“I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his disciples believed in the existence of devils—talked and made bargains with them, expelled them from people and animals. This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that devils do not exist—that Christ never cast them out, and that if he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane. These stories about devils demonstrate the human, the ignorant origin of the New Testament.”

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the N…" by Robert G. Ingersoll?

Robert G. Ingersoll439

Union United States Army officer 1833–1899

Related quotes

“There is an honesty in science which leads to a certain acceptance of reality. There are some who, finding the ocean an impediment to the pursuit of their designs, try to ignore its existence. If they are unable to ignore it because of its size, they try to legislate it out of existence, or try to dry it up with a sponge. They insist that the latter operation would be possible if enough sponges were available, and if enough persons would wield them. There is no ocean of greater magnitude than the sexual function, and there are those who believe that we would do better if we ignored its existence, that we should not try to understand its material origins, and that if we sufficiently ignore it and mop at the flood of sexual activity with new laws, heavier penalties, more pronouncements, and greater intolerances, we may ultimately eliminate the reality.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

page 10
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Source: Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers

“I repeat that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people, and for the people all springs, and all must exist.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book VI, Chapter 7.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)

“The mythology of the New Testament, also, is not to be questioned with respect to the content of its objectifying representations but with respect to the understanding of existence that expresses itself in them.”

Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884–1976) German theologian

Source: New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1941), p. 10

“Why do we complain about the Fall? It is not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but on account of the Tree of Life, lest we might eat of it.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

82, a slight variant of this was later published in Parables and Paradoxes (1946):
Why do we lament over the fall of man? We were not driven out of Paradise because of it, but because of the Tree of Life, that we might not eat of it.
"Paradise"
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"What Makes a Life Significant?"
1910s, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1911)

“Sad is a fake word for me to be using, I am still angry that their reason for disagreeing with McCarthy was too often his crude methods.... Many of the anti-Communists were, of course, honest men. But none of them... has stepped forward to admit a mistake. It is not necessary in this country; they too know that we are a people who do not remember much. I have written here that I have recovered. I mean it only in a worldly sense because I do not believe in recovery. The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.”

Lillian Hellman (1905–1984) American dramatist and screenwriter

Source: Scoundrel Time (1976), p. 150

“I believe that there is a fundamental mystery in my existence, transcending any biological account of the development of my body (including my brain) with its genetic inheritance and its evolutionary origin.”

John C. Eccles (1903–1997) Australian neurophysioloigst

Source: Facing Reality (1970), p. 83
Context: I believe that there is a fundamental mystery in my existence, transcending any biological account of the development of my body (including my brain) with its genetic inheritance and its evolutionary origin. … I cannot believe that this wonderful gift of a conscious existence has no further future, no possibility of another existence under some other unimaginable conditions.

“I know the God hypothesis has its partisans, but, oh, what a boring idea. Where did the universe come from? He did it. How do we account for rivers and rocks and ring-tailed lemurs? He made them. Ho-hum.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 5 (p. 108)

“Only the Jews had remained victorious after the dreadful days of World War I. These were the people of whom Christ said, "Its father is the devil."”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Quoted in "Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel" - Page 14 - by Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, Frederique Vandecasteele-Vanneuville - Religion - 2001

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Robert G. Ingersoll439

Related quotes

Related topics