As a literary monument the Bible is of much later origin than the Vedas; as a work of literary value it is surpassed by everything written in the last two thousand years by authors even of second rank, and to compare it seriously with the productions of Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare or Go the would require a fanatacized mind that had entirely lost its power of judgment. Commentary on the Bible and Christianity
http://www.themodernreligion.com/comparative/christ/bible_commentary.html
Its conception of the universe is childish, and its morality revolting, as revealed in the malicious vengeance attributed to God in the Old Testament and in the New, the parable of the laborers of the eleventh hour and the episodes of Mary Magdalen and the woman taken in adultery.
Historical investigations have revealed to us the origin and growth of the Bible. We know that by this name we designate a collection of writings as radically unlike in origin, character and contents, as if the Nibelungen Lied, Mirabeu's speeches, Heine's love poems and a manual of zoology had been printed and mixed up promiscuously, and then bound into one volume.
We find collected in this book the superstitious beliefs of the ancient inhabitants of Palestine, with indistinct echoes of Indian and Persian fables, mistaken imitations of Egyptian theories and customs, historical chronicles as dry as they are unreliable, and miscellaneous poems, amatory, human and Jewish-national, which are rarely distinguished by beauties of the highest order, but frequently by superfluity of expression, bad taste, and genuine Oriental sensuality.
- Max Nordau, Conventional Lies of Our Civilization
Our study of pornography, our living of life, tells us that the myth of feminine evil lived out so resolutely by the Christians of the Dark Ages, is alive and well, here and now. Our study of pornography, our living of life, tells us that though the witches are dead, burned alive at the stake, the belief in female evil is not, the hatred of female carnality is not.
The Church has not changed its premises; the culture has not refuted those premises. It is left to us, the inheritors of that myth, to destroy it and institutions based on it.
- Andrea Dworkin, Women Hating
... Most of the world is ruled by Biblical religious beliefs -- even Africa now. I want to encourage anything that's a statement against Christianity, because over the past 500 years Christian missionaries systematically destroyed virtually all of world's diverse cultures, making the world a much less interesting place.
No other religion -- Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Paganism -- did anywhere near the damage Christianity did. Bishop Landa burned almost all the one-of-a-kind Mayan codices -- an incalculable historical loss. There have been so many atrocities (like the Inquisition and the Salem witch trials) in the name of Christianity that -- it can't be too soon to be rid of that alien belief plague. In fact, aliens from Outer Space could hardly have devised a more crippling weapon against the people of planet Earth than the Christian religion.
- V. Vale, Re/Search #12: Modern Primitives
With all of the contradictions in the Christian scriptures, many people currently cannot rationally accept Christianity the way it has been practiced in the past. Great numbers of people are beginning to doubt the existence of God, in the established Christian sense of the word. So, they have taken to calling themselves "Christian Athiests." True, the Christian Bible is a mass of contradictions; but what could be more contradictory than the term "Christian Athiest?"
If prominent leaders of the Christian faith are rejecting the past interpretation of God, how then can their followers be expected to adhere to previous religious traditions?
With all the debates about whether or not God is dead, if he isn't he had better have MEDICARE!
- Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible
The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was fifteen years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean, sweet breath again this side of the grave.- Mark Twain
I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature.
- Thomas Jefferson, quoted in Salvation for Sale by Gerard Thomas Straub
The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
- Abraham Lincoln, quoted in Salvation for Sale by Gerard Thomas Straub
Those who do not violently set themselves against religion, the bogus God, the parasitic priests -- these professors of resignation are assimilable to the pact with the countless vermin of Christianity, vermin which must be exterminated.
- Andre Breton, What is Surrealism?
Christianity -- the religion dominant in our present society -- has had a history that is simply FILLED with examples of disregard of individual liberty, equality of men and women, and the dignity of all races of people. The religion has exhibited over a period of almost two thousand years... a self-righteous desire to impose itself on anyone and everyone through law, and a total intense suppression of criticism and questioning of itself.
How can anyone with any shred of love for freedom call himself or herself part of THAT tradition?
Religion is a terrible and opportunistic thing. The fact is that something in it will always attempt to seize on anything in the world that can lever it into an even more secure position of dominance. If the spirit of the time is for slavery, then it is for slavery; if the tendency evolves towards fascism, it is fascistic. And true to form when protest is the hallmark of an age, the churches turn into abodes of singing nuns with guitars, or earnest young ministers decrying nuclear weapons.
- Fred Woodworth, Strike
An old adage says, "Where a priest has trod, no grass will grow!" That means, in other words, if a person is once in the clutches of the priests, his intellect becomes barren -- his intellectual functions cease to operate in a normal way, and instead religious maggots and divine worms wriggle through his brain. He resembles a sheep that has the staggers.These misguided, unhappy wretches have been defrauded of the real object of life; but what is worse, they form the great crowd in the train of the opponents to science and the march of reason, to revolution and to liberty. Whenever new chains are to be forged for mankind, they are willing to work at the anvil as if possessed by demons...
Away, then, with the Christian theology! Away with a god invented by preachers of the bloody faith, who, without their important nothing, by means of which they explain everything, could no longer revel in superfluity; no longer glorify poverty and live in luxury themselves; no longer preach submission and practice arrogance; but who would, through the march of reason, be hurled into the deepest depths of oblivion.
- Johann Most, The God Pestilence
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