“… Only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate … utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people.…” [Dawkins]
“Our Western politicians avoid mentioning the R word (religion), and instead characterize their battle as a war against ‘terror,’ as though terror were a kind of spirit or force, with a will and a mind of its own. Or they characterize terrorists as motivated by pure ‘evil.’ But they are not motivated by evil. However misguided we may think them, they are motivated, like the Christian murderers of abortion doctors, by what they perceive to be righteousness, faithfully pursuing what their religion tells them. They are not psychotic; they are religious idealists who, by their own lights, are rational. They perceive their acts to be good, not because of some warped personal idiosyncrasy, and not because they have been possessed by Satan, but because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning faith.”
… Only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate … utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people.Newsnight, Friday September 22, 2006, The God Delusion, Dawkins interview: LEAD: “In The God Delusion, the scientist Richard Dawkins sets out to attack God ‘in all his forms’ He argues that the rise of religious fundamentalism is dividing people around the world, while the dispute between ‘intelligent design" and Darwinism ‘is seriously undermining and restricting the teaching of science.” Excerpt from chapter eight: What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5372458.stm; Bantam Press published the God Delusion in 2006
Mark Twain
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), American author and humorist (b. November. 30, 1835; d. April 21, 1910)
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.
Mark Twain
“The War Prayer: ‘O Lord our God, help us to tear their bodies to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded.’”
James Madison
Fourth president of the United States (b. 1751 – d. 1836; term of office March 4, 1809-March 3, 1817), Father of the U. S. Constitution
“What have been [Christianity’s] fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”
Richard Dawkins
Author and lecturer
“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
Selected quotes [Twain, Madison, Dawkins] at The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason, http://richarddawkins.net/quotes
“The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and human suffering.”
Author and lecturer Richard Dawkins is the former (1995-2008) Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Among his books are The Ancestor’s Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, A Devil’s Chaplain and The God Delusion [http://richarddawkins.net/pages/staff].
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