Antony Flew quote: “A less important point which needs to be made in this piece is that although the index of The God Delusion notes six re…”

“As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
Context: As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.

“The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot.”

Antony Flew (1923–2010) British analytic and evidentialist philosopher

Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’
Flew's review of The God Delusion

“The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).”

Antony Flew (1923–2010) British analytic and evidentialist philosopher

Flew's review of The God Delusion

“I don’t know if I’m the right person to be doing jokes about religion; in the past few months, I’ve become religious, I’ve started to believe in god, creationism and intelligent design, and the reason that I now believe in god and creationism and intelligent design is because of Professor Richard Dawkins. Because when I look at something as complex and intricate and beautiful as Professor Richard Dawkins, I don’t think that just could’ve evolved by chance! Professor Richard Dawkins was put there by god to test us, like fossils. And facts.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

Series 1 Episode 6: "Religion"

“If the Bible is only human lore, and not divine truth, then we have no real answer to those who say, "Let's pick the best out of all religions and blend it all into Pan-Deism - one world religion with one god made out of many."”

J. Sidlow Baxter (1903–1999) Australian theologian

Our Bible: The Most Critical Issue http://www.pwmi.org/christianfaith/ourbible.asp (1991).

“Say: All matters must be referred to the Book of God; I am indeed the First to believe in God and in His signs; I am the One Who divulgeth and proclaimeth the Truth and I have been invested with every excellent title of God, the Mighty, the Incomparable. Verily I have attained the Day of the First Manifestation and by the bidding of the Lord and as a token of His grace, I shall attain the Day of the Latter Manifestation”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to the First Letter of the Living

“God hath in truth testified in His Book and so also have testified the company of His angels, His Messengers and those endued with divine knowledge, that thou hast believed in God and in His signs and that everyone is guided aright by virtue of thy guidance. This is indeed a boundless grace which God, the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsisting, hath graciously conferred upon thee aforetime and will confer hereafter. And since thou didst believe in God before the creation, He hath in truth, at His own behest, raised thee up in every Revelation. There is no God but Him, the Sovereign Protector, the All-Glorious.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to the First Letter of the Living

“When believers argue over any of the many things which contradict their religion, they often challenge us to decide whom we are going to believe? The alleged “word” of God? Or that of Men? As if human inquiry had no chance against the authority they imagine their doctrine to be. But when they say, “men”, they’re talking about science. And when they refer to the “word of God”, they’re talking about myths written about God by men.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrkjEgUDZA&list=PL126AFB53A6F002CC&index=2, Youtube (November 24, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

“As men, we have God for our King, and are under the law of reason: as Christians, we have Jesus the Messiah for our King, and are under the law revealed by him in the gospel. And though every Christian, both as a deist and a Christian, be obliged to study both the law of nature and the revealed law, that in them he may know the will of God, and of Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent; yet, in neither of these laws, is there to be found a select set of fundamentals, distinct from the rest, which are to make him a deist, or a Christian. But he that believes one eternal, invisible God, his Lord and King, ceases thereby to be an atheist; and he that believes Jesus to be the Messiah, his king, ordained by God, thereby becomes a Christian, is delivered from the power of darkness, and is translated into the kingdom of the Son of God; is actually within the covenant of grace, and has that faith, which shall be imputed to him for righteousness; and, if he continues in his allegiance to this his King, shall receive the reward: eternal life.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

§ 228
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

“There are only two loves, whence originate all our wishes and all our actions: the love of God which does all for God and which God rewards and the love of ourselves and of the world, which does not refer to God what should be referred to him and which for that very reason becomes evil.”

Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719) French theologian

44th Proposition, as translated by Mary Ilford in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1968), pp. 118-119

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