Quotes About Skepticism

All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.

People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it , and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy.

What is it the Bible teaches us? — repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.

We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and new Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries

I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow.

All this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told. Priests and conjurors are of the same trade .

the person they call Jesus Christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe

Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication—after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be revelation; but it is not and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God.

they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy;

Peygamberlik profesyonel bir yalanc?l?kt?r. Neredeyse diÄŸer tüm vakalarda basit bir varsay?m?n bile insanlar?n safl??? sayesinde bir yalana dönüÅŸtüÄŸünü ve bu yalan?n da sonunda gerçek olarak anlat?ld???n? görmek zor deÄŸildir.

I proceed to speak of three principal means that have been employed in all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose [religion] upon mankind. Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy. The first two are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected

Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.

Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.

The general public has long been divided into two parts; those who think that science can do anything and those who are afraid it will.

I confess I know not what a sceptic can answer to this, nor by what good argument he can plead even for a hearing; for either his reasoning is sophistry, and so deserves contempt; or there is no truth in the human faculties, and then why should we reason?

Those who reject some principle of common sense in speculation, find themselves under necessity of being governed by it in their practice. A skeptic may struggle hard to disbelieve the information of his senses, as a man does to swim against the torrent; but ah! it is in vain...For after all, when his strength is spent in the fruitless attempt, he will be carried down the torrent with the common herd of believers.

All the arguments urged by Berkeley and Hume against the existence of a material world, are grounded on this principle, That we do not perceive external objects themselves, but certain images or ideas in our own minds

Should doubt knock at your doorway, just say to those skeptical, disturbing, rebellious thoughts, I propose to stay with my faith, with the faith of my people.

Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense.

Everything that he was saying sounded incredible, but Frank knew enough about politics to know that governments got away with what they did because they counted on ordinary citizens dismissing events as being too incredible and implausible.

Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.

Gyuri had dropped church much in the same way he had stopped believing in Santa Claus; there came a point where it was impossible to take it seriously.

Now I'd believe Osama bin Laden over you, Devon.