“My Parents had early given me religious Impressions, and brought me through my Childhood piously in the Dissenting Way. But I was scarce 15 when, after doubting by turns of several Points as I found them disputed in the different Books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.
Deism: About the God who left Quotations and history. Quotations: The half-life of some Deist web sites appears to be on the order of one year. Most of the links shown below are no longer valid. Still, the quotations are interesting to read.
Some Books against Deism fell into my Hands; they were said to be the Substance of Sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. It happened that they wrought an Effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them: For the Arguments of the Deists which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much Stronger than the Refutations. In short I soon became a thorough Deist. Part I, p.
45 of autobiography”―Benjamin Franklin. “You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it: But I do not take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few Words to gratify it. I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Jesus' divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.
Letter to Ezra Stiles, March 9, 1790”―Benjamin Franklin. “The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.
It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him.”―James Madison. “As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together.We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”―Max Planck. “If there was a God he reasoned it would have the same relation to us as we have to blades of grass. Do we make them grow?
Yes in the sense that we water the lawn. Do we care for them and worry over them?
Again as a lawn but not as individual blades. We don't give them names. We just want them to look nice and green. A God who created the earth would want it to look nice an blue from space.
He would sit back after a long day of creating things and think to himself now that's what a planet should look like.”―Tom Lichtenberg. “For if you look over the State of Religion as it standeth in Christendom, there is no Church whatsoever which will accept you as a Member of its Communion, but upon some particular terms of Belief, or Practice, which Christ never appointed, and it may be such as an honest and a wise Christian cannot consent to. I am not more able to give up my Reason to the Church of England, than to give up my Senses to the Church of Rome; it looks like a Trick in all Churches to take away the use of Mens Reason, that they may render us Vassals and Slaves to all their Dictates and Commands.”―William Stephens. “Besides (said he) do you not observe what a keen Edge Christian Faith puts upon the ill-nature of Divines, when they are disputing about matters of Religion? 'Tis common for Philosophers, Lawyers, Physicians, &c. To differ about matters which concern their Professions, and write one against another: But you will find some Temper and Decorum observed in their Writings.
But let the Controversy be about any Branch of Christian Faith; and then see the Odium Theologorum, the Malice of Divines in the late Writings of two of your Church Doctors against each other; at least this shews that Christian Faith doth not improve the Temper of such Men who are of mean Birth, and narrow Education.”―William Stephens. “It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference.
The evidence I have produced, and shall still produce in the course of this work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquilize the minds of millions: it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the Almighty which priest-craft and the Bible had infused into their minds, and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence.”―Thomas Paine. “The central thesis of Surnaturel, then, is that, neither in patristic nor in medieval theology, and certainly not in Thomas Aquinas, was the hypothesis ever entertained of a purely natural destiny for human beings, something other than the supernatural and eschatological vision of God. There is only this world, the world in which our nature has been created for a supernatural destiny. Historically, there never was a graceless nature, or a world outside the Christian dispensation. This traditional conception of human nature as always destined for grace-given union with God fell apart between attempts, on the one hand, to secure the sheer gratuitousness of the economy of grace over against the naturalist anthropologies of Renaissance humanism and, on the other hand, resistance to what was perceived by Counter-Reformation Catholics as the Protestant doctrine of the total corruption of human nature by original sin.
The Catholic theologians, who sought to protect the supernatural by separating it conceptually from the natural, facilitated the development of the humanism which flowered at the Enlightenment into deism, agnosticism and ultimately atheism. The conception of the autonomous individual for which the philosophers of the Age of Reason were most bitterly criticized by devout Catholics was, de Lubac suggested, invented by Catholic theologians. The philosophers which broke free of Christianity, to develop their own naturalist and deist theologies, had their roots in the anti-Protestant and anti-Renaissance Catholic Scholasticism of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.”―Fergus Kerr. “Thus that Upright Judge, whose three Letters my Friend having read, did well approve of 'em, acknowledging, that with great Exactness he had distinguished between Religion and Priest-craft: And he added, If you will shew me, Sir, any Christian Church where that distinction is observed, I will become a Member of it. I recommended the Church of England; he presently told me that he had read the 39 Articles, and observed that 3 of them were wholly design'd to uphold the Power of the Clergy over the People. And then he bad me only compare the Design, which has been, and still is, carrying on under the Name of the Church of England, with the Design of the Christian Religion, as 'tis described by Sir Matthew Hale; and I should find one in all its parts a Contradiction to the other.
'Tis plain ( said he) the Clergy do not allow of Sir Matthew's Notions, nor will they suffer us to take any thing for Religion, that is distinguished from their particular Interest. To what end have so many Persecutions and Penal Laws been set a foot by the Clergy in Christendom? Was it to bring Men to any one Point of that full Description of Christian Religion, which you cited from Sir Matthew Hale?
Or only to bring them to that short Article of their Clergy Religion, i.e. To submit to their Power?”―William Stephens. “I remember one Gentleman objected to the Christian Faith, that it made Men insolent, quarrelsom and ill-natur'd.
From whence I concluded, (as I told him) that he had never read over the Gospells; truly he could not say that he had read 'em carefully, but yet that in reading the History of what had passed in Christendom, he observed that most of the Quarrels in which this part of the World had been engaged, arose from contentions among the Christian Priesthood. Church-History is chiefly a relation of Church-mens Wrangles, and D. Cave in a late Book of his has denominated every Century from some eminent Quarrel which arose among the Clergy. But besides this, what was the Holy War, what all the holy Massacres and Croisados which filled Europe with Blood, but the Inventions of the Holy Church? And what is holy Inquisition, but a perpetual Series of Murthers carry'd on in barbarous Forms of Law against the common Sense of Mankind? Does History account for any Barbarities so great as those committed by the Popes?
Any Cruelties so savage as those of the Holy Inquisition? Any Murthers so solemn, and religiously brutal as the Acts of Faith?
Any Pragmaticalness so insufferable as that of the Jesuits? Is not their Humanity extinguished by their Christian Religion?
Such is their Malice that no Man can eat Bread where they have to do, unless he submit his Faith to their guidance, witness the present French Persecution.”―William Stephens. “In the emerging picture of mankind in the universe, the future (if it exists) will surely entail discoveries about space and time which will open up whole new perspectives in the relationship between mankind, mind, and the uni-verse. But what is now?
There is no such thing in physics;it is not even clear that ‘now’ could ever be described, let alone explained, in terms of physics. Notions such as ‘the past,’ ‘the present’ and ‘the future’ seem to be more linguistic than physical. There is no universal now, but only a personal one—a ‘here and now.’ This strongly suggests that we look to the mind, rather than to the physical world, as the origin of the division of time into past, present, and future.There is none of this in physics. No physical experiment has ever been performed to detect the passage of time. As soon as the objective world of reality is considered, the passage of time disappears like a ghost into the night.”―Paul Davies. “The ambition of domineering over the mind, is one of the strongest passions. A theologian, a missionary, or a partisan of any description, is always for conquering like a prince, and there are many more sects than there are sovereigns in the world.
I conclude, that every sensible man, every honest man, ought to hold Christianity in abhorrence. ‘The great name of Theist, which we can never sufficiently revere,’ is the only name we ought to adopt. The only gospel we should read is the grand book of nature, written with God’s own hand, and stamped with his own seal.
The only religion we ought to profess is, 'to adore God, and act like honest men.’ It would be as impossible for this simple and eternal religion to produce evil, as it would be impossible for Christian fanaticism not to produce it. But what shall we substitute in its place? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place!
Is it you that put this question to me? Then you are a hundred times more odious than the Pagan Pontiffs, who permitted themselves to enjoy tranquility among their ceremonies and sacrifices, who did not attempt to enslave the mind by dogmas, who never disputed the powers of the magistrates, and who introduced no discord among mankind. You have the face to ask what you must substitute in the place of your fables!”―Voltaire.