Celia Green quote: “People having religions is an insult to the universe.”

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

Address at the Conference on Cosmic Design, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C. (April 1999)
This comment is modified in a later article derived from these talks:
:Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.
:* "A Designer Universe?" at PhysLink.com http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm

“It has, understandably, aggrieved our Muslim community. Their religion and its founder have been insulted, and ridiculed.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

( Fiji Live http://www.Fijilive.com).
Reaction to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, 7 February 2006

“I have several times found some people say that there were abusing drawings of Islam or Prophet Muhammad and people get angry and hurt inside. I was just thinking whether we also do insult Prophet Muhammad? In our behaviors and our practices do we insult Islam or not? I mean, we got hurt by those people who draw abusing drawings or making abusing movies of Prophet Muhammad, So what have we done? We also insult Prophet Muhammad! At the end, what we have introduced about our religion is what made people attack us and insult us.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by el-Sisi during celebrating the night of El-Kadr on 25 July 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6d_ln9MQHk.
2014

“I was reminded of a quotation by the famous American physicist Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist. Weinberg said: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it, you'd have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."”

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

Part 2, 00:35:01
The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

“Liberalism is the world's religion. We do not have the right to insult liberalism. (after Malaysia conference on Islam and West, 2006)”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

Attributed

“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”

Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) French writer

“Note that Crocker's Rules does not mean you can insult people; it means that other people don't have to worry about whether they are insulting you. Crocker's Rules are a discipline, not a privilege.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

Promoting "Crocker's Rules" at SL4 (c. 2000) http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html
Context: Declaring yourself to be operating by "Crocker's Rules" means that other people are allowed to optimize their messages for information, not for being nice to you. Crocker's Rules means that you have accepted full responsibility for the operation of your own mind — if you're offended, it's your fault. Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor. (Which, in point of fact, they would be. One of the big problems with this culture is that everyone's afraid to tell you you're wrong, or they think they have to dance around it.) Two people using Crocker's Rules should be able to communicate all relevant information in the minimum amount of time, without paraphrasing or social formatting. Obviously, don't declare yourself to be operating by Crocker's Rules unless you have that kind of mental discipline.
Note that Crocker's Rules does not mean you can insult people; it means that other people don't have to worry about whether they are insulting you. Crocker's Rules are a discipline, not a privilege. Furthermore, taking advantage of Crocker's Rules does not imply reciprocity. How could it? Crocker's Rules are something you do for yourself, to maximize information received — not something you grit your teeth over and do as a favor.

“No person, no idea, and no religion deserves to be illegal to insult, not even the Church of Emacs — and certainly not Islam.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

On report of Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil who was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and Hosni Mubarak, in [http://www.stallman.org/archives/2007-jan-apr.html "Illegal to insult" (1 March 2007) http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1593050,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
2000s

“You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others. … There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others. They are provocateurs.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Statements on his official plane traveling from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, reported in "Pope Francis: 'You cannot make fun of the faith of others (15 January 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSV-GD9gA-U
2010s, 2015
Context: Not only does each person have the freedom and the right to say what they think for the common good, they have a duty to do so. Because while it is true that is wrong to react with violence, If my good friend Mr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch in the nose. … It's normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others. … There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others. They are provocateurs. And what happens to them is what would happen to Mr Gasparri if he says a curse word against my mother. There is a limit. … One cannot make war… kill in the name of one’s own religion, that is, in the name of God.

“It has seen the people themselves taking increasing individual and collective action in order to obtain a world organization or government, a universal religion, or a universal language.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Introduction p. I - XII

“People having religions is an insult to the universe.”

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