Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Belief is a wonderful way to pass the time until the facts come in.

~ Carl R White

Good gods are scarce because the majority of gods are created by evil men

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Why do religious believers hate unbelievers? The feel threatened by them, they feel besieged by them. Religions consider themselves as separate tribes in their own rights and feel like unbelievers will one day overrun their strongholds

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Every word that comes after And the Lord told me. . . “is a pious lie

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Give me something to worship whatever.” Cries the human soul

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Spiritual leaders, priests and prophets are lamps burning in the dark, seeking meaning for humanity.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Science cannot disprove god. Science studies the things that are. The eternal question is who or what made them to be

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Can really anybody put his hand on his heart and profess to know beyond doubt what happens on the other side of this life?

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Once you believe that god is not a private property of anybody, you are on your way to becoming a new messiah. Maybe your own if not the world's

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Theology is like assuming that there is a black cat in a dark room where in fact there is no black cat, and endeavoring to study the cat's properties and how it may have evolved from its ancestors.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

The eyes of god are upon you, I mean the eyes of society. We are prisoners of societies in which we live

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

You take away my golden dreams and my visions of paradise, in its place you wake me up and hand me your reasons and facts and crude reality. You have ruined my life. If I commit murder or hang myself, let the god I used to pray to repay you in full.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

If you believe that God is good and that He loves you without regard to whom you are or what you do, you will worship Him wholeheartedly. You will praise him with thanksgiving. If you believe He is angry against you, you will come to him with fear and trying to appease his anger. And you don't know when His anger will be over. Such a god keeps you in a perpetual psychological anguish. That is the typical kind of god we usually worship. That is the typical god approved by authority.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Each mind conceives god in its own way. There may be as many variation of the god figure as there are people in the world

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him on that level they are all equal

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

What is needed is not that a religion be true, meaning that what it claims exist beyond the ink it is written with in a holy book. That is hard to prove. What is important is that a religion be a good system to help us mere mortal deal with our short and troubled life in the universe. Whether what we hope for in the afterlife materializes or not is not important, what is important is that we believe it will materialize and that gives us hope.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Much terror in religion is not the will of god, it is created by power hungry clerics who thirst for absolute power and claim it for god. God does not seek power, he is already powerful.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

No one knows what god thinks of anything. He only knows and no one can claim to penetrate into his mysteries. Those who do that are liars and must be avoided at all costs

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

It's utter arrogance to think that we can know what god ought to be or do. If we don't understand we must continue our search or recognize our ignorance

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

All religions are revealed and inspired. After all nothing happens without the will of god.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Don't create unbelief or doubt in people's minds. When you do so you ruin their lives and you have nothing to give them in its place. It's ok if people delude themselves those delusions keep their day running.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

An atheist is a disappointed true believer he is an angry and hungry soul who has failed to find a real god to whom he can anchor his hope

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

When you have doubts about God, the right position to take is agnosticism, atheism is outright arrogance

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

All religions are guesswork

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

My gut instinct is that these heavens and hells exist nowhere else except in our hearts and minds

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Don’t curse the gods you will feel shame when you have to call on them for help

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

God is powerful. Even those who claim not to believe in him fear him. Though their mouths may confess to disbelieve in him, their hearts yearn for him.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

All atheists will go to heaven. If god exists, not believing in him does not take him away and he cannot justly condemn those who seek him earnestly and cannot find him. He would even reward their earnest search for him.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

You can't have it both ways. Either you believe in my god or you go to hell

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Atheists are the most honest of the human race. These people are unable to live a double life; they are unable to lie to themselves. Of course it's an evolutionary handicap, and if that handicap was widespread, our species would run the risk of extinction

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana