“I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity.”

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William Blake 249
English Romantic poet and artist 1757–1827

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Context: I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
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“I don't withdraw a word of my initial statement. But I do now think it may have been incomplete. There is perhaps a fifth category, which may belong under "insane" but which can be more sympathetically characterized by a word like tormented, bullied, or brainwashed.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Sincere people who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the massive evidence of science on the one hand, and their understanding of what their holy book tells them on the other. I think this is one of the truly bad things religion can do to a human mind. There is wickedness here, but it is the wickedness of the institution and what it does to a believing victim, not wickedness on the part of the victim himself.
2001
Summer
Ignorance Is No Crime
Free Inquiry
21
3
0272-0701
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=dawkins_21_3
Regarding his 1989 statement "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." (see above)

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