In the sixth century B.C., Gautama, an Aryan princeling on the northern frontier of India, formulated a bleakly pessimistic philosophy that markedly resembles Schopenhauer's. This high doctrine of negation, for reasons that would require an extensive historical explanation, became extremely popular, but was variously interpreted by at least eighteen rival schools, each of which claimed alone to preserve the true teaching of Gautama the Buddha, and Gautama's austere atheism was gradually contaminated and obscured by the usual theological techniques, so that a philosophy that was intended to supplant religion was converted into just another elaborate and learned superstition.

With the exception of some early Christian sects that were exterminated when the Fathers of the Church wormed their way to power and could start killing their …

Our idealists must own that their velleity to abolish all suffering is most fully expressed in the Fifth Wisdom of Lamaism, the doctrine that teaches that 'no …

It would be more proper to classify Islam as a Christian sect or group of sects, since the word 'Christian' properly designates all of the innumerable sects th…

Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.

Even of old the Christian world, so bitterly antagonistic to any ideas not specifically contained in their creeds and dogmas, made an exception in Socrates' ca…

The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had…