Quotes Regarding the Bible

“The real oppressor, enslaver, and corrupter of the people is the Bible.” Some Mistakes of Moses, Ingersoll’s Works, Vol. 2, p. 43

“Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature. In order to increase our respect for the Bible, it became necessary for the priests to exalt and extol that book, and at the same time to decry and belittle the reasoning powers of man. The whole power of the pulpit has been used for hundreds of years to destroy the confidence of man in himself–to induce him to distrust his own powers of thought, to believe that he was wholly unable to decide any question for himself, and that all human virtue consists in faith and obedience. The church has said, ‘Believe and obey!’ If you reason you will become an unbeliever, and unbelievers will be lost. If you disobey, you will do so through vain pride and curiosity, and will, like Adam and Eve, be thrust from Paradise forever! For my part, I care nothing for what the church says, except in so far as it accords with my reason; and the Bible is nothing to me, only in so far as it agrees with what I think or know.” Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 53

“It is said that from Mount Sinai God gave, amid thunderings and lightnings, ten commandments for the guidance of mankind; and yet among them is not found–”THOU SHALT BELIEVE THE BIBLE” Ibid., p. 120.

“It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge.” Ibid., p. 242.

“The OT describes the hell of the past, and the New the hell of the future.” Some Reasons Why, Ingersoll’s Works, Vol. 2, p. 334.

“The inspired Bible has been and is the greatest curse of Christendom, and will so remain as long as it is held to be inspired.” Superstition, Ingersoll’s Works, Vol. 4, p. 335.

“…but the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any….” The Age of Reason, T. Paine, p. 104.

“…and this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.” Ibid., p. 134.

“…the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world;….the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;….” Ibid., p. 167.

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind….” Ibid., p. 34.

“But when I see throughout the greatest part of this book, the Bible, scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonor my Creator by calling it by his name.” Ibid., p. 38.

“They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much worse books than I had conceived. If I have erred in any thing, in the former part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts than they deserved.” Ibid., p. 88.

“Great objects inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the grovelling tales and doctrines of the Bible…are fit only to excite contempt…. the stupid Bible of the church, that teaches man nothing….” Ibid., p. 192.

“…the stupid texts of the Bible…from which, be the talents of the preacher what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached.” Ibid., p. 194.

“I…am satisfied that the Bible is fabulous.” The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol. 8, p. 328.

“For my own part, my belief in the perfection of the Diety will not permit me to believe that a book so manifestly obscure, disorderly, and contradictory can be His work.” Ibid., p. 330

“The obscene and vulgar stories in the Bible are as repugnant to our ideas of the purity of a Divine Being, as the horrid cruelties and murders it ascribes to Him are repugnant to our ideas of His justice.” Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 84.

“That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.” Ibid., p. 134.

“…therefore we say that a lying Spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible.” Ibid., p. 158.

“One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we have seen what priestcraft and fanaticism can do, and credulity believe.” Ibid., p. 200.

“On the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant today, like Noah taking 40 days to find a place to park.” Curtis McDougall

“If we found in any other book pretending to give a system of religion, the falsehoods, falsifications, contradictions, and absurdities, which are to be met with in almost every page of the Old and New Testament, all the priests of the present day, who supposed themselves capable, would triumphantly show their skill in criticism, and cry it down as a most glaring imposition. But since the books in question belong to their own trade and profession, they, or at least many of them, seek to stifle every inquiry into them and abuse those who have the honesty and the courage to do it.” Ibid., p. 271-272.

“…we must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and the New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries.” Ibid., p. 282.

“Compare all this ribaldry, blasphemously called the Word of God, with the Almighty power that created the universe, and whose eternal wisdom directs and governs all its mighty movements, and we shall be at a loss to find a name sufficiently contemptible for it.” Ibid., p. 285.

“Nonsense ought to be treated as nonsense wherever it be found, and had this been done in the rational manner it ought to have been done, instead of intimating and mincing the matter as has been too much the case, the nonsense and false doctrine of the Bible, with all the aid that priestcraft can give, could never have stood their ground against the divine reason that God has given to man.” Ibid., p. 312.

“As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book.” Ibid., p. 296.

“…the indiscriminate judgments upon men, women, and children, with which this lying book, the Bible, is crowded….” Age of Reason, Paine, p. 150.

“The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act….” Ibid., p. 153.

“It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.” Theological Works of Paine, p. 163.

“The best cure for admiring the Bible is to read it.” Anonymous

“The hardest thing to believe about the Bible is that there were only two jackasses in the ark.” Anonymous

“When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.” Oscar Wilde

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

“The Christian Bible is a drug store. It’s contents remain the same but the medical practice changes. For 1,800 years these changes were slight–scarcely noticeable…. The dull and ignorant physician day and night, and all the days and all the nights, drenched his patient with vast and hideous doses of the most repulsive drugs to be found in the store’s steak…. He kept him religion sick for eighteen centuries, and allowed him not a well day during all that time.” Mark Twain and the Three R’s, Ed. by Maxwell Geismar, p. 107.