Feminist Atheist Quotes

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McCulloch
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Feminist Atheist Quotes

Post #1

Post by McCulloch »

[i]The Degraded Status of Woman in the Bible[/i] - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1896 wrote:I have endeavored to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church...The less they believe, the better for their own happiness and development...

For fifty years the women of this nation have tried to dam up this deadly stream that poisons all their lives, but thus far they have lacked the insight or courage to follow it back to its source and there strike the blow at the fountain of all tyranny, religious superstition, priestly power, and the cannon law.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote:The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote:The church is a terrible engine of oppression, especially as concerns women.
Catherine Fahringer wrote:We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best mids at the stake.
Kay Nolte Smith wrote:The tragedy is that every brain cell devoted to belief in the supernatural is a brain cell one cannot use to make life richer or easier or happier.
[i]The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages[/i] - Lydia Maria Child, 1855 wrote:It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world.
[i]A Few Reasons for Renouncing Christianity[/i] - Emma Martin wrote:There is yet another consideration which is fatal to the Christian religion, and that is its persecuting spirit. It calls in the aid of Ecclesiastical and civil laws, and the iron hand of custom to condemn, and if possible to punish those who may express different opinions to its own...Perish the cause which has no more rational argument in its favour than that which the stake or prison can supply.

[i]The Godly Women of the Bible[/i] - Ella E. Gibson, 1870 wrote:Christianity is an insult to the wisdom of the nineteenth century. To place before its progress and development a leader, ruler, king, saviour, god, whose knowledge was less than a modern five year old school girl, is an outrage upon humanity. -
[i]Woman's Nation Liberal Union Resolutions[/i] - Matilda Joslyn Gage, 1890 wrote:...In order to help preserve the very life of the Republic, it is imperative that women should unite upon a platform of opposition to the teaching and aim of the ever most unscrupulous enemy of freedom --The Church.

Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote:The church... bids people live under faith outside of evidence, and in thus doing is guilty of immeasurable evils to mankind. A bark without compass, it steers upon a sea of night no star illuminating the darkness...
Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote:Possessing no proof of its (God's) existence, the church has ever fostered unintelligent belief. To doubt her "unverified" assertion has even been declared an unpardonable sin.
Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote:The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it.
Annie Besant from [i]the Gospel of Atheism[/i] wrote:God is always the equivalent of "I do not know".
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1883 wrote:[center]The World's Need

So many Gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
When just the art of being kind
Is all this sad world needs.[/center]
[i]Men, Women and Gods[/i] - Helen H. Gardener, 1885 wrote:There is no book which tells of a more infamous monster than the Old Testament, with its Jehovah of murder and cruelty and revenge, unless it be the New Testament, which arms its God with hell, and extends his outrages throughout all eternity.
-
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, 1897 wrote:Heresy makes for progress
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner wrote:Less power to religion, the greater power to knowledge.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman from [i]His Religion and Hers[/i], 1923 wrote:Let us inquire what glory there was in an omnipotent being torturing forever a puny little creature who could in no way defend himself? Would it be to the glory of man to fry ants?
Marian Noel Sherman, M.D. , 1969 (Marian Sherman was a missionary Doctor to Atheist with a Mission.) wrote:A believer is not a thinker and a thinker is not a believer
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Margaret Knight, from [i]Morals Without Religion[/i], 1955 wrote:Ethical teaching is weakened if it is tied up with dogmas that will not bear examination.
Siver Queen from [i]Humanity's Gain From Unbelief.[/i] wrote:The greatest contribution nonbelievers have made to the world has been the Constitution of the United States. Consider how very heretical to a religious world was the idea of a Constitution predicated on "We the People."
Ruth Hurmence Green, [i]Born again Skeptic[/i] wrote:There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.
I have sorted through these quotes as MOST quotes and books mentioned in Atheist sites seem to be from men only. Women have been grappling with subjects near and dear to Atheist hearts for quite awhile. Their work needs wider circulation. I have only skimmed the surface of what some of the women of the world have contributed to Atheism.
Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
First Epistle to the Church of the Thessalonians
The truth will make you free.
Gospel of John

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Cathar1950
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Post #2

Post by Cathar1950 »

I read a book awhile back I think it was "Women without Superstition", but was moved. I enjoy many of the women's studies and many women scholars and thinkers.
Their contributions are yet to be comprehended or sometimes considered.
I tend to think there is something to identification and sympathy.
Power issues are all something that is neglected and they have much to add.
It almost give you hope for earthings.
I had a friend that claimed he wanted to know about himself as women go thru self discovery. He was into psychology and a wimp.
Not a sissy mind you although he might be one of those too. Come to think of it his wife was a little masculine ( not that there is anything wrong with that) but they are both psychologist and I am sure they worked it out. I often wonder where the dividing line is located and why we need it. It seems to be some kind of continuum like a lop sided bell curve seen from many angles.


I will have to see what I can dig up but I enjoyed the post and I will reread it and think about it for a bit. They do have an often neglected point or points.

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JamesBrown
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Post #3

Post by JamesBrown »

Here are a few more for your collection:
One of my favorite fantasies is that next Sunday not one woman, in any country of the world, will go to church. If women simply stop giving our time and energy to the institutions that oppress, they cease to be. [Sonia Johnson]
Koranic teaching still insists that the sun moves around the earth. How can we advance when they teach things like that? [Taslima Nasrin Time magazine, 31st Jan 1994]
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation. [Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Free Thought Magazine, 1896]
It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so. [Ernestine Rose]
Nothing fails like prayer [Annie Laurie Gaylor]
Eve was framed [Annie Laurie Gaylor]
No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. [Margaret Sanger]
By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.
[Gloria Steinem]
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
[Susan B. Anthony]
The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading. [Elizabeth Cady Stanton]
But why are Paul's commands not followed to-day? Why are not the words, sister, mother, daughter, wife, only names for degradation and dishonor? Because men have grown more honorable than their religion, and the strong arm of the law, supported by the stronger arm of public sentiment, demands greater justice than St. Paul ever dreamed of. Because men are growing grand enough to recongize the fact that right is not masculine only, and that justice knows no sex. And because the church no longer makes the laws. Saints have been retired from the legal profession. I can't recall the name of a single one who is practicing law now. Have any of you ever met a saint at the bar? Women are indebted to-day for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch to-day where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God.--Helen H. Gardener

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Cathar1950
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Post #4

Post by Cathar1950 »

I just got the book from the library and loaned it to a friend. Women Without Superstition: No Gods - No Masters: , by Annie L. Gaylor. I really enjoyed it.
I hope It don't turn her in to an atheist.
I have read a lot of women authors and don't recall them being athiest or not. I don't think it really matered to their work. I am ssure the right sees them as heritics and witches as much of their work is about religion.
What struck me was that people do dot think and write like this in the pop world we live it. Tv has changed the way we see the world and respond. We hardly think in coherent sentences and that is just our leaders. These women were not snotty one liner atheist
Or right-wing, giggling bimboo.
But we get our world, except thru reading in little entertaining snips.

I often wonder at the idea of having our god wanting us to be slaves and servants
Obeying even what looks like insanity.
I tend to gravitate to the Child-Growing up, Friend, Lover and Adult kind of qualities in a god's desire for my well-being.
Given the negative qualities attributed to mankind and nature it causes me to wonder what loving me could even mean and seems a good breeding ground for dysfunctional psychology interests.
But I am wondering why there are little female participations?
I hate talking behind their backs.
I guess I can go invite some.

This reminds me of a cartoon show, it think it was “Futurama” . But they were in a virtual reality room and Lela came in and all the men (nerds) yelled and ran because it was a real woman. It stuck me funny.

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