Quotes re Christian

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

The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don’t understand it.
~ George Santayana (1863-1952) U.S. philosopher, writer, professor

I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by religions men who are certain they represent Divine Will. I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that if it is probably that God would reveal His will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it directly to me.
~ Abraham Lincoln

It has often been said that anything may be proved from the Bible; but before anything can be admitted as proved by the Bible, the Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as proof of anything.
~ Thomas Paine

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
~ Joseph Conrad

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.
~ Mark Twain, Europe and Elsewhere

The very concept of sin comes from the bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

A god’s primary function is to confirm for us deeply held beliefs that we can’t let go of, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. When you are totally and absolutely convinced of something fundamentally unreasonable, it helps to believe you have divine guidance.
~ randallg@wimsey.com

How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost?
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

Most Christians suffer from a form of mental dyspepsia. A detachment from reality which I can only dub christopsychosis or bibliopsychosis, both being particular forms of theopsychosis. The only cure and protection: thinking, logic, and reason, is hard to administer. Often the condition is acute and incurable, and has proven to be malignant and contagious.
~ Eljay

You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say God is love, they will claim that you are taking things out of context!
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being.
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

…once we can look at religion objectively and impartially, it becomes entirely obvious that religion has all the characteristics of a form of insanity. To one degree or another the religious mind must accept, and believe in, another world; a supernatural or unnatural world, a world filled with all sorts of imaginary beings called gods, devils, angels, saints, demons, etc. These imaginary creatures are talked to, asked for favors, guidance, “signs,” or miracles, and then blamed or thanked for natural events that follow. Except for the cloak of religion, such beliefs and actions would otherwise cause an individual to be judged insane, and committed to an institution for treatment.
~ Emmet F. Fields

Real religion should be something that liberates men. But churches don’t want free men who can think for themself and find their own divinity within. When a religion becomes organized it is no longer a religious experience but only superstition and estrangement.
~ Federico Fellini, c.1981 60 Minutes interview by Harry Reasoner

Prayers never bring anything... They may bring solace to the sap, the bigot, the ignorant, the aboriginal, and the lazy - but to the enlightened it is the same as asking Santa Claus to bring you something for Xmas.
~ W. C. Fields

If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
~ Anatole France
...or 2 billion

God [of-the-Bible] is not all that exists. God is all that does not exist.
~ Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) French novelist, critic, philosopher

Faith is the antithesis of proof.
~ NY State Supreme Court Justice Edward J. Greenfield, 1995

The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever believed Christian notions.
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

...in every religion the priest insists on five things --
First: There is a God.
Second: He has made known his will.
Third: He has selected me to explain this message.
Fourth: We will now take up a collection; and
Fifth: Those who fail to subscribe will certainly be damned.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Not thinking critically, I assumed that the successful prayers were proof that God answers prayer while the failures were proof that there was something wrong with me.
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

SUN OF GOD
I’ve begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It’s there for me every day, and the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to dress up, and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to “God” are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate.
~ George Carlin

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
~ Susan B. Anthony

To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance. That implies that everyone else (such as the opposing football team, driver, student, parent) is de-selected, unfavored by God, and that I am special, above it all.
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

Fear believes -- courage doubts.
Fear falls upon the earth and prays -- courage stands erect and thinks.
Fear is barbarism -- courage is civilization.
Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts.
Fear is religion, courage is science.
~ R.G. Ingersoll

Without The Law of Moses would we all be wandering around like little gods, stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended?
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

To doubt is heresy -- to inquire is to admit that you do not know -- the church does neither.
~ R.G. Ingersoll

This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll

You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time, but I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime.
~ Dan Barker

To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place -- not to mention the “ethnic cleansing” presently being performed by Christians in our world -- and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women.
~ James Randi, challenging blasphemy laws in several US states

Blasphemy laws should be abolished. It would be a strange God indeed, that required protection by the judicial system.
~ Salman Rushdie

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
~ Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted, and heaven crammed with these phantoms.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll, The Gods, 1872

We were blood brothers, pals forever. He was my very best friend. Nobody else could see him. I now know he was just pretend.
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

Some theists, observing that all ‘effects’ need a cause, assert that God [of-the-Bible] is a cause but not an effect. But no one has ever observed an uncaused cause and simply inventing one merely assumes what the argument wishes to prove.
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll, Ingersoll’s Works, Vol. 1, p. 285

I have an Easter challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day that their most important doctrine was born.
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

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 relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called ‘faith.’
~ Robert G. Ingersoll

The next time believers tell you that ‘separation of church and state’ does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word ‘trinity.’ The word ‘trinity’ appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural,Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord’s Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible.
~ Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith

The Santa myth is one of the most effective means ever devised for intimidating children, eroding their self-esteem, twisting their behavior, warping their values, and slowing their development of critical thinking skills.
~ Tom Flynn, The Trouble with Christmas

Businesses may come and go, but religion will last forever, for in no other endeavor does the consumer blame himself for product failure.
~ Harvard Lampoon, Doon (paraphrase)

John Wesley said that if you give up the witchcraft, you must give up the Bible. He is right. The choice is easy for me.
~ Rupert Hughes

Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!
~ Mark Twain

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
~ David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748

It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.
~ Marquis de Sade

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
~ Gene Roddenberry

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
~ George Bernard Shaw

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said let us close our eyes and pray. When we opened our eyes we had the Bible and they had the land.
~ Bishop Desmond Tutu

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
~ David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739)

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
~ Aldous Huxley

...your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.
~ Krishnamurti

It is possible to pay another man’s debts on his behalf, but it is not possible to make a guilty man innocent by suffering in his place.
~ Carl Lofmark, What is the Bible?

Christians say that—without exception—their God answers all of their prayers; it’s just that He sometimes says ‘yes’ and other times ‘no’, ‘maybe’, or ‘wait’. Of course the same could be said of the rain-god, ‘Bob’.
~ Rev. Donald Morgan

As “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make one drink,” so also, “You can drag a Christian to the truth, but you can’t make one think.”
~ Delmar Coughlin

I don’t believe in god because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.
~ Clarence Darrow, speech, Toronto, 1930

Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. From this perspective, all human claims to possess objectivity, certainty, or infallibility are revealed as nothing but the weak and pitiable pleas of frantically insecure people who seek to live in a illusion because reality has proved to be too difficult. Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long-range future of anyone.
~ Bishop John Shelby Spong, Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop of Newark, NY, in Resurrection: Myth or Reality? pg. 99

[Christian] Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn’t there.
~ Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice

Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate.
~ F. M. Knowles

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.
~ Clarence Darrow

The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.
~ Clarence Darrow

Blind faith can justify anything. In a man believes in a different god, or even if he uses a different ritual for worshipping the same god, blind faith can decree that he should die - on the cross, at the stake, skewered on a Crusader’s sword, shot in a Beirut street, or blown up in a bar in Belfast. Memes for blind faith have their own ruthless ways of propagating themselves. This is true of patriotic and political as well as religious blind faith.
~ Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
~ Denis Diderot

Q: I bet you don’t want anything about the Bible taught in school.
~ Morton Downey, controversial TV talk-show host

A: If they teach Greek and Roman mythology, they should also teach Middle Eastern mythology.
~ Rob Sherman, spokesman for American Atheists, on the show

There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is - in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree - it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime- the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.
~ Mark Twain, Reflections on Religion

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.
~ Steve Eley

I think that in philosophical strictness at the level where one doubts the existence of material objects and holds that the world may have existed for only five minutes, I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptic orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.
~ Bertrand Russell

Over the years I realized the god I prayed to was the god I invented. When I was talking to him, I was talking to myself. He had no understanding or qualities that I did not have. When I realized god was an extension of my imagination, I stopped praying to him.
~ Howard Kreisner, host of The American Atheist Hour

[Christian] Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration- courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth.
~ H. L. Mencken, Autobiographical Notes (1925)

[Christian] Theology-An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.
~ H. L. Mencken

An attempt to give credibility to Hebrew mythology by making people believe that the world’s foremost biologists, paleontologists, and geologists are a bunch of incompetent nincompoops.
~ Ron Peterson, on creation science

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said “Stop! Don’t do it!”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he said.
I said, “Well, there’s so much to live for!”
He said, “Like what?”
I said, “Well...are you religious or atheist?”
He said, “Religious.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?”
He said, “Christian.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?”
He said, “Protestant.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”
He said, “Baptist!”
I said, “Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?”
He said, “Baptist Church of God!”
I said, “Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?”
He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God!”
I said, “Me too! Are you reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?”
He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!”
I said, “Die, heretic scum”, and pushed him off.

Man is a Religious Animal. Man is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.
~ Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the Church as a human being.
~ J. Joyce

Creationists make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
~ Isaac Asimov

The creationists have this creator who is evil, who is small-minded, who is malevolent, and who is not very bright and can’t even get his science right. Creationists have made their creator in their own image, in my view.
~ Prof. Ian Plimer - The Skeptic, Vol 13, No 2

Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.
~ Pliny to Trajan about the Christians, 111 AD

The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence...Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God... Man’s standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith....The purpose of man’s life...is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.
~ Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

The Christian God is a fragile thing. The moment you stop believing in it, not only does it cease to exist, you find that it never existed at all.
~ Eljay

If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.
~ Mark Twain, Notebook

God had to kill himself to appease himself, so that he wouldn’t have to roast us (his beloved creations) alive for all eternity, except that he didn’t really die.
~ unknown, capsule description of Christianity

You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason.
~ Voltaire

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
~ Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764

Superstition, born of paganism and adopted by Judaism, invested the Christian Church from earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were really in communication with the devil.
~ Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost their power of reasoning.
~ Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764

We must condemn Christianity, not Christians; strike the Church, but spare the heart.
~ Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays

What a queer thing is Christian salvation! Believing in firemen will not save a burning house; believing in doctors will not make one well, but believing in a savior saves men. Fudge!
~ Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays

The main doctrine of a fanatic’s creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God.
~ Andrew White

If he [god] is wise, why did he not compose a coherent account of what he wanted mankind to do? No, the Bible is not such an account; nobody can agree in what it says. The very god who, according to those who believe in him, made every last electron spin in its orbit everywhere throughout the universe, still cannot write a clear, unmistakable volume of instructions to human beings who are supposed to follow his wishes, Instead, he allegedly gives us the Bible or Koran, or some other jumble of ridiculous and ancient superstitions...
~ Fred Woodworth

If the lord had meant us to have faith, he’d have given us lobotomies.
~ Zlatko

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people.
~ Adolf Hitler (an avowed Roman Catholic), April 26, 1933

Pro-God
Two Good reasons to have a god:
Gods make good paperweights and can
be decorative. You want a small god made
of metal or wood. India makes excellent
gods and so do the Hopi.
~ Larry Devich

MYTHOLOGY
n. The body of a primitive people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
~ Ambrose Bierce

RELIGION
n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

“What is your religion my son?” inquired the Archbishop of Rheims.
“Pardon, monseigneur,” replied Rochebriant; “I am ashamed of it.”
“Then why do you not become an atheist?”
“Impossible! I should be ashamed of atheism.”
“In that case, monsieur, you should join the Protestants.”

TRINITY
n. In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches, three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one. Subordinate deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually their clames to adoration and propitiation. The Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion. In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a part of the latter.
~ Ambrose Bierce

CHRISTIAN
n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
~ Ambrose Bierce

FAITH
n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
~ Ambrose Bierce

INFIDEL
n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. (See GIAOUR.) A kind of scoundrel imperfectly reverent of, and niggardly contributory to, divines, ecclesiastics, popes, parsons, canons, monks, mollahs, voodoos, presbyters, hierophants, prelates, obeah-men, abbes, nuns, missionaries, exhorters, deacons, friars, hadjis, high-priests, muezzins, brahmins, medicine-men, confessors, eminences, elders, primates, prebendaries, pilgrims, prophets, imaums, beneficiaries, clerks, vicars-choral, archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, preachers, padres, abbotesses, caloyers, palmers, curates, patriarchs, bonezs, santons, beadsmen, canonesses, residentiaries, diocesans, deans, subdeans, rural deans, abdals, charm-sellers, archdeacons, hierarchs, class-leaders, incumbents, capitulars, sheiks, talapoins, postulants, scribes, gooroos, precentors, beadles, fakeers, sextons, reverences, revivalists, cenobites, perpetual curates, chaplains, mudjoes, readers, novices, vicars, pastors, rabbis, ulemas, lamas, sacristans, vergers, dervises, lectors, church wardens, cardinals, prioresses, suffragans, acolytes, rectors, cures, sophis, mutifs and pumpums.
~ Ambrose Bierce

KORAN
n. A book which the Mohammedans foolishly believe to have been written by divine inspiration, but which Christians know to be a wicked imposture, contradictory to the Holy Scriptures.
~ Ambrose Bierce

OCCIDENT
n. The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call “war” and “commerce.” These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient.
~ Ambrose Bierce

PIETY
n. Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man.

The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.
-- Judibras

REDEMPTION
n. Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin, through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned. The doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religion, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it.
~ Ambrose Bierce

Quotes on Christianity