l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 1 What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only
very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of “
humility.” This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do
with mysticism.
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept
which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal
outside the human sphere. … Science has been charged with undermining
morality, but the charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behavior should be
based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no
religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to
be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein, “Religion and Science”, New York Times Magazine, 9
November 1930
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed. | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 2 The most henious and the must cruel crimes of which history has record have
been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.
-Mohandas K Gandhi, Young India, July 7, 1950, quoted from Laird Wilcox, ed.
, “The Degeneration of Belief”
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so
unlike your Christ. | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 3 Mark Twain
“It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me
, it is the parts that I do understand.”
A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out
for what he knows.
What God lacks is convictions — stability of character. He ought to be a
Presbyterian or a Catholic or something — not try to be everything.
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to
prayer.
“In God We Trust.” I don’t believe it would sound any better if it were
true. | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 4 Thomas Jefferson
Shake off all fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are
servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal
for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of
a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of
reason than that of blindfolded fear.
We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life
and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every
form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of
what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions,
reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic
nature of man and therefore of society. | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 5 Benjamin Franklin
he way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: The Morning Daylight
appears plainer when you put out your Candle.
-the incompatibility of faith and reason, Poor Richard’s Almanack
Lighthouses are more helpful then churches. | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 6 Black holes would seem to suggest that God not only plays dice, but also
sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
-Stephen Hawking, NATURE, 1975
We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God.
There’s not much personal about the laws of physics. | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 7 Isaac Asimov
“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life
fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell
, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”
“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and
it remains premature today”
“If I am right, then [religious fundamentalists] will not go to Heaven,
because there is no Heaven. If THEY are right, then they will not go to
Heaven, because they are hypocrites.”
“If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to
save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern
of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a
TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul
, foul, foul.”
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been
an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually
unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that
one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an
agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of
reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove
that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't
want to waste my time.” | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 8 Aristotle
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.
Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they
consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move
against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is
sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form
but with regard to their mode of life. | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 9 John Lennon
I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I
believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that
what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's
just that the translations have gone wrong.
I'm not claiming divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never
claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer
questions as honestly as I can... But I still believe in peace, love and
understanding.
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that;
I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I
don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity.
Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them
twisting it that ruins it for me.
God is a concept by which we measure our pain. | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 10 胡适
“有人来与余言宗教事，甚有趣。余告之以吾不信洗礼及圣餐之类，辩论久之，亦不得
归宿。”、
“有人告诉我今夜天主教堂有弥撒礼，因往观之……坐定审视，堂上有塑像甚多，中列
十字架，上刻耶稣裸体钉死之像……此等偶像，与吾国神像何异？虽有识之士，初不以
偶像祷祀之，然蚩蚩之氓，则固有尊敬顶礼迷信为具体之神明者矣……坛上牧师合十行
礼，俨如佛教僧徒，跪拜起立，沓沓可厌。其所用经文及颂祷之词，都不可解，久之，
始辨为拉丁文也。吾敢言座中男女十人中无二之能解其词者。此与佛教中之经呪何异乎
？始行礼时，已十一时，礼毕，则已一点半矣。子夜风雪中坐此庄严之土，闻肃穆之乐
歌，感人特深，宗教之魔力正在此耳，正在此耳。”
“同一宗教之人，亦有支派之异：天主旧教繁文缛礼，后人苦之而创新教。然新旧教都
以耶稣为帝子，神也，死而复生，没而永存，于是有三尊之论（Trinity）。三尊者，
天帝为父，耶稣为子，又有‘灵’焉（Holy Spirit）。近人疑之，于是有创为一尊之
教（Unitarianism）,以上帝为一尊，耶稣则人也。凡此之类，都以示道德是非之变迁
。”
“美国亦有求雨之举……吾去年闻西美某省省长出令，令省中各教堂同日祈祷求雨……
彼求雨者与彼礼拜堂中济济士女之低首求福者，容有上下床之别乎？”
“选读代讲演，有大病焉：曰，不能感人，不能深入人心也。以留声机器为之，何以异
是？奚必仆仆来教堂中听人宣读也。”
“在做慈善事业方面，在处理个人事务，国内事务方面，耶教徒确实为耶教徒。然而，
一介入国际事务，他们便摇身一变，不是耶教徒了……这些自称信耶教之国家只认暴力
，不认别的……他们对弱国这权利和权益不理不睬……他们仍置法律与正义不顾，只管
攫取国民和贸易收入，只管侵略别国的领土。”
“耶稣之死建立了一种宗教，而苏格拉底之死建立了一种哲学。苏格拉底哲学对于希腊
和罗马世界造成了巨大影响，这种影响一直影响至今。现今世界的理想不再是耶教的克
己，而是希腊人的扬我；不再是耶教的信仰，而是苏格拉底的真理，苏格拉底为这奉献
生命的真理！”
“宗教家往往说灵魂不灭，死后须受未日的裁判……这种说法，几千年来不但受了无数
愚夫愚妇的迷信，居然还受了许多学者的信仰” | | | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 11 Bertrand Russell
My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of
traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they
were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free
to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the
opportunity.
I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in
accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the
evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost
all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest
social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity
or any other system of organized beliefs.
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of
intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel
authority more closely than in some others.
One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because
religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of
opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers;
it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindness in favor
of systematic hatred.
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through
people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it
will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the
truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.
That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the
Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have
been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that
the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound
has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse
has been the state of affairs. In the so-called Ages of faith, when men
really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was
the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate
women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon
all sorts of people in the name of religion.
The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient
oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men.... We
ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make
the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all
it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these
ages.
My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it,
either here or hereafter. | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 12 Sigmund Freud
"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a
benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and
an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we
are bound to wish it to be."
"In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the
contradiction religion offers to both is palpable."
"The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to
anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the
great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life
."
"The idea of God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed
to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted
father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for
a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go
on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and
worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion
belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in
the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values
which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however,
it should be left behind." | l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 13 George Bernard Shaw
The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic 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.
In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave
them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a
week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after
the drainage.
All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of
storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion
would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and
the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is
malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many
mistakes.
What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and
saints, they are nothing but empirics who say "I know" instead of "I am
learning," and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for
scepticism and activity.
The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early
Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.
A miracle is an event which creates faith. Frauds deceive. An event which
creates faith does not deceive; therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.
The Christian doctrine of the uselessness of punishment and the wickedness
of revenge has not, in spite of its simple common sense, found a single
convert among the nations.
The Jews generally give value. They make you pay; but they deliver the goods
. In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably
Christians.
Common people do not pray; they only beg.
Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.
I believe in Michael Angelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of
design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty
everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen.
Amen. | h*****1
发帖数: 376 | 14 他们都是JDT
only
concept
to
【在 l*****a 的大作中提到】
: What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only
: very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of “
: humility.” This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do
: with mysticism.
: It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept
: which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal
: outside the human sphere. … Science has been charged with undermining
: morality, but the charge is unjust. A man’s ethical behavior should be
: based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no
: religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to
| l*****a
发帖数: 38403 | 15 我有点理解了为什么韩国那么多基督徒
【在 h*****1 的大作中提到】
: 他们都是JDT
:
: only
: concept
: to
|
|
