Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel. — Thomas Paine
Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth. — H. L. Mencken
Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand. — Karl Marx
Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. — Martin Amis
Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government. — Leon Trotsky
Religion poisons everything good in this world. — Unknown Author
Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things... one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority. — Christopher Hitchens
Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims. — Morris Raphael Cohen
Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Theological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind. — Voltaire
Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide. — Tom Robbins
Accept both compliments and criticism. It takes both sun and rain for a flower to grow.
Religion Criticism Quotes
In a free society, people should have the right to criticize a religion; they should have the right to do so, and of course their criticisms are themselves open to criticism; that is the essence of freedom of speech and thought. — Gad Saad
I can criticize your religion all I want, and you can criticize mine. I don't like this whole climate of, 'You can't ever say anything bad about the group I'm in, cause every group is untouchable.' We can all criticize each other and engage in debate all we want. — Kathy Griffin
If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe. — Charlton Heston
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyways.
No idea is above scrutiny. No idea whatsoever. To criticize, to scrutinize and to satirize my own religion [Islam] is not Islamophobia. — Maajid Nawaz
Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war... Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
It's a no win situation. It's a mug's game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity. — Daniel Dennett
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
The most important thing is to know how to awaken in the still undeveloped masses an intelligent attitude towards religious questions and an intelligent criticism of religions. — Vladimir Lenin
The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. — Christopher Hitchens
Their [the new atheists] treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing. — Michael Ruse
In every society in human history, including the United States, those in power seek to imbue themselves with the attributes of religion and patriotism as a way of getting greater support for their policy and insulating themselves from any criticism. — George J. Mitchell
Against Religion Quotes
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. — Aldous Huxley
Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here. — Eleanor Roosevelt
I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas. — Johnny Cash
What you feel about another person, what you think or say about another eprson, what you do to another person - you do to you. Give judgement and criticism and you give it to yourself. Give love and appreciation to another person or anything, and you give it to yourself.
The reason people use a crucifix against vampires is because vampires are allergic to bullshit. — Richard Pryor
...he [Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind...The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. — John Quincy Adams
The devil is not fighting religion. He´s too smart for that. He is producing a counterfeit Christianity, so much like the real one that good Christians are afraid to speak out against it. — Vance Havner
Nothing happens by accident. God is preparing you for great things.
I found enormous opposition to my religion. It's like if you want to strengthen your biceps, you lift heavy weight, as heavy as you can handle, and work your muscles against resistance until it grows strong. I had to do that with my religion. — Ricardo Montalban
Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy - the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man - endeavored to crush your well-earned & well-deserved fame. — Thomas Jefferson
Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck. — Thomas Jefferson
This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. — John Steinbeck
Man makes religion, religion does not make man — Karl Marx
Redemption is promised at the low price of surrender of your critical faculties. — Sayings
Religion has the capacity to silence critical thinking and create blindness in entire groups of people. It can infect the minds of followers so completely as to allow the most egregious sexual acts against children and others to go unchallenged for centuries. — Darrel Ray
Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism. — Leslie Fiedler
In fact, current cosmological observations indicate that the average density of matter and energy in the universe is equal, within measurement errors, to the critical density for which the total energy of the universe was exactly zero at the beginning. — Victor J. Stenger
Simply disabling specific critical thinking skills is all that is necessary for the god virus [to take control of a person]. — Sayings
Let nobody be afraid of true freedom of thought. Let us be free in thought and criticism; but, with freedom, we are bound to come to the conclusion that science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to it. — Lord Kelvin
I put a lot of effort into writing 'A Briefer History' at a time when I was critically ill with pneumonia because I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion. — Stephen Hawking
Bad Religion has never been about criticizing people who are Christian. But we've always been about pointing out the irony and contradictions in Christian theology and the more extreme versions of Christians that seek to challenge modern secularism. — Greg Graffin
Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination. — Immanuel Kant
In its Roman-era setting, for example, Christianity was so different that critics of the time referred to it as a "superstition" (meaning a bogus or dangerous religion). — Larry Hurtado
Expressions of sharp and even violent criticism of religion and the church have been welcomed, for they usually imply sincerity of thought. If caustic criticism of religious institutions and practices is irreligious, then Amos, Isaiah, and Jesus were very irreligious men. In fact, that is exactly what many of their contemporaries took them to be. — Halford Luccock
Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. — William James
The criticism of Religion is the beginning of all criticism — Karl Marx
Among the more irritating consequences of our flagrantly religious society is the special dispensation that mainstream religions receive. We all may talk about religion as a powerful social force, but unlike other similarly powerful institutions, religion is not to be questioned, criticized or mocked. — Natalie Angier
It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization. — Sam Harris
I have a reputation worldwide of being tolerant of all people and their views. I'm too well-educated to criticize a certain religion or group of people for what they believe in. It's called freedom. — Robert H. Schuller
I learned from James Baldwin that one can be a novelist, essayist, and activist, combined. That being critical of one's country is a way of loving it. That travel is crucial for perspective. That faith needn't be confined to organized religion. — Emily Raboteau
Contemplation: I read a lot of books on philosophy and religion, and try to keep always growing in that part of my life, because without having a spiritual grounding, I think you can get really swayed by the winds of all the praise or the criticism; it's all very, kind of, up and down. Try to stay up and focused. — Kimbra
Evolution has primarily been an attack on religion by militant atheists who wrap themselves in the mantle of science in an effort to refute all religious claims concerning a creator - an effort that has also often attempted to suppress all scientific criticisms of Darwin's work. — Rodney Stark
In religious matters it is now fashionable to define tolerance as the absence of criticism of any standard religion. All too often, this absence of criticism degenerates into a conspicuous absence of thought. — Paul Blanshard
I do not criticize religion as such, but I criticize the concept and the definition of "religion" - as I said in Genealogies. — Talal Asad
The way of presentation is different according to each religion. In theistic religions like Buddhism, Buddhist values are incorporated. In nontheistic religions, like some types of ancient Indian thought, the law of karma applies. If you do something good, you get a good result. Now, what we need is a way to educate nonbelievers. These nonbelievers may be critical of all religions, but they should be decent at heart. — Dalai Lama
[There is a] depth and urgency of the search of Jewish and Christian women for connection to the Divine, which found expression in more than 1000 years of feminist Bible criticism and religious re-visioning. — Gerda Lerner
The very aspect of religions that many of their critics most fear - that the religiously devout, in the name of their faith, take positions that differ from approved state policy - is one of their strengths. — Stephen L. Carter
I suspect that, though Craig indulges in a bit of wishful thinking, playing taps for various critical approaches still quite far from death's door, he may well be correct that New Testament scholarship is more conservative than it once was. This has more than he admits to do with which denominations can afford to train the most students, hire more faculty, and send more members to the SBL. — Robert M. Price
politics and religion in the United States work like the twin grips of a pair of pliers on a critical mass of the masses. — Roseanne Barr
Criticism of the commitment of religion to the supernatural is thus positive in import. — John Dewey
Questioning our own motives, and our own process, is critical to a skeptical and scientific outlook. We must realize that the default mode of human psychology is to grab onto comforting beliefs for purely emotional reasons, and then justify those beliefs to ourselves with post-hoc rationalizations. — Steven Novella
Criticism is not religion, and by no process can it be substituted for it. It is not the critic's eye, but the child's heart, that most truly discerns the countenance that looks out from the pages of the gospel. — John Campbell Shairp
But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion. — William James
Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste. — Friedrich Schiller
Several of our children have married outside my faith. Would I prefer they marry within their religion? Yes, because I know that marrying outside the family faith will very likely bring them more problems-but not from me. My job is to accept them and love them, not to criticize them and make their lives more difficult. — Bernie Siegel
‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect. — Salman Rushdie
FAITH. No one word personifies the absolute worst and most wicked properties of religion better than that. Faith is mind-rot. It’s the poison that destroys critical thinking, undermines evidence, and leads people into lives dedicated to absurdity. It’s a parasite regarded as a virtue. I speak as a representative of the scientific faction of atheism: it’s one thing we simply cannot compromise on. Faith is wrong. — PZ Myers
Religion is a belief in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die. It therefore has no reality check. And it is therefore uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self-correction. It is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality… and extreme, grotesque immorality. — Greta Christina
Just to the extent that the Bible was appealed to in matters of science, science was retarded; and just to the extent that science has been appealed to in matters of religion, religion has advanced - so that now the object of intelligent religionists is to adopt a creed that will bear the test and criticism of science. — Robert Green Ingersoll
I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening. — Sarah Palin
In Conclusion
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