{"quotes":[{"text":"You haven't heard a damn word I've said. See, this is why I can't stand your kinds. You light your candles and mumble your latin spells and pray to a god who isn't there, doesn't care, or is just plain crazy or cruel or both. The world burns and you praise the asshole who either set it or let it.","author":"Rick Yancey","tags":["atheism","church","priests","religion"],"id":31907,"author_id":"Rick+Yancey"},{"text":"Yes an atheist priest can perfectly minister to a believing congregation and miracles can happen in that congregation. Miracles depend on the faith of the believer, not that of the officiant. A bartender who never takes alcohol can serve alcohol to his clients. What is necessary is that the priest believes he is doing the good work. The congregation needs faith and it helps them. It would be evil to deny them such a service in the name of his lack of faith. - Bangambiki Habyarimana.","author":"Bangambiki Habyarimana","tags":["atheism","atheism-defined","atheism","atheist","atheist-argument","atheist-arguments","atheist-claims","atheist-club","atheist-pastor","atheist-philosophers","atheist-priest","atheist","atheistic","atheistic-philosophy","atheistic-religion","atheists","belief","belief-in-god","belief","belief-system","beliefs","believer","believing","church","clergy","clergy","congregation","faith","faith-in-god","faith-in-yourself","faith","faith-reason","faith-vs-reason","faithful","faithfulness","false-god","false-gods","fear-of-god","god","goddess","gods","habyarimana-bangambiki","minister","pastor","pastors","pastors","priest","priest","priests","religion","religion-and-philoshophy","religion-spirituality","religion-vs-science","religious","religious-faith","spirituality","spirituality","spirituality-vs-religion","there-is-no-god","unbelief","unbelieve","unbeliever","unbelievers"],"id":71489,"author_id":"Bangambiki+Habyarimana"},{"text":"The first days of January 1942 brought enormous amounts of snow. The reader already knows what snow meant for the clergy. But this time the torture surpassed the bounds of the endurable. At the same time the thermometer hovered between 5 and 15 degrees below zero. From morning till night we scraped, shoveled, and pushed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of snow to the brook. The work detail consisted of more than 1,000 clergymen, forced to keep moving by SS men and Capos who kicked us and beat us with truncheons.We had to make rounds with the wheelbarrows from the assembly square to the brook and back. Not a moment of rest was allowed, and much of the time we were forced to run.At one point I tripped over my barrow and fell, and it took me a while to get up again. An SS man dashed over and ordered me to turn with the full load. He ran beside me, beating me constantly with a leather strap. When I got to the brook I was not allowed to dump out the heavy snow, but had to make a second complete round with it instead.When the guard finally went off and I tried to let go of the wheelbarrow, I found that one of my hands was frozen fast to it. I had to blow on it with warm breath to get it free.","author":"Jean Bernard","tags":["catholicism","catholics","concentration-camps","good-friday","nazi-germany","nazis","nazism","priest","priesthood","priests","ss","suffering","torture"],"id":77280,"author_id":"Jean+Bernard"},{"text":"...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes.].","author":"John Adams","tags":["celts","chaldeans","clergy","greeks","hindu","hinduism","islam","knowledge","monopoly","muslim","persians","priesthood","priests","protestant","reformation","romans","science-vs-religion","sect","teutons"],"id":86477,"author_id":"John+Adams"},{"text":"If the bible be true, God commanded his chosen people to destroy men simply for the crime of defending their native land. They were not allowed to spare trembling and white-haired age, nor dimpled babes clasped in the mothers' arms. They were ordered to kill women, and to pierce, with the sword of war, the unborn child. 'Our heavenly Father' commanded the Hebrews to kill the men and women, the fathers, sons and brothers, but to preserve the girls alive. Why were not the maidens also killed? Why were they spared? Read the thirty-first chapter of Numbers, and you will find that the maidens were given to the soldiers and the priests. Is there, in all the history of war, a more infamous thing than this? Is it possible that God permitted the violets of modesty, that grow and shed their perfume in the maiden's heart, to be trampled beneath the brutal feet of lust? If this was the order of God, what, under the same circumstances, would have been the command of a devil? When, in this age of the world, a woman, a wife, a mother, reads this record, she should, with scorn and loathing, throw the book away. A general, who now should make such an order, giving over to massacre and rapine a conquered people, would be held in execration by the whole civilized world. Yet, if the bible be true, the supreme and infinite God was once a savage.","author":"Robert G. Ingersoll","tags":["bible","book","brutal","children","commandments","defense","destroy","devil","father","general","god","heart","hebrews","history","jehovah","loathing","lust","maidens","massacre","mercy","modesty","native","numbers","priests","read","savage","scorn","sword","the-bible","the-devil","wife","women","yahweh"],"id":101044,"author_id":"Robert+G.+Ingersoll"},{"text":"I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay hands on everything they can get.","author":"Napoléon Bonaparte","tags":["greed","hypocrites","hypocritical","priests","superstition"],"id":163481,"author_id":"Napol%C3%A9on+Bonaparte"},{"text":"My Ten Commandments:1. God is a verb, not a noun.2. Prayers are important only if they lead to corresponding actions.3. Creation is an art. Science provides the tools for the artist. Anybody with the tools is not necessarily an artist.4. Religion involves exclusivity and superiority. Divinity is inclusive and involves humility.5. God by definition should be omnipotent. He should not require intermediation by priests and prophets.6. All prophets have displayed exclusivity and superiority. (Refer to #4 above)7. Rituals involve intermediation and often cruelty towards other fellows of creation. 8. Inclusivity and humility towards all creations of God is divine.9. Rituals are antithesis of the divine. Rituals indicate a god and his intermediaries who are greedy, arrogant, revengeful and cruel.10. God exists only for increasing happiness of all creatures.","author":"R. N. Prasher","tags":["cruelty","god","kindness","mankind","prayer","priests","religion","ritual"],"id":167868,"author_id":"R.+N.+Prasher"},{"text":"When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power:—'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted.' This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God.When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other, swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt, and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters. Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God.While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend.It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch.","author":"Robert G. Ingersoll","tags":["abhorrent","affection","agony","arrogant","beauty","belief","benefactor","bible","blood","book","christianity","corpses","cruelty","curse","death","deceived","delight","despair","despicable","dishonesty","dreams","dust","enemy","exchange","exodus","falsehood","famine","fear","freedom","friend","god","govern","hateful","heartless","hideous","history","home","horror","hypocrisy","ignorant","impossible","indignation","infamous","jehovah","jewish","jews","joy","judaism","justice","liberty","love","moses","murder","music","myth","mythology","pain","parallel","pentateuch","pharaoh","pity","plagues","plunder","prey","priests","promise","promised-land","reading","religion","revelation","revengeful","robbed","sad","safety","serpents","shock","slavery","sorrow","sport","starved","superstitious","sympathy","tears","thankful","the-bible","tyranny","tyrants","unreasonable","vain","wander","wasted","yahweh"],"id":178409,"author_id":"Robert+G.+Ingersoll"},{"text":"In medieval times, contrary to popular belief, most knights were bandits, mercenaries, lawless brigands, skinners, highwaymen, and thieves. The supposed chivalry of Charlemagne and Roland had as much to do with the majority of medieval knights as the historical Jesus with the temporal riches and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, or any church for that matter. Generally accompanied by their immoral entourage or servants, priests, and whores, they went from tourney to tourney like a touring rock and roll band, sports team, or gang of South Sea pirates. Court to court, skirmish to skirmish, rape to rape. Fighting as the noble's substitution for work.","author":"Tod Wodicka","tags":["bandits","brigands","catholic-church","charlemagne","chivalry","highwaymen","jesus","knighthood","knights","medieval-life","mercenaries","noblemen","pirates","priests","rock-and-roll-bands","servants","skirmishes","sports-teams","thieves"],"id":194004,"author_id":"Tod+Wodicka"},{"text":"Priests always had much attention lavished on them by their starstruck fans,those devout housewives and wealthy congregants who treated them as if they were guardians of the velvet rope blocking entrance into that ever so exclusive nightclub, Heaven.","author":"Viet Thanh Nguyen","tags":["hypocrisy","priests","religion"],"id":214831,"author_id":"Viet+Thanh+Nguyen"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":37,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}