Ross Winn

“ In this day and generation of fashionable piety and $50,000 churches, genuine religion—religion warrented for everyday home use—is about as hard to find as a truthful newspaper editor. The woods are full of self-advertised saints the devil wouldn't have and anybody could buy in job lots, two dozen for a quarter. This fashionable church religion that promises humanity heavenly joys after it turns up its toes to the daisies and does nothing to abolish the sorrows of this world is a scintillating sham, and is as absolutely worthless as a political party platform. ”

“ Otherwise the church, as was said of the Bourbons, never learns anything and never forgets anything.
I have no fight against religion. Every human soul big enough to hold an ideal is religious. Every intelligent man has a religion. Religion itself is a good thing, but I am a little particular about the brand. I believe in the religion of deeds, as opposed to this Sunday morning, amen-corner, sanctimonious variety, that is peddled around by long-faced parsons trying to pulverize purgatory with their puril pulpit palaver. ”

“ In the face of the evidence of its impotency, the claim of the church to be the evangel of divine will is an impudent absurdity. The church is purely a human institution. It is a structure of unstable clay, fashioned by the weak hand of human fallibility.
The church claims the credit for all that has been achieved by civilization, including civilization itself. But, as a matter of fact, the church has combatted every advance in civilization. It opposed every discovery of science. ”