The Rant Institute

The Christian believes in the invisible for which there is no evidence just as much as they doubt something as visible as the nose on their face.

Religion turns people into robots. Their only directive thereafter is to seek God, even if that means acting like the Terminator seeking Sarah Conor.

When the Christian asks, "What if you're wrong, and there's a God, and you have to spend eternity in hell because you didn't believe?" An atheist replies, "What if you're wrong, and there's a God, and you have to spend eternity in hell because you did?"

God, who makes us just broken and ignorant enough to be dependent upon a highly flawed power-seeking church of men for our salvation, no matter how many inquisitions or pedophiles it employs, is angered enough to throw us into hell for all eternity for having the courage to go it alone.

Marriage abolishes free will.

The only difference between life and death is improvisation.

Loneliness is when you have a lot to say but no one who wants to listen.

The Conservative Christian accuses the Liberal of being dependent upon government while at the same time boasting about how humble they are for being wholly dependent upon an imaginary God, which basically means they are dependent mostly upon an institutional Church to explain everything for them. 

“The past is because of the present,” said Alan Watts, and the future accrues with compound interest.

It takes far more energy to run from a fear than to face it. And by running we surrender our future to the clutches of the past, while by facing our fears we claim the future for our own. We are the only one who can save us.

The origin of all hatred is self hatred.

God is a ubiquitous explanation that Christians use to explain anything and everything they can’t explain.

Fear is the wellspring of all doubt, that no devotion to certitude - whether in a god or a religion  - can ever overcome.

A mustard seed of faith might move mountains, but no mountain of evidence can move a mind trapped in the mustard seed of religion.

All demons live off of fear. And mostly their own.

Ironically enough, it turns out that the Founding Father's did NOT want the U.S. Constitution interpreted with the kind of "Original Intent" that Conservatives want. According to the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a 1995 book by James W. Loewen, a sociologist: "The most notes we have from the Philadelphia convention that eventually framed the Constitution, comes from Jame  Madison. But Madison did not want his notes published in his lifetime (he died in 1836) specifically because he did not want people to pivot off of what they thought the people in Philadelphia were doing."  In other words, the "original intent" of James Madison - the only 'founding father' who's mind we know anything about at all, thanks to his notes - wanted the Constitution to be understood and applied subjectively, as it applied to the ideas and issues of the day.  He wanted the Constitution to be interp...

I am an atheist who does not believe in god, mostly because such a word can not be defined. The word “god” is so amorphous and abstract that it can mean anything to anyone. And the more broadly we define such a term the more it could be be like something that maybe even atheists would accept, while the more narrowly such a term is defined the more finite, contradictory and thus purely man made it becomes. As such, when my mom told me she was sad that I did not know Christ, I explained it to my mom this way: Mom, the word “Christ” means “anointed,” which is a word the ancient Greeks used to describe people like Socrates or Aristotle. It’s what they would’ve called Buddha or Confucius, or Bertrand Russell, or maybe even Noam Chomsky, and lots of other people. It’s what they called people who possessed particular brilliance, in other words, and who often imitated “Jesus” by picking up their cross of speaking truth to the world, even though they knew they may well be crucified on ...

Conservatives believe that gender is biological, and biology dictates certain fixed behavioral norms for each gender that are mutually exclusive and never change, across time or place, even though anything that can be defined as biological is always changing and evolving, according to time and place. Hence the Conservative believes that gender, however inseparably linked to our biological, must be mostly psychological. And the only proof that the Conservative has that the psychological is forever fixed with regard to gender, is the Conservative's religious devotion to never changing their mind about anything. 

Today, the only way a person can ever hope to become all that Jesus taught humanity to aspire to be, is by becoming an atheist and a humanist. Because to practice religion is to act like the Sanhedrin.

We sacrifice tomorrow on the altar of today.

The question of God is a very simple one. Which do we prefer: the truth, even if it scares us to death, or a "belief" that protects us from having to face such a truth?  Which is easier for us to accept? That there is a God that will save us from meaninglessness and oblivion, or that the only one who can save us from "meaningless and oblivion" is ourselves, regardless of whether any "God" exists or not? Time is indifferent to what we believe. But we hope there is a god who can change all of that. And that if we "worship" Him enough, and in the right ways, and convince Him we really "love" Him, He will change all of that.

Religion teaches people to use their intelligence as a shield and their ignorance as a sword.

The difference between reality TV and reality is the difference between having a gold fish and being Jacques Cousteau.

Nothing blinds a person to the "truth" about God more than their "beliefs" about God.

Religion teaches us to assume the worst of people, which only brings out the worst in ourselves.

the genius and the idiot almost always confuse themselves for the other.

The simple difference between life and non-life is the ability to change. Religion, with its addiction to tradition, constancy, and infallibility, worships the idea of never changing your mind about God or your religion. Religion, therefore, is the worship of non-life. Maybe that's why Christians worship a guy who is basically a zombie, by acting like vampires.

When you see how people are taught to hate themselves, and how to confuse that hate for love of one idea or another, it breaks your heart, because you know they’ll never stop doing it. And then you get angry at them, because they won’t stop doing it.

Maybe suicide really is the only answer.

We live within the Iron Maiden of our mind, with a smile painted on our faces.

There is no way out. And everything that looks like one, only leads you back in.

Most people prefer bondage to freedom.

It's been years already Since that September so many years already As we look back and remember A warm sunny day that began like a kiss And ended in tears for all those we miss Years since Guiliani became The countries mayor And so many Police and Firemen Became hero's beyond compare since Great Britain played our national anthem in Buckingham square to remind us we are not alone in the grief that we bear since a nation turned to God in prayer and we told all those we love just how much we care since we lit candles in the depths of despair and congress sang "God Bless America" on the capital stairs since we marveled at courage so inspiring and rare and "bucket-brigades" worked night after night beneath the halogen glare since we discovered we all have something to share And red, white and blue seemed to blossom from everywhere since we all forgot about "who wants to marry a millionaire?" and we longed for t...

 hard come the hawks of winter's blow when springs ambitions do concede to autumn snow and into that clanging hall of memories do all our yesterdays go for with the crown of thorns of all we know walks one writhing tongue in a gallery of echoes

Wisdom is only the discovery of our own ignorance, and an epiphany is when that discovery hits you like a ton of bricks.

Religion is the "belief" that our own ignorance of the universe -  how it works in every detail, why it exists at all, and where it came from -  is proof that we should therefore "believe" in the existence of a God that is not only solely responsible for creating it all, but who only hides from us any direct evidence of this fact, for our own good. And in the same way this "God" ensures that all of our best scientific endeavors will never detect a single shred of evidence of its existence, in order to ensure that its "command" that we must love it more than anything else, including our own lives and even that of our own children (Abraham and Isaac), never intervenes in any of our squabbles for our "own good" as well. And this is because protecting the inviolable sanctity of our own "free will" is apparently far more important to that God than maintaining world peace, no matter how many millions must perish to protect the f...

You cannot learn how to love if you have never been loved, and you cannot feel love if you have not first learned how to love yourself.

If you cannot look at the world and have meaningfulness, hope, love, joy and peace, without the need to first believe in a god, then you are not free to believe in a god. And this is especially true when hell is said to await anyone who dares to try ad find those things without a need to believe in that god.

The sanest thought can be carried out in the sanest way and produce the greatest insanity possible.

We are only as stubborn as we are afraid.

The more heirs we put on, the more we show who we are.

The law serves the people but the priests serve the law

Suicide is as common to those who have everything as to those who have nothing at all.

Institutions, and especially ideologies, tend to demonize minorities, because those from without always have a better view of the serpent than those from within. It’s also why the quest for knowledge was defined as the sin that cursed us all to live in ignorance.

I always imagined that Judas hung himself because he could not bear to live with what he had done, because he had no idea of what he was actually doing.  And once he saw what he had done, he hung himself for being such a fool. He found humility, in other words, but it ran over him like a freight train. And Christians see themselves as the proud benefactors of his mistake, and all the suffering he now endures for our sake.

Some people’s demons are so bad, they can’t face themselves.

Evening comes ... And the gray ghost bleeds across a jagged sky As destiny plucks our strings Tis a play seen only by the bumble bee for the gods of the mezzanine We drink tears from the scorpion's eye And swim in that which is unseen the abyss that swallows up the fire fly are the gods of the mezzanine Come night ye gothic stalking steed the sun is but an apple to your serpentine when they kill us for their sport and feed these gods of the mezzanine

What’s the difference between truth and a belief? Truth is always unfolding before us, and can only be understood with the gift of being able to change your mind about anything upon learning new information or simply looking at something in a different way. A belief is a curse that dupes us into only ever looking at things the same way, and worshiping such a perspective as our "true" god.

It is a universal truth that everyone fails to live up to their own standards, which are always the very same standards they use to stand in judgement of everyone else.   We never truly see our own sins, but we damn sure think we can see everybody else’s.

The difference between love and religion is the difference between a tree and a cross. And as one bears fruit, the other crucifies.

The difference between being emotional and emotional intelligence is the same difference between being self conscious and being self aware.  Or to put it more simply, self awareness is emotional intelligence, and to be self conscious is to be emotional. It's just amazing how many self conscious men  there are out there who are convinced that women are more emotional than men.

Everyone is convinced they know who God is, but no one can tell you; not even the atheists.

Christians think they are being like Jesus by treating anyone who disagrees with them like the devil.

Religion often teaches people to be proud of the things they should be most ashamed of, and ashamed of the things they should be the most proud of.

As society becomes more complex relationships become more complicated, and it becomes more difficult to find someone who thinks or understands the world the same way you do.

Death puts all of your ideas in a state of zero gravity.

Death tends to shatter the wall that hides the difference between our life and our potential.

How is it that Catholics can call for the end of the papacy of pope Francis over the sexual abuse scandal within the church but say nothing about making JP II a saint, even though JP II was even more guilty of facilitating that sexual abuse than Francis??

Christians often feel compelled to "believe" in the God of Christianity, and feel even more compelled to deny that God is far more evil than the devil of Christianity, even though the devil can only torture us here on earth, while God can torture us in the afterlife for all eternity. And what's ironic is that God will torture us in the afterlife for all eternity, for not having allowed ourselves to be tortured by the bible here on earth, or even for just failing to "believe" both in God, and that that God is the "one and only, true God" (whatever that means exactly). But all of this only leads us to wonder why God would bother making atheists in the first place. Why bother making people that you know will not believe in you, that must figure out in the span of their lifetime - however short that may be - that God not only exists and is real, but "loves them," or they will be cast forever into an eternal furnace that makes the ovens at A...