Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and
shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.
To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?
Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.
What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.
What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence.
The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.
We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.
Exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.
The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals
The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that 'if English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me.