LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hummingwolf)

In light of recent events, some many of you will groan when you see the name of the author, but even the official Richard Dawkins website has posted this quote--from a writer with a rather different overall mindset than Dawkins--with approval. Enjoy!

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme--whose highest real claim is to reasonable prudence--the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY exotic_princess)

Hooo boy LOL


NYDailyNews article here

"I admire the Islam. There's a lot of good principles in it," he said. "But I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith."

*I LOL'd at this*

In the interview, the senator also said the "Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation."
There is no mention of God, Jesus or Christ in that entirely secular document.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Matthew Fox on Christianity:

“There are two Christianities in our midst. One worships a punitive father and seeks obedience at all costs. It is patriarchal, demonizes woman, the earth, science, gays, lesbians, and deep thought. It builds on fear and it supports empire-builders. Its theology includes a punitive father in the sky and teaches original sin. The other Christianity recognizes the original blessing that all beings derive from. We recognize awe, not sin, not guilt, as the starting point of true religion. We recognize a divinity who is source of all things and is as much mother as father, as much female as male. We honor creation and diversity. When God created everything, He pronounced it all good.

"We are here to make love to life. Yes, we are here to make love to life. Delight in creation and take your dreams into our politics and institutions. We live in the midst of a suicidal economy, motivated by love of money. We have reached a dead end. What we need to turn it around are hearts in love with life. How do we do it? We first must move from domination to partnership, and we begin by educating our young in awe and wonder, not how to take tests. Awe leads to reverence, which leads to gratitude, which will reinvent our species. This is the task of our generation: to regain awe. The three Rs need to be balanced by the ten Cs: contemplation, creativity, chaos, compassion, courage, critical consciousness, community, celebration, ceremony, and character." --Matthew Fox

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

"Advocates of mutually exclusive paradigms are in an insidious position: Though each may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing... neither may hope to prove his case. The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proof."

--Thomas S. Kuhn

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dulcinbradbury)

Often, dominionists/the religious right refer to how our country was founded on the principles of Christianity.

I decided to take a look at some quotes of Thomas Jefferson:

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God."

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. 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 blindfolded fear."

Would that there were more who would adhere to such views.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hat_lights)

"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?"
[John Adams, letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816]( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY seshen)

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

~ Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) of Baton Rouge

Google the comment for reactions.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ad_lumen)

I decided, for aome reason, to read Thomas Paine's The Rights Of Man on-line, probably because of the role the phrase plays in Britten's Billy Budd, which is playing on the radio as I write this. I came across the following passage, which put me in mind of The Presidential Imposter and his Mullah - allies:

" When a set of artful men pretended, through the medium of oracles, to hold intercourse with the Deity, as familiarly as they now march up the back-stairs in European courts, the world was completely under the government of superstition. The oracles were consulted, and whatever they were made to say became the law; and this sort of government lasted as long as this sort of superstition lasted.

"After these a race of conquerors arose, whose government, like that of William the Conqueror, was founded in power, and the sword assumed the name of a sceptre. Governments thus established last as long as the power to support them lasts; but that they might avail themselves of every engine in their favor, they united fraud to force, and set up an idol which they called Divine Right, and which, in imitation of the Pope, who affects to be spiritual and temporal, and in contradiction to the Founder of the Christian religion, twisted itself afterwards into an idol of another shape, called Church and State. The key of St. Peter and the key of the Treasury became quartered on one another, and the wondering cheated multitude worshipped the invention.

"When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY deridetenebras)

what a weekend we had here; this was the kind of the weekend that makes you love new york. on one place in new york city the billy graham crusade. not even a mile away the gay pride parade... only in new york city.

oh and btw, the billy graham crusade and the gay pride parade, guess which one of those groups was trying to convert ppl to their agenda and their lifestyle- the crusade or the parade?

i believe it was the crusade.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Nope. No way. Na-ah.

Here's what the Founding Fathers had to say about the US being a "Christian Nation". There are some pretty pithy remarks by some pretty hallowed people.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jmthane)

A few quotes apropos the total disaster that is unfolding in the United States this year.

1. " Naturally the common people don't want war...That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists..." -- Herman Goehring

2. "I am not going to give you a number for it because...it's not my business to do intelligent work." -- Donald Rumseld

3. "Great Britain will imperialize itself out of existence, Germany will militarize itself out of existence, and the United States will spend itself out of existence." --Vladimir Lenin. (He's been right so far)

4. "This is how liberty dies -- to thunderous applause." -- from "Revenge of the Sith"

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY bennu_)

Here is a list of quotes from Christian leaders that are truly disturbing and inhuman.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Christopher Hitchens talks about the Religious Right:

Why I'm Rooting Against the Religious Right
Save the Republic from shallow, demagogic sectarians.

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Thursday, May 5, 2005 12:01 a.m.

I hope and believe that, by identifying itself with "faith" in general and the Ten Commandments in particular, a runaway element in the Republican leadership has made a career-ending mistake. In support of this, let me quote two authorities:

* The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100%. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. . . . Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some god-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

ordos45 wrote:

"America's ideals are corrupted by human nature, just as the ideals of Christianity are corrupted by human nature. A wise man once said "Satan's greatest trick is to make us think he doesn't exist at all". I disagree, Satan's greatest trick is to make us think we're doing the Lord's Work."