23 Quotes by Joseph McCabe

The making of an Atheist implies a mental stimulation and training which brings into play the primary factors of social progress.

No pope ever condemned slavery.

I AM what is called a Feminist. Thirty years ago I left a monastery and began a sane human existence. Within two or three years, I find, I was defending the rights of women.

An idea or institution may arise for one reason and be maintained for quite a different reason.

Evolution throws a wonderful light on all the struggles, eccentricities, tortuous developments of the human conscience in the past. It is the only theory of morals that does. And evolution throws just as much light on the ethical and social struggle today; and it is the only theory that does. What a strange age ours is from the religious point of view! What a hopeless age from the philosopher's point of view! Yet it is a very good age, the best that ever was. No evolutionist is a pessimist.

... the absence of theistic belief.

If a single one of these gentlemen is correct, if a believer of any type is right, the essential truth for man, the real drama of life, in comparison with which the secular story of the race, is a puppet-show and the unfolding of the universe is a triviality, is the dialogue of the immortal soul and the eternal God. Yet it seems that there is nothing in the world so hard to discover as this. The theory refutes itself.

Today we know not only that there is a terrible amount of disorder in the heavens - great catastrophes or conflagrations occur frequently - but evolution gives us a perfectly natural explanation of such order as there is. No distinguished astronomer now traces "the finger of God" in the heavens; and astronomers ought to know best.

If, it was natural to reason, God punishes men with eternal torment, it is surely lawful for men to use doses of it in a good cause.