Gutsiest anti-religious statement ever?
Offline "Human rights include the rights of all, not only man, but woman, not only white but black; wherever there is a being called human, his rights are as full and expressive as his existence, and ought to be without limits or distinction of sex, country, or color...and only ignorance, superstition, and tyranny - both the basis and the influence of the Bible - deprive him of it." - Earnestine Rose at the Hartford Bible Convention, Hartford, CT, 1853.
Wow! An Atheist woman had the stroke to say this at a bible convention in 1853? Not only am I dumbfounded that she said it, I'm shocked that she wasn't killed for it! To see the looks of the faces of everyone in that room must have been priceless!
"They always say the same thing; 'But evolution is only a theory!!' Which is true, I guess, and it's good they say that I think, it gives you hope that they feel the same about the theory of Gravity and they might just float the f**k away."
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Nice quote. She had a set of balls on her. I guess she was a he.
Very impressive. I would have loved to have been there as well.
Go girl power !
That generation was much closer to the secular ideas the founders had about government, they had grandparents and even parents old enough to remember the founders.
Until I became active online I had no clue how popular skepticism was in that century. Robert Ingersoll also blasted religion and it's negative influence on politics.
Even Susan B. Anthony carried that sentiment over with, "I distrust what God believers say what God wants because it usually coincides with their desires". She may have been a believer, but she despised government playing favorites.
People who cry "Christian nation" have no clue how many skeptics and atheists battled government dogmatism to keep them free from becoming a theocracy.
Without the countless skeptics and Constitution I am certain that America today would be a Christian version of the Middle East and our Capital dome and flag would have a cross on it, and we'd all be forced to recite Christian prayers.
"Thank Thor for skeptics"
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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I like Robert G. Ingersoll's speeches etc...
here is an excerpt from his 1876 'Centennial Oration' speech:
"They made up their minds that a new nation must be formed. All nations had been, so to speak, the wards of some church. The religious idea as to the source of power had been at the foundation of all governments, and had been the bane and curse of man.
Happily for us, there was no church strong enough to dictate to the rest. Fortunately for us, the colonists not only, but the colonies differed widely in their religious views. There were the Puritans who hated the Episcopalians, and Episcopalians who hated the Catholics, and the Catholics who hated both, while the Quakers held them all in contempt. There they were, of every sort, and color and kind, and how was it that they came together? They had a common aspiration. They wanted to form a new nation. More than that, most of them cordially hated Great Britain; and they pledged each other to forget these religious prejudices, for a time at least, and agreed that there should be only one religion until they got through, and that was the religion of patriotism. They solemnly agreed that the new nation should not belong to any particular church, but that it should secure the rights of all.
Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more. In other words, our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword; thai it should be allowed only to exert its moral influence.
You might as well have a government united by force with Art, or with Poetry, or with Oratory, as with Religion. Religion should have the influence upon mankind that its goodness, that its morality, its justice, its charity, its reason, and its argument give it, and no more. Religion should have the effect upon mankind that it necessarily has, and no more. The religion that has to be supported by law is. without value, not only, but a fraud and curse. The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket, is hardly worth making. A prayer that must have a cannon behind it, better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. Love need not carry knives and revolvers."
Entire speech here:
www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/centennial_oration.html