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by Edward Jayne
February 14, 2003

I try here to compile a full sampling of the best and most persuasive freethought arguments I can find. Atheists, agnostics, skeptics, materialists, pantheists, deists, heretics, and sundry modern iconoclasts are included. Appropriately, Platonists, orthodox theologians and others totally devoted to the God concept are excluded unless they support or exemplify secularist concerns despite their best intentions otherwise. These include, for example, Tertullian, Descartes, and Teddy Roosevelt.

Major proponents of freethought such as Lucretius, d'Holbach, Nietzsche, Ingersoll, and Russell are well represented in this collection, and their quoted passages may be supplemented without much difficulty from their writings. On the other hand, the remarks of many others--such as Katherine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Peter Ustinov--very likely provide the only public record of their opinion.

Many passages are primarily included for their aphoristic vitality, but others have been chosen for their more inclusive persuasiveness, and at least a few--for example by historians and mythologists--for ideas that require a full paragraph or more. As much as possible the sequence of passages by particular authors provides a continuous explanation of their viewpoint. When successful the effect is as if they responding to interview questions, or, better yet, writing a brief essay.

It may be confessed at the outset that the quoted passages tend to be among the most militant I could find and do not necessarily represent the final judgment of the authors included here. Several--for example Laplace, Napoleon, John Adams, and Oscar Wilde--reverted to orthodox Christianity toward the end of their lives, when the prospect of eternal life was more important.

My sources include original texts as well as secular histories, secular encyclopedias and quotation books. I have sought to include all major figures in the freethought movement, but some--Bentham, Besant, and Büchner, for example--have been bypassed or insufficiently represented either because of inaccessibility or a maddening lack of concision. My persistent regret in compiling this collection has been that too many individuals identified as freethinkers are not effectively quotable.

Now and again I resort to elision and bracketing in order to clarify arguments as much as possible without distorting them, and I inscribe N.B. (nota bene--note well) preceding my comments to help explain the significance of passages when this seems useful. At the end of the text I summarize freethought history as well as my own response to current freethought issues.

1. Confucius. Chinese philosopher (6th century, B.C.):

Not knowing life, how can we know death? Why talk of spirits when you do not understand men?

2. Thales. First Greek philosopher, a so-called materialist of Miletus on the Aegean coast of Turkey (c. 636-546 B.C.):

Aristotle: Of those who first pursued philosophy [beginning with Thales], the majority believed that the only principles of things are principles in the form of matter. For that of which all existing things are composed and that out of which they originally come into being and that into which they finally perish, the substance persisting but changing in its attributes, this they state is the element and principle of things that are.

Aristotle: Not all agree about the number and form of such a principle, but Thales, the founder of this kind of philosophy, declares it to be water. (This is why he indicated that the earth rests on water). Maybe he got this idea from seeing that the nourishment of all things is moist, and that the hot itself comes to be from this and lives on this . . . and also because the seeds of all things have a moist nature; and water is the principle of the nature of moist things.

Aristotle: Some declare that it [the soul] is mixed in the whole [universe], and perhaps this is why Thales thought all things are full of gods.

3. Anaximander. Greek materialist of Miletus, a protegé of Thales (ca. 560 B.C.):

Theophrastus: Anaximander named the arché [basic underlying source] of existing things apeiron [the boundless], being the first to introduce this name for the arché. He says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but a different substance which is boundless, from which there comes into being all the heavens and the worlds within. Things perish into those things out of which they have their being, as is due; for they make just recompense to one another for their injustice according to the ordinance of time.

Hippolitus: [Anaximander] said that living creatures arose from the evaporation of the moist element by the sun; and that man originally resembled another creature, namely a fish.

Plutarch: [Anaximander] says moreover that originally man was born from creatures of a different species, on the grounds that whereas other creatures quickly find food for themselves, man alone needs a long period of suckling; hence if he had been originally what he is now he could never have survived.

Censorinus: Anaximander of Miletus said that in his opinion there arose out of water and earth, when warmed, either fish or creatures resembling fish. In these creatures men were formed, and the young were retained within until the time of puberty; then at last the creatures were broken open and men and women emerged already capable of finding their own nourishment. [N.B. These three passages obviously anticipate the modern theory of evolution.]

4. Anaximenes. Greek materialist of Miletus, also in the tradition of Thales (c. 585 B.C.):

As our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air surround the whole universe.

Theophrastus: Anaximenes . . . like Anaximander, declares that the underlying nature is one and apeiron, but not indeterminate as Anaximander held, but definite, saying that it is air. It differs in rarity and density according to the substances [it becomes]. Becoming finer it comes to be fire; being condensed it comes to be wind, then cloud, and when still further condensed it becomes water, then earth, then stones, and the rest come to be out of these. He too makes motion eternal and says that change also comes to be through it.

5. Xenophanes. Greek philosopher of Elea, on the western coast of Italy (c. 570-475 B.C.):

All things that come into being and grow are earth and water.

For everything comes from earth and everything goes back to earth at last.

Certain truth has no man seen, nor will there ever be a man who knows about the gods and about everything of which I speak; for even if he should fully succeed in saying what is true, even so he himself does not know it, but in all things there is opinion.

Let these things be believed as resembling the truth.

There is one god, among gods and men the greatest, not at all like mortals in body or in mind. [N.B. Xenophanes' remarks here provide the earliest Greek record of monotheism.]

He [God] sees as a whole, thinks as a whole, and hears as a whole.

But without toil he sets everything in motion, by the thought of his mind.

And he always remains in the same place, not moving at all, nor is it fitting for him to change his position at different times.

Ethiopians imagine their gods as black and snub-nosed, Thracians as blue-eyed and with red-haired.

6. Pythagoras. Greek philosopher of Crotona, at the foot of Italy (c. 582-507 B.C.):

Aristotle: Because they noticed that many attributes of numbers belong to sensible objects, the Pythagoreans held that existing things are numbers--not separate numbers, but composed of numbers.

Aristotle: They supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all existing things.

Aristotle: If all things must share in number, many things must turn out to be the same and the same number must belong to one thing and to another.

Aristotle: The Pythagreans also say that void exists, and enters the universe from the unlimited breath, the universe being supposed in fact to inhale the void, which distinguishes things. For void is that which separates and distinguishes things that are next to each other.

Aristotle: Although most say that the earth is situated [at the center of the universe], those in Italy called Pythagoreans assert the contrary opinion. For they declare that fire is at the center and the earth is one of the stars and by being carried in a circle round the center it causes night and day.

N.B. Pythagoras and his followers were generally identified as a religious cult, and their mathematical emphasis was used by Plato to justify metaphysics as an alternative to materialism. Nevertheless, their approach could also be used to justify materialism, as so aptly demonstrated by the mathematical emphasis of the physical sciences today.

7. Heraclitus. Greek materialist of Ephesus, on the Aegean coast of Turkey (c. 535-475 B.C.):

This ordered universe [cosmos], which is the same for all, was not created by any one of the gods or of mankind, but it was ever and is and shall be ever-living Fire, kindled in measure and quenched in measure.

The thunder-bolt steers the universe.

One should know that war is general and jurisdiction is strife, and everything comes about by way of strife and necessity.

To souls, it is death to become water; to water, it is death to become earth. From earth comes water, and from water, souls.

In the same river, we both step and do not step, we are and we are not.

Upon those who step into the same river, different and again different waters flow.

Nature loves to hide.

God is day-night, winter-summer, war-peace, satiety-famine. But he changes like [fire] which when it mingles with the smoke of incense, is named according to each man's pleasure.

Religion is a disease, but it is a noble disease.

8. Parmenides. Greek philosopher of Elea, the primary figure of the so-called Eleatic school (c. 515 B.C.):

[We must reject] uncritical hordes [Heraclitus necessarily included], by whom To Be and Not To Be are regarded as the same and not the same, and [for whom] in everything there is a way of opposing stress. . . . There is only one other description of the way remaining, that what is, is. To this way there are very many sign posts: that Being has no coming-into-being and no destruction, for it is whole of limb, without motion, and without end. And it never Was, nor Will Be, because it Is now, a Whole all together, One, continuous.

It [being] is motionless in the limits of mighty bonds, without beginning, without cease, since Becoming and Destruction have been driven very far away, and true conviction has rejected them. And remaining the same in the same place, it rests by itself and thus remains there fixed; for powerful Necessity holds it in the bonds of a Limit, which constrains it round about, because it is decreed by divine law that Being shall not be without boundary.

For nothing else either is or shall be except Being, since Fate has tied it down to be a whole and motionless.

9. Simonides. Greek poet (556-468 B.C.):

The longer I consider the subject of God, the more obscure it becomes.

10. Empedocles. Greek materialist of Sicily (495-435 B.C.):

None of the gods has formed the world, nor has any man; it has always been.

For [god] is not furnished in his limbs with a human head. Two branches do not spring from his back. He has no feet, no swift limbs, no hairy genitals, but is only mind [phren], holy and indescribable, darting through the entire kosmos with his swift thoughts.

For the coming together of all things produces one birth and destruction . . . at one time all coming together into one by Love, and at another each being borne apart by the hatred of Strife. . . . in that way they come to be and their life is not lasting, but in that they never cease interchanging continually, in this way they are always unchanging in a cycle.

For at one time they [the four elements] grew to be only one out of many, but at another they grew apart to be many out of one: fire and water and earth and the immense height of air, and deadly Strife apart from them, equal in all directions, and Love among them, equal in length and breadth.

For these [four elements] are all equal and of the same age, but each rules in its own province and possesses its own individual character, but they dominate in turn as time revolves. And nothing is added to them, nor do they leave off, for if they were perishing continuously, they would no longer be.

Aristotle: For those who talk like Empedocles . . . it [the mixture of elements] must be a matter of composition as a wall comes to be out of brick and stones. Also, this mixture will be composed of elements that are preserved, placed next to one another close by. In this way, then, there comes to be flesh and all the rest.

Aristotle: If the dissolution [of an element into smaller components] is going to come to an end, either the end-product will be indivisible [atoms] or it will be divisible but will never in fact be divided, as Empedocles means to say.

11. Anaxagoras. Athenian philosopher (c. 460 B.C.):

Opening sentence of his book On Natural Science: All things were together, infinite in number and in smallness. For the Small also was infinite. And since all were together, nothing was distinguishable because of its smallness. For air and aether dominated all things, both of them being infinite. For these are the most important [elements] in the total mixture, both in number and size.

And since there are equal parts of Great and Small, so too similarly in everything there must be everything. It is not possible [for them] to exist apart, but all things contain a portion of everything.

Lucretius: Anaxagoras [supposed] that all things are hidden immingled in all things, but that alone appears which preponderates in the mixture and is more to be seen and placed right in front.

Thus these things circulate and are separated off by force and speed. The speed makes the force. Their speed is not like the speed of any of the Things now existing among mankind, but altogether many times as fast.

In everything there is a portion of everything except Mind [nous]; and some things contain Mind also.

Other things all contain a part of everything, but Mind is infinite and self-ruling, and is mixed with no Thing, but is alone by itself. . . . For it is the finest of all Things, and the purest, and has complete understanding of everything, and has the greatest power. All things which have life, both the greater and the less, are ruled by mind.

N.B. Anaxagoras' concept of mind was one of Plato's principal sources in his formulation of metaphysics as an antidote to both materialism and skepticism. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras himself did not reject materialism, as would be suggested by the first three passages above.

12. Euripedes. Athenian tragedian (484-406 B.C.):

Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with unsubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world?

He was a wise man who originated the idea of God.

Gods should not be like mortals in vindictiveness.

13. Protagoras. Athenian Sophist originally from Abdera on the north Aegean coast of Greece (c. 481-411 B.C.):

Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.

As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.

N.B. These are the only two sentences of Protagoras known today. His treatise On the Gods, beginning with the second of these sentences, so infuriated his Athenian compatriots that all his writings were burned in a public bonfire. Protagoras was forced to escape abroad, and while in flight he is said to have died in a storm at sea.

14. Gorgias. Athenian Sophist originally from Sicily (c 485-380 B.C.):

Plato: Gorgias concludes as follows that nothing is: if (something) is, either what-is is or what-is-not (is), or both what-is and what-is-not are. But it is the case neither that what-is is, as he will show, nor that what-is-not is, as he will justify, nor that both what-is and what-is-not are, as he will teach this too. Therefore, it is not the case that anything is.

Plato: Next in order to teach that even if something is, it is unknowable and inconceivable by humans. For if things that are thought of, says Gorgias, are not things-that-are, what-is is not thought of. And reasonably so.

Plato: But even if [what is] should be comprehended, [Gorgias argues], it cannot be expressed to another. For if things-that-are are visible and audible and generally perceptible, and in fact are external objects, and of these the visible are comprehended by vision and audible by hearing, and not vice versa, how can these be communicated to another? For that by which we communicate is logos [the word], but logos is not the objects, the things that are. Therefore it is not the case that we communicate things-that-are to our neighbors, but logos, which is different from the objects.

N.B. In summary, nothing exists; if it did it would be unknowable, and if it were knowable, it could not be communicated.

15. Socrates. Athenian Sophist (c.470-399 B.C.):

Diogenes Laertius: [Socrates] used to say . . . that he knew nothing except the fact of his ignorance.

Cicero: The method of discussion pursued by Socrates in almost all the dialogues so diversely and so fully recorded by his hearers is to affirm nothing himself but to refute others, to assert that he knows nothing except the fact of his own ignorance, and that he surpassed all other people in that they think they know things that they do not know but he himself thinks he knows nothing, and that he believes this to have been the reason why Apollo declared him to be the wisest of all men, because all wisdom consists solely in not thinking that you know what you do not know.

N.B. This stance of self-confessed ignorance was essential to Socrates's dialectic mode of argument. Paradoxically, Plato employed it to promote an elaborate metaphysics of ideal forms that was finally dependent on absolute confidence in the concept of God. This is the most obvious in Timaeus, but it may be found throughout the rest of his dialogues.

16. Leucippus. Greek materialist of Abdera--teacher of Democritus (c. 430 B.C.):

No thing happens at random but all things as a result of a reason and by necessity.

Simplicius: [Leucippus] posited the atoms as unlimited and ever moving elements, and an unlimited multitude of shapes among them on the grounds that they are no more like this than like that, since he observed that coming to be and change are unceasing in things that are. Further, he posited that what is is no more than what is not, and both are equally causes of what comes to be. For supposing the substance of the atoms to be compact and full, he said it is "being" and that it moves in the void, which he called "not-being" and which he declares is no less than what is.

Diogenes Laertius: [According to Leucippus], the cosmos comes into being in the following way. Many bodies of all sorts of shapes by virtue of being cut off from the unlimited move into a great void. They collect together and form a single vortex. . . . When they are no longer able to rotate in equilibrium, the fine ones depart into the void outside as if sifted. The rest remain together, and form a first spherical complex. This stands apart like a membrane, enclosing all kinds of bodies in it. As these whirl around by virtue of the resistance of the center, the surrounding membrane becomes thin, since the adjacent atoms are always joining the fluid motion when they come into contact with the vortex. And the earth came into being in this way when the atoms moving to the center remained together.

Hippolytus: [According to Leucippus and Democritus] there are an infinite number of kosmoi [celestial groups] of different sizes. In some there is no sun or moon. In some the sun and moon are larger than ours and in others there are more. The distances between the kosmoi are unequal and in one region there are more, in another fewer. Some are growing, some are at their peak, and some are declining, and here one is coming into being, there one is ceasing to be.

17. Democritus. Greek materialist of Abdera (c. 460-370 B.C.):

Aristotle quoted by Simplicius: Democritus believes that the nature of the eternal things is small substances [atoms] unlimited in multitude. As a place for these he hypothesizes something else, unlimited in size, and he calls the place by the names "void," "nothing" [ouden], and "unlimited," and he calls each of the substances . . . "compact" and "what is." He holds that the substances are so small that they escape our senses. They have all kinds of forms and shapes and differences in size. Out of these elements he generates and combines visible and perceptible bodies.

Aristotle quoted by Simplicius: These atoms, which are separate from one another in the unlimited void and differ in shape and size and position, and arrangement, move in the void, and when they overtake one another they collide, and some rebound in whatever direction they may happen to, but others become entangled in virtue of the relation of their shapes, sizes, positions, and arrangements, and stay together, and this is how compounds are produced.

Naught exists just as much as aught.

Aristotle: Democritus leaves aside purpose, but refers all things which nature employs to necessity.

Truth is sunk in an abyss, opinion and custom are all-prevailing, no place is left for truth, all things successively are wrapped in darkness.

Diogenes Laertius: [For Democritus] the goal of life is cheerfulness, which is not the same as pleasure, . . . but the state in which the soul continues calmly and stably, disturbed by no fear or superstition or any other emotion.

18. Diagoras. Greek poet of Melos (ca. late 5th century B.C.):

Diagoras, named the Atheist, was once asked by a friend, "You who think that the gods disregard men's affairs, do you not remark all the votive pictures that prove how many persons have escaped the violence of the storm, and come safe to port by dint of the vows of the gods?" "That is so," replied Diagoras; "It is because there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked and drowned at sea."

During a storm at sea Diagoras was told by the crew that they had brought it on themselves by having taken him on board their ship. He pointed out to them a number of other vessels making heavy weather on the same course, and inquired whether they supposed that those ships also had a Diagoras on board.

N.B. Diagoras was accused of impiety because he threw a wooden image of a god into a fire, remarking that the deity should perform another miracle and save itself. Charges were pressed against him for this misconduct, and he fled Athens to avoid trial and the possibility of execution.

19. Critias. Athenian poet, playwright and relative of Plato-- also a leader of the Thirty Tyrants (c. 460-403 B.C.):

I believe that a man of shrewd and subtle mind invented for men the fear of the gods, so that there might be something to frighten the wicked even if they acted, spoke or thought in secret. From this motive he introduced the conception of divinity. There is, he said, a spirit enjoying endless life, hearing and seeing with his mind, exceedingly wise and all-observing, bearer of a divine nature. He will hear everything spoken among men and can see everything that is done. If you are silently plotting evil, it will not be hidden from the gods, so clever are they. For a dwelling he gave them . . . the vault above, where he perceived the lightnings and the dread roars of thunder, and the starry face and form of heaven . . . With such fears did he surround mankind, and so by his story give the godhead a fair home in a fitting place, and extinguished lawlessness by his ordinances . . . So, I think, first of all, did someone persuade men to believe that there exists a race of gods.

20. Metrodorus of Chios. Greek skeptic (c. 4th century, B.C.):

I deny that we know whether we know something or know nothing, and even that we know the mere fact that we do not know (or do know), or know at all whether something exists or nothing exists.

21. Diogenes. Athenian cynic philosopher from Sinope, on the south coast of the Black Sea (412-323 B.C.):

Thus does Diogenes sacrifice to all the gods at once. N.B. This was spoken upon cracking a louse on the altar rail of a temple.

When I look upon seamen, men of physical science, and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings. When I look upon priests, prophets, and interpreters of dreams, nothing is so contemptible as man.

22. Aristotle. Athenian philosopher from Stagira, on the north coast of Greece (384-322 B.C.):

[God's role as the "unmoved mover" of the universe]: While some things are moved by an eternal unmoved movent and are therefore always in motion, other things are moved by a movent that is in motion and changing, so that they too must change. But the unmoved movent as has been said, since it remains permanently simple and unvarying and in the same state, will cause motion that is one and simple.

[Religion's validity as myth]: Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to their posterity a tradition, in the form of a myth that these bodies are gods, and that the divine encloses the whole of nature. The rest of the tradition has been added later in mythical form with a view to the persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian expediency. . . . But if one were to separate the first point from these additions and take it alone--that they thought the first substances to be gods, one must regard this as an inspired utterance . . .

[An infinite universe excludes both creationism and a final judgment day]: If the world is believed to be one, it is impossible to suppose that it should be, as a whole, first generated and then destroyed, never to reappear; since before it came into being there was always present the combination prior to it, and that, we hold, could never change if it was never generated.

[The soul as a function of the body]: As the pupil plus the power of sight constitutes the eye, so the soul plus the body constitutes the animal. From this it indubitably follows that the soul is inseparable from the body, or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has parts)--for the actuality of some of them is nothing but the actualities of their body parts.

[The soul as a product of metabolism]: All food must be capable of being digested, and . . . what produces digestion is warmth; that is why everything that has soul in it possesses warmth.

[Reason as the basic principle of the universe]: For it is not likely either that fire or earth or any such element should be the reason why things manifest goodness and beauty both in their being and in their coming to be, or that these thinkers [Heraclitus, Xenophanes, etc.] should have supposed it was; nor again could it be right to entrust so great a matter to spontaneity and chance. When one man [Anaxagoras] said, then, that reason [nous] was present--as in animals, throughout nature--as the cause of order and of all arrangement, he seemed like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of his predecessors.

[Induction as the final source of truth]: Such appears to be the truth about the generation of bees, judging from theory and from what are believed to be the facts about them; the facts, however, have not yet been sufficiently grasped; if ever they are, then credit must be given rather to observation than to theories, and to theories only if what they affirm agrees with the observed facts.

N.B. Aristotle was charged with atheism by fellow Athenians upon the death of his student and protegé, Alexander the Great. He was forced to escape the city and died a year later in exile.

23. Epicurus. Athenian materialist from Samos--the first so- called Epicurean philosopher (341-270 B.C.):

The universe is boundless. For that which is bounded has an extreme point: and the extreme point is seen against something else. So that as it has no extreme point, it has no limit; and as it has no limit, it must be boundless and not bounded.

Furthermore, there are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours. For the atoms being infinite in number, as was proved already, are borne on far out into space.

Atoms do not change at all, since there must needs be something which remains solid and indissoluble at the dissolution of compounds, which can cause changes; not changes into the non-existent or from the non-existent, but changes effected by the shifting of position of some particles, and by the addition or departure of others.

And the atoms move continuously for all time, some of them falling straight down, others swerving, and others recoiling from their collisions.

We must believe that worlds . . . were created from the infinite, and that all things, greater and less alike, were separated off from individual agglomerations of matter; and that all are again dissolved, some more quickly, some more slowly, some suffering from one set of causes, others from another. . . . Furthermore, we must believe that in all worlds there are living creatures and plants and other things we see in this world.

Furthermore, the motions of the heavenly bodies and their turnings and eclipses and risings and settings, and kindred phenomena to these, must not be thought to be due to any being who controls and ordains or has ordained them and at the same time enjoys perfect bliss together with immortality.

If the soul continues to exist at all, it will retain sensation. . . . If the whole structure [body] is dissolved [dies], the soul is dispersed and no longer as the same powers nor performs its movements, so it does not possess sensation either. . . . Now it is impossible to conceive the incorporeal as a separate existence, except the void: and the void can neither act nor be acted upon, but only provides opportunity of motion through itself to bodies. So that those who say that the soul is incorporeal are talking idly.

Men, believing in myths, will always fear something terrible, everlasting punishment as certain or probable. . . . Men base all these fears not on mature opinions, but on irrational fancies, so that they are more disturbed by fear of the unknown than by facing facts. Peace of mind lies in being delivered from all these fears.

You should accustom yourself to believing that death means nothing to us, since every good and every evil lies in sensation; but death is the privation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.

Posidonius cited by Cicero: Epicurus does not really believe in the gods at all, and . . . said what he did about the immortal gods only for the sake of deprecating popular odium.

N.B. Epicurus was perhaps the most prolific author in ancient Greece, but only three letters survive intact, to be found in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers.

24. Strato. Athenian scientist, the third head of Aristotle's Academy (c. 269 B.C.):

Cicero: "In [Strato's] view the sole repository of divine power is nature, which contains in itself the causes of birth, growth and decay, but is entirely devoid of sensation and of form."

Cicero: "He [Strato] declares that he does not make use of divine activity for constructing the world. His doctrine is that all existing things of whatever sort have been produced by natural causes . . . "

Cicero: "he [Strato] . . . teaches that whatever either is or comes into being is or has been caused by natural forces of gravitation and motion.

Gomperz: "The soul [for Strato], as we have already been told by Aristotle, is 'something of the body.'"

N.B. Strato devised simple laboratory equipment--the first of its kind--in one instance a vacuum jar to investigate the properties of a vacuum with the expectation of resolving the choice between Democritus' atomism and Aristotle's theory of spatial continuity. Strato was notorious as an atheist, and all of his fifty-five texts listed by Diogenes Laertius were either lost or destroyed.

25. Arcesilaus. Athenian Academic skeptic--the director of Pla to's Academy (hence the name "Academic skepticism") a half century after Plato (c. 316-241 B.C.):

Cicero: Arcesilaus said that there is nothing that can be known, not even that residuum of knowledge that had left to himself [that he knew he did not know], so hidden in obscurity did he believe that everything lies, nor is there anything that can be perceived or understood, and for these reasons, he said, no one must make any positive statement or affirmation or give the approval of his assent to any proposition . . . and nothing is more disgraceful than for assent and approval to outstrip knowledge and perception.

Cicero: [The uncertainty of truth] necessarily engendered the doctrine of epoche, that is, a holding back of assent, in which Arcesilaus was more consistent [than his successor Carneades].

N.B. Epoche took on central importance among future skeptics, Montaigne for example having written it on the ceiling over his desk.

26. Ecclesiastes ["the Preacher"]. Hebrew prophet (c. 350 B.C.]:

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity. [3.19]

For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun. [Therefore] go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. [9.4-7]

N.B. The influence of Hellenistic philosophy is exemplified by these two passages as well as the repeated carpe diem exhortations to eat, drink, and live well ("seize the day").

27. Carneades. Athenian Academic skeptic who was notorious for his atheism (213-129 B.C.):

In order to form a conception of God one must necessarily . . . suspend [judgment] as to his existence or non-existence. For the existence of God is not pre-evident [a priori]. . . . therefore it is not proved, either, by a pre-evident fact. . . . Nor yet by what is non-evident; for he who asserts this will be driven into circular reasoning when we keep demanding proof every time for the non-evident fact which he produces as proof of the last one propounded. Consequently, the existence of God cannot be proved from any other fact.

If [God] has the power but not the will to have forethought for all, he will be held to be malignant; while if he has neither the will nor the power, he is both malignant and weak--an impious thing to say about God. Therefore God has no forethought for the things in the universe.

If these brothers [Jupiter, Neptune, and Orcus] are included among the gods, can we deny the divinity of their father Saturn, who is held in the highest reverence by the common people in the west? And if he is a god, we must also admit that his father Caelus is a god. And if so, the parents of Caelus, the Aether and the Day . . . [here Carneades goes on to list at least another five dozen ancient gods and goddesses to justify his conclusion]: Either therefore this process will go on indefinitely, or we shall admit none of these; and this unlimited claim of superstition will not be accepted; therefore none of these is to be accepted.

Cicero: There are however other philosophers, and those of eminence and note, who believe that the whole world is ruled and governed by divine intelligence and reason; and not this only, but also that the gods' providence watches over the life of men . . . This view was controverted at great length by Carneades, in such a manner as to arouse in persons of active mind a keen desire to discover the truth.

Cicero: [According to Carneades], that which feels pleasure and pain cannot be everlasting; and every living thing feels them; therefore no living thing is everlasting. . . . Therefore every living thing must of necessity perish.

N.B. Carneades also proposed a theory of probability at three levels of sophistication: (1) ordinary truths, (2) ordinary truths confirmed by others like them, and (3) tested truths justified by close empirical study. This permitted the tentative acceptance of truths until they could be demonstrated to be false. Carneades transcribed none of his ideas, but his disciple Clitomachus composed more than 400 treatises, all of which were either lost or destroyed.

28. Polybius. Greek historian (203-120 B.C.):

Since the masses of people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequence, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.

29. Varro. Roman scholar (115-27 B.C.):

It is for the good of states that men should be deluded by religion.

30. Cicero. Roman rhetorician, politician and scholar (106-43 B.C.):

But the question is not, are there any people who think that the gods exist,--the question is, do the gods exist or do they not?

[Nature's] coherence and persistence is due to nature's forces and not to divine power; she does possess that "concord" . . . of which you spoke, but the greater this is as a spontaneous growth, the less possible is it to suppose that it was created by divine reason.

Either providence does not know its own powers, or it does not regard human affairs, or it lacks power of judgment to discern what is best.

All those things you talk about are hidden, Lucullus, closely concealed and enfolded in thick clouds of darkness, so that no human intellect has a sufficiently powerful sight to be able to penetrate the heaven and get inside the earth. We do not know our own bodies . . .

I do not even deem that this world was built on a divine plan; and yet it may be so.

But just as I deem it supremely honourable to hold true views, so it is supremely disgraceful to approve falsehoods as true.

It is better to have no opinions than to have such wrong ones!

With the ignorant you get superstitions like the Syrians' worship of a fish, and the Egyptians' deification of almost every species of animal . . . Well, those are the superstitions of the unlearned; but what of you philosophers? How are your dogmas any better?

[Strato's atheism] frees the deity from a great task, and also me from alarm! For who holding the view that a god pays heed to him can avoid shivering with dread of the divine power all day and all night long, and if any disaster happens to him (and to whom does it not!) being thoroughly frightened lest it be a judgment upon him? All the same, I do not accept the view of Strato, nor yet [religious belief] either; at one moment one seems the more probable, and at another moment the other.

[Cicero's explanation of Academic skepticism]: The sole object of our discussions is by arguing on both sides [in utramque partem] to draw out and give shape to some result that may be either true or the nearest possible approximation to the truth. Nor is there any difference between ourselves and those who think they have positive knowledge [i.e., all dogmatists, including both materialists and religious believers] except that they have no doubt that their tenets are true, whereas we hold many doctrines as probable, which we can easily act upon but can scarcely advance as certain; yet we are more free and untrammelled in that we possess our power of judgement uncurtailed, and are bound by no compulsion to support all the dogmas laid down for us almost as edicts by certain masters.

N.B. Cicero retired from public life in 45 B.C. to summarize his knowledge of Greek philosophy that he had gained during his youth as a student in Greece. His two dialogues, De Natura Deorum and Academica, are the only contemporary assessments available today of trends in Academic skepticism preceding Augustus's reign. The less sympathetic assessments by Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius came almost two hundred years after Cicero.

31. Lucretius. Roman poet-philosopher (99-55 B.C.):

No thing is ever by divine power produced from nothing.

. . . this world was made by nature, and the seeds of things themselves of their own accord, knocking together by chance, clashed in all sorts of ways, heedless, without aim, without intention, until at length those combined which, suddenly thrown together, could become in each case the beginnings of mighty things, of earth and sea and sky and the generation of living creatures.

Though all the first-beginnings of things are in motion, the sum total seems nevertheless to abide in supreme quietude . . . For the nature of the first things lies all hidden far beneath our senses.

We must confess that there is nothing beyond the sum of things, it has no extremity, and therefore it is without end or limit. Nor does it matter in which of its quarters you stand: so true is it that, whatever place anyone occupies, he leaves the whole equally infinite in every direction.

Lastly, we are all sprung from celestial seed; all have the same father, from whom our fostering mother earth receives liquid drops of water, and then teeming brings forth bright corn and luxuriant trees and the race of mankind . . .

I would make bold to maintain from the ways of heaven itself, and to demonstrate from many another source, that the nature of the universe has by no means been made for us through divine power: so great are the faults it stands endowed with.

Another thing it is impossible that you should believe is that any holy abode of the gods exists in any part of the world. For the nature of the gods, being thin and removed from our senses, is hardly seen by the mind's intelligence; and since it eludes the touch and impact of the hands, it cannot possibly touch anything that we can touch; for that cannot touch which may not be touched itself. Therefore their abodes also must be different from our abodes, being thin in accord with their bodies. [N.B. this vision of the gods as creatures of a realm totally isolated from the real world was treated by many contemporaries as a defensive tactic of both Epicurus and Lucretius to avoid being accused of atheism.]

All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. N.B. The stoic philosopher Seneca (4 B.C.-65 C.E.) used the same argument: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful," as did Edward Gibbon in the eighteenth century, "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful."

32. Catullus. Roman poet (84-54 B.C.):

Suns may rise and set; we, when our short day has closed, must sleep on during one perpetual night.

33. Pontius Pilate. Roman prefect (c. 26 B.C.-A.D. 36):

What is truth? [John 18.38]

34. Jesus Christ. The Christian Messiah (c. 5 B.C.-A.D. 30):

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? [Mark 15.35]

35. Ovid. Roman poet (43 B.C.-A.D. 17):

It is expedient that gods should exist; since it is expedient, let us believe they do.

36. Petronius Arbiter. Roman satirist (--A.D. 66):

It was fear that first brought gods into the world.

37. Pliny the elder. Roman scholar (A.D. 23-79):

The world and this--whatever other name men have chosen to designate the sky whose vaulted roof encircles the universe, is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal immeasurable, a being that never began to exist and never will perish. What is outside it does not concern men to explore and is not within the grasp of the human mind to guess. It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the whole, nay rather itself the whole, finite and resembling the infinite, certain of all things and resembling the uncertain, holding in its embrace all things that are without and within, at once the work of nature and nature herself.

That [a] supreme being, whate'er it be, pays heed to man's affairs is a ridiculous notion. Can we believe that it would not be defiled by so gloomy and so multifarious a duty?

All men are in the same state from their last day onward as they were before their first day, and neither body nor mind possesses any sensation after death, any more than it did before birth. From the moment of death onward, the body and soul feel as little as they did before birth.

38. Seneca. Roman tragedian and philosopher (4 B.C.-A.D. 65):

After death, nothing is. . . . Let the ambitious zealot lay aside his hope of heaven, whose faith is but his pride. . . . Naught's after death, and death itself is naught.

39. Diodorus Siculus. Greek historian (c. 1st century A.D.):

The myths about Hades and the gods, although they are pure invention, help to make men virtuous.

It is to the interest of states to be deceived in religion.

40. Statius. Roman poet (c. 45-96 A.D.):

It was fear in the world that created the gods.

41. Plutarch. Roman historian and moralist (A.D. 46-120):

The abysmal gates of the nether world swing open, rivers of fire and offshoots of the Styx are mingled together, darkness is crowded with spectres of many fantastic shapes which beset their victim with grim visages and piteous voices, and, besides these, judges and torturers and yawning gulfs and deep recesses teeming with woes. Thus unhappy superstition, by its excess of caution in trying to avoid everything suggestive of dread, unwittingly subjects itself to every sort of dread.

42. Epictetus. Greek stoic philosopher (A.D. 50-135):

Where are you going? It cannot be a place of suffering; there is no hell.

43. Tacitus. Roman historian (55-120 A.D.):

Christianity is a pestilent superstition.

44. Lucian. Roman poet (c. 120-180 A.D.):

National observances show better than anything else how vague religious theory is. Confusion is endless, and beliefs as many as believers. Scythia makes offerings to a scimeter, Thrace to the Samian runaway Zamolxis, Phrygia to a Month-God, Ethiopia to a Day-Goddess, Cyllene to Phales, Assyria to a dove, Persia to fire, Egypt to water. In Egypt, though, besides the universal worship of water, Memphis has a private cult of the ox, Pelusium of the onion, other cities of the ibis or the crocodile, others again of baboon, cat, or monkey. Nay, the very villages have their specialties; one deifies the right shoulder, and another across the river the left; one a half skull, another an earthenware bowl or platter. Come, my fine fellow, is it not all ridiculous?

The earthly navigator makes his plans, takes his measures, gives his orders, with a single eye to efficiency; there is nothing useless or purposeless on board; everything is to make navigation easy or possible; but as for the navigator [God] for whom you claim the management of this vast ship [the universe], he and his crew show no reason or appropriateness in any of their arrangements; the forestays, as likely as not, are made fast to the stern, and both sheets to the bows; the anchor will be gold, the beak lead, decoration below the water-line and unsightliness above. As for the men, you will find some lazy awkward coward in second or third command, or a fine swimmer active as a cat aloft, and a handy man generally, chosen out of all the rest to--pump. It is just the same with the passengers: here is a gaolbird accommodated with a seat next the captain and treated with reverence, there a debauchee or parricide or temple-robber in honourable possession of the best place, while crowds of respectable people are packed together in a corner and hustled by their real inferiors. . . . If there had been a captain supervising and directing, in the first place he would have known the difference between good and bad passengers, and in the second he would have given them their deserts . . . So too for the crew: the keen sailor would have been made look-out man or captain of the watch, or given some sort of precedence and the lazy shirker have tasted the rope's end half a dozen times a day. The metaphorical ship [of the universe] is likely to be capsized by its captain's incompetence.

45. Celsus. Roman philosopher (c. 2nd century, A.D.)--the first ancient author of a whole book attacking Christianity.

Just as the charlatans of the cults [of Cybele, Mithras, etc.] take advantage of a simpleton's lack of education to lead him around by the nose, so too with the Christian teachers: they do not want to give or to receive reasons for what they believe. Their favorite expressions are "Do not ask questions, just believe!" and: "Your faith will save you!" "The wisdom of the world," they say, "is evil"; "to be simple is to be good."

And how can one overlook the fact that Christian teachers are only happy with stupid pupils--indeed scout about for the slow-witted. . . . And to the scum that constitutes their assemblies, they say "Make sure none of you ever obtains knowledge, for too much learning is a dangerous thing; knowledge is a disease for the soul, and the soul that acquires knowledge will perish."

Let us imagine what a Jew--let alone a philosopher--might put to Jesus: "Is it not true, good sir, that you fabricated the story of your birth from a virgin to quiet rumours about the true and unsavory circumstances of your origins? Is it not the case that far from being born in royal David's city of Bethlehem, you were born in a poor country town, and of a woman who earned her living by spinning? Is it not the case that when her deceit was discovered, to wit, that she was pregnant by a Roman soldier named Panthera, she was driven away by her husband--the carpenter--and convicted of adultery? Indeed, is it not so that in her disgrace, wandering far from home, she gave birth to a male child in silence and humiliation? What more? Is it no so that you hired yourself out as a workman in Egypt, learned magical crafts, and gained something of a name for yourself which now you flaunt among your kinsmen?" What absurdity! Clearly the Christians have used the myths of the Danae and the Melanippe, or of the Auge and the Antiope in fabricating the story of Jesus' virgin birth.

Let's assume for the present that he [Christ] foretold his resurrection. Are you ignorant of the multitudes who have invented similar tales to lead simple-minded hearers astray? It is said that Zamolxis, Pythagoras' servant, convinced the Scythians that he had risen from the dead, having hidden himself away in a cave for several years; and what about Pythagoras himself in Italy! ---or Rhampsinitus in Egypt. . . . What about Orpheus among the Odrysians, Protesilaus in Thessaly, and above all Herakles and Theseus?

It is equally silly of these Christians to suppose that when their God applies the fire (like a common cook!) all the rest of mankind will be thoroughly roasted, and that they alone will escape unscorched--not just those alive at the time, mind you, but (they say) those long since dead will rise up from the earth possessing the same bodies as they did before. I ask you: Is this not the hope of worms?

It is clear to me that the writings of the Christians are a lie, and that your fables have not been well enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction. I have even heard that some of your interpreters, as if they had just come out of a tavern, are onto the inconsistencies and, pen in hand, alter the original writings three, four, and several more times over in order to be able to deny the contradictions in the face of criticism.

46. Tertullian. Church Father (c. 180-230):

Tertullian's paradox: certum est quia impossibile est. It [the story of Christ] is certain, because it is impossible.

N.B. This is the likely origin of the modern phrase, "I believe because it is impossible."

47. Porphyry. Scholar of Tyre (c. 232-305):

A famous saying of the Teacher [Christ] is this one: "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have no life in yourselves." [John 6.54] This saying is not only beastly and absurd; it is more absurd than absurdity itself and more beastly than any beast; that a man should savor human flesh or drink the blood of a member of his own family or people--and that by doing this he should obtain eternal life! Tell us: in recommending this sort of practice, do you not reduce human existence to savagery of the most unimaginable sort?

48. St. Gregory I (the Great). Pope (540-604):

If the work of God could be comprehended by reason, it would be no longer wonderful, and faith would have no merit if reason provided proof.

49. Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri. Syrian poet (973-1057):

The world holds two classes of men--intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.

50. Omar Khayyam. Persian poet and mathematician (1048?-1131):

One thing is certain--this life flies . . . the flower that once has blown forever dies.

51. Frederick II. Holy Roman Emperor (1194-1250):

Accused by Pope Gregory IX of having said the world had been deceived by three impostors--Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed.

52.Pope Boniface VIII. (1235-1303)--charged with heresy after his death based on testimony that he had made these remarks:

So that God gives me the good things of this life, I care not a bean for that to come. A man has no more a soul than a beast. Did you ever see any one who had risen from the dead?

Christ! he was no Son of God; he was a man, eating and drinking like ourselves; he never rose from the dead; no man has ever risen. I am far mightier than he. I can bestow kingdoms and humble kings.

53. Leonardo da Vinci. Italian artist (1452-1519):

Take no miracles on trust; always look for causes.

54. Pietro Pomponazzi. Italian philosopher (1462-1525):

[The statesmen] have set up for the virtuous eternal rewards in another life, and for the vicious, eternal punishments, which frighten greatly. And the greater part of men, if they do good, do it more from fear of eternal punishment than from hope of eternal good, since punishments are better known to us than that eternal god. And since this last device can benefit all men, of whatever degree, the lawgiver regarding the proneness of men to evil, intending the common good, has decreed that the soul is immortal, not caring for truth but only for righteousness, that he may lead men to virtue.

N.B. As the most influential philosopher of the Italian Renaissance, Pomponazzi was able to make this statement by using Averroes' "double truth," a common rhetorical strategy at the time that let him justify heresy by contrasting it with orthodox arguments which could be ignored by readers aware of his intentions. Pomponazzi also argued in essays published after his death that the soul is mortal, that angels, demons and miracles are fictitious, that religions are born and die, and that prayers go unanswered.

55. Niccolo Machiavelli. Italian author (1467-1527):

It is therefore the duty of princes and heads of republics to uphold the foundations of the religion of their countries, for then it is easy to keep their people religious and consequently well conducted and united. And therefore everything that tends to favor religion (even though it were believed to be false) should be received and availed of to strengthen it; and this should be done the more, the wiser the rulers are, and the better they understand the natural course of things.

56. Pope Leo X. The son of Lorenzo de' Medici (1475-1521):

We owe all this to the fable of Jesus Christ.

N.B. It was widely held that Leo made this remark, but there is no solid evidence that he did.

57. Hermann van Ryswyck. Dutch priest burned at the stake in 1512:

J.M. Robertson: In 1502, Ryswyck told his inquisitors "with his own mouth and with sane mind" that the world is eternal, and was not created as was alleged by "the fool Moses"; that there is no hell, and no future life; that Christ, whose whole career was flatly contrary to human welfare and reason, was not the son of Omnipotent God, but a fool, a dreamer, and a seducer of ignorant men, of whom untold numbers had been slain on account of him and his absurd evangel; that Moses had not physically received the law from God; and that "our" faith was shown to be fabulous by its fatuous Scripture, fictitious Bible, and crazy Gospel.

I was born a Christian, but am no longer one: they are the chief fools.

N.B. A decade later Ryswyck was brought before the Inquisition once again, and, upon repeating his heretical argument, was burned at the stake later in the day.

58. Étienne Dolet. French Humanist (1509-1546):

Thou shalt no longer be anything at all.

N.B. Dolet was burned at the stake for having translated Socrates' description of death, "Thou shalt no longer be," with the verb complement "anything at all."

59. Jacques Gruet. Swiss Protestant executed in 1547:

All so-called laws, divine as well as human, are made at the will of men.

N.B. At the order of Calvin, Gruet was executed for this quotation and other infractions that were less obviously heretical. According to one account his execution was particularly violent: "His half-dead body was beheaded on the scaffold, the torso being tied and the feet nailed thereto."

60. Michel de Montaigne. French essayist (1533-1592):

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

Men make themselves believe what they believe.

Men of simple understanding, little inquisitive and little instructed, make good Christians.

Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.

To know much is often the cause of doubting more.

Philosophy is doubt.

61. Giordano Bruno. Italian philosopher (1548-1600):

Nothing appears to be really durable, eternal and worthy of the name of principle, save matter alone.

It is more appropriate to say, then, that matter contains the forms and implies them, than to think that it is empty of them and excludes them. That matter, then, which unfolds what it has enfolded must be called the divine and excellent progenitor, generator and mother of natural things; or, in substance, the entire nature.

There is then a kind of substratum from which, with which, and in which, nature effects its operations and its work; and which is by nature endowed with so many forms that it presents for our consideration such a variety of species.

The universe is, then, one, infinite, immobile.

The foolish renounce this world and pursue an imaginary world to come.

To his holy inquisitors upon being sentenced to burn at the stake: "You are more afraid to pronounce my sentence than I to receive it."

Last words: unspoken. Bruno's tongue was tied to prevent any final speech before he was burned at the stake. When a crucifix was presented for him to kiss, he pushed it aside.

N.B. Like both Epicurus and Lucretius, Bruno proposed that we live in an infinite universe in which time, motion and location are relative. He also argued that the universe includes countless stars and planets similar to the sun and earth that move freely in space rather being limited to orbits around a central body such as the sun.

62. Sir Francis Bacon. English empirical philosopher (1561-1626):

In every age, natural philosophy had a troublesome adversary and hard to deal with; namely, superstition, and the blind and immoderate zeal of religion.

It addeth deformity to an ape to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion makes it the more deformed.

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.

The more contrary to reason the divine mystery, so much the more must it be believed for the glory of God.

The trinitarian believes a virgin to be the mother of a son who is her maker.

63. William Shakespeare. English playwright (1564-1616):

We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. [The Tempest, Act 4, scene 1]

To be or not to be, that is the question. [Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1] N. B. A double entendre seems intended: (1) to live or to die, and (2) to enter afterlife or not upon dying, with fear of the possibility that suicide might bring eternal punishment if there is an afterlife. Having explored this possibility, Hamlet concludes his soliloquy no longer willing to consider suicide.

Absent thee from felicity a whole. [Hamlet, Act 4, scene 2] N.B. With this sentence Hamlet prevents Horatio from drinking from the poison goblet to commit suicide, thus suggesting that Hamlet no longer fears an afterlife in which suicide would be punished by eternal hellfire as suggested by his "to be or not to be" soliloquy.

The rest is silence. [Hamlet, Act 5, scene 2]. N.B. There are at least three meanings to Hamlet's final line: (1) that the play is finished; (2) that Hamlet will be dead and can no longer speak; and (3) that death as a condition of "rest" consists of total wordlessness, suggesting the absence of an afterlife--at least one in which voices can be heard (which might be considered Shakespeare's single most compelling pursuit). Horatio's response, "And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest," implicitly rejects this possibility, but Hamlet has already told Horatio, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." [Act I, scene 5]. Ironically, by the end of the play more becomes less in the sense that no heaven or hell exists that would be of much interest to Shakespeare.

N.B. George Santayana treats Shakespeare's skepticism at greater length in his essay, "The Absence of Religion in Shakespeare," in Essays in Literary Criticism, (Scribners, 1956).

64. Christopher Marlowe. English playwright (1564-1593):

Charges filed with the Privy Council to prosecute Marlowe for atheism: "These things shall by good and honest witness be approved to be his opinions and common speeches and that this Marlowe doth not only hold them himself but almost into every company he cometh he persuades men to atheism, willing them not to be afeard of bugbearers and hobgoblins . . . I think all men in Christianity ought to endeavor that the mouth of so dangerous a member may be stopped."

N.B. Marlowe was killed in a knife fight before he could be prosecuted.

65. Ben Jonson. English playwright (1572-1637):

What excellent fools religion makes of man.

66. Matthew Hamount. English heretic burned at the stake in 1579:

J.M. Robertson: [Hamount was] charged with heresy for having declared his belief: "That the New Testament and Gospel of Christ is but foolishness, a mere fable; that Christ is not God or the Saviour of the world, but a mere man, a shameful man, and an abominable idol; that He did not rise again from death or ascend unto Heaven; that the Holy Ghost is not God; and that baptism is not necessary, nor the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ."

67. Lucilio Vanini. Italian philosopher (c. 1584-1619):

He [Christ] sweated with fear and weakness, and I, I die undaunted.

N.B. This was spoken by Vanini just before he was burned at the stake. His executioner was reportedly so shocked and outraged by this remark that he obtained pincers and tore out Vanini's tongue before lighting his pyre.

68. Thomas Hobbes. English materialist philosopher (1588-1679):

Opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion to what men fear, and taking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seeds of religion.

For it is with the mysteries of our religion, as with wholesome pills for the sick; which swallowed whole have the virtue to cure; but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.

Atheism: the sin of imprudence.

69. Rene Descartes. French metaphysician (1596-1650):

I will [for the sake of argument] suppose therefore that not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds, and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment.

70. Sir Thomas Browne. English author (1605-82):

The religion of one seems madness unto another.

71. Blaise Pascal. French mathematician and Jansenist philosopher (1623-1662):

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

To carry piety to the extent of superstition is to destroy it.

72. Baruch Spinoza. Dutch Jewish philosopher identified as a pantheist (1632-1677):

I take a totally different view of God and Nature from that which the later Christians usually entertain, for I hold that God is the immanant, and not the extraneous, cause of all things. I say, All is in God; all lives and moves in God.

Believers are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance.

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

73. John Locke. English philosopher (1632-1704):

Religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above beasts, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.

Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to do.

How any man who should inquire and know for himself can content himself with a faith or belief taken upon trust, is to be astonishing.

74. Sir Isaac Newton. English physicist who was devout but unor- thodox in his Christian viewpoint (1642-1727):

He [God] is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither been seen, nor heard, nor touched; nor ought he to be worshiped under the representation of any corporeal thing.

We know [God] only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature.

By way of allegory, God is said to see, to speak, to laugh, to love, to hate, to desire, to give, to receive, to rejoice, to be angry, to fight, to frame, to work, to build; for all our notions of God are taken from the ways of mankind by a certain similitude, which though not perfect, has some likeness, however.

75. Jean Meslier. French village priest--author of modern Eur ope's first atheist treatise, three copies of which were found in his possession after he died (1664-1729):

While we are told that God is infinitely good, is it not constantly repeated to us that He is very easily offended, that He bestows His favors upon a few, that He chastises with fury those to whom He has not been pleased to grant them?

If God Himself was not able to render human nature sinless, what right had He to punish men for not being sinless?

The pictures which are drawn of Divinity, are they not visibly borrowed from the implacable jealous, vindictive, blood-thirsty, capricious, inconsiderate humor of man, who has not yet cultivated his reason? Oh, men! You worship but a great savage, whom you consider as a model to follow, as an amiable master, as a perfect sovereign.

We find in all the religions of the earth a God of armies, a jealous God, an avenging God, an exterminating God, a God who enjoys carnage and whose worshippers make it a duty to serve him to his taste. Lambs, bulls, children, men, heretics, infidels, kings, whole nations, are sacrificed to him. All the Gods worshiped by men have a barbarous origin; they were visibly imagined by stupid nations, or were presented by ambitious and cunning legislators to simple and benighted people, who had neither the capacity nor the courage to examine properly the object which, by means of terrors, they were made to worship.

Faith consists in an unlimited credulity, which causes men to believe, without examination, all that which the interpreters of the Deity wish them to believe. . . . Implicit faith has been the source of the greatest outrages which have been committed upon earth.

There is no crime which men have not committed in the idea of pleasing the Deity or of appeasing his wrath.

Who are those who have seen God? They are either fanatics, or scoundrels, or ambitious men, whose word we can not rely on.

It is necessary to the priests that we tremble before their God, in order that we have recourse to them to obtain the means to be quieted.

"Sacrifice your reason; give up experience; distrust the testimony of your senses; submit without examination to all that is given to you as coming from Heaven." This is the usual language of all the priests of the world.

If religion was clear, it would have fewer attractions for the ignorant. They need obscurity, mysteries, fables, miracles, incredible things, which keep their brains perpetually at work.

The superstitious man wants to be afraid; his imagination demands it. It seems that he fears nothing more than having no object to fear.

Religion is, for the people, but a vain attendance upon ceremonies, to which they cling from habit, which amuses their eyes, which enlivens temporarily their sleepy minds, without influencing the conduct and without correcting their morals.

Morality and virtue are totally incompatible with the idea of a God, whose ministers and interpreters have painted him in all countries as the most fantastic, the most unjust, and the most cruel of tyrants, whose pretended wishes are to serve as rules and laws for the inhabitants of the earth.

To discover the true principles of morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of Gods; they need but common sense. . . . Truth is simple, error is complicated . . . the voice of nature is intelligible, that of falsehood is ambiguous, enigmatical, and mysterious.

76. Anthony Shaftesbury. English philosopher (1671-1713):

If we are told that a man is religious, we still ask what are his morals. But if we hear he has honest morals, we seldom think of the other question.

77. Voltaire. French philosophe, poet, dramatist, and historian-- France's dominant eighteenth century proponent of deism as opposed to both atheism and orthodox religion (1694-1778):

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.

Would you believe that while the flames were consuming these innocent victims [burned at the stake for heresy], the inquisitors and the other savages were chanting our prayers? These pitiless monsters were invoking the God of mercy . . . while committing the most atrocious crime.

Superstition, born of paganism, and adopted by Judaism, invested the Christian Church from earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were really in communication with the devil.

Letter to Boswell: You seem solicitous about that pretty thing called soul. I do protest I know nothing of it, nor where it is, nor what it is, nor what it shall be.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning.

Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people.

Most of the great men . . . live as if they were atheists.

The first divine was the first rogue who met the first fool.

Theology: A science profound, supernatural, and divine, which teaches us to reason on that which we don't understand and to get our ideas mixed up on that which we do.

Écraser l'enfame ["eradicate the infamy"]. N.B. Voltaire's oft-repeated slogan referred to religious orthodoxy and more specifically to French Catholicism.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

78. Benjamin Franklin. American statesman and scientist (1706-90):

As to Jesus of Nazareth, . . . I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is like to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity.

79. Henry Fielding. English novelist (1707-1754):

No man has ever sat down calmly unbiased to reason out his religion, and not ended by rejecting it.

80. William Pitt. English Prime Minister (1708-1778):

We need a religion of humanity. The only true divinity is humanity.

81. Julien La Mettrie. French physician of the court of Frederick the Great--also notorious for his atheism (1709-1751):

To eliminate chance is not to prove the existence of a supreme being since there could be something else that is neither chance nor God. I mean nature, whose study consequently cannot help but produce unbelievers, as witnessed by the ways of thinking of its most successful investigators.

Need I say more . . . to prove that man is but an animal, or a contraption of springs, each of which activates the next without our being able to tell which one nature used to start the merry-go-round of human society? Thus the soul is only a principle of movement or sensible, material part of the brain, which one can regard as the machine's principal spring without fear of being mistaken.

To be a machine, to feel, think, know good from evil like blue from yellow, in a word, to be born with intelligence and a sure instinct for morality, and yet to be only an animal, are things no more contradictory than to be an ape or parrot and know how to find sexual pleasure.

82. David Hume. Scottish skeptical philosopher (1711-1776):

Thought, design, intelligence, such as we discover in men and other animals, is no more than one of the springs and principles of the universe, as well as heat or cold, attraction or repulsion, and a hundred others which fall under daily observation. . . . [But] what peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model for the whole universe?

Is there any reasonable ground to conclude that the inhabitants of other planets possess thought, intelligence, reason, or anything similar to these faculties in men? . . . And if thought, as we may well suppose, be confined merely to this narrow corner [of the universe] and has even there so limited a sphere of action, with what propriety can we assign it for the original cause of all things?

What is the soul of man? A composition of various faculties, passions, sentiments, ideas--united, indeed, into one self or person, but still distinct from each other. . . . How is this compatible with that perfect immutability and simplicity which all true theists ascribe to the deity? . . . A mind whose acts and sentiments and ideas are not distinct and successive, one that is wholly simple and totally immutable, is a mind which has no thought, no reason, no will, no sentiment, no love, no hatred; or, in a word, is no mind at all.

The [universe] presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children. . . . The true conclusion is that the original Source of all things is entirely indifferent to all these principles, and has no more regard to good above ill than to heat above cold, or to drought above moisture, or to light above heavy.

It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause.

Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent? Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent? Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

Why, then, eternal punishment for the temporary offenses of so frail a creature as man?

Examine the religious principles which have, in fact, prevailed in the world, and you will scarcely be persuaded that they are anything but sick men's dreams.

[Worship] depresses the Deity far below the condition of mankind, and represents him as a capricious demon who exercises his power without reason and without humanity.

Generally speaking, the errors of religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

Boswell's report of his conversation with Hume on his death bed: "I asked him if he was not religious when he was young. He said he was. . . . He then said flatly that the Morality of every Religion was bad, and, I really thought, was not jocular when he said 'that when he heard a man was religious, he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious.' I asked It was possible that there might be a future state. He answered It was possible that a piece of coal put upon the fire would not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist for ever."

83. Jean Jacques Rousseau. French philosophe and deist who rejec ted outright atheism (1712-1778):

The less reasonable a cult is, the more men seek to establish it by force.

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.

84. Frederick the Great. Prussian king (1712-1786):

Superstition is the weakness of the human mind, which is inseparably tied up with it; it has always existed, and always will.

Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand. . . . We know the crimes that fanaticism in religion has caused.

The imbecile priests! The best destiny they can look for is that they and their vile artifices will forever remain buried in the darkness of oblivion.

85. Denis Diderot. French philosophe, editor of the Encyclopedié and the central figure among freethinkers in Paris for the final three decades of his life (1713-1784):

Considering the picture that is drawn for us of the Supreme Being, the most righteous soul must be tempted to wish that he did not exist.

The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.

Religion is a support that in the end almost always ruins the edifice.

The English, like us, have a mania for converting people. Their missionaries go off into the depths of the forests to take the catechism to the savages. There was a native chief who said to one of his missionaries: "Brother, look at my head; my hair is quite grey: seriously, do you think you can make a man my age believe in all these stories? But I have three children. Don't address yourself to the oldest; you will make him laugh. Get hold of the little one; you can persuade him of anything you like."

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest.

I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.

Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

86. Claude Helvétius. French philosophe (1715-1771):

A man who believes that he eats his God we do not call mad; a man who says he is Jesus Christ, we call mad.

87. Baron Paul-Henry d'Holbach. French philosophe (1723-1789):

We cannot doubt the power of nature; she produces all the animals we see by the aid of the combination of matter which is a continual action; the harmony that subsists between the parts of these same animals is a consequence of the necessary laws of their nature and of their combination; as soon as this accord ceases, the animal is necessarily destroyed. What becomes then of the wisdom, of the intelligence, or the goodness of that pretended cause to whom they ascribe the honour of this so much boasted harmony? . . . Where is the wisdom, the goodness, the foresight, and the immutability of a workman [God], who appears only to be occupied with deranging and breaking the springs of those machines, which are announced to us as the chefs d'oeuvres of his power and his ability. If this God cannot do otherwise, he is neither free nor omnipotent. If he changes his will, he is not immutable. If he permits those machines, which he has rendered sensible, to experience pain, he wants goodness. If he has not been able to render his work more solid, it is that he lacks the ability.

Shall it be in the revealed religions, that we shall draw up our idea of virtue? Alas! do they not all appear to be in accord in announcing a despotic, jealous, vindictive and selfish God, who knows no law, who follows his caprice in everything, who loves or who hates, who chooses or reproves, according to his whim; who acts irrationally, who delights in carnage, rapine and crime; who plays with his feeble subjects, who overloads them with puerile laws, who lays continual snares for them, who rigorously prohibits them from consulting their reason? What would become of morality, if men proposed to themselves such Gods as models.

A theology which assures us that God has been able to create men for the purpose of rendering them eternally miserable, shows us nothing but an evil and malicious genius, whose malice is inconceivable and infinitely surpasses the cruelty of the most depraved beings of our species.

It will ever be . . . that a [God] who gives liberty to sin, has resolved, in his eternal decrees, that sin should be committed; that a [God] who punishes those faults which he has permitted to be done, is sovereignly unjust and irrational; that an infinite [God] who contains qualities infinitely contradictory, is an impossible being, and is only a chimera.

. . . A God such as the theologians depict him, is totally impossible.

The Devil, the false God, the evil principle, has he not a more extensive empire than the true God, whose projects according to the theologians, he is unceasingly overturning? The true sovereign, is he not the sad witness and the accomplice of those outrages which are everywhere offered to his divine majesty?

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to the gods, knowledge of nature is destined to destroy them.

An atheist is a man who destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.

Diderot: "The first time that Mr. Hume found himself at the table of the Baron [d'Holbach], he was seated beside him. I don't know for what purpose the English philosopher took it into his head to remark to the Baron that he did not believe in atheists, that he had never seen any. The Baron said to him: 'Count how many we are here. We are eighteen.' The Baron added: 'It isn't too bad a showing to be able to point out to you fifteen at once: the three others haven't made up their minds.'"

N.B. As a close friend of Diderot, D'Holbach heavily contributed to the Encyclopedié and held lavish bi-weekly soireés for freethinkers on his two estates. What few contemporaries realized was that he also authored well over a dozen anonymous atheistic texts, including his infamous System of Nature, which is quoted here.

88. Immanual Kant. German metaphysician (1724-1804):

Reason can never prove the existence of God.

I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.

Religion is too important a matter to its devotes to be the subject of ridicule. If they indulge in absurdities, they are to be pitied rather than ridiculed.

89. Gotthold Lessing. German critic and philosopher (1729-1781):

If God were holding all the truth that exists in his right hand, and in his left just the one ever-active urge to find the truth, even if attached to it were the condition that I should always and forever be going astray, and said to me: "Choose!" I should humbly fall upon his left hand and say: "Father, give! Pure truth is surely for thee alone!"

When told toward the end of his life of the annoyance that clerics caused Voltaire on his deathbed, Lessing replied, "When thou see me about to die, call the notary; I will declare before him that I die in none of the prevailing religions."

90. John Adams. American president (1735-1826):

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles.

As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

91. Edward Gibbon. Scottish historian (1737-1794):

Religion is a mere question of geography.

So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition.

To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.

92. Thomas Paine. English pamphleteer and deist (1737-1809):

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy. . . . I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Christian Mythologists, calling themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which, for absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.

A book called the Bible has been voted by men, and decreed by human laws, to be the Word of God, and the disbelief of this is called blasphemy. But if the Bible be not the Word of God, it is the laws and the execution of them that is blasphemy.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon rather than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate anything to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of Himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and the disposition to do good ones.

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

93. Ethan Allen. American Revolutionary hero (1737-1789):

In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

94. Marquis de Sade. French pornographer (1740-1814):

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

95. Sébastien Chamfort. French writer (1740-1794):

I once heard an orthodox person denouncing those who discuss articles of faith: "Gentlemen," he said naively, "a true Christian does not examine what he is ordered to believe. Dogma is like a bitter pill: if you chew it, you will never be able to swallow it."

96. George Lichtenberg. German physicist (1742-1799):

After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

Nothing has proved easier for men to invent than heaven.

97. Thomas Jefferson. American president (1743-1826):

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.

I find some passages of the Bible of correct morality, and others of so much ignorance, untruth, charlatanism, and imposture.

98. Condorcet, Marques de. French philosophe and mathematician-- also an early architect of the French Revolution who was found dead upon having been jailed by Jacobins (1743-1794):

Priests . . . a class of individuals who separated themselves from the common mass of mankind so that they might dominate them more effectively, and who sought to gain an exclusive control over medicine and astronomy so that they might hold in their own hands all the means of subjugating the human mind and deprive mankind of any way of umasking their hypocrisy or destroying their tyranny.

The growth of this same system [medieval Christianity] gave rise to many absurdities: monks inventing ancient miracles or manufacturing new ones, feeding the ignorance and stupidity of the people with fables and prodigies, deluding them in order to despoil them; doctors of the Church exhausting all their ingenuity in an effort to find some new piece of nonsense with which to embellish their faith or to outdo their predecessors; priests compelling princes to burn any man who dared doubt one of their dogmas, unmask their impostures or denounce their crimes, or who wavered for a moment from the course of blind obedience . . .

All errors in politics and morals are based on philosophical errors and these in turn are connected with scientific errors.

There is not a religious system nor a supernatural extravagance that is not founded on ignorance of the laws of nature. . . . Advances in the physical science are all the more fatal to these errors in that they often destroy them without appearing to attack them.

99. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. German poet, novelist, and scien tist (1749-1832):

To Lavater in 1772, Goethe wrote, "You look upon the gospel as it stands as the divinest truth; but even a voice from heaven would not convince me that water burns and fire quenches, that a woman conceives without a man, and that a dead man can rise again. To you, nothing is more beautiful than the Gospel; to me, a thousand written pages of ancient and modern inspired men are equally beautiful."

You say truly that Man is God and Satan, Heaven and Earth, all in one, for what else are these concepts but conceptions which Man has of his own nature.

This occupation with ideas of immortality is for people of rank, and especially for ladies who have nothing to do. But a man of real worth who has something to do here, and must toil and struggle to produce day by day, leaves the future world to itself, and is active and useful in this.

I shall be well content that after the close of this life we should be blessed with another, but I would beg not to have there for companions any who have believed it here.

Living will teach you to live better than preacher or Bible.

100. Pierre Simon Laplace. French astronomer (1749-1827):

Asked by Napoleon why he did not mention God in his Celestial Mechanics, Laplace replied, "I have no need of that hypothesis."

101. James Madison. American president (1751-1836):

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

102. Anonymous. The Unbeliever's Creed (1754):

I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God and God is matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or no.

103. Maximilien Robespierre. French revolutionist (1758-1794):

Atheism is aristocratic. N.B. As a devout Christian, Robespierre persecuted atheists and freethinkers during the Reign of Terror.

104. Mary Wollstonecraft. English feminist (1759-1797):

We must get entirely clear of all the notions drawn from the wild traditions of original sin, the eating of the apple . . . and the other fables, too tedious to enumerate, on which priests have erected their tremendous structures of imposition.

105. Napoleon Bonaparte. French dictator (1769-1821):

All religions have been made by men.

If I have a soul, then pigs and dogs have souls.

When we are dead, we are simply dead.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal life-giver would be my god.

Everything is more or less organized matter. To think so is against religion, but I think so just the same.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

In all countries, religion is useful to the government; it should be used to control the minds of the people.

Priests have everywhen and everywhere introduced fraud and falsehood.

If I had believed in a God of rewards and punishments, I might have lost courage in battle.

106. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. English poet (1772-1834):

Not one man in ten thousand has goodness of heart or strength of mind to be an atheist.

107. James Mill. Philosopher, J.S. Mill's father (1773-1836):

According to J.S. Mill, "He [James Mill] regarded it [religion] with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil."

Also by J.S. Mill: "I have a hundred times heard him [James Mill] say, that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression, that mankind have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and have called this God, and prostated themselves before it. This ne plus ultra of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity."

108. Charles Lamb. English author (1775-1834):

There is a need of multiplying books a hundredfold in this philosophical age to prevent converts to atheism, for they seem too tough disputants to meddle with afterwards.

109. Lord Byron. English poet (1778-1824):

Those who swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can hardly find anything else otherwise than easy to digest.

110. Charles Caleb Colton. American author (1780-1832):

The three great apostles of practical atheism that make converts without persecuting and