Robert Green Ingersoll
Ambrose Bierce
Telling religious twits off since the 19th century
Quote:Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "Some Mistakes of Moses"
We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins -- they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of to-day. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of to-day -- of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago.
These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars -- neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience -- and for them all, man is indebted to man.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "God In The Constitution"
Ambrose Bierce
Quote:Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.
-- Ambrose Bierce, Collected Works
Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumption and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure.
-- Ambrose Bierce, Collected Works
Camels and Christians receive their burdens kneeling.
-- Ambrose Bierce, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief
Telling religious twits off since the 19th century
