Steve Allen Quotes

There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice.

That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another. God said, 'Thou shalt not kill'; at another time He said, 'Thou shalt utterly destroy.' This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted—by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.

Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It's when you go backwards through the 'begats' and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, 'Hang on, that's a big punishment for eating one lousy apple... There's a human-rights issue.'

It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.

You can find justification for slavery in the Bible. Some say this is what the Bible says and that closes the argument.

If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.

Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind.

One does well to put on gloves when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do this.

We're capable of understanding that someone has to drop an atomic bomb on a town of innocent civilians, but not that others have to cut up prostitutes who spread disease and moral depravity in the slums of London. Hence we call the former realism and the latter madness.

Most things that are politically right are morally wrong

The use of God in moral debate is so problematic as to be almost worthless.

Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.

Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting. Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom. Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have a good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified.

We now possess four principles of morality: 1) a philosophical: do good for its own sake, out of respect for the law; 2) a religious: do good because it is God's will, out of love of God; 3) a human: do good because it will promote your happiness, out of self-love; 4) a political: do good because it will promote the welfare of the society of which you are a part, out of love of society having regard to yourself. But is this not all one single principle, only viewed from different sides?

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy

If goodness can't come from bad things, it makes bad things unbearable.

The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.

But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support the measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.

It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.

Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash.

Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it.