critics-of-religion

"… Hassan promotes the BITE model as a scientific method for identifying “destructive cults,” claiming it can distinguish legitimate religions from dangerous groups. In practice, however, the model functions less as a diagnostic tool than as a means of labeling any movement he opposes as a “cult.” Its criteria are so broad and indeterminate that they can be applied to political movements, established religions, or even public-health debates, depending on the evaluator’s preferences. The result is a subjective framework that reflects Hassan’s own moral and political prejudices."

"Most comedians are questioning by nature. There are a solid handful of comedians who make fun of religion that are not atheist, just not fans of religion or specific religious institutions. There are also a higher percentage of atheists per capita in comedy due to the nature of what we do."

"Comedy is generally based in pain and suffering, often anger or a feeling of being on the outside looking in. Comedians tend to break down life and look at things we all see or do in a unique way. Comedians are rebellious by nature. It is our job to point out inconsistencies, wrong doings, etc. and make people think and laugh about them. The experiences are generally universal and the best comedy is honest and based in reality."

"First off, everything is fair game. Nothing is sacred, especially the "sacred". And since the theme is critical thinking and I try to do all my jokes about things we believe without evidence, or at least in the face of scientific data they are exactly the same. There is actually probably more "evidence" of bigfoot or ghosts than there is of God. At least we have one bad 50 year old 8mm film of bigfoot and some questionable foot prints. What evidence do we have of any gods? A statue that cries tears and a warm, fuzzy feeling inside? (in response to the question "Do you think it is fair to mock religion in the same way one mocks belief in Big Foot or ghosts – are these really the same sort of phenomena?")"

"I am not afraid of being called an Atheist, which is the most misunderstood word. Even dictionaries seem to be written at times by people who don't understand the word. A-Theism just means to not have accepted any assertions of any gods, or to not have a god. I equate it to asexual. Asexual organisms are not against sex or mad at sex, they just do not have male/female sex or sex organs. When it is used in humans metaphorically it has a similar meaning, someone not interested in or does not have sex. I do not have any gods. I have not fostered a belief in gods, or unicorns, or fairies, etc. The only reason it exists as a word is because the majority of people do have belief in gods, so it is used as a definition to understand a position on the issue of existence of gods, in contrast to the norm."

"I think in America it is safe to do whatever you want. Hopefully we can keep it that way, but we will see with this American Taliban attitude. I just don't really care. Controversy is great for comedy and if someone really wants to seek me out on stage and gun me down or get physical over an intellectual idea being told by one man on a comedy stage what can I do about it? It certainly wouldn't help their cause and it would immortalize me. (in response to the question "Personally, I find critiquing or debunking Christianity is pretty safe—but I’m scared to go after Islam. Do you feel that as well?")"

"I think there are both valid and invalid reasons for this. First, many atheists are angry. We are one of the last groups for which is socially and legally ok to discriminate against. There are still states where atheists can't hold office. Substitute "atheist" with any other group or minority and that becomes clear. (in response to the question "Many people think of atheists as being angry. Thoughts?")"

"There is also a rich tradition of right-wing thinkers in the West cozying up to foreign dictators, theocrats, and military strongmen, who are sworn enemies of western civilisation and its liberal values."

"Personally, I think the Western penchant for vilifying our own civilisation has a more straightforward explanation: only a free and affluent civilisation like ours permits people to vilify it. Where else can you take your own political leaders to task in public, even insult and abuse them, without fear of repercussions? You shouldn’t try it in Russia or China, just as you shouldn’t have tried it in Europe before the rights revolution and the liberal constitutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Similarly, where are you free to wage a full-frontal attack on the economic and political institutions under which you live? Where can you make a fuss about problems both real and imaginary? Only in a liberal democracy. But why would you want to bite the hand that feeds you in this way? Such critics have a variety of motives, but perhaps for many, the main appeal is that in doing so they feel they are striking a heroic posture. In a Western democracy, you can pat yourself on the back for courageously “speaking truth to power,” you can even complain about being silenced and censored, while the very fact that you are able to voice these complaints out loud proves them hollow. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a soccer player theatrically flopping down onto the field to feign injury."

"Openly expressing your aversion to Marxism from behind the Iron Curtain would have meant social opprobrium at best—but more likely the gulag. Communist sympathisers in the West, however, were free to vilify their own societies, while glorifying the totalitarian alternative they never had to suffer under. Most were savvy enough to remain hypocrites: they returned from brief visits to Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China raving about the glorious future they supposedly witnessed there, but only the truly deluded actually packed their bags for Moscow or Beijing."

"Even after the Cold War ended and most of the world’s communist regimes collapsed, biting the nourishing hand of industrial modernity remained a favourite pastime of leftist intellectuals. Postmodernists and critical theorists launched countless attacks on Western civilisation, while ensconced in cushy positions at Western universities, and Western presses published their books."

"Moreover, in evolutionary accounts of religion there’s always a flipside to pro-sociality: being friendly to “us” also means being hostile and aggressive to “them”. There is a dark side to human pro-sociality that is often sanitized in popular accounts."

"Most people intuitively grasp the basic rules of logic and probability—we wouldn’t have survived otherwise. Human reason is a bag of tricks and heuristics, mostly accurate in the environments in which we evolved, but easily led astray in modern life. And it is strategic and self-serving, motivated to reach conclusions that serve our own interests."

"Is such a life of voluntary delusion really what you should want? Even if you don’t have any objections against untruthfulness per se, how can you foresee all of the consequences and ramifications of your false belief in an afterlife, or in any other comforting fiction?"

"An illusion will only make you happy if you’re fully under its spell, and blissfully unaware of it."

"We should cherish the naysayers. The more mud they fling, the better. Anti-capitalists, postmodern relativists, and Putin apologists are canaries in the free speech coal mine—we should start worrying if they suddenly fall silent. Still, although self-criticism is important if we want to learn from our mistakes, ritual self-flagellation is not just unproductive but actively harmful, especially when it involves glorifying alternatives that would make all of us much worse off. A healthy body needs a robust immune system to protect it from infections, but if that immune system is overzealous, it will wreak the body’s destruction. Enemies of liberal democracy like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Ayatollah Khamenei must be rubbing their hands with glee as they watch us disarm ourselves without a fight. They don’t even have to denounce our free societies—we’ve already indicted ourselves."

"Nowhere else in the world, and at no other previous time in history, have people ever had so much freedom to bite the hand that feeds them without being punched in the face for it. This leads to a paradox that was probably first described by American diplomat Daniel Patrick Moynihan:"

"In fact, non-Westerners like Ayaan Hirsi Ali are often especially appreciative of the blessings of liberal democracy and industrial modernity because they have had first-hand experience of what it means to be deprived of them. It’s only those who have enjoyed freedom and prosperity their whole lives who tend to behave like spoiled brats."

"Rousseau’s first Discourse is one of the earliest instances of something that would come to accompany modernity wherever it gained a foothold: biting the hand that feeds you because you know it won’t punch you in the face."

"Although over the past decades leftists have been more creative in inventing ever more novel ways of denouncing Western civilisation, the efforts of the Right should not be discounted, either."

"According to scholars like Ara Norenzayan and Joe Henrich, belief in moralizing Big Gods has fostered pro-sociality and enabled large-scale human cooperation. That sounds beautiful and uplifting, but if you look a little closer, it turns out that it’s mostly the nasty, vengeful, punishing gods that bring pro-social benefits. The stick works better than the carrot."

"The many fabrications and distortions in the genocide case against Israel are evidence of something different from rational inquiry and truth-seeking. What explains the frantic search, from almost the first day of the war, for statements by Israeli officials that can be twisted into proof of genocidal intent? What accounts for the wilful blindness to Hamas’s cruelty, to the point of erasing Hamas altogether, as if the war had only one combatant? And why is the definition of genocide gerrymandered by NGOs to implicate and condemn Israel, even though the Palestinian population grew from 1.1 million to 5.1 million between 1960 and 2020? The answer is that the “Gaza genocide” calumny has become the Left’s equivalent of the “stolen election” hoax on the American Right—a baseless accusation that signals ideological allegiance precisely because it defies logic and evidence. That is why nonsense like the Amalek verse keeps being recycled, impervious to correction—the point is not to offer evidence, but to hammer down a pre-established conclusion. (The "Amalek verse" referred to is Deuteronomy 25:17-19)"

"Many religious apologists argue that explaining the evolutionary roots of belief does nothing to undermine God’s existence. But it does. As Nietzsche understood, if you can explain the origins of religious faith in biological terms, then “with the insight into that origin the belief falls away.” Sure, if we possessed incontrovertible evidence for God’s existence, then the genealogy of belief would be irrelevant. But in the absence of such evidence, showing how religious faith can arise without any supernatural input genuinely weakens its credibility."

"“I find it extremely unlikely that God exists. Yet, if he does exist, let him exist! So what? If God exists, it’s not necessary to believe in him, and if he doesn’t, much less.”"

"“In addition to torture (the scourge of Christ) and cannibalism (drinking the blood and eating the flesh of Christ, the ritual known as the Holy Communion), it’s indisputable that Christianity is founded on human sacrifice and filicide. What is the Son’s death on the cross, if not human sacrifice to placate the Father’s wrath?”"

"“We were born atheists. Therefore, it’s normal to be an atheist. If we were born believing in God, that is, knowing that God exists, there would be only one god and everyone would worship him.”"

"“The gods of religions are ridiculous, there is no evidence, let alone convincing, that God exists and, in and of itself, the idea of God doesn’t even make sense. Believing in God is, therefore, a tremendous waste of time (and, if you are a church member, money).”"

"“If life on Earth is evidence of God’s existence, the absence of life on seven planets and five dwarf planets wins 12 to 1 as evidence of his nonexistence.”"

"“To exist, religions need religious freedom, but religious freedom can exist only where what religions fight against is permitted: disbelief. After all, believers too are disbelievers: they disbelieve other religions. Religions combating disbelief is, therefore, schizophrenia and self-destruction. Instead of threatening them with Hell and trying to convert them, Christians should thank God for the existence of skeptics, doubters, disbelievers, infidels, blasphemers and atheists.”"

"“Either God is love or he is not. If he is love, he cannot punish his creatures just for not believing in him.”"

"“Next to the history of Christianity, the scariest horror movie is comedy.”"

"“I don’t want to believe, I want to know.”"

"“Isn’t it ironic that religious freedom comes precisely from secularism, that is, from vetoing the intrusion of religion into politics?”"

"“I’m not against God existing. I just have no reasons to believe that he exists. Believing is not a virtue. I’m not able to accept incoherences, nor do I know why I should. If what is incoherent deserves to be rejected, how much more what is perverse!”"

"“Those who believe in a supernatural being can’t have difficulty believing in other supernatural beings, such as angels, demons, witches, spirits, ghosts, apparitions and hauntings, nor in superstitions, conspiracy theories and folkloric figures, such as the Headless Mule, by the way a legend based on a woman who supposedly was cursed by God. Those who believe in God cannot find it wrong to believe in the existence, for example, of the Werewolf and Chupacabra, since they can very well be diabolical manifestations. Christians and Muslims are fully convinced that demons exist. On what rational basis could they, then, contest the existence, for example, of vampires? In contrast, a person who doesn’t believe in deities and demons is immune to all kinds of old wives’ tales.”"

"“Some more than others, but all religions are dictatorships of thought, because they dictate how their adherents must think, what they can accept and what they must reject.”"

"“If Humanity can be saved and this Pale Blue Dot transformed into a really good place to live, at least without poverty and wars, then not by people who see life as worthless and spend it dreaming of mansions of gold in an imaginary world, but by people who don’t flee from reality and are guided not by primitive mythological beings, but by reason: freethinkers.”"

"“Yahweh is comparable to the powerful boss of a mafia clan who spreads fear through threats, violence and murder in order to gain power, control and respect. Of what value are worship and obedience out of fear? Taking pleasure in this kind of devotion is typical of dictators.”"

"“Religion is the illusion of having answers to questions to which no one has answers.”"

"“There is no greater pleasure than to be a freethinker.”"

"“How many pieces of evidence are needed to recognize that the Creator of the Universe either doesn’t exist or doesn’t give a damn about his creation? For me, one is sufficient: churches that collapse on believers during worship service.”"

"“One of the principal reasons why so many people believe the evidently fantastic stories of the Bible is the fact that it’s an ancient book. If it had been written these days, an overwhelming majority would not think twice before considering it a work of fiction.”"

"“Unless we are children, or retards, when we are told a story we instinctively feel whether it’s plausible or fanciful. Instinctively, Christians feel that the stories told by the holy books of other religions are fantastical. Yet, as incredible as it seems, they don’t sense the smell of fantasy of the stories told by their own holy book, more or less like someone who is used to his own foot odor.”"

"“Where there is no reflection, there is manipulation.”"

"“Any ideology that threatens with punishment those who reject it is perverse and deserves to be rejected.”"

"( Emmanuel Macron)The President of the Republic has decided to entrust, as of today, the function of Personal Representative of the Head of State for the Francophonie to Ms. Leïla Slimani. According to the mission letter she received from the President of the Republic, Ms. Slimani will represent France on the Permanent Council of the Francophonie"

"Abroad, French often has the reputation of being a difficult, highly literary language. A rarified language that belongs to intellectuals. However, it is important to show young people that it is also a language of modernity, a language of rap and slam poetry, for thinking about the world of tomorrow and inventing. And also that French is also a useful language through which you can find work."

"I speak French, English and an Arabic dialect. This is something that is very natural for me and that I don’t think about."

"It is a fascinating and very rewarding job on a human level. French is a global language, which lives and flourishes on all the continents, with accents, turns of phrase and metaphors which belong to each landscape. It is quite extraordinary to see the flexibility of this language and to understand its constant creolisation and transformation."

"You only have to travel around the world, especially in Africa for example or in the Maghreb, to see how much of an appetite there is for French."