Perfect title.

JOSEPH LEWIS
An Atheist Manifesto

You are to make up your mind whether it is to be God or man. Whether you are to be free or a slave. Whether it is to be progress or stagnation.

As long as man loves a phantom in the sky more than he loves his fellow man, there will never be peace upon this earth; so long as man worships a Tyrant as the "Fatherhood of God," there will never be a "Brotherhood of Man."

You must make the choice, you must come to the decision. Is it to be God or Man? Churches or Homes—preparation for death or happiness for the living?

If ever man needed an example of the benefit of the one against the other, he need but read the pages of history for proof of how religion retarded progress and provoked hatred among the children of men.

When theology ruled the world, man was a slave. The people lived in huts and hovels. They were clad in rags and skins; they devoured crusts and gnawed bones; the priests wore garments of silk and satin; carried mitres of gold and precious stones, robbed the poor and lived upon the fat of the land!

Here and there a brave man appeared to question their authority. These martyrs to intellectual emancipation slowly and painfully broke the spell of superstition and ushered in the Age of Reason and the Dawn of Science.

Man became the only god that man can know. He no longer fell upon his knees in fear. He began to enjoy the fruits of his own labor.

He discovered a way to relieve himself from the drudgery of continuous toil; he began to enjoy a few comforts of life—and for the first time upon this earth he found a few moments for happiness. It is far more important to learn how to live than to learn how to pray.

A new day and a new era dawned for him. His labors produced enormous dividends. He looked at the sky for the first time and saw that it was blue! He searched the heavens and found no God. He no longer feared the manifestations of nature.

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child

When the great ship containing the hopes and aspirations of the world, when the great ship freighted with mankind goes down in the night of death, chaos and disaster, I am willing to go down with the ship. I will not be guilty of the ineffable meanness of paddling away in some orthodox canoe. I will go down with the ship, with those who love me, and with those whom I have loved.

If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant.

I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and woman and child. It has filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the tender; it has furrowed the cheeks of the good. This doctrine never should be preached again.

What right have you, sir, Mr. Clergyman, you, minister of the gospel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine: neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.

ANAÏS NIN

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. 

Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. 

But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea!

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

We keep being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and - perhaps above all - more stupid.

Religion is poison.

Religion kills.

A woman came up to me and said
"I'd like to poison your mind
With wrong ideas that appeal to you
Though I am not unkind"
She looked at me, I looked at something
Written across her scalp
And these are the words that it faintly said
As I tried to call for help:

There's only one thing that I know how to do well
And I've often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that's be you
Be what you're like
Be like yourself
And so I'm having a wonderful time
But I'd rather be whistling in the dark

YUVAL NOAH HARARI
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?

I am so fucking tired of this "not all christians" bullshit.

THIS IS CHRISTIANITY.

These ARE pro-life christians getting baptized next to the dead bodies of babies floating in the Rio Grande.

"The biggest danger of taking your child to a drag show is that a christian could show up with a gun."

Truer words have never been  spoken.

[Photographer unknown to me.]

Religion Kills. Religion is pure evil.

There's nothing else to say about it.

"Pro-life" is the last phrase in the world I'd use to describe a christian.

Religion Kills.

KNUT HAMSUN

Mysteries

____________________

I have no respect to merchants and preachers; as far as I’m concerned, their only talent is coming up with the right word at the right time. What is a professional preacher, really? He is a kind of middleman who for the wrong reasons tries to make people buy his goods. The more he sells, the more his stock rises. The louder he hawks his wares, the larger his business grows.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

____________________

A dangerous book will always be in danger from those it threatens with the demand that they question their assumptions. They'd rather hang on to the assumptions and ban the book.

Republicans in America really are this fucking stupid. Religion poisons the mind and exterminates all possible reasoning abilities.

Note to Republicans:

JFK was born in 1917, which is to say 10-20 years older than the Band of Brothers. He would currently be 104 years old if he had not BEEN ASSASSINATED ... 58 years ago.

If you meant it was JFK, Jr masquerading as the twice-impeached, one-term former guy, he was KILLED in a plane crash almost 23 years ago. 

And no, none of the Kennedys share a swingin love nest condo with Elvis in Missouri, Montana, or Mara Lago. 

JFK dead √

JFK, Jr dead √

Elvis dead √

Richard Nixon dead √

Jesus dead √

Moreover, you brain dead excuses for living organisms, even their crumbling bones couldn't bear the shame of wearing a stinking, sweat-soaked, coke-infused, elderly fat suit with a full diaper dripping down their legs before they even huffed and puffed struggling to reach the podium.

Funny how y'all never have an answer for why the former guy would be hiding in his bunker - too afraid to go out in public - and paying a corpse he raised from the dead to impersonate him.

____________________

These people have the legal right to vote in our country.