Religious Tyranny

Whatever religious people may say about their love of God or the mandates of their religion, when their behavior toward others is violent and destructive, when it causes suffering among their neighbors, you can be sure the religion has been corrupted and reform is desperately needed. Charles Kimball 

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven. Robert Green Ingersoll

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. Thomas Jefferson

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty. Albert Einstein

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. Albert Einstein

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. Albert Einstein

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue. Erich Fromm

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people. Eleanor Roosevelt

The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history. Noam Chomsky

Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe. Thomas H. Huxley

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Voltaire

Hate is not a family value. James D. Hornfischer

No moral system can rest solely on authority. A. J. Ayer

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind. Thomas Paine

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Blaise Pascal