What Follows Belief

Founding Father Quotes On Christianity

Thomas Jefferson - reason over religion

Letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.

In a 1787 letter to his nephew and ward, Peter Carr, while at school, Jefferson offered the following advice:

Fix Reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than of blindfolded fear. ... Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it end in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others which it will procure for you. -- (Jefferson's Works, Vol. ii., p. 217)

In his 1787 Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson stated:

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth... Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establishment at all. The experiment was new and doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond conception. They flourish infinitely. Religion is well supported; of various kinds, indeed, but all good enough; all sufficient to preserve peace and order: or if a sect arises, whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without suffering the state to be troubled with it. They do not hang more malefactors than we do. They are not more disturbed with religious dissensions. On the contrary, their harmony is unparalleled, and can be ascribed to nothing but their unbounded tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in which they differ from every nation on earth. They have made the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may, of those tyrannical laws.

In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, he wrote:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

Notes on Virginia, 1782

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

To Benjamin Waterhouse in 1811, Jefferson referred to the Revelation of St. John as "the ravings of a maniac"

Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

Letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 (in the last letter he penned)

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Let Freedom Ring

Quotes about Religion

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth. - Henry Mencken

Good people can do good and bad people can do evil. But for good people to do evil -- that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. - Blaise Pascal

The latter one is quite interesting since he is known for his wager, bet on god and believe that he is and if he is, you gain all, if he does not, you lose nothing, which is a totally fallacy. You lose a lot like just remove science which religion is ready to do and promote ignorance. How is it he recognized the evil of religion and still said it is safer to believe? Slimy bugger.

Rod Serling Nailed It

We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.

— Rod Serling

When Churches Ruled

When the churches literally ruled society, the human drama encompassed:

(a) slavery

(b) the cruel subjection of women

(c) the most savage forms of legal punishment

(d) the absurd belief that kings ruled by divine right

(e) the daily imposition of physical abuse

(f) cold heartlessness for the sufferings of the poor

(g) as well as assorted pogroms ('ethnic cleansing' wars) between rival religions, capital punishment for literally hundreds of offences, and countless other daily imposed moral outrages. . . .

It was the free-thinking, challenging work by people of conscience, who almost invariably had to defy the religious and political status quo of their times, that brought us out of such darkness

- Steve Allen

National Day Of Prayer or Cinco De Mayo

The God Vine website has a video for What Would Happen If We Didn't Pray to God with the subtext of

National Day of Prayer is coming on May 5th, but we should pray to our Lord every single day. This video dramatically shows what the world would be like if we stopped praying. Let's never stop and never give up.

After seeing the video with its ominous music for affect, I think it will be just a cloudy, rainy day if we don't pray. Not too bad. We do need rain as everyone says. But what is it with this God? Is he the stereotypical Jewish mother? What? You don't call your mother? You will hear about it forever, all this bitching and moaning. What is it with this God who is all powerful, all knowing, all loving who gets petty and annoyed that we don't pray to him? Wouldn't he just be happy if we were happy enjoying each others company and a corona? Instead of staring down at us arms folded he should just join in and have some fun with us. Such a party-pooper. Dude, lighten up.

Happy Cinco De Mayo for those who care to join in.

The endeavour to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in. - Thomas Edison

Which Is More Likely?

Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie?

We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie... Instead, therefore, of admitting the recitals of miracles as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be considered as symptoms of its being fabulous.

--Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)

Mankind Asked - Religion's Reply

Religion is not the hero of the day, but the zero.

In any exposition of the products of brains, the Sunday-School takes the booby prize.

Man has asked for truth and the Church has given him miracles.

He has asked for knowledge, and the Church has given him theology.

He has asked for facts, and the Church has given him the Bible.

This foolishness should stop. The Church has nothing to give man that has not been in cold storage for two thousand years. Anything would become stale in that time.

Marilla M. Ricker

What is Faith?

The effort to believe that which your common-sense tells you is not true.

- Elbert Hubbard

Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the Creator of human intelligence

- Anonymous

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.

- Hebrews 11:1

Paul recognized how thin faith is. Just a belief and if wrong they are to be pitied above all.

1 Corinthians 15:12-19

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.