“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…

“..a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them free to otherwise to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.  This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

There’s no debate about what “religious…

“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…

“Hell no, we won’t go!”

60s anti-war slogan

It’s nice to have a birthday in the summer – guaranteed good weather (almost).  My early parties were well attended (everybody home from vacation) and outdoors.  But I know why seniors tend to disregard birthdays: as the number of enjoyed August 9ths gets more numerous, so does the number of anticipated August 9ths shrink.

As a speechwriter, I learned such obscure facts as my shared birthdate with Francis Scott…

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…

(Several years ago, I undertook to read the Torah.  For specific reasons, see below.  But basically I wanted to find out, to my own satisfaction, just what it said, to the extent possible, given that it's such an ancient text that's been repeatedly copied and edited. 

To rabbis, thus to most Jews, it is a repository of priceless wisdom.   I set out to find it. 

What I found was both enlightening and disappointing. …

“Here’s an object more of dread / Than aught the grave contains – A human form with reason fled / While wretched life remains.”

Abraham Lincoln, letter to Andrew Johnson, Sept. 6, 1846

A heavily armed man explodes a gas canister in a theater, then opens fire,  killing a dozen, wounding many more.  Again, Colorado and the nation are in shock.  The eternal gun debate, which Obama had been keeping quiet, explodes, four months before an election.  There’s…

“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…

“Never speak ill of yourself; your friends will always say enough on that subject.”

Talleyrand

“It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.”

Mark Twain

On June 28, my second wife and I would have celebrated our 31st anniversary.  I meant to write about it on the 28th, but hey, three years after the divorce, a guy’s allowed to…

“All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.”

Lucretius

I sometimes think that prankish college students with nothing better to do are responsible for at least some of the more outrageous letters to advice columnists.  That may be one explanation for the following letter and response.  Another is that the writer and columnist are absolutely serious,  the latter buying into…

“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 Devil gets up to the belfry by the vicar's skirts."

Thomas Fuller, 1732

"It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak."

Eric Hoffer, 1954

“Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor.”

Emerson, Essays: First Series, 1841

“Much of the important evils…are those which [people] inflict on each other through stupidity or…

“Civilization will not attain to its perfection, until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”

Emile Zola

On the summer solstice, there is more light than on any other day of the year.  Light is a metaphor for knowledge, so let us set aside at least one day a year to intentionally do one thing to advance the light of reason.  Read a book, join a secular group, write a letter to the editor, give a talk, have a thoughtful discussion,…

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…