“It is straightforward—and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.”
"The voice of the lonely crowd" (2002)
Source: The Second Plane: 14 Responses to September 11
Context: The 20th century, with its scores of millions of supernumerary dead, has been called the age of ideology. And the age of ideology, clearly, was a mere hiatus in the age of religion, which shows no sign of expiry. Since it is no longer permissible to disparage any single faith or creed, let us start disparaging all of them. To be clear: an ideology is a belief system with an inadequate basis in reality; a religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. It is straightforward — and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.
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Martin Amis 136
Welsh novelist 1949Related quotes
“If God wanted us to fly, he would have given us tickets. ”
Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 391)
Ibid., p. 164
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Nunca me pesou o que de trágico se passasse na China. É decoração longínqua, ainda que a sangue e peste.
“If God is truly powerful, He would not let this plague go on.”
Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 11 (p. 208)
“Let us never forget that he who would serve God must prove that he is worthy by serving man.”
1950s, Closing address at the final convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (1955)
I have been saying for a long time that I believe the more young Americans who are trained to join with other young people in the world to be sent abroad with slide rule, textbook, and medical kit to help people help themselves with the tools of peace, the fewer young people will need to be sent with guns and weapons of war.
Source: Closing Address at the final convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, New York, New York, December 2, 1955, as quoted in Walter P Reuther: Selected Papers (1961), by Henry M. Christman, p. 102
