Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

The Vatican won’t prosecute pedophile priests but I decide I’m not ready for motherhood and it’s condemnation for me? These are the same people that won’t support national condom distribution that PREVENTS teenage pregnancy.

If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.

Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.The work is a...

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have...

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.

The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, that is true perversion!

One of the greatest tragedies in mankind’s entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.

The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we’ll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of...

Religion is still useful among the herd – that it helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could. The crude human animal is in-eradicably superstitious, and there is every biological reason why they should be....

…legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of...

Since then your sere Majesty and your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by...

I remember Bob saying, ‘Some people who believe in God are good, and some people who believe in God are not good. So where does that leave you?’ He had looked around and decided that...

Theology is ignorance with wings.

God save us from religion.

Religion. It’s given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.

the church should just stay out of people’s pants.

…people don’t think in churches.[Noyce on what bothers him most about organized religion.]

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. … These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.[Letter objecting to the use of government...

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.

I don’t know how you feel, but I’m pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public...

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might...

Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus...

The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. ‘They won’t let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.”What are you complaining...

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal,...

The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep...

I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions...

Don’t tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh. …And if any...

To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds...

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

Your way of life is sinful and wrong,” he said fiercely.Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares,...

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎The mind of God is greater than all the minds of men, so let all men leave the gospel just as God has delivered it unto us.

Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?

Perhaps the True Self–and the full Christ Mystery (not the same as organized Christianity)–will always live in the backwaters of any empire and the deep mines of any religion.

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.