Yeah, I know everyone is doing it, but when I first tried I never got quotes that were really satisfying. But when PZ set up a random 5 from his own vault, I got an embarrasment of riches. So here are the first 5 I liked from there:
Creeds made in Dark Ages are like drawings made in dark rooms
[Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, 1929]
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
Bertrand Russell
The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight -- that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether
[Daniel Dennett, "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", p. 18]
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"]
It is fear that first brought gods into the world.
[Petronius Arbiter, Satyricon]
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