This is for my associate the flying crimson eagle. Use these as a reminder to those self serving false 'profit' theocrats whenever they begin their revenge/fear motivated oppression based, intolerant, bigoted, hateful rant.
"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself" [Sir Richard F. Burton]
"It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster." [Voltaire]
"The [Christian] supremacists who lead the anti-gay crusade are wrong morally. They are wrong because justice is moral, and prejudice is evil; because truth is moral and the lie of the closet is the real sin; because the claim of morality is a subtle sort of subterfuge, a strategem which hides the real aim which is much more secular(an extended period of time). The supremacists don't care about morality, they care about power. They care about social control. And their goal, my friends, is the reconstruction of American Democracy into American Theocracy." [Urvashi Vaid (April 25, 1993)]
"Primus in orbe deos facit timor.(Make a T-shirt of this) (Fear created the first gods in the world.)" [Caecilius Statius (220-168 B.C.), Thebais]
"Today, Jesus' name is used to divide us, to make us intolerant, bigoted, hateful. There is nowhere Jesus could be born today were he would feel comfortable. Jesus is being betrayed by the people who claim to believe in him." [F. Forrester Church, Unitarian minister and author of "God and Other Famous Liberals", quoted in Life Magazine, Dec. 1994 "Jesus" issue]
For Catherine- the next time you go to a christmas show, you can remind the clones that the real meaning of christmas was based on the change of seasons more than a birth of a man. I love Joseph Campbell. His Quest for the grail is a masterpiece, as are other PBS/Bill Moyers Power of Myth specials.
"A one sentence definition of mythology?
"Mythology" is what we call someone else's religion." [Joseph Campbell]
"The night of December 25, to which date the Nativity of Christ was ultimately assigned, was exactly that of the birth of the Persian savior Mithra, who, as an incarnation of eternal light, was born the night of the winter solstice (then dated December 25) at midnight, the instant of the turn of the year from increasing darkness to light." [Joseph Campbell, _The Mythic Image_, Bollingen Series C, Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 33]
"Believing is easier than thinking. Hence so many more believers than thinkers." [Bruce Calvert]
"The bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgement seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man's bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire . . . Here is the Bible position of woman briefly summed up." [Elizabeth Cady Stanton]
"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind isn’t common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless." [Leo Tolstoy, "On Life and Essays on Religion"
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