767 "Whenever a priest comes all they talk about is sex. Whenever a prositute comes all they talk about is God."

3448 "When the church teaches that "confession is good for the soul," it teaches false doctrine; it is only good for the church." [Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays_, 1911]

3033 "Watsonville. In this sleepy farm town where thousands are still feeling the effects of the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, people take their signs of hope where they can find them. ... About a month ago, an elderly woman praying in a shaded grove at Pinto Lake County Park found one in the bark of a tree. ... An estimated 4,000 people have flocked every day this week to see what many claim is the outline of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the limb of an oak tree, and park officials have cordoned off part of the tree because pilgrims are carving gashes and dents in it to take bark home as souvenirs. ... She is said to appear on the Watsonville tree as the outline of a cloaked woman. Some visitors claim they see two other Virgins on the same tree. Skeptics see little more than a garden-variety growth on an unremarkable oak." [Dan Turner, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 July 1992]

3724 "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." --George Bernard Shaw

1672 "Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." Thomas Henry Huxley

558 "Keyboard Locked. Try anything you can think of."

76 "The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw

3009 "Bound by a common theology and the spreading sensation that their number is great and their time and leader have come, the Rev. Pat Robertson's fellow Pentecostal and charismatic evangelists are stirring to his still-unannounced quest for the Republican nomination for the presidency. ... Robertson is the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and a regular commentator on its '700 Club.' ... It is a quickening that the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who is supporting Vice President George Bush, said was the beginning of 'a mighty army.' ... No preacher has ever tried to summon this latent religious army to his own political cause. ... In the last two weeks, however, Robertson has persuaded two evangelists, [Jimmy] Swaggert of Louisiana and Oral Roberts of Oklahoma, both of whom are Pentacostals, to give him emotional public endorsements. The evangelist Rex Humbard sat on stage with him at Constitution Hall in Washington last week, and the camera picked him out as Robertson announced to a national audience on a satellite telecast that 3 million signatures on a petition would persuade him to declare for the nomination. Evangelist Jim Bakker of North Carolina, in response to a reporter's inquiry, gave a mild reply: 'I would have no problems standing with him. My feeling is that our viewers would welcome his candidacy.' ... Robertson, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, is a charismatic. Unlike other evangelicals who also believe that the Bible is true and that one must be reborn to experience salvation, Pentecostal churches such as the Assemblies of God and charismatic Christians of any denomination share an additional theology. It is a belief in the 'gifts' of the spirit, the abilities to heal and work other miracles through faith, to speak in tongues, to discern the will of God." [Dudley Clendinen, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 October 1986]

3570 "The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one." -- David Hume

1235 "The very admission of the need to harmonize is an admission that the burden of proof is on the narratives, not on those who doubt them. What harmonizing shows is that despite appearances, the texts still might be true." Robert M. Price, Beyond Born Again, p. 75.

2966 "There is something feeble and a little contemptable about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not real, he becomes furious when they are disputed." [Bertrand Russell, "Human Society in Ethics and Politics"]

1996 "...Jesus was almost certainly not 'of Nazareth'. An overwhelming body of evidence indicates that Nazareth did not exist in biblical times. The town is unlikely to have appeared before the third century." [Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, _The Messianic Legacy_]

675 "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -- Plato

215 "A Prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support." -- Ambrose Bierce

520 "11th commandment: Desire not your neighbor's Pentium II or his 16xCD-R."

2366 "It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui." [Helen Keller]

554 "System Price Error. Inadequate money spent on hardware."

2575 "God has always been hard on the poor." [Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793)]

1738 "It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved." [Galileo Galilei, "The Authority of Scripture in Philosophical Controversies"]

3701 "Beam me aboard, Scotty!" [-] "Will a 2 x 4 do, Captain?"