Darrel Ray Quotes

#1. Religion has the capacity to silence critical thinking and create blindness in entire groups of people. It can infect the minds of followers so completely as to allow the most egregious sexual acts against children and others to go unchallenged for centuries.

Darrel Ray

#2. Just as the chicken pox virus continues to live quietly in the body after the disease is gone, the god virus may live quietly in the host until something evokes it.

Darrel Ray

#3. Religion does not stop adolescents from having sex; it only makes them feel bad about about the sex they do have.

Darrel Ray

#4. Celibacy is nothing if not abnormal. The human body and brain are not made for such programming. Whatever normal is, it does not include celibacy.

Darrel Ray

#5. Simply disabling specific critical thinking skills is all that is necessary for the god virus [to take control of a person].

Darrel Ray

#6. What did you know about sex before you started engaging in intercourse? That is rhe level of knowledge a priest has unless he is cheating with another man or woman, or both.

Darrel Ray

#7. The abstinence-only programs and reclaimed-virginity movement make men and women ashamed of being sexual creatures before or outside of marriage.

Darrel Ray

#8. The more educated and financially successful, the less religious a person is likely to be.

Darrel Ray

#9. All major religions put most of the responsibility for sexual morality on women. Religions teach that women should remain chaste and should control and hide their sexuality so men will not be tempted.

Darrel Ray

#10. Religion is evolving to survive but is losing the battle in many regions, largely because of the Internet. Sexual information is far more available now, which interferes with religion's ability to use sexual guilt to perpetuate.

Darrel Ray

#11. The more a religion makes a person feel guilty and insecure, the harder the person works for the religion.

Darrel Ray

#12. The conflict between church teachings and natural desires results in guilt, shame and anger.

Darrel Ray

#13. While [female genital mutilation] may have not originated with Islam, it has become an integral part of the religious practice in many regions tied to notions of male dominance and control of female sexuality.

Darrel Ray

#14. There are many afterlife ideas and little agreement on what it may be.

Darrel Ray

#15. Every religion ... has rituals, practices, holy writings or traditions, etc. Nothing like that has ever developed from Atheism. There are no holy men, holidays or holy books and no agreed-upon canons of faith. In fact, the only thing you can get some Atheists to agree upon is that there is no god.

Darrel Ray

#16. With the concept of an afterlife, religion creates a portal to infect people by means of terror and fear of death. If one has no concept of an afterlife, then fear of eternal punishment becomes an effective way to convince people of the need to perform specific rituals and live a certain way.

Darrel Ray

#17. Fundamentalist groups like Christian Embassy have infiltrated the very top of the U.S. military and gained positions of influence in the Pentagon.

Darrel Ray

#18. Open, fact-based sex education is among the biggest threats to religion. Knowing the facts about sex reveals the myths that religions preach.

Darrel Ray

#19. The notion that a woman's sexuality belongs only to the husband is a central tenet tied to the idea that a woman is the property of the father first, then the property of the husband.

Darrel Ray

#20. The more risk averse a person is, the higher his or her religiosity [ ... ]. In other words, risk-averse people don't want to take a chance on getting on the wrong side of god.

Darrel Ray

#21. [U]sing religion to treat depression often makes the problem worse. It's like treating the disease with more of the disease. It is effective in getting people to give time and money to the church, but it does not help the victim.

Darrel Ray

#22. Living a religious sexual lifestyle is tantamount to living a lie.
Religion distorts our sexuality when the majority of religious people live one life for the public and another in private. It can be as simple as living as a "happily married" couple when you are both miserable with your sex life.

Darrel Ray

#23. Genetics and epigenetics are far more important in sexuality than any idea of choice. No evidence has been found that anyone chooses their sexuality. Choice is a theological concept, not a biological one.

Darrel Ray

#24. Islam has some of the best defenses against other god viruses and has the potential to be more parasitically aggressive when consolidating political power with a society.

Darrel Ray

#25. Religion tries to give us maps of sexuality that are no better than a 2,000-year-old map of my hometown.

Darrel Ray

#26. The church may update its techniques and methods, but it is always in service of the institutional organism. This is one of the reasons why the pedophile priest issue is and will remain an endemic disease in the Catholic Church.

Darrel Ray

#27. Religious training and indoctrination creates internal states that are in conflict with natural urges and drives.

Darrel Ray

#28. Jesus must have been married to have been called a rabbi.

Darrel Ray

#29. It is not very romantic, but reality is a better basis for building a relationship than fantasizing about a soul mate or counting on a god to find you a partner.

Darrel Ray

#30. People don't learn about their sexuality from books or discussions; they learn mostly from personal experience in bed with themselves or someone else.

Darrel Ray

#31. Religious programming has the power to distort normal, natural and intensely pleasurable behavior into something inconceivably disgusting.

Darrel Ray

#32. Religious people use 10% more pornography than secular people. The biggest consumers of pornography are Utah and Mississippi. All that religious preaching does no good.

Darrel Ray

#33. Sexual preferences develop, evolve and change over a lifetime. [ ... ] Without opportunities for sexual exploration and discovery, how is a 19 to 20-year-old to learn what he or she likes and how his or her body reacts?

Darrel Ray

#34. All religions have something to say about sex, and it rarely coincides with scientific knowledge of sex and sexuality.

Darrel Ray

#35. The religious guilt cycle interferes with learning and change. Rather than learning who he is as a sexual being, he measures himself against an impossible religious sexual standard and always comes up short. Absent religion, many unrestricted people can deal with their behavior in a rational manner.

Darrel Ray

#36. Theology has not advanced an inch in the last 1,000 years. How much respect does a profession deserve if it cannot add to the knowledge and understanding of man?

Darrel Ray

#37. Jealousy is the opposite of maintaining and growing in a relationship. Jealousy includes elements of fear, anger, suspicion, and control that have no place in a mature relationship.

Darrel Ray