Great Doubt, Great Awakening

Let us remember, this day, that three great religions sprung from one book, the Bible, and that at least two of them have to be wrong.

The following are some quotations I gathered from the book Doubt: A History, by Jennifer Michael Hecht. It’s a worthy read, a useful collection of wisdom over the millenia. I found it inspiring.

Great doubt: Great awakening. Little doubt: Little awakening. No doubt: No awakening. (Zen Dictum)

They all err – Moslems, Christians, Jews and Magians, because there are only two types of humanity’s universal sect: One man intelligent without religion, and one religious without intellect. (Addalla al-Ma-arri (973-1057).

These [Christian] principles seem to me to have made men feeble, and caused them to become an easy prey to evil-minded men, who can control them more securely, seeing that the great body of men, for the sake of gaining paradise, are more disposed to endure injuries than to avenge them. (Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince)

Considering how dangerous it is made to tell the truth, ’tis difficult to know when any man declares his real sentiments of things. (John Toland)

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opiate of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. (Karl Marx)

I read the book of Job last night. I don’t think God comes out well in it. (Virginia Woolf)

The educated man ceases to be superstitious. (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

What the world needs is not dogma, but an attitude of scientific inquiry, combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desireable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer. (Bertrand Russell)

I wanted to become an atheist, but I gave it up. They have no holidays. (Henny Youngman)

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends. (Woody Allen)