"No man consciously chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for the happiness he seeks."
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world
That the pale name of priest might shrink and dwindle
Into the Hell from which it first was furled."
- Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822), Ode to Liberty, 1820

"My purpose…is to transform theologians into anthropologists, lovers of God into lovers of man, candidates for the next world into students of this world … I negate the fantastic hypocrisy of theology and religion only in order to affirm the true nature of man." - Ludwig Feuerbach

The sun, the stars, entheogens, some of the ancient sources of religious myths: "... the main source of religion by far is visionary plants, including Psilocybin mushrooms, Peyote, Ayahuasca combinations, Cannabis, Opium, Henbane, Datura, Mandrake, Belladonna, ergot, Amanita mushrooms, and combinations of these." [Religious myths grew from the] "...midst of an entheogen-induced mystic cognitive state. ...visionary plant inebriation makes you sober, no longer drunken."
- Michael S. Hoffman, Wasson and Allegro on the Tree of Knowledge as Amanita http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm#_Toc135889182
See also: http://www.jamesarthur.net/
http://www.johnallegro.org/Allegro-SundayMirror.htm

The Old and New Testaments, the Bible character Jesus and Christianity are a current manifestation of ancient myths, some of which reach back hundreds of thousands of years. A conglomeration of myths, myths based on myths, including those related to goddess worship, solar mythology, and entheogen ingestion. These rewrites and revisions of previous myths are permeated with mind ensnaring mind entrapping mechanisms, social control mechanisms and political ideology all designed to entrap and control masses of ignorant people and get them to submit to and support authorities and the things authorities desire, (brainwashing and mind control). Designed with support for; authority, empire, and the violence and aggression of empire expansion, for patriarchal hierarchy and totalitarianism, for slavery, torture, and genocide, for rape, incest, and child abuse, for exploitation of resources, for taking from the many to give to the few, for denying help to the needy, and for denying reason as a means to understanding. It's man made, it's wrong, and it's evil. Were it not such a great evil, it could easily be dismissed as ridiculous nonsense.

"Were the many state and religious philosophies to be based upon truth and justice the world would not have an incredible history of bloodshed, wars and oppression." - James Arthur http://www.jamesarthur.net/

"Religion is based...mainly upon fear...fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand.... My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." - Bertrand Russell

"Christianity, like most religions, was set up to disempower people and control them. It was set up as a political vehicle. Sell people on their unworthiness and guilt and you can control them." - John Kaminski, Devils From Heaven

The Christian religion, assembled under the direction of the Roman State, established through centuries of torture, murder and genocide, "with its time tested messiah invented by stealing bits and pieces of mythological masters from other times and places, was designed to be a crowd sedative that kept the rabble in its place, urged them to turn the other cheek when they were robbed and raped by their betters, and kept them from rising up against their masters." - John Kaminski, Devils From Heaven)

What these inventors of patriarchal religion, (Christanism and others past and present), did was create the problem, "sin." They declared man's every natural pleasure, (they were demonizing sexuality, and goddess worship, as natural sexuality will always be the arch enemy of mystical religion, and sexual repression being an effective means of control), the entheogen-induced mystic cognitive state, the original source of religious experience and religion, all declared "sin." (They declared war on mankind.) And, as if that were not enough, so that believers might never be without guilt, they invented "original sin." Invented a consequence, "hell," (partially plagiarized from an earlier myth). Provided a solution, "heaven," which could be attained, based on "faith," through a life of servitude, sacrafice, and suffering, which could be imposed through threats of hellfire and eternal damnation, or torture. This is a common tactic used time and again, demonize something to create a problem, or otherwise create a problem, and offer, or impose, a solution.

That's pretty much the way it continues to work today. Freedoms and pleasures have been repressed, demonized and prohibited and, "Display of the Ten Commandments is like the burning cross used by the KKK. It is a threat to those that don't "tow the line" on religious and social matters." - Lewis Loflin, http://www.sullivan-county.com/

"Once you can get people to believe things you can definitely prove are not true, you can get them to believe anything." - John Kaminski, Devils From Heaven

Believe absurdities and commit atrocities. That is what is happening today.
"The destruction of mankind appears to be the nature, for some reason, of the patriarchal systems that took over somewhere around eight thousand years ago."
- James Arthur http://www.jamesarthur.net/

"I realized early on that it is detailed scientific knowledge which makes certain religious beliefs untenable. A knowledge of the true age of the earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do. And if some of the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest of it be accepted automatically? . . . What could be more foolish than to base one's entire view of life on ideas that, however plausible at the time, now appear to be quite erroneous? And what would be more important than to find our true place in the universe by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs?" [Emphasis added.]
- Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, 1988

"Formidable as the task may seem at present, the long-term need is to persuade Americans that having evidence for your beliefs is a good idea."
- Peter Singer, Princeton professor of ethics, letter to the editor, The New York Times, Nov. 8, 2004

Religion Teaches Hate
"It should be made clear that in order to live a Christian life, any Christian must be able to discriminate and hate, because that's what the bible says." - Bernhard Kuiper

"The God of the Old Testament commands his followers to commit wholesale massacre of tribes who worshiped other gods. Likewise, the Koran commands true believers to destroy the unbelievers. The Inquisition and the crusades are well documented. Religious fanaticism is responsible for sexism, homophobia, mutilations, oppression, torture, executions, genocide and ethnic cleansing." - S Smith Not Snails and Whales: Religion and the Environment

The New Testament is no better as the Bible character Jesus instructs that those who would not have him reign over them should be slain. (Luke 19-27) Sounds like instruction to commit genocide.

"The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization." - Robert A. Wilson
"…jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. …cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

A God of War for a Doomsday Death Cult, worshipping death and trying to bring about the end of the world. Promoting the Cult of the Hero, fight and die for "God and Country". God sacrificed his only son for you, surely you can sacrifice yours for a country whose leaders are "chosen by God." And the sheeple keep doing it, enslaved and herded by the "Good Shepard."

"The Christian religion has made the white man a blood-thirsty, cowardly, low-minded hypocrite, justifying all his foul acts with a cross. Nothing but a club will keep the Christian fanatic out of government, out of the schools, out of control of press, theater, and police. - http://www.christianism.com/html/add45.html

"The recurrence of evil acts committed in the name of God shows that they are not random perversions." - Steven Pinker, "The Blank Slate The Modern Denial of Human Nature" 2002

"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them." - Galileo Galilei

"The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'" - Robert Ingersoll

"To describe religions as mind viruses is sometimes interpreted as contemptuous or even hostile. It is both." - Richard Dawkins

"The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. I don't want to have anything to do with such a God."
- Luther Burbank, interview in San Francisco Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1926

"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." Voltaire ended every letter to friends with "Ecrasez l'infame" (crush the infamy --the Christian religion). - http://www.ffrf.org/

“It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible.”
- George W. Foote

"The plain truth is this:
There is no good reason to believe in a personal God; there is no good reason to believe that the Bible, the Koran, or any other book was dictated by an omniscient being; we do not, in any important sense, get our morality from religion; the Bible and the Koran are not, even remotely, the best sources of guidance we have for living in the 21st century; and the belief in God and in the divine provenance of scripture is getting a lot of people killed unnecessarily." - Sam Harris

"The Bible adversely affects millions of people in thousands of ways and it is crucial that both the Book's inadequacies and its negative teachings be exposed. Suffice to say, THE BIBLE IS A CONTRADICTORY, DECEPTIVE, INACCURATE, SUPERSTITIOUS, DEBILITATING, HALLUCINATORY CONGLOMERATION OF MYTHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE THAT KEEPS ITS ADHERENTS IN A DETACHED STUPOR MASQUERADING AS A VALID DEPICTION OF REALITY. Time is never wasted when it is devoted to altering the false opinions and beliefs of millions of my fellow citizens WHO vote and otherwise INFLUENCE MY ENVIRONMENT." - http://www.christianism.com

"Religion has ever been anti-human, anti-woman, anti-life, anti-peace, anti-reason, and anti-science. The god idea has been detrimental not only to humankind but to the earth. It is time now for reason, education, and science to take over." - Madalyn O'Hair

"Under the pretext of bringing peace on earth, it ["the Christian religion"] has overwhelmed it with hate, discord, and war." - Baron d'Holbach

It is way past time to end the perverted morals, the repression and persecution, the twisted world view and insane acts caused by religious beliefs as manufactured by ignorant men using ancient myths and lies to control others.

"At some point, there is going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be too embarrassing to believe in God." - Sam Harris

Liberation Through Knowledge and Reason

The church knows that an educated man is an unbeliever. - Joseph Lewis
Ecrasez l'infame

20 Reasons to Abandon Christianity, by Chaz Bufe, See Sharp Press

The Importance of Philosophy

Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth

www.rationalrevolution.net is dedicated to presenting significant facts and ideas within a rational and historical framework in an attempt to make sense of American society through careful inspection.
Origins of Christianity and the Jesus Myth - AUDIO ESSAY, also in text.

www.christianism.com Years of research are summarized, via abstracts from scholars. ...scholarship, blasphemy, heresy, freethought, rationalism, atheism, history, psychology, sociology, theology, anthropology, etc. OVER 3000 PAGES. Extensive links list at the bottom of main page.

Solar Mythology and the Bible
Solar Mythology and the Jesus Story

www.jamesarthur.net Mushrooms and Mankind

www.johnallegro.org/Allegro-SundayMirror.htm The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

The Pharmacratic Inquisition

The AUTHENTIC HERSTORY Of PROSTITUTION
A BRIEF CHRONICLE OF SACRED WHOREDOM

www.jesusneverexisted.com

www.truthbeknown.com

www.jesuspuzzle.com

Review of Vardis Fisher's Testament of Man; a series of eleven historical novels tracing the development of religious and social ideas from the dawn of human intelligence two million years ago to the Christian Middle Ages.

Why Won't God Heal Amputees

www.skepticsannotatedbible.com

www.evilbible.com

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

Daniel C. Dennett's Home Page

www.samharris.org

The Christopher Hitchens Web

www.davidmills.net Atheist Universe

www.atheistfoundation.org.au

Atheist Alliance

Freedom From Religion Foundation National association of nontheists has been working since 1978 to promote freethought and defend the constitutional principle of the separation of state and church.

The Secular Web

www.jcnot4me.com

www.2think.org

www.cygnus-study.com

Rational Response Squad

www.skeptic.com
Skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found. - Miguel de Unamuno

www.ravingatheist.com

www.ministerturnsatheist.org

www.thetruthongod.com

www.godchecker.com

www.infidelguy.com

The Hellbound Alleee Network

Normal Bob Smith

American Atheists

The Inquisition - A Pictorial History

Vatican Warns Against Increasingly Healthy Attitudes Toward Sex

Sex Crimes and the Vatican A secret document which sets out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church is examined by Panorama.

www.seesharppress.com See Sharp Press publishes books and pamphlets on a wide range of topics — anarchism, atheism, music, substance abuse, and psychology. Bumper stickers and T-shirts. Complete, online texts of many of our books and pamphlets.

"...by filling the mind with the light of truth, we will drive out the darkness of intolerance, fear, and bigotry." - Gabriel Loch & Lainn Seabrook, The Authentic Herstory of Prostitution, http://www.coyotela.org/history.html

"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence in a shadow than in the church."
- As attributed to Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), Portuguese navigator, by Robert G. Ingersoll. Source: The Great Quotations edited by George Seldes.
Thanks to the Freedom From Religion Foundation http://www.ffrf.org/

More than 2000 years before Magellan, people (the ancient Greeks, the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Ancient Chinese) knew the Earth was round. The thought that the Earth was flat was only believed by the Catholic Church as part of its dogma thus limiting this silly belief to Europe during the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. Early Christianity's burning and killing wiped out much of the existing knowledge and threw much of the world into the Dark Ages, science was banned, and the church resisted every advancement of humankind during the past 1700 and some years, and does still.

"If, in any culture, children are taught, 'We are all equally unworthy in the sight of God'

If, in any culture, children are taught, 'You are born in sin and are sinful by nature'

If children are given a message that amounts to 'Don't think, don't question, *believe*'

If children are given a message that amounts to 'Who are you to place your mind above that of the priest, the minister, the rabbi?'

If children are told, 'If you have value it is not because of anything you have done or could ever do, it is only because God loves you'

If children are told, 'Submission to what you cannot understand is the beginning of morality'

If children are instructed, 'Do not be "willful", self-assertiveness is the sin of pride'

If children are instructed, 'Never think that you belong to yourself'

If children are informed, 'In any clash between your judgment and that of your religious authorities, it is your authorities you must believe'

If children are informed, 'Self-sacrifice is the foremost virtue and the noblest duty'

… then consider what will be the likely consequences for the practice of living consciously, or the practice of self-assertiveness, or any of the other pillars of healthy self-esteem."
- Nathaniel Branden, "The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem"

"For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it."
-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"Thus I pronounce the fables, inventions, dogmas, or whatever they may be termed, upon which the Christian religion is founded, to be untrue, false, nothing but lies. It makes no difference who promulgates these dogmas, whether Augustine, Gregory, Leo, Luther, Calvin, McClosky, Crosby, Talmadge, Hall or Brigham Young, they are equally false. Protestantism is just as false as Catholicism, etc...." - D.M. Bennett, A Truth Seeker in Europe (New York, 1881), p. 646.

"There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world.
Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."
- Anne Nicol Gaylor, wording proposed to counter religious displays. Appears on annual Winter Solstice sign displayed at the Wisconsin State Capitol every December. Also see Women Without Superstition and Lead Us Not Into Penn Station.

"Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power."
- Emma Goldman, "The Philosophy of Atheism," in Goldman's Mother Earth journal, February, 1916

"Atheism rises above creeds and puts Humanity upon one plane.
There can be no 'chosen people' in the Atheist philosophy.
There are no bended knees in Atheism;
No supplications, no prayers;
No sacrificial redemptions;
No 'divine' revelations;
No washing in the blood of the lamb;
No crusades, no massacres, no holy wars;
No heaven, no hell, no purgatory;
No silly rewards and no vindictive punishments;
No christs, and no saviors;
No devils, no ghosts and no gods."
- Joseph Lewis, "Atheist Rises Above Creeds," part of an address on atheism delivered at a symposium at Community Church, New York City, April 20, 1930. Atheism and Other Addresses by Joseph Lewis (1941)

"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind--that it's modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious…

I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech . . .

I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I believe in the reality of progress.

But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant."
- Mencken's Creed, cited by George Seldes in Great Thoughts, H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken

"I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril."
- Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist James Michener, born on Feb. 3, 1907, d. 1997). Interview, Parade Magazine (Nov. 24, 1991), cited in Who's Who in Hell edited by Warren Allen Smith. (A similar passage is found in The World Is My Home by Robert Michener, 1991.)

"I am treated as evil by those who feel persecuted because they are not allowed to force me to believe as they do." -

It may also become easier to see how the many are lied to and used by the few. "The agenda of the propaganda-pushers is not only sad but actually quite sickening because of the way it tends to lead the mindless masses of sheep right down the road to foolishness, causing them to become the unknowing pushers of the very same oppressive dis-information and propaganda which imprisons them, whilst believing the whole time that they are being right, proper, clean purveyors of the truth." - James Arthur http://www.jamesarthur.net/mm_01.html

"When the world shall have learned that the Christ of the Gospels is a myth, that Christianity is untrue, it will turn its attention from the religious fictions of the past to the vital problems of to-day, and endeavor to solve them for the improvement of the well-being of the real men and women whom we know, and whom we ought to help and love."
- Marshall J. Gauvin Did Jesus Really Live http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/marshall_gauvin/did_jesus_really_live.html