Excerpt #110 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
“This is the destiny of any society ruled by an authoritarian religious or totalitarian regime. It offers no opportunity to alter its view of a changing world as it evolves under the impetus of newly acquired knowledge, or to examine the role of humanity in the context of that change. It does not acknowledge that the current period differs radically from that extant at the start of that religion. It is stuck in a time warp and must ultimately decline, vanish or destroy the society it dominates.
“The self-proclaimed, self-perpetuating ‘clergy’ studying within the framework of the established ‘religion’ compound the problem by politicizing its dogma, becoming militant, rewarding its adherents and designating those wanting change as dissidents.
“Therefore, what we have to fear for ourselves in permitting organized religion to infiltrate our civil laws and culture is not so much the lack of freedom but its arresting the development of our society and its position in the world.” – Joseph Julie Gottfried
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. – Thomas Jefferson
THINGS THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, DON’T.