Seymour and Marcia Gottlieb

Seymour and Marcia Gottlieb

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Perhaps my most favorite Story Corp story ever.

"What a funny looking broad!"

A seemingly random question . . .

If you publically post examples of how humble you are, ummmm . . .

The Super Guru

NOTE: Lest someone confuse the cynical, sarcastic, and sometimes layered meaning of what I write . . .

I'm not the Super Guru.

Did you hear that?

I wish I would have said this . . .

Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine. ~Austin O'Malley

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. ~Mark TwainTraveler: "God has been mighty good to your fields, Mr. Farmer."Farmer: "You should have seen how he treated them when I wasn't around."~Author Unknown

I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents become better people as a result of practicing it. ~Joe Mullally

I believe in God; I just don't trust anyone who works for him. ~Author unknown, from a stand-up comedy routine on television

If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides. ~Old Yiddish Proverb

I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. ~George Carlin

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did." ~Saturday Night Live, Jack Handey, "Deep Thoughts "

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist. ~G.C. Lichtenberg

There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said "Let us pray," and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible. ~Desmond M. Tutu, "Religious Human Rights and the Bible"

An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Inuit earnestly, "did you tell me?" ~Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains.... But it can put mountains where there are none. ~Friedrich Nietzche, Human, All Too Human, 1879

Sunday school: a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents. ~H.L. Mencken

What has been the effect of religious coercion? To make half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. ~Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785

Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founders' than any other agency in the world. ~Richard Le Gallienne

I believe in God, but I'm not too clear on the other details. ~Bill Veeck

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. ~Frederick Douglass, escaped slave

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction. ~Pascal, Pensees, 1670

Strange...a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! ~Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

The problem with fundamentalists insisting on a literal interpretation of the Bible is that the meaning of words change. A prime example is 'Spare the rod, spoil the child.' A rod was a stick used by shepherds to guide their sheep to go in the desired direction. Shepherds did not use it to beat their sheep. The proper translation of the saying is 'Give your child guidance, or they will go astray.' It does not mean 'Beat the shit out of your child or he will become rotten' as many fundamentalist parents seem to believe. ~Author Unknown

Everyday people are straying away from the church and going back to God. ~Lennie Bruce, The Essential Lennie Bruce, 1972

Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. ~H.L. Mencke