....seem appropriate on Independence Day:



The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the
opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and
not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That
which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be
thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is
to decide, the living, or the dead?


The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are
those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing
science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are
universally denominated rude and barbarous.


All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or
Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine and murder;
for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.


What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty
committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief
of this debauchery is called faith.


- Thomas Paine -