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+--- Thread: Sayings & Quotes (/showthread.php?tid=791)
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 24-10-2022
"Whatever the motivation, male sexuality & violence in our culture seem to be inseparable. James Bond alternately whips out his revolver & his cock, & though there is no known connection between the skills of gun-fighting & love-making, pacifism seems suspiciously effeminate."
Susan Griffin
"We are told that men protect us, that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection.
Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, & they took all your property & your children, & paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit on streetcars & picked up your pocket handkerchief?"
Mary B Clay
"If ever you want a really good laugh, I would recommend reading up some of the incredibly involved & convoluted arguments of a male evolutionist trying to explain why woman, alone of all the primates, equipped herself with a hymen, which appears on the face of it to have no other purpose than to keep him out."
Elaine Morgan
"Women do not often recognise that courtship is a phase in which the preferences of women are ritualistically catered to: the wooing is a preliminary concession to those pressure contacts women love - gentleness, tenderness, kissing, caressing. With marriage comes a startling change of events, the woman's preferences being set aside in favour of the duties of marriage.
The man has heroically fulfilled the role of suitor, onerous though it may have been, & now considers it his right to indulge his own preferred types of pressure contact, learned on the playing field."
Rita Herschberge
"We ask ourselves in some bewilderment, if women commit deeds of violence only when their monthly period induces an emotional instability, when do men commit their six times as many deeds of violence?"
Alice Beal Parsons
"Did anyone ever tell Toscanini or Bach that he had to choose between music & family, between art & a normal life?"
Elizabeth Mann Borgese 1963
"Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate. Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspaper or listening to his regular breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room."
Ibid.
"The labour of women in the house certainly enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise would, & in this way, women are economic factors in society. But so are horses."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1898
"Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood."
Erica Jong
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 25-10-2022
"The ground of modern woman's protest has been precisely the fact that 'he' meant in man's mind what the plain word said, & not what he assured her that it meant."
Elizabeth Robbins 1924
"If there is no word for shrew or **** in male form, is it because there were no bad tempered, no slovenly men? Or is it because only the male tongue might safely point out defects? If a female did so, was the scold's bridle & the ducking stool the proper repartee?"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman. 1903
"Religion was for man to preach - & women to practise."
Ibid
"American men have had a hard struggle for their own liberty, & some of them are afraid there will not be liberty enough to go around."
Josephine K. Henry.
"It might be interesting to speculate upon the probable length of a 'depatriarchialised' Bible. Perhaps there would be enough salvageable material to comprise an interesting pamphlet."
Ibid.
"Even in our own over rational age, the medium of the all male priesthood continues to convey the ancient message that women & mystery are a dangerous combination."
Mary Wollstonecraft 1792
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 26-10-2022
"One reason why men have superior judgement & more fortitude than women, is undoubtedly this: that they give a freer scope to the grand passions, & by more frequently going astray enlarge their minds."
Mary Wollstonecraft 1792
"Don't you think that the best thing a woman can do is to perform well her part in the role of wife & mother? My wife has presented me with eight beautiful children: is not this a better life-work than that of exercising the right of suffrage?"
"I have met few men in my life, worth repeating eight times."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in an encounter with a man from Nebraska, 1898
"Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes is responsible for her inferiority."
Emma Goldman on the myth that woman was made out of Adam's rib. 1911
"Society asks, what is to become of children that women are forced to bear? Society provides prisons for them, & the death penalty now. Might it not be well to leave women the liberty to choose whether they will bear children to be hung or not?"
Mary Gore Nichols 1854
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 27-10-2022
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't."
"Jealousy is all the fun you THINK they had."
Erica Jong,
"Its not that such a woman has become denatured & gone off children. But if you take our mythical man with his eye on the topless blonde, I believe you would find that if his footsteps were dogged by two or three topless blondes who hung around his office all day, demanding constant attention, quarrelling,’ helping' with the bookkeeping, following him to the lavatory, butting in on conferences, criticising his methods, & every five minutes wanting help with their zippers & admiration of their knitting, if they never, ever went away - then after five or six months you would have a man less than rapturous about topless blondes. It wouldn't mean he had necessarily gone homosexual or frigid. (More likely he would have gone clean around the bend.)"
Elaine Morgan
"Women Constitute half the world's population
perform nearly two thirds of the world's work
receive one tenth of the world's income
own less than one hundredth of the world's wealth."
Sally Cline & Dale Spender, Reflecting men at twice their natural size.
"There is a saying 'Where power is, women are not.' Women must be willing to be powerful. Because we bear scars from the ways men have used their power over us, women often want no part of power."
Petra Kelly.
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 28-10-2022
The tired woman's epitaph
"Here lies a woman who was always tired
she lived in a house where help was not hired
her last words on earth were 'Dear friends I am going
where washing ain't done, nor sweeping, nor sewing;
but everything there is exact to my wishes;
for where they don't eat there's no washing of dishes.
I'll be where loud anthems will always be ringing,
but, having no voice, I'll be clear of the singing.
Don't mourn for me now, don't mourn for never -
I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever."
“Consensual sex” is just sex. To say that implies that there is such a thing as “non consensual sex”, which there isn’t. That’s rape. That is what it needs to be called. There is only sex or rape. Do not teach people that rape is just another type of sex. They are two very separate events. You wouldn’t say “breathing swimming” and “non breathing swimming”, you say swimming and drowning.
The young women in my classes are feisty and clever and believe, often with the passion of youthful optimism, that feminism is a battle already won. I worry for them - and for my daughters, too."
Louise Brown
"Feminism isn't simply about being a woman in a position of power. It's battling systemic inequities; it's a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged."
Jessica Valenti
"Well behaved women rarely make history."
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
"Man enjoys the great advantage of having a god endorse the code he writes; and since man exercises a sovereign authority over women it is especially fortunate that this authority has been vested in him by the Supreme Being. For the Jew, Mohammedans, and Christians, among others, man is Master by divine right; the fear of God will therefore repress any impulse to revolt in the downtrodden female."
Simone de Beauvoir
“If men could get pregnant, then abortion would be a sacrament.”
Irish woman taxi driver, to Flo Kennedy & Gloria Steinem.
“I could go on and on, but the reality is that violence and discrimination against women are still endemic in every society in the world.”
Sue Kedgely
"I cannot understand anti abortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species we've fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. the shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain and life long poverty show us that. Whatever we tell ourselves, we've only made the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred'.
Caitlin Moran
"Men of quality do not fear equality."
Anon
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 29-10-2022
"Feiminism is hated because women are hated.
Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny;
It is the political defence of women hating.”
Andrea Dworkin
“It should be added that the men who most respect embryonic life are the same ones who do not hesitate to send young adults to death in war.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“I want any young men who buy a gun to be treated like young women who seek an abortion. Think about it: a mandatory 48-hours waiting period, written permission from a parent or a judge, a note from a doctor proving that he understands what he is about to do, time spent watching a video on individual and mass murders, traveling hundreds of miles at his own expense to the nearest gun shop, and walking through protestors holding photos of loved ones killed by guns, protestor who call him a murderer.
After all, it makes more sense to do this for young men seeking guns than for young women seeking an abortion. No young woman needing reproductive freedom has ever murdered a roomful of strangers.”
Anon (often attributed to Gloria Steinem)
“No woman can call herself free who does not own & control her own body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”
Margaret Sanger
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 30-10-2022
A MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN
To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except North Dakota, which she does not fancy).
Your new Prime Minister (insert name) will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.
Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour,' 'favour,' 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise.' Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').
2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ''like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u'' and the elimination of '-ize.'
3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse.
5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.
8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.
9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted
provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable, as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt at English dialect in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
11. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).
12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.
13.. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.
14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).
15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (formerly 'cookies' ) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.
God Save the Queen!
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 31-10-2022
"Yes, some religions are better than others, and some are worse. How can we tell the difference? Here’s a test: if I am not a member of your religion, or if I don’t believe in your God—indeed if I don’t belong to any religion or believe in any gods—will my liberties or my life be taken away from me? If your answer is “no,” then your religion is better than any religion which encourages or insists that its members deprive nonbelievers of life or liberty."
Michael Shermer
"An excess of reason is itself a form of madness."
Tibetan Buddhist
"If you can conduct yourself in a way that is not detrimental to others or that does not impinge on their freedom, then you are behaving according to dharma."
Sai Baba
"Regard your neighbour’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbour’s loss as your loss."
Taoism
"No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself."
Koran
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 01-11-2022
“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth-"
Muhammad Ali
"If you want others to be happy practice compassion. If you want to be happy practice compassion."
Dalai Lama
Three blind men find themselves in the presence of the Great Elephant. Each, trembling with fear & awe, stumble forward & reach out their hands to discover its nature for themselves. One takes hold of the tail, one a leg, one a tusk. And each is overcome with joy at having directly discovered the nature of the Great Elephant.
The blind man holding the tail announces, ‘The Great Elephant is a broom that cleanses & sweeps all before it.”
The blind man holding the leg is surprised, & protests, “No, the Great Elephant is a magnificent pillar towering above us, guarding us & keeping us safe.”
The blind man holding the tusk is astonished & shouts “No, you’re both wrong. The Great Elephant is a plough that furrows the earth that we may grow crops & have plenty.”
And they fell to fighting & there was no peace in the land.
'Arrogance diminishes wisdom.'
Arab proverb
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 02-11-2022
'When the human spirit, after years of imprisonment in the cage & dungeons of the body, is at last set free, & wings its flight to the Source whence it came, is this not an occasion for rejoicing, & thanks, & dancing?'
Jalal Al-Din, Sufi poet.
“Know then that the body is merely a garment.
Go & seek the wearer, not the cloak.”
Rumi, 13th century Persian poet
"I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
Mohandas Gandhi
"The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers & efforts of human beings IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER that mortals choose to worship - just so long as those prayers are sincere. As one line from the Upanishads suggests: 'People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or most appropriate - & all reach You, just as rivers enter the ocean."
Upanishads
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 03-11-2022
"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom.
It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest
might weaken and the wisest might err."
"Your beliefs become your thoughts
your thoughts become your words
your words become your actions
your actions become your destiny."
Mahatma Gandhi
"a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this superpersonal content ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities.
Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be."
Albert Einstein
“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.”
Terry Pratchett
'The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people’s interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise.'
Steven Pinker
"Look, a village cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot. It’s as simple as that, and we have to understand: we have a village idiot in this country. It’s called fundamentalist Christianity."
Sam Harris
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 03-11-2022
"People who hate cats will come back as mice in their next life."
Faith Resnick
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 04-11-2022
“You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone?
All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more.
If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition.”
Carl Sagan
CHRISTIANITY – The belief that some cosmic Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
Anon
“Every sensible man, every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.”
Voltaire
“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absented myself from Christian assemblies.”
Benjamin Franklin
"There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be god"
Primo Levi.
‘What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?’
Rowan Atkinson
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 05-11-2022
"Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true."
Buddha
"In the end, only three things matter: How much you loved,
how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you."
Buddha
“When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realised I was talking to myself. ”
Peter O'Toole
"Hatred is a product of evil. To the extent you allow yourself to feel hatred, to that extent you become an instrument of evil. When you hate someone you draw that person to you. Is that what you want? To eliminate the connection, dismiss the person from your thoughts. To combat evil, respond with goodness."
Tao Te Ching
"If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia."
Thomas Szasz
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 06-11-2022
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
Stephen Roberts
"Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?"
Nietzsche
"Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them."
Steve Eley
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Anne Lamot
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 07-11-2022
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."
Gene Roddenberry
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
Napoleon
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Steven Weinberg
"The Bible devotes some 500 verses on prayer, less than 500 verses on faith, but over 2000 verses on money and possessions."
"The difference between religion and philosophy is that philosophers discuss entering a darkened room blindfolded, in search of a black cat that isn't really there.
The religious person claims to have found the cat."
Anon
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 08-11-2022
“All faiths that come out of the biblical tradition—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—have the tendency to believe that they have the exclusive truth,” writes Rabbi David Hartman of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. “When the Taliban wiped out the Buddhist statues, that’s what they were saying. But others have said it too.”
"the Bible is a book that opens with a story about a magic garden with talking animals and an angry giant. It features a talking shrubbery that teaches the reluctant hero how to wield his magic wand. And it ends with a bizarre zombie snuff porn fantasy, complete with the zombie king commanding his thralls to fondle his intestines through the gaping wound in his side. The best part? A modern-day shaman can chant a magic spell over stale bread and cheap wine, causing it to reanimate into the living flesh and blood of the zombie king…and anybody who eats the “flesh” and drinks the “blood” will themselves become an undead zombie vampire. And this is somehow supposed to be desirable."
Thank you, Pharyngula
"The religion of one age is the entertainment of the next."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
'That's the problem with religion: you beat your way past the clerics, fight your way through the demons, stand before the holy of holies, and when you rip away the veil, there's nothing there but a mirror.'
Owen Rowley
"The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around. “
Herb Caen
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 09-11-2022
"Rather than respect or tolerate religion we must be free to investigate, analyse, challenge, criticise, debate, satirise, lampoon, ridicule and mock any and all religious belief. We need to continue this until everyone that has the intellect to comprehend sees religion as the superstitious and dangerous nonsense that it is. We need to expose the terror that religion has evoked throughout history and that is poisoning our world once again, especially by Muslim terrorists, but also barbaric acts by Christians, Jews, Hindus and even Buddhists. We can't let our inquiry into these atrocities or even our curiosity about some silly religious claim like the virgin birth be stopped in its tracks by their demand to back off: 'Respect our religion'."
-by John Ateo and Jason C.
"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards
the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their
own image to be servants of their human interests."
George Santayana
'The notion that faith in christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'
Robert Green Ingersoll
Bumper Sticker of the Month
He is YOUR God, they are YOUR rules ... YOU burn in hell!
"Don’t speak to me about your religion; first show it to me in how you treat other people. Don't tell me how much you love your God; show me in how much you love all his children. Don't preach to me your passion for your faith; teach me through your compassion for your neighbours’. In the end, I'm not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as I am in how you choose to live and give....Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, New Jersey"
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 10-11-2022
“One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody-not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms-had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think-though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one-that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.”
Christopher Hitchens
"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening
than when they are convinced beyond doubt
that they are right"
Laurens van der Post
'The problem with secularism is not intolerance, as Tory peer Baroness Warsi claims; it’s snobbery.
Intellectual snobbery, actually. Secularists see religious people as none too bright. Sorry.
Honestly, no offence intended, but to a non-believer, the leap of logic required to faithfully invest in the concept of a supernatural being — one that is turned to in times of minor personal crisis but takes a laissez-faire approach to war and genocide — is so great as to appear little short of ridiculous.
So a person with faith appears ridiculous, too.
I know this is wrong. I know this is judgmental. I admire a lot of the principles of religious faith.
I am certainly not intolerant of those who wish to behave charitably towards their fellow man.
But the logic. I cannot get beyond the logic.
‘How can you believe that?’ I wonder. ‘You seemed so sensible.’
HINDU: This is the sum of duty; do naught unto others which if done to
thee would cause thee pain.
ZOROASTRIAN: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto
another whatsoever is not good for itself.
TAOIST: Regard your neighbour's gain as your own gain, and your
neighbour's loss as your own loss.
BUDDHIST: Hurt not others in ways that you would find hurtful.
CONFUCIAN: Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto
you
JAIN: In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard
all creatures as we regard our own self
JEWISH: Whatever thou hatest thyself, that do not to another.
CHRISTIAN: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,
do ye even so to them.
ISLAMIC: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother
that which he desires for himself
SIKH: As thou deemest thyself, so deem others.
RE: Sayings & Quotes - Lilith7 - 11-11-2022
"Is it too modern to notice that there is nothing [in the ten commandments] about the protection of children from cruelty, nothing about rape, nothing about slavery, and nothing about genocide? Or is it too exactingly “in context” to notice that some of these very offenses are about to be positively recommended?"
Christopher Hitchens
"It's a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, power, couldn't think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to Earth in his alter ego as his son and have himself hideously tortured and executed so that he could forgive himself."
Richard Dawkins
"I'm completely in favour of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."
George Carlin
“Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base though.”
Richard Dawkins