I use the quote on my sig, and though it would be nice to share the essay it came from.
For a little background, the author was Robert Green Ingersoll. A Union officer in the the American Civil war and later a Politician, fighter for civil rights, and major figure in the Free Thought movement. He published quite a few great works on the subject of religion and mystics.
I would really recommend reading them, and many of them can be found here:
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/some excerpts:
On witchcraft:
Think of the days when superstition and fear were in every
house, in every mind, when accusation was conviction, when
assertion of innocence was regarded as a confession of guilt, and
when Christendom was insane!
Now we know that all of these horrors were the result of
superstition. Now we know that ignorance was the mother of all the
agonies endured. Now we know that witches never lived, that human
beings never bargained with any devil, and that our pious savage
ancestors were mistaken.
Let us take another step
On morality:
Murder is, and always was, a crime, and always will be, as long as a majority of people object to being murdered.
All the Ten Commandments that are good were old, were the result of experience. The commandments that were original with Jehovah were foolish......
These religions teach the slave virtues. They make inanimate things holy, and falsehoods sacred. They create artificial crimes. To eat meat on Friday, to enjoy yourself on Sunday, to eat on fast-days, to be happy in Lent, to dispute a priest, to ask for evidence, to deny a creed, to express your sincere thought, all these acts are sins, crimes against some god, To give your honest opinion about Jehovah, Mohammed or Christ, is far worse than to maliciously slander your neighbor. To question or doubt miracles. is far worse than to deny known facts. Only the obedient, the credulous, the cringers, the kneelers, the meek, the unquestioning, the true believers, are regarded as moral, as virtuous. It is not enough to be honest, generous and useful; not enough to be governed by evidence, by facts. In addition to this, you must believe. These things are the foes of morality. They subvert all natural conceptions of virtue.
Again I say: Intelligence is the only moral guide.
On the Ghosts:
In the history of our poor world, no horror has been omitted, no infamy has been left undone by the believers in ghosts, -- by the worshipers of these fleshless phantoms. And yet these shadows were born of cowardice and malignity. They were painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of ignorance by that artist called superstition.
From these ghosts, our fathers received information. They were the schoolmasters of our ancestors. They were the scientists and philosophers, the geologists, legislators, astronomers, physicians, metaphysicians and historians of the past. For ages these ghosts were supposed to be the only source of real knowledge. They inspired men to write books, and the books were considered sacred. If facts were found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the worse for the facts, and especially for their discoverers.....
From the books written by the ghosts we have at last ascertained that they knew nothing about the world in which we live. Did they know anything about the next? Upon every point where contradiction is possible, they have been contradicted.
According to the theologians, God, the Father of us all, wrote a letter to his children. The children have always differed somewhat as to the meaning of this letter. In consequence of these honest differences, these brothers began to cut out each other's hearts. In every land, where this letter from God has been read, the children to whom and for whom it was written have been filled with hatred and malice.
The God of Hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved — cursed, not worshiped. A heaven presided over by such a God must be below the lowest hell.
and some of my favorite nuggets:
Salvation through slavery is worthless. Salvation from slavery is inestimable.
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They say to me, do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do.
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Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.
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An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.
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It is incredible that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation.
Topic: Superstition is the child of ignorance and the mother of misery