The time has come for honest men to denounce false teachers and attack false gods. The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. Today the scientists say that they can level mountains, and nobody doubts them. The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind. Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal god. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms. The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. It is the opium of the people. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.