Sections (TOC) :
• 1
39 Words; 252 Characters
• 2
40 Words; 248 Characters
• 3
26 Words; 172 Characters
• 4
21 Words; 118 Characters
• 5
35 Words; 219 Characters
• 6
24 Words; 147 Characters
• 7
24 Words; 145 Characters
• 8
113 Words; 702 Characters
• 9
36 Words; 230 Characters
• 10
48 Words; 287 Characters
• 11
34 Words; 187 Characters
• 12
22 Words; 157 Characters
• 13
34 Words; 227 Characters
• 14
110 Words; 526 Characters
• 15
132 Words; 813 Characters
• 16
8 Words; 66 Characters
• 17
28 Words; 199 Characters
• 18
24 Words; 155 Characters
• 19
26 Words; 175 Characters
• 20
23 Words; 109 Characters
• 21
99 Words; 634 Characters
• 22
45 Words; 249 Characters
• 23
32 Words; 194 Characters
• 24
36 Words; 229 Characters
• 25
119 Words; 597 Characters
• 26
240 Words; 1,287 Characters
• 27
9 Words; 69 Characters
• 28
25 Words; 176 Characters
Sections (Content) :
• 1
Strepsiades: O highly honored Clouds, for now they cover all things.
Socrates: Did you not, however, know, nor yet consider, these to be goddesses?
Strepsiades: No, by Jupiter! But I thought them to be mist, and dew, and smoke.
• 2
Strepsiades: But come, by the Earth, is not Jupiter, the Olympian, a god?
Socrates: What Jupiter? Do not trifle. There is no Jupiter.
Strepsiades: What do you say? Who creates rain then? For first of all explain this to me.
• 3
...the light of those sciences that are most useful to humanity began to shine forth in Europe, having triumphed over the obscure idol of peripatetic superstition.
• 4
Jesus? I like the literary figure, but the clear light of science teaches us that we must be our own saviors.
• 5
God? The God within us is the only available God we know. We must come out from behind theological barbed-wire fences, into the great ocean of scientific truth. Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity
• 6
[Real religion, if there is one, is]... Justice, love, truth, peace and harmony, a serene unity with science and the laws of the universe.
• 7
If it is not certain that death ends personal identity and memory, then almost nothing that man accepts as true is susceptible to proof.
• 8
The same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs. Many of these are terrible to think of -- such as the sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving god; the trial of innocent persons by the ordeal of poison or fire; witchcraft, etc. -- yet it is well occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they show us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to the improvement of our reason, to science, and to our accumulated knowledge.
[Chapter 3.]
• 9
...many naturalists think that something more is meant by the Natural System; they believe that it reveals the plan of the Creator; but ... it seems to me that nothing is thus added to our knowledge.
[Chapter 14.]
• 10
What the dogma is to the religious belief, material facts are to the science of inductive socialism, while the views of liberalism are as whimsical and elusive as the ideal conceptions, as the ideas of eternal justice or liberty on which the liberals believe to be safely based.
• 11
Darwin's theory, whether one likes it or not, in showing that man descends from animals, has struck a great blow at the belief in God as the creator of the universe and of man...
• 12
Nothing physical which...demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages...
• 13
...the exploratory, experimental approach of modern science to the search for the truth stands in basic contradiction to the dogmas and doctrines of Western religions, whose roots are deep in the miracle of revelation.
• 14
I regard the universe as the one fact, as the one existence -- that is, as the absolute thing. I am a part of this. I do not say that there is no God; I simply say that I do not believe there is. There may be millions of them. Neither do I say that man is not immortal. Upon that point I admit that I do not know, and the declarations of all the priests in the world upon that subject give me no light, and do not even tend to add to my information on the subject, because I know that they know that they do not know.
• 15
All the great theologians in the Catholic Church have denounced reason as the light furnished by the enemy of mankind -- as the road that leads to perdition. All the great Protestant theologians, from Luther to the orthodox clergy of our time, have been the enemies of reason. All orthodox churches of all ages have been the enemies of science. They attacked the astronomers as though they were criminals -- the geologists as though they were assassins. They regarded physicians as the enemies of God -- as men who were trying to defeat the decrees of Providence. The biologists, the anthropologists, the archaeologists, the readers of ancient inscriptions, the delvers in buried cities, were all hated by the theologians. They were afraid that these men might find something inconsistent with the Bible.
• 16
Science cannot possibly either teach or deny immortality.
• 17
[Our ideal is...] War on religions and all lies, even if they shelter under the cloak of science.
["Anarchist Propaganda," by Errico Malatesta, from "Malatesta: Life and Ideas."]
• 18
I never imagined that in ten years, science and rationality would require explanation and defense in a world rocked and ruled by religious fervor.
• 19
[Doctor:] "...pain is the only evil I know about. It's the only one I can fight."
[Priest:] "Then God help you."
[Doctor:] "Antibiotics help me more."
• 20
No one goes back to the school of myth when he has seen, or thinks he has seen, to the bottom of it.
• 21
One fact is certain: all so-called religions are the products of human ignorance, mere fantastical efforts of barbarous people to reason out matters which they could not possibly understand without some knowledge of science and scientific methods. The opinion of a savage on the power that works a steam engine, or produces the electric light, is evidently worthless and could be refuted by anyone possessing elementary knowledge. In the same worthless way our forefathers, savages also, reasoned about the phenomena of nature, and came to the naive conclusion that somebody behind the curtains of the sky pulled the strings.
• 22
...being deceived or uninformed about the highest realities in the highest part of themselves, which is the soul, and in that part of them to have and to hold the lie, is what mankind least like; -- that, I say, is what they utterly detest.
• 23
The contention that it is sin to have dominion over nature is simple nonsense. The Pope frustrates nature by getting shaved and having his hair cut, as well as by practicing continence.
• 24
For three hundred years, now, the Christian astronomer has known that his Deity didn't make the stars in those tremendous six days; but the Christian astronomer does not enlarge upon that detail. Neither does the priest.
• 25
Noah built the Ark. He built it the best he could, but left out most of the essentials. It had no rudder, it had no sails, it had no compass, it had no pumps, it had no charts, no lead-lines, no anchors, no log, no light, no ventilation, and as for cargo room -- which was the main thing -- the less said about that the better. It was to be at sea eleven months, and would need fresh water enough to fill two Arks of its size -- yet the additional Ark was not provided. Water from outside could not be utilized: half of it would be salt water, and men and land animals could not drink it.
• 26
If science exterminates a disease which has been working for God, it is God that gets the credit, and all the pulpits break into grateful advertising-raptures and call attention to how good he is! Yes, he has done it. Perhaps he has waited a thousand years before doing it. That is nothing; the pulpit says he was thinking about it all the time. When exasperated men rise up and sweep away an age-long tyranny and set a nation free, the first thing the delighted pulpit does is to advertise it as God's work, and invite the people to get down on their knees and pour out their thanks to him for it. And the pulpit says with admiring emotion, "Let tyrants understand that the Eye that never sleeps is upon them; and let them remember that the Lord our Father will not always be patient, but will loose the whirlwinds of his wrath upon them in his appointed day."
They forget to mention that he is the slowest mover in the universe; that his Eye that never sleeps, might as well, since it takes it a century to see what any other eye would see in a week; that in all history there is not an instance where he thought of a noble deed first, but always thought of it just a little after somebody else had thought of it and done it. He arrives then, and annexes the dividend.
• 27
...there is no common ground between science and religion...
• 28
God, banished from the realm of living experience to that of rational explanation, had a tendency to disappear altogether when more naturalistic hypotheses came along.
Chronology :
April 13, 2020 : Religion -- Added.
HTML file generated from :
http://RevoltSource.com/