“We reach in desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human face. London is religions opportunity--not the decorous religion of theologians, but an anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would be tolerable if a man of our own sort--not anyone pompous or tearful--were caring for us up in the sky.”

“We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.”

“Let us never measure our religion by that of others, and think we are doing enough if we have gone beyond our neighbors.”

“I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)”

“Because we imagine that we are what humanity was divinely destined to become, we assume that our prehistoric ancestors were trying to be us, but just lacked the tools and techniques to succeed. We invest our ancestors with our own predelictions in what seem to us primitive and unevolved forms. As an example of all this, we take it for granted that our religions represent humanity's ultimate and highest spiritual development and expect to find among our ancestors only crude, fumbling harbingers of these religions. We certainly don't expect to find robust, fully developed religions whose expressions are entirely different from ours.”

“I am the deepest of unbelievers. Every neurosis is a religion to its owner and religions is the universal neurosis of mankind. This is much beyond doubt: the characteristics we attribute to God reflect the fears and wishes we first feel as infants and as small children. Anyone who does not see that much cannot have understood the first thing about human psychology, If it is religion you are looking for, do not follow me.”