In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessings. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence.
A.A. LewisStichwörter: science inspirational religion atheism euphoric
New Rule: Death isn’t always sad. This week, the Reverend Jerry Falwell died, and millions of Americans asked, “Why? Why, God? Why…didn’t you take Pat Robertson with him?” I don’t want to say Jerry was disliked by the gay community, but tonight in New York City, at exactly eight o’clock, Broadway theaters along the Great White Way turned their lights up for two minutes.
I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I think we can make an exception, because speaking ill of the dead was kind of Jerry Falwell’s hobby. He’s the guy who said AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality and that 9/11 was brought on by pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, and the ACLU—or, as I like to call them, my studio audience.
It was surreal watching people on the news praise Falwell, followed by a clip package of what he actually said—things like:
"Homosexuals are part of a vile and satanic system that will be utterly annihilated." "If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being." "Feminists just need a man in the house." "There is no separation of church and state." And, of course, everyone’s favorite: "The purple Teletubby is gay."
Jerry Falwell found out you could launder your hate through the cover of “God’s will”—he didn’t hate gays, God does.
All Falwell’s power came from name-dropping God, and gay people should steal that trick. Don’t say you want something because it’s your right as a human being—say you want it because it’s your religion.
Gay men have been going at things backward. Forget civil right, and just make gayness a religion. I mean, you’re kneeling anyway. And it’s easy to start a religion. Watch, I’ll do it for you.
I had a vision last night. The Blessed Virgin Mary came to me—I don’t know how she got past the guards—and she told me it’s time to take the high ground from the Seventh-day Adventists and give it to the twenty-four-hour party people. And that what happens in the confessional stays in the confessional. Gay men, don’t say you’re life partners. Say you’re a nunnery of two. “We weren’t having sex,officer. I was performing a very private mass.Here in my car. I was letting my rod and my staff comfort him.”
One can only hope that as Jerry Falwell now approaches the pearly gates, he is met there by God Himself, wearing a Fire Island muscle shirt and nut-hugger shorts, saying to Jerry in a mighty lisp, “I’m not talking to you.
Stichwörter: humor hate death religion ignorance jerry-falwell hate-speech
[We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds.
W.E.B. Du BoisStichwörter: education religion dogma skeptic creed superstition ancient disbelief creeds humanist
It doesn't matter how you conceive of divinity. It only matters that you see it in everything, including yourself.
Eric Micha'el LeventhalStichwörter: inspirational consciousness love acceptance compassion inspiration self-acceptance peace god spiritual religion spirituality self-awareness unity appreciation awareness healing enlightenment divinity wholeness oneness self-love know-thyself
The True Believer ignores anything that doesn't fit his belief system. Instead, he inevitably comes to hold those beliefs at a very profound level. They can become absolutely part of his identity. It is this that brings together the religious, the psychic, the cynic (as opposed to the open skeptic) and the narrow-minded of all kinds. It is something I encountered a lot among my fellow Christians. At one level it can be seen in the circular discussion which goes as follows:
Why do you believe in the bible?
Because it is Gods word.
And why do you believe in God?
Because of what it says in the bible.
At a less obvious level, it can be seen in the following common exchange:
Why do you believe Christianity is true?
Because I have the experience of a personal relationship with God.
So how do you know you're not fooling yourself?
Because i know it is real.
Even as an enthusiastic believer myself I could see this kind of tautology at work, and over time I realized that it is common to all forms of True Belief., regardless of the particular belief in question. The fact is, it's enormously difficult - and you need to be fantastically brave - to overcome the circularity of your own ideologies. But just because our identity might be tied up with what we believe, it doesn't make that belief any more correct. One wishes that True Believers of any sort would learn a little modesty in their convictions.
Stichwörter: religion scepticism
Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.
Tom ClancyStichwörter: religion sports idolatry
I am, indeed, against all proselyters, whether they be on my side or on some other side. What moves nine-tenths of them, I believe, is simply the certainty of the result that I have just mentioned. Their lofty pretensions are all tosh. The thing they yearn for is the satisfaction of making someone unhappy: that yearning is almost as universal among them as thirst is in dry Congressmen.
H.L. MenckenStichwörter: religion
I dislike persons who change their basic ideas, and I dislike them when they change them for good reasons quite as much as when they change them for bad ones. A convert to a good idea is simply a man who confesses that he was formerly an ass—and is probably one still. When such a man favors me with a certificate that my eloquence has shaken him I feel about him precisely as I’d feel if he told me that he had started (or stopped) beating his wife on my recommendation.
H.L. MenckenStichwörter: religion
The Fathers of the Republic, I believe, were far cleverer fellows than they are commonly represented to be, even in the schoolbooks. If it was not divine inspiration that moved them, then they must have drunk better liquor than is now obtainable on earth. For when they made religion a free-for-all, they prepared the way for making it ridiculous; and when they opened the doors of office to the mob, they disposed forever of the delusion that government is a solemn and noble thing, by wisdom out of altruism.
H.L. MenckenStichwörter: religion
For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. The more stupid the man, the larger his stock of adamantine assurances, the heavier his load of faith.
H.L. MenckenStichwörter: religion
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