A Quote by H. L. Mencken
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.
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Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say that they will be realized later on. Thus, if we have another boom, they will argue that the collapse of capitalism is only postponed. The fact that the greatest booms ever heard of followed Marx's formal prophecy of the downfall of capitalism is already forgotten, just as millions have long since forgotten the early Christian prophecy that the end of the world was at hand. The first Christians accepted postponements as docilely as the Communists of today.
I cannot believe that any religion has been revealed to Man by God. Because a revealed religion would be perfect but no known religion is perfect; and because history and science show us that known religions have not been revealed but have been evolved from other traditions.
There is a reason why you see such an antagonism to religion. Because communism necessitates the destruction of religion for one reason. Communism needs for government to be your God. So there cannot be any alliance to anything but government. So an alliance to God must be destroyed. That's why socialism and anti-religion go together.
Men who sincerely abhorred the word Communism in the pursuit of common ends found that they were unable to distinguish Communists from themselves…. For men who could not see that what they firmly believed was liberalism added up to socialism could scarcely be expected to see what added up to Communism. Any charge of Communism enraged them precisely because they could not grasp the differences between themselves and those against whom it was made.
Religions are not revealed: they are evolved. If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in whole and in part, and would be as perfect at the first moment of its revelation as after ten thousand years of practice. There has never been a religion which fulfills those conditions.
From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.
Indeed the three prophecies about the death of individual art are, in their different ways, those of Hegel, Marx, and Freud. I don't see any way of getting beyond those prophecies.
There isn't any (afterlife), you dingbat! This is it, baby! Enjoy, carefully! Religion is such a medieval idea. Don't get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion and I can't buy any of it. So God made man in His own image? It's just the other way around. Man made God in his own image. It's all about money.
You can tell the future?' 'More like the future mugs me from time to time.' Rachel said 'I speak prophecies. The oracle spirit kind of hijacks me once in a while, and speaks important stuff that doesn't make any sense to anybody. But yeah, the prophecies tell the future.
It is iniquitous, unjust, and most impolitic to persecute for religion's sake. It is against natural religion, revealed religion, and sound policy.
I am not so repelled by Communism: an element of Communism in politics is necessary and inevitable. In any involved society there must be a feeling that something must be done about poverty - which is the basis of communism.
Revealed religion is one thing, revealed legislation, another.
It is one thing, then, to say, "The Bible contains the religion revealed by God ," and quite another to say, "Whatever is contained in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God." If the latter be accepted, metaphor and allegory become literal statements and the errors and absurdities of bibliolatry follow.
African famine is not a visitation of fate. It is largely man-made, and the men who made it are largely Africans.
Just as the Security Council was largely irrelevant to the great struggle of the last half of the twentieth century - freedom against Communism - so too it is largely on the sidelines in our contemporary struggles against international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
I, personally, am unable to accept any revealed religion, Christian or not.
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