curse to himself—why should he remain?
He lessens misery and increases happiness.
man has the right to stop the pulse of pain and woo the sleep...
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Let us remember that all actions, good, bad and indifferent, are the necessary children of conditions—that there is no chance in the natural world in which we live.
I believe that all actions that tend to the well-being of sentient beings are virtuous and moral.
Most people, after arriving at the conclusion that Jehovah is not God, that the Bible is not an inspired book, and that the Christian religion, like other religions, is the creation of man, usually say: "There must be a Supreme Being, but Jehovah is not his name, and the Bible is not his word. There must be somewhere an over-ruling Providence or Power." This position is just as untenable as the other. He who cannot harmonize the cruelties of the Bible with the goodness of Jehovah, cannot harmonize the cruelties of Nature with the goodness and wisdom of a supposed Deity. He will find it
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Desism as untenable as theism
It seems to me that the man who knows the limitations of the mind, who gives the proper value to human testimony, is necessarily an Agnostic.
From out the words Creator, Preserver, and Providence, all meaning falls.
It does not occur to him that it is necessary to account for the existence of an infinite personality. He is perfectly certain that there can be no design without a designer, and he is equally certain that there can be a designer who was not designed.
Flaw of "design" - who/what designed the designer?
He takes it for granted that matter was created and that its creator was not.
Is it possible to imagine an infinite intelligence dwelling for an eternity in infinite nothing?
What was there to be intelligent about?
These questions, however, will be answered by each individual according to the structure of his mind, according to his experience, according to his habits of thought, and according to his intelligence or his ignorance, his prejudice or his genius.
In the realm of thought majorities do not determine. Each brain is a kingdom, each mind is a sovereign.
The universality of a belief does not even tend to prove its truth.
In the long night of savagery, in the midst of pestilence and famine, through the long and dreary winters, crouched in dens of darkness, the seeds of superstition were sown in the brain of man.
Religion sprouting from our species' fearful/ignorant beginnings.
The few took advantage of the ignorant many. They pretended to have received messages from the Unknown. They stood between the helpless multitude and the gods.
The Christian of to-day wonders at the savage who bowed before his idol; and yet it must be confessed that the god of stone answered prayer and protected his worshipers precisely as the Christian's God answers prayer and protects his worshipers to-day.
The questions of origin and destiny seem to be beyond the powers of the human mind.
With a feeling of reverence they say that the religion of their mother is good enough and pure enough and reasonable enough for them. In this way the love of parents and the reverence for ancestors have unconsciously bribed the reason and put out, or rendered exceedingly dim, the eyes of the mind.
Tradition / unqusestioning family sourfce of continued superstition
Yet it will hardly do to say that the religion of my mother is good enough for me, any more than to say the geology or the astronomy or the philosophy of my mother is good enough for me. Every human being is entitled to the best he can obtain; and if there has been the slightest improvement on the religion of the mother, the son is entitled to that improvement, and he should not deprive himself of that advantage by the mistaken idea that he owes it to his mother to perpetuate, in a reverential way, her ignorant mistakes.
Had this been done, there could have been no improvement in the world of thought.
all the prejudices against other religions, and all the egotism of nation and tribe, were in favor of the local superstition.
And there is this peculiarity about man: he can see the absurdities of other religions while blinded to those of his own.
The average man adopts the religion of his country,
He is dominated by the egotism of race, the arrogance of nation, and the prejudice called patriotism. He does not reason—he feels. He does not investigate—he believes. To him the religions of other nations are absurd and infamous, and their gods monsters of ignorance and cruelty.
the only true church is the one to which he belongs;
The average man believes implicitly in the religion of his country, because he knows nothing of any other and has no desire to know.
The right to examine involves the necessity to accept or reject.
If, then, we have the right to examine, we have the right to tell the conclusion reached.
No Presbyterian thinks it is worth his while to examine the religious systems of India; he knows that the Brahmins are mistaken, and that all their miracles are falsehoods. No Methodist cares to read the life of Buddha, and no Baptist will waste his time studying the ethics of Confucius. Christians of every sort and kind take it for granted that there is only one true religion, and that all except Christianity are absolutely without foundation.
We find now that the prosperity of nations has depended, not upon their religion, not upon the goodness or providence of some god, but on soil and climate and commerce, upon the ingenuity, industry, and courage of the people, upon the development of the mind, on the spread of education, on the liberty of thought and action; and that in this mighty panorama of national life, reason has built and superstition has destroyed.
Good men have had bad creeds, and bad men have had good ones.
Passion often masters reason, and "the state of man, like to a little kingdom, suffers then the nature of an insurrection."
In all the sacred books there are some truths, some rays of light, some words of love and hope.
