Search Results: at a table by myself

"Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike"

"It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication--after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him."

"When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to super natural intervention."

"When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay evidence and secondhand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it."

"When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so--it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence."

Doesn't this just make sense to everyone? How can revealed religions survive based upon this information? Do you agree or disagree?