The War On Faith - HQ - Henry Louis Mencken

"Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge
a serpent--slimy, sneaking and abominable."

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. A man
full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic
thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill."

"Puritanism- The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

"There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than
other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly."

"Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves were dead and in
Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in Hell."

"I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries."

"One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing."

"The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the
Christians."

"What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: he gets his living by
assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell. It's a business almost
indistinguishable from that of a seller of snake-oil for rheumatism."

"God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not
only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos;
He will set them above their betters."

"Religion is so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."

"If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible
theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder."

"The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the
scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident
does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable.
Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the
habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad
institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine
right of kings."

"The motive of fear is the be-all and end-all of religion."

"The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect
that religious opinions should be respected."

"The scientist who yields anything to theology, however slight, is yielding to ignorance and
false pretenses, and as certainly as if he granted that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water
will turn into a snake."

"The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and
seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man- that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense-
has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book
worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous
woman."

"The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand
around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion
and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated
freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the
critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and
that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision
and improvement."

"A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man."