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" Christopher’s anti-God campaign was based on a fundamental error reflected in the subtitle of his book: How Religion Poisons Everything. On the contrary, since religion, as practiced, is a human activity, the reverse is true. Human beings poison religion, imposing their prejudices, superstitions, and corruptions onto its rituals and texts, not the other way around. “Pascal Is a Fraud!” When I first became acquainted with Christopher’s crusade, I immediately thought of the seventeenth-century scientist and mathematician, Blaise Pascal. In addition to major contributions to scientific knowledge, Pascal produced exquisite reflections on religious themes: When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here?4 These are the questions that only a religious faith can attempt to answer. There is no science of the why of our existence, no scientific counsel or solace for our human longings, loneliness, and fear. Without a God to make sense of our existence, Pascal wrote, human life is intolerable: This is what I see and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and I see only darkness everywhere. Nature presents to me nothing which is not a matter of doubt and concern. If I saw nothing there that revealed a Divinity, I would come to a negative conclusion; if I saw everywhere the signs of a Creator, I would remain peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied. . . .5 To resolve this dilemma, Pascal devised his famous “wager,” which, simply stated, is that since we cannot know whether there is a God or not, it is better to wager that there is one, rather than that there is not. "
― David Horowitz , DARK AGENDA: The War to Destroy Christian America
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" My own theological views are those of an agnostic—one who doesn’t know. I do not know whether there is a Divine designer or not. As an agnostic, what impresses me first of all is the woeful limits of our human knowledge. I respect the power of reason, but I also respect those aspects of religious faith that are compassionate and consoling. Many people could not live their lives without the consolation of faith. The virtues of religion should not be dismissed lightly. The Christian testament has a beautiful phrase for our limited human understanding: “For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”13 Believers trust the biblical promise that all our questions will be answered when we meet God face-to-face in eternity. That promise is the heart of religious faith. For an agnostic, that promise is a reminder that our knowledge in this life is incomplete. We are well into the twenty-first century, and we marvel at the spectacular achievements of science. But science still does not know how the universe was created or how life began. The Book of Proverbs contains a warning that speaks to us in our uncertain state: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”14 Those who believe they are changing the world, or saving the planet, or transforming the human race, are intoxicated with self-aggrandizing pride. As secular “redeemers,” a haughty spirit is their second nature. Consequently, they are deaf to this biblical wisdom. The secularists are confident that the nonexistence of God is a self-evident fact. It infuriates them that religionists (or “irrationalists,” as Bill Maher calls them) resist what they think is obviously, indisputably true. Believing they know a truth that cannot be known, and that others resist, they are prepared to use any means necessary to silence their opponents and achieve their goals. "
― David Horowitz , DARK AGENDA: The War to Destroy Christian America
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" The legal argument the ACLU used to support Engel and his fellow plaintiffs was that the Regents’ nondenominational prayer violated the Establishment Clause. The ACLU backed its argument not with a clause in the Constitution, but with a phrase taken from a private letter written by President Thomas Jefferson. In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut on January 1, 1802, Jefferson wrote that the First Amendment, enacted on behalf of all the American people, “declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”7 Jefferson coined the metaphor of a wall of church-state separation to assure the Baptists in Connecticut that the government would never infringe on the free exercise of their religion. The ACLU stood Jefferson’s reassurance on its head, turning it into a rationale for suppressing the free exercise of religion. That phrase, “wall of separation between church and state,” became a bumper-sticker slogan for leftists and secularists who want to silence religious people and marginalize their beliefs. "
― David Horowitz , DARK AGENDA: The War to Destroy Christian America
