Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes

I believe the fast track to atheism is reading the Bible. I've read it three times all the way through. It's a big part of our culture, a big part of our history. I don't just read things I agree with.

I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend - just as if it were a novel - very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly.

Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document?

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.

I questioned the blind faith demanded by my religion, which was Islam.

Don't take our word for it. Read the Bible itself. Read the statements of preachers. And you will understand that God is the most desperate character, the worst villain in all fiction.

Though I have usually posed as a Catholic, I have not done my duty for 15 years, and have not the slightest tincture of faith left.

When I was quite a boy I had a spasm of religion which lasted six weeks... But I never since have swallowed the Christian fable.

I went off to college, a good, middle-class, very proper college, a Brethren institution, where two years of Bible study are required for graduation. It was a good, sound, thorough, but completely biased evaluation of the Bible, and I was delighted with it, because it helped to document my doubts; it gave me a framework within which I could be critical.My independent study continued for 20 years after this. So I do know the Bible very well from a Protestant point of view.

The story of the creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much, but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism.

...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.

Like the Bible-a document that often contradicts itself and from which one can construct sharply different arguments-theology is the product of human hands and hearts.

Too many instances there are of daring men, who by presuming to sound the deep things of religion, have cavilled and argued themselves out of all religion.

[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.

Often a man goes on for years imaging that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.

If God himself wills such misery on people whom I love, then I say I will deal with him

The Bible, taken as a whole, can be used to praise or condemn practically any human activity, thought, belief, or practice.

The primary and literal meaning of the Bible, then, is its centripetal or poetic meaning.

Reading the Bible is the fast track to atheism. Reading the Bible means starting at "In the beginning..." and throwing it down with disgust at "...the grace of the lord Jesus be with all. Amen." I'm sure there are lots of religious people who've read the Bible from start to finish and kept their faith, but in my self-selected sample, all the people I know who have done that are atheists.

The churches had left me cold, but I thought there's got to be a God. I remember going out, this is in Charleston, South Carolina, and my desire then was to be a playwright, and I was studying theater, and I went out one night, late at night, and I asked, "What can God be if there is a God?" I wasn't sure there was a God, but if there is a God, what must he be? Well, he can't be a judge, who's up there just waiting for us to make a mistake so he can clap us into hell. There's got to be something more than that.

I like the fact that people come together who have shared values, but I don't believe that a man died 2,000 years ago and was crucified on a cross to save me from my original sin.

I brought Sammy inside and put him to bed. Said his prayer with him. “‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’” To me, just random noise. Gibberish. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I felt that, when it came to God, there was a broken promise in there somewhere.

How can we be so confident that we are correct about the religion of Islam that it is really different in this insidious way and people 50 years from now, people aren't going to back on.

These religions that are so freighted with their own pomposity are no better than inspired guesses.