Despicable Meme Quotes

“Tell you what: Ask a Baptist wife why her husband treats her like a personal slave. Ask a homosexual couple why their love for one another is treated as a sick joke in some parts of the world and as a crime punishable by death in others. Ask a starving African mother with ten starving children why she doesn't practice birth control. Ask a young Muslim girl why her parents sliced off her clitoris. Ask millions of Muslim women why they cannot attend schools or show themselves in public except through the eye slits of a full-body burqa. Ask the Pakistani woman who's gang-raped why she is sentenced to death while her rapists go free, and why it’s her own family leading the murderous chorus. Ask the American woman who’s raped why her local congressman would question the “legitimacy” of that rape and would force her to bring her rapist’s child to term. Ask the dead Christian children why their fundamentalist parents wouldn’t give them an antibiotic to stave off their infection or an insulin injection to control their diabetes. Ask the Parkinson’s or paralysis victims why their cures have been mired in religious and political red tape for decades now because an increasingly hysterical and radical segment of American society believes that a clump of cells with no identity and no consciousness has more rights than they do. Ask them all to point to the source of their misery, and then ask yourself why it doesn't bother you that they are pointing to the same goddamned book you're using in your religious services and in the celebration of your “harmless” and “quaint” traditions.”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion

“The last section, Mostly Harmless, is my most personal rant. It is directed at the rest of you, the 20% or so who would never in a million years call yourselves atheists but who practice such a watered-down version of your own religion that you’re just one honest admission away from being atheists. It is an angry and impassioned plea to those of you who most likely champion progressive social causes during the day but who still cling to, or gloss over, the wild superstitions of your parents’ religion at night. Mostly, though, it’s my explanation of why I have no patience for your insistence on the virtues of religious tradition and why your actions (and inactions) give legitimacy to the very dark-ages policies and politics you claim to abhor.”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion

“Faith is just the license religious people give themselves to feel better about believing stupid things. It's a cop-out. When you invoke faith, you admit your belief cannot stand on its own merit. It's the last recourse of the intellectually defeated.”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion

“Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True. (He also writes a blog of the same name.) For”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion

“There's an unspoken rule that seems to permeate our society, that we should automatically accord respect to a belief simply because it is religious in nature. Why? Religious beliefs should be subject to the same scrutiny that we reserve for other beliefs, and, when they wilt under the glare, to the same ridicule. No belief should be taken seriously unless it is backed by evidence.”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion

“It's also important to note that beliefs shouldn't be taken seriously; only evidence should be taken seriously. Beliefs are, more often than not, deserving of every bit of ridicule that's heaped upon them.”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion

“There's a huge difference between being a know-it-all and a not-gullible-enough-to-believe-it-all.”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion

“Atheism is most likely true. What difference does it make if it's tragic?”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion

“What do you think might happen if half of America, rather than the current 20% or so, suddenly demanded that their political candidates not be blithering idiots? Well, I’ll tell you one thing: the Rick Santorums and Sarah Palins and Michelle Bachmanns and Mitt Romneys of the world wouldn't get within a hundred miles of Washington or any other political institution.”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion

“What should be marginalized as the practices and customs of lunatics is instead given legitimacy by your complete failure to speak out against the source of that insanity. Because their books are your books. Their religions are your religions.”
― D. Cameron Webb, Despicable Meme: The Absurdity and Immorality of Modern Religion