671 All argument is against it; but all belief is for it." --Samuel Johnson

2758 "...it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes scientific. Moral: science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, seed of all sin, the original sin. This alone is morality. 'Thou shalt not know' -- the rest follows." [Nietzsche, "Antichrist"]

1593 "But could the divine command theorist hold, as some theologians have, that God's will is restricted by His own nature or character? For example, it has been claimed that God's nature is unalterably loving and just, and hence that God cannot violate his nature by performing and unloving or unjust act. Notice, however, that this view places the ultimate source of moral value outside of God's will, in his unalterable nature or character; from this perspective, it is God's inability to will acts contrary to His loving nature which guarantees the goodness of His commands. Thus, to place restrictions on God's will is to admit that something outside of His will determines what is right. So, the 'unalterable nature' approach is not open to the divine command theorist." C. Stephen Layman, The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the Fondation of Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1991), p. 40.

2480 If God can do anything he can make a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it. Then there is something God cannot do, he cannot lift the stone. Therefore God does not exist." [Lucretius, Roman poet]

970 "Because even Christianity isn't powerful enough to destroy the good in humanity, try as it might."

566 "The bible teaches that women brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment sent of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man's bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire...Here is the Bible position of women briefly summed up." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

1446 "It seems to me that it could simply be denied that it is appropriate to describe the universe as an entity which 'pops into existence' or which 'begins to exist' even if it is true that the universe is temporally finite. Suppose we think of the universe as a distribution of properties over an at-least-four-dimensional finite manifold. (So we shall be B-series theorists and substantivalists.) Among the questions we need to answer, there are the following: (i) does the manifold in question have any boundaries?; (ii) if the manifold does have boundaries, are these boundaries open or closed?; (iii) if the universe does have boundaries, does time extend all the way to these boundaries (or is it a local phenomenon, restricted to some sub-portion of the manifold)? Suppose--to consider just one epistemically possible option--that the universe is bounded and closed, but that time is a local phenomenon. Then it could surely turn out to be the case that there is nothing which begins to exist which does not have a cause, and yet that the universe--which is not itself an entity in time--does not begin to exist (and hence does not need a cause to explain how it 'pops into existence'). Even in a temporally finite universe, there needn't be any uncaused events--for the time-series might be appropriately modelled by an open interval on the real number line." Graham Oppy, "Reply to Professor Craig" (1995)

750 "Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

1780 "Christians say that--without exception--their God answers all of their prayers; it's just that He sometimes says "yes" and other times "no," "maybe," or "wait." Of course the same could be said of the rain-god,"Bob." [Rev. Donald Morgan]

462 "Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software. I'm talking about major-label recording contracts." -- Courtney Love

454 "The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning." -- Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764

2793 Marriage Ceremony: An incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the law being dragged into the affairs of your family. [O. C. Ogilvie]

190 "In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies."

3443 "There may be lots of Providence in the world, but no man seems to know just where it can be found." [Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays_, 1911]

3731 "There are the known knowns, thinks we know we know; and the known unknowns, things we know we do not know; but there are also the unknown unknowns, those things we don't know we don't know.

1700 "No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion." Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)]

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.

3463 "Honesty is never seen sitting astride the fence." [Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays_, 1911]

674 "At one point in time, many of us actually had Jesus as our personal lord and saviour. Unfortunately, we later had to dismiss him for incompetence, gross negligence, misconduct and consistent failure to show up for work."

3728 "The greatest danger to our future is apathy." --Jane Goodall