God Is Not Great

"If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world."

"The shedding of blood — which is insisted upon at circumcision ceremonies — is most probably a symbolic survival from the animal and human sacrifices which were such a feature of the gore-soaked landscape of the Old Testament. By adhering to the practice, parents could offer to sacrifice a part of the child as a stand-in for the whole."

"Billion of dollars have already been awarded, but there is no price to be put on the generations of boys and girls who were introduced to sex in the most alarming and disgusting ways by those whom they and their parents trusted."

"It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than Nazis or Stalinists."

"What is a totalitarian system if not one where the abject glorification of the perfect leader is matched by the surrender of all privacy and individuality, especially in matters sexual, and in denunciation and punishment — "for their own good" — of those who transgress?"

"Those who invoke "Secular" tyranny in contrast to religion are hoping that we will forget two things: the connection between the Christian churches and fascism, and the capitulation of the churches to National Socialism."

"The idea that a group of people — whether defined as a nation or as a religion — could be condemned for all time and without the possibility of an appeal was (and is) essentially a totalitarian one."

"The connection between religion, racism, and totalitarianism is also to be found in the other most hateful dictatorship of the twentieth century: the vile system of apartheid in South Africa. ... Racism is totalitarian by definition: it marks the victim in perpetuity and denies him, or her, the right to even a rag of dignity or privacy, even the elemental; right to make love or marry or produce children with a loved one of the "wrong" tribe, without having love nullified by law."

"Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it."

"Religion has run out of justifications."

"All postures of submission and surrender should be part of our prehistory."