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  fortune index  all fortunes 
  
 |  |  | #2801 |  | The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion.  I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
 - Abraham Lincoln
 
 |  |  |  | #2802 |  | As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely 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.
 - Benjamin Franklin
 
 |  |  |  | #2803 |  | I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released.  I thank God they were satisfied with the
 missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.
 - Oliver North
 
 |  |  |  | #2804 |  | I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)
 how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom
 to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or
 political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely
 because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the
 people who might elect him.
 - from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
 September 12, 1960.
 
 |  |  |  | #2805 |  | The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
 at rational thinking.  Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
 knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable.  Since the earliest
 days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
 effort to liberate the body and mind of man.  It has been, at all times and
 everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
 laws, bad social theories, bad institutions.  It was, for centuries, an
 apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
 - H. L. Mencken
 
 |  |  |  | #2806 |  | The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
 effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts.  If it could,
 science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
 every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
 To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
 not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
 ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
 - H. L. Mencken, 1930
 
 |  |  |  | #2807 |  | The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has
 its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way.
 Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality,
 and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is
 recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation,
 and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing
 beyond the grave.  Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and
 they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to
 flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....
 - H. L. Mencken
 
 |  |  |  | #2808 |  | There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
 Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
 discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
 on his own account.  The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
 even highly probable.
 - H. L. Mencken, 1930
 
 |  |  |  | #2809 |  | The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
 drifting side by side to our common doom.
 - Clarence Darrow
 
 |  |  |  | #2810 |  | We're here to give you a computer, not a religion. - attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
 
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