All Blog Posts Tagged 'religion' (431)

[Note: The following was written when I was an adherent of Humanistic Judaism.  I have since left the movement and revised the post, but the basic ideas still apply.]

“Soon silence will have passed into legend.  Man has turned his back on silence.  Day after day he invents machines and devices that increased noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.  Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and…

Good evening. Tonight I speak, as always, to my fellow Americans…but also to the entire Muslim world, from those who think theirs is a religion of peace…to the perpetrators of the ongoing insanity of blasphemy laws, jihads, and fatwas – all of you who call yourselves Muslims.

I want to talk to you about the recent resurgence of Muslim insanity.  Actually, most of Islam is insanity, but the same is true of all religions, and that’s beside the point.

Sometimes Muslims just go…

Of the many, many things there are to know about 9/11, here are three that I hang on to.  Other suggestions are welcome.  What is not fact about 9/11 is voluminous: the Jews did it, the government did it, they hate our freedoms, etc., etc.  But here are three (proposed) facts:

(1) The horror could have been prevented.  Every indication is that the government knew about Muslim men being trained to fly planes.  It is common knowledge…

“No child should predecease their parents.  I remember what it’s like (PAUSE).  It brings back (PAUSE)…It brings back memories…that call, out of the blue.”

Joe Biden

Why is football still legal?  It’s a serious question.  Why maintain, nay, lionize a pastime that wrecks bodies and minds? 

A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt, that manliest of…

“God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable.  They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.”

H.L. Mencken

“I find it necessary to wash my hands after I have come   into contact with religious people.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Recent A/N threads have generated much thoughtful…

“If God wants us to do a thing he should make his wishes sufficiently clear.  Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.”

Samuel  Butler

“I cannot believe in a God who has neither humor nor common sense.”

W. Somerset Maugham

Followers of the riveting “Zachary’s Brain” series will remember that Zach is my 6-year-old stepson (7 this month) whose task of configuring the world – his…

Another A/N blogger, Richard Goscicki, has eloquently written on the connection between religion and the destruction of our planet.  Let us count the ways. 

Time is wasted in religious ritual and obsessing over ancient texts.  Religious wars and terrorism carry on a constant slaughter of humans and destruction of resources.  Religious teachings – that contraception is wrong, that man is not descended from animals but is special, that we are meant to have total dominion over nature…all…

There is someone on my tumblr who is an atheist scientist student.  She posted something along the lines of "religion is not the problem, people are" and went on and on, in what looked like a defense of religion.



I thought this needed to be sorted out.  I don't want criticism of religion to be so easily dismissed.  So I decided that people who criticise religion…

“I used to think my brain was the most wonderful organ in the universe. Then I realized who was telling me this.”

Emo Phillips

(From a fictional exchange between two extraterrestrial intelligent machines, regarding the dominant life-form on Earth:)

“So…what does the thinking?”

“You’re not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat.”

“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in…

"As a beautiful flower that is full of hue but lacks fragrance, even so fruitless is the well-spoken word of one who does not practice it."

The Dhammapada

Informed of a former colleague’s decision to have a bar mitzvah in middle age, I can’t help but look for reasons, since the ceremony is completely optional at this point in life.

For a complex variety of reasons, many of them personal, some Jewish adults genuinely want to reconnect with their…

The most questionable part of Romney is not his ethics, or whether he created or destroyed jobs.  It's his religion. A President's religion, if's he's a true believer, influences the way he sees the world and makes decisions.  Did Dubya think God told him to invade Iraq?  To what extent does Romney believe all that nutty Mormon stuff? 

Nutty stuff

I was recently fortunate enough to receive a copy of the Book of Mormon, courtesy of the Marriott Residence Inns. …

Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.”

Ambrose Bierce

It would be great to have reliable numbers on religious migration: how many people change religions each year, how many become new adherents, how many drift away, never to return?

Increasing the ranks

Different religions have different ways of increasing their ranks: birth rate (e.g., all…

(The following was originally submitted to the July 1-4 2008 Blogswarm against Theocracy.  I have made some additions and revisions.  Since my goal is always change in the real world, I urge you to take personal action to roll back religious bigotry and superstition.  First Freedom First is a good place to start.)

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good…

“I object to having to attend chapel 40 times before I graduate in order to earn a degree, sir.  I don’t see where the college has the right to force me to listen to a clergyman of whatever faith even once, or to listen to a Christian hymn invoking the Christian deity even once, given that I’m an atheist who is, to be truthful, deeply offended by the practices and beliefs of organized religion…I do not need the sermons of professional moralists to tell me how I should act.  I certainly…

“Those who love God are not always the friends of their fellow men.”

Robert Ingersoll

“When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.”

Oscar Wilde

“I find it necessary to wash my hands after I have come into contact with religious people.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Voltaire was right for his time, but would be wrong today if he said “Christianity…

The mailed invitation to the presumed induction of the daughter of my first cousin to Jewish adulthood read “We cordially invite you to celebrate with us on the occasion of the bat mitzvah of our daughter Carly Sarah on Saturday morning, the Twelfth of November, Two Thousand and Eleven at Nine Thirty in the morning. Congregation Adath Jeshrun…Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.” 

Apparently it’s more dignified to use no numbers and capitalize everything, as if it were 18th…

“An inch away, total darkness.”

Zen saying

"If you believe in judgment day, then I have to seriously question your judgment."

Bill Maher

“Prepare for tomorrow by doing your best today.”

Life’s Little Instruction Calendar, Volume V

Religious radio and TV are great sources of amusement for me.  I love to watch the strutting, sweating televangelists spouting their childish BS…

Introduction

If secular humanists don’t look to God, the Bible or the Quran for their wisdom, where do they get it?  From other human beings, of course.  It turns out that people have been thinking and writing for a very long time about how to live a good life.

I’ve noticed that many of the same ideas keep showing up, across geography, history and culture.

The following collection provides practical advice about how to think, behave, and regard others,…