Famous Freethinkers- Allen, Steve

“No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible. ” Read on…

Famous Freethinkers- Asimov, Isaac

Creationists make it sound as though a “theory” is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. Read on…

Historical Humanists- Arnold, Matthew

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
— Matthew Arnold Read on…

Famous Freethinkers- Adams, Phillip

Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opiate of the people. Opium suggests something soporific, numbing, dulling. Too often religion has been an aphrodisiac for horror, a Benzedrine for bestiality. At its best it has lifted spirits and raised spires. At its worst it has turned entire civilizations into cemeteries.

— Phillip Adams, Adams vs. God Read on…

Historical Humanists- Amiel, Henri Frédéric

“We are always making God our accomplice so that we may legalize our own inequities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.”

“A lively, disinterested, persistent liking for truth is extraordinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism or doubt.”
— Henri Frédéric Amiel Read on…

Famous Humanists- Bierce, Ambrose

“Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.”

“Camels and Christians receive their burdens kneeling.”

“Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.” Read on…

Historical Humanists- Besant, Annie Wood

“The position of the atheist is a clear and reasonable one. I know nothing about God and therefore I do not believe in Him or it. What you tell me about your God is self-contradictory and is therefore incredible. I do not deny “God,” which is an unknown tongue to me. I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God.”
— Annie Wood Besant Read on…

Famous Humanists- Attenborough, Sir David Frederick

“I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programs a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature, to which I reply and say, “Well, it’s funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the almighty, always quote beautiful things, they always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses.” But I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he’s five years old, and I reply and say, “Well presumably the god you speak about created the worm as well,” and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful god with that action, and therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truth, truthful and factual, and allow people to make up their own minds about the moralities of this thing, or indeed the theology of this thing.”
— David Attenborough Read on…

Famous Humanists- Baldwin, James

“Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty — necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.”
“If the concept of God has any validity or use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”
— Baldwin, James Read on…