I am Andrew Ryan, and I’m here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God. No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone. I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose… Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by Petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.
“Die Sache ist die, dass wir unsere Probleme an jemanden oder etwas abtreten, sobald wir an den Herrgott oder an eine beliebige andere Transzendenz appellieren und damit auf die eigene Souveränität der Erkenntnis verzichten.”
“It’s a dumb freedom. [...] And I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of this freedom of religion thing. When did religion get such a good name, anyway? Be it the Crusades, the Reformation genocides, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, mass slaughters supposedly in the name of Allah, and then, of course, the obligatory reciprocal retribution. Hundreds of millions of people have died in religious conflicts. Hitler did his business in the name of his Creator. 9/11 was an act of religious extremism. It’s our greatest threat today – a Holy Jihad. If we’re not ready to strip religion out of its sacred cow status, how about we at least scale back a little on the constitutional dogma exalting it as all get-out? [...] Everybody should get to believe in God. Pray to his God, worship his God, of course. But to impose him on others, to victimize others in His name, the Founding Fathers of this country set out to prevent persecution, not to license it. [...] At a certain point, we have to say: Enough of this freedom of religion crap.“
Die Atheistische Buskampagne, welche in England begonnen hat wurde inzwischen auf anderen Länder ausgeweitet. Doch wie in Italien sieht sich auch der deutsche Ableger dieser Kampagne mit einigen Hindernissen konfrontiert.
Dabei ist das ganze mit dem - meiner Meinung nach überflüssigen - Zusatz “mit an Sicherheit grenzender Wahrscheinlichkeit” ziemlich entschäft. Aber okay, dann muss die Botschaft eben anders unters Volk gebracht werden.
“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?”
