Kate Cohen > Quotes

“I just want to change the default setting of American culture and politics from “In God We Trust” to “secular until proven otherwise.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“you can conduct a full life, a wonderful, even profound life, without relying on either the familiar religious structures or the supernatural beings that supposedly animate them.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“Not only does God make Pharaoh harden his heart against the Jews on purpose so that he can continue to send plagues, he also tortures his own people as well, whether it’s commanding Abraham to sacrifice his own son or allowing Satan to kill Job’s children, destroy his property, and⁠—why not?⁠—cover him in boils.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“You don’t have to hate religion or feel disdain toward religious people to think that religious belief should not be shaping public policy. Or to see that the prejudices written into the foundational myths of the world’s three major monotheistic religions are driving much of the discrimination our fellow Americans suffer today.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“Here again, my point is not so much that the Ten Commandments aren’t useful; it’s that their uselessness proves that people⁠—even religious people⁠—don’t really use them to tell right from wrong.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“For atheists, and even for believers, it hardly matters whether God is good or wants us to be good. What matters is that we know what’s bad⁠—inside, we know⁠—and we want to be good.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“God himself both commits and permits obscene injustices, which believers struggle to explain because they independently know right from wrong.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“The Jews I know, both believers and nonbelievers, comb through Exodus looking for phrases that meet our ethical standards, or they use Haggadot that do. The rest we leave out.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“Along with promoting the values of compassion, justice, and humility, the Bible extols the “values” of exclusion, patriarchy, tribalism, and, yes, homophobia.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“Obviously, I did not subscribe to these laws any more than I did to number 598: “Wipe out the descendants of Amalek.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“Here on earth, we have no particular reason to believe God is good or just, but we have plenty of evidence that he is neither. I could fill a book describing the injustices that are occurring right now in this country alone, at this hour alone⁠—injustices that, from a believer’s perspective, God either causes or fails to prevent.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“But Passover, as it is set forth in Exodus, is not an antislavery, anti-oppression holiday. It’s an us-against-them, praise-the-Lord-or-suffer-the-consequences holiday.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“It was crazy to feel guilt, shame, or even discomfort when I broke the rules of religions to which I did not subscribe.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“And for the record, the brutality doesn’t end on the last page of the Old Testament: even the supposedly kinder, gentler New Testament God promises to consign all unbelievers to everlasting hellfire.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“Without gods, we have to depend on human power. We can’t shake our heads sadly at a tragedy and murmur “mysterious ways” and do nothing to prevent the next one. We must accept the burdens of humanity.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“The most carefully spelled out of the Ten Commandments prohibits this same crime⁠—the crime of disloyalty to God⁠—and promises vengeance not just on those who commit it but also on their children “to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me” (Deuteronomy 5:9).”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“Under the guise of religious liberty, “sincerely held religious belief” is increasingly being used to undermine the progress we have”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“The idea that God is good is an extremely generous interpretation of texts that seem to argue otherwise.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“You don’t have to believe in God to know right from wrong.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“As for slavery, Exodus makes it clear: there’s nothing wrong with owning slaves⁠—just with being slaves.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“If you need a reason to let people know that you don’t believe moral authority derives from a Supreme Being, then I offer you no less than making America a safer, smarter, more just, and more compassionate country.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“Under the guise of religious liberty, “sincerely held religious belief” is increasingly being used to undermine the progress we have made as a country, from labor protections to health care to human rights.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“The Jews I know, both believers and nonbelievers, comb through Exodus looking for phrases that meet our ethical standards, or they use Haggadot that do. The rest we leave out. We make scripture conform to our morality, not the other way around.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe

“If you start to look, religion is at the center of every battle against scientific and social progress. And when it loses a fight and progress wins instead, religion then claims it’s not subject to the laws that result. “Religious belief” is⁠—more and more, both at the state and federal level⁠—a way to sidestep every advance the country makes in terms of civil rights, human rights, and public health.”
― Kate Cohen, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe