Linux Cookie

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.

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

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

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

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

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

We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.
- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga

...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is
the practice of truth.
- George Jacob Holyoake

"If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee."
- broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center, Houston
  July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.

The meek are contesting the will.