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Anti Religious Quotes and Sayings

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I've made a lot of pages where people can share their favorite spiritual and religious quotes. One day someone came along who wanted to share some anti-religious quotes. I'm a tolerant person and I feel anti-religious sentiments are quite justified up to a point. So here's your chance: convince the world that religion is nonsense by sharing your best anti-religious quotations.

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Reader submitted anti religious and atheist quotes

As the human race becomes more knowledgeable, it cares less for preachers and more for teachers.

unknown

Men created God in their own image.

unknown

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.

Ferdinand Magellan

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.

Benjamin Franklin

It is said that men may not be the dreams of the Gods, but rather that the Gods are the dreams of men.

Carl Sagan

Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies.

Unknown

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

John Buchan

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.

Arthur C. Clarke

It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

Mark Twain

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Stephen Roberts

The moment you shift the conversation to God ... you can pretend to know things you absolutely and obviously cannot know.

Sam Harris

Specifically anti christian quotes

Alan Watts calles the Bible: the world's most dangerous book

Rick Reynolds on Religion

About science and religion: some reading material

Some spiritual wisdom quotes and sayings

I'm really a spiritual person. I have respect for the atheist view, but I feel there's a lot of wisdom to be salvaged. What's more: anything can turn into a dogma and communism shows just how harmful an atheist dogma can be. So here are some of my favorite spiritual quotes. And yes, most of these people were religious, though not in a dogmatic way.

People blogging about atheism online

Academic hits out at atheism in our schools Quotes from the new atheists: A LEADING academic has warned the rise of popular atheism is threatening the place of religion as a legitimate subject of study in Scottish schools. Professor Robert Davis has said there is evidence the views of high-profile atheist authors that ...
Op-Ed: B. Maher: Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position: In a country where atheists are all but considered vermin and where rapists [03] are better trusted by the public, coming out as an atheist is something of a brave thing to do. In his programme "Real Time" on 3 February 2012, Maher talked about ...
Courts says schools within rights to prohibit Christian displays, allow other ...: by Peter Grady ? In a blatant admission that the ?establishment clause? only applies to Christian beliefs, a California court has ruled that a school district was within its rights to order classroom banners proclaiming God in quotes by American's ...
Mission Week backlash: tag and featured quotes from prominent atheists claiming that organised religion is synonymous with ?misogyny, genocide and homophobia.? The more light-hearted responses to the CU campaign include a list of cheeses entitled ?This is cheesus? which was ...

Share your favorite anti-religious quotes and sayings...

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GodlessHeathen Jan 20, 2012 @ 9:17 am | delete

The rapture? I am not worried...Santa will save me.

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Cubbysue Jan 18, 2012 @ 4:52 pm | delete

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. ? Samuel Clemens

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Meir DeVilna Aug 11, 2011 @ 10:24 am | delete

Belief and Religion Meír DeVilna

Religion as we know it today, especially, organized religion, is an outcome of earlier beliefs and superstitions inherent in worldwide cultures, be they primitive or civilized.
What has been unique about humans, from time immemorial, is a need to believe in
a guiding system (for behavior) that should emanate from a super-natural source.
In Freudian terms, religion is a neurosis. In Marxian: "the opium of the masses."
Whether it be a neurosis or opium, it is, even as a palliative, not completely benign.
Just as someone under the influence of alcohol cannot think clearly, an adherence
to religious beliefs impedes free and rational thinking and behavior. Notwithstanding other motives, horrendous bloodshed has been committed in the name of religious
belief.
Religion is obviously a social/cultural phenomenon, where the individual absorbs communal values and life orientations. One is, thus, born and automatically indoctrinated into a specific religion. Initially, then, religious belief is not a free choice.
The foundation of Christianity is the neurosis of Jesus and his followers. Jesus' father Joseph was a journeyman (away from home for long periods), and apparently, Miriam/ Mary, at a very young age, conceived Jesus by someone other than Joseph. Hence, Jesus was considered to be a mamzer (born out of wedlock), which was obviously
a social stigma as he grew up. Then Joseph died, and Jesus found himself to be an orphan at a very young age. His search for a father resulted in a fabricated heavenly surrogate, but real to him, and self-serving to his new calling. The rest is history as we know it.
Closely enough, a parallel scenario took place when monotheism was introduced as
a result of Abraham's encounter with his father-figure, God, because Abraham was seemingly rebelling against his real father Terakh (who dealt in pagan idols).
Hence, Judaism evolved from Abraham's neurosis as well (Abraham was even ready to sacrifice his own son); and similarly, Islam emerged via Mohammed, who, as Jesus,
became a n orphan at a young age, and his (the same existing) god was to be called Allah.
One is hard pressed to acquiesce to the fact that humans had stooped down to such
a level of irrationality as to write a "divinely inspired" play as the Bible, with a god with human characteristics at center stage, and in a truly theatrical style. Even from
a religious point of view, it makes little sense to have a Supreme Being demean Him/Her/Itself to reach earthlings in such a manner. It is equally incomprehensible
how theologians and Biblical scholars have spent themselves, with a sense of awe at that, to find divine meaning in that literary work, which, having been primitively conceived, remains riddled with inconsistencies to the modern mind.
Well, this is a judgmental view. In analytic terms, though, man's irrational feature can be explained perhaps as follows.
There is obviously no correlation between man's evolved intellect and his pervasive irrationality. Possibly, man remains irrational because of a biologically ingrained uncertainty and fear of the unknown, and with a need to rationalize such feelings. The sublimation of this uncertainty and fear fostered the phenomenon of belief ? supposedly, in some sort of supernatural entity ? to allay that fear; and in turn, this disposition laid the ground for religious belief in general.
Indeed, assuming that there is an intelligence, a creator, named for convenience, God, would such a god need to actually inspire the writing of a sentimentalized drama after thousands and thousands of years of human existence? One would think that playing around with humans would be beyond divine standards, and a discredit to a god in
whom humans, presumably, are instructed to believe in.
A case in point is God's request of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a test of his loyalty, only to prevent him from doing it. Furthermore, a supreme creator of the entire universe would hardly need to instill in humans the aspect of belief itself - in Him, Her, or It. Thus, the supposition or acknowledgment of a creator should have nothing to do
with the human fabrication of a religious monotheistic god, combined yet with all the already existing pagan rituals.
The Biblical God, who is the basis for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is childishly conceived, reflecting aspects of human qualities in toto. From an objective (or even divine) point of view, such a subjective naïve human perception of a god would constitute a degradation of, rather than reverence for, a god. Also, the recorded
Biblical drama took place in a relatively isolated desert-like region not known to the vast majority of people inhabiting the earth who was not subject to receive God's message. Why then, from the religious perspective, if God had a message, wasn't it universal? Has it been God's design to spread His word to a greater part of the world by way of the sword and missionaries?
It all points to the fact that humans have indeed projected their own characteristics and social drama on an invented god. Contrary to the Biblical account that "God created man in His image," it is man, who created God in man's image.
In the same vein, if, religiously speaking, all are "God's children," how does it make "divine" sense that a supposedly benevolent God would create or inspire a drama where all "His children" would be given free will, and then tempted and tested by sin, only to be assigned hell or heaven after the agony of living on earth? A true divine design would not encompass such game playing; neither would it encompass human innocent suffering from disease and a host of other misfortunes. The bare facts are that humans, as other creatures, are subject to the merciless forces of nature. There is no divine mercy. The only mercy that exists is the one that humans, as an advanced species, possess.
Obviously, early religious/superstitious believers worldwide couldn't have predicted the monolithic forms of religion we are witnessing today. For one thing, earlier religious beliefs and practice were mainly ritualistic, and a far cry from being doctrinaire, which is typical of monotheism.

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Meír DeVilna Aug 9, 2011 @ 7:31 pm | delete

Knowledge is a light that enlightens; faith is a light that blinds.

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Meír DeVilna Aug 9, 2011 @ 7:27 pm | delete

Reason unifies; belief separates

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Meír DeVilna Aug 9, 2011 @ 7:21 pm | delete

Belief is a human affliction

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copperdragon Jul 14, 2011 @ 1:03 pm | delete

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

animals do not have gods - they are smrter than that.

Just because you dont understand how the natural world works, doesnt mean a big invisible being had to be part of it.

Belief in God is personal. Belief in religion is social.

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

Philosophy is "questions that may never be answered." Religion is "answers that may never be questioned."

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Anti-Theist Apr 8, 2011 @ 12:49 pm | delete

Who are we to say god is real and evolution doesn't exist, where its so easy to believe and proven that evolution is the cause of all things we know. God was just an ordinary man that wanted to be remembered, and to this day hes known as the man who created everything, or to me the man who formed the worlds longest lasting and most full of shit cult.

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Rachel Feb 5, 2011 @ 6:42 am | delete

Organized religions are the very teeth of the devil, and the leaders wear the golden crowns. How I long to see the devil with a toothless grin, never to tear at my soul again. - R. S.