d any
attempt at exact comparisons with the past are here bound to be
misleading and distorting. Even the extreme assailant of pagan
religions, like Lucretius, had no basis for the critical attitude as the
contemporary sceptic. The bitter attack of Lucretius upon supernatural
religion was based mainly upon assumptions and intuitions, as incapable
of proof at the time as were the most extreme pietistic views of his
age. Today the situation has been profoundly altered. Contemporary
science, especially astrophysics, renders the whole set of assumptions
underlying the anthropomorphic and geocentric supernaturalism of the
past absolutely archaic and preposterous. Our scientific knowledge has
undermined the most precious tales in the holy books of all peoples. The
development of biblical criticism has discredited the dogma of direct
revelation and unique nature of the Hebrew Bible. Textual scholarship
has been equally devastating to the sacred scriptures which form the
literary basis of the other world religions. It avails one nothing to
deny these things, for they are actually undeniable. We must face the
implied intellectual revolution honestly and see what is to be done
about it.

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

To be thoroughly religious, one must, I believe, be sorely disappointed.
One's faith in God increases as one's faith in the world decreases. The
happier the man, the farther he is from God.

RUPERT HUGHES

It is important that the truth be known. Is religion, is church
membership a help to virtue? The careless will answer without
hesitation, "Yes!" Of course. The statistics, when they are not
smothered, cry, "No!"

HU SHIH

On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we
should recognize that the individual self is subject to death and decay,
but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or for worse,
lives on in the immortality of the Larger Self; that to live for the
sake of the species and posterity is religion of the highest kind; and
that those religions which seek a future life either in Heaven or in the
Pure Land, are selfish religions.

DR. FRANKWOOD E. WILLIAMS

In these difficult times we are told that we should go to the temple,
that we should get in touch with God. We do not need the temple. We do
not need to get in touch with "God." We need to get in touch with each
other.

WILLIAM FLOYD

This Bible bears every evidence of being a book like every other book