RE: It's A Quote
October 20, 2021 at 8:30 pm
(This post was last modified: October 20, 2021 at 8:30 pm by Fake Messiah.)
Here are some quotes from the letters by Isaac Asimov, including that famous and ubiqutus one:
22 February 1966
I’m working on my Bible book. I’ve just reached the part where the Israelites have been seduced into apostasy by the Moabite women (in the Book of Numbers), and Moses gets all self-righteous about the wickedness of the women who deliberately seduced the poor, innocent Israelites (except that Moses ordered the slaughter of all of the Israelites without mercy).
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
28 December 1981
Although I am an atheist and was interviewed on a program called Equal Time for Atheists on 25 December, I then afterward sang Christmas carols. I like the tunes and I like the festivities and we had a good time.
1 November 1966
Luke and Matthew both give material on the birth and childhood of Jesus, and they do not correspond AT A SINGLE POINT. Whatever one says the other doesn’t say. Nobody but a dedicated Christian could possibly read the gospels and not see them as a tissue of nonsense—at least the legendary and miraculous material in them.
1 December 1990
I have written on religion and science and have never made any secret of the fact that I am an atheist. My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad job that He isn’t worth discussing.
22 December 1967
I just saw the movie The Bible. I knew it was a bad picture, having carefully read the reviews which unanimously panned it. But I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw how bad it really was.
The first half of Genesis was approached with such literality and hidebound reverence that there was no chance of creativity. The letter was there, and there, and there, but the spirit was utterly lacking.
I kept thinking bitterly of "The Green Pastures", which presented the Bible as seen by illiterate Negroes, with the crudest anthropomorphism and with the anachronisms played for laughs. "The Green Pastures" was a noble rendition that caught the spirit, breathed true reverence and was all the Bible ought to be. This thing by John Huston was just trash.
22 February 1966
I’m working on my Bible book. I’ve just reached the part where the Israelites have been seduced into apostasy by the Moabite women (in the Book of Numbers), and Moses gets all self-righteous about the wickedness of the women who deliberately seduced the poor, innocent Israelites (except that Moses ordered the slaughter of all of the Israelites without mercy).
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
28 December 1981
Although I am an atheist and was interviewed on a program called Equal Time for Atheists on 25 December, I then afterward sang Christmas carols. I like the tunes and I like the festivities and we had a good time.
1 November 1966
Luke and Matthew both give material on the birth and childhood of Jesus, and they do not correspond AT A SINGLE POINT. Whatever one says the other doesn’t say. Nobody but a dedicated Christian could possibly read the gospels and not see them as a tissue of nonsense—at least the legendary and miraculous material in them.
1 December 1990
I have written on religion and science and have never made any secret of the fact that I am an atheist. My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad job that He isn’t worth discussing.
22 December 1967
I just saw the movie The Bible. I knew it was a bad picture, having carefully read the reviews which unanimously panned it. But I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw how bad it really was.
The first half of Genesis was approached with such literality and hidebound reverence that there was no chance of creativity. The letter was there, and there, and there, but the spirit was utterly lacking.
I kept thinking bitterly of "The Green Pastures", which presented the Bible as seen by illiterate Negroes, with the crudest anthropomorphism and with the anachronisms played for laughs. "The Green Pastures" was a noble rendition that caught the spirit, breathed true reverence and was all the Bible ought to be. This thing by John Huston was just trash.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
