'Burn the Beatles!': Remember When John Lennon Said The Beatles Were More Popular Than Jesus?
https://rare.us/rare-news/history/burning-beatles-records/Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.
Playboy Interview with The Beatles: February 1965 issue
http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/dbbtspb.int2.html
PLAYBOY: "You guys seem to be pretty irreverent characters. Are any of you churchgoers?"
JOHN: "No."
GEORGE: "No."
PAUL: "Not particularly. But we're not antireligious. We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believe in God."
JOHN: "If you say you don't believe in God, everybody assumes you're antireligious, and you probably think that's what we mean by that. We're not quite sure 'what' we are, but I know that we're more agnostic than atheistic."
PLAYBOY: "Are you speaking for the group, or just for yourself."
JOHN: "For the group."
GEORGE: "John's our official religious spokesman."
PAUL: "We all feel roughly the same. We're all agnostics."
JOHN: "Most people are, anyway."
RINGO: "It's better to admit it than to be a hypocrite."
JOHN: "The only thing we've got against religion is the hypocritical side of it, which I can't stand. Like the clergy is always moaning about people being poor, while they themselves are all going around with millions of quid worth of robes on. That's the stuff I can't stand."
PAUL: "A new bronze door stuck on the Vatican."
RINGO: "Must have cost a mighty penny."
PAUL: "But believe it or not, we're not anti-Christ."
RINGO: "Just anti-Pope and anti-christian."
PAUL: "But you know, in America..."
GEORGE: "They were more shocked by us saying we were agnostics."
JOHN: "Then they went potty; they couldn't take it. Same as in Australia, where they couldn't stand us not liking sports."
PAUL: "In America, they're fanatical about God. I know somebody over there who said he was an atheist. The papers nearly refused to print it because it was such shocking news that somebody could actually be an atheist... yeah... and admit it."
RINGO: "He speaks for all of us."
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in my home office/music room that's white at the bottom and fades up to a blue sky with a couple of clouds and at the bottom it says "Above us only sky". That song is almost the atheist national anthem 
Forgive the poor pic, my iPhone is ancient and doesn't take great pics.
With a Southern Baptist church right across the street where we lived in the countryside. we could hear preacher Whitehead spewing fire and brimstone in our living room. He was a source of great comic relief for me, though he didn't know it.
On some Sunday's I tried making a go of it, be a good Christian and go to church. I would sit in the way back and do my best to suppress belly laughs as his fury driven sermons turned his face deep scarlet red and his veins could be seen bulging from his temples, and spittle spraying along the center aisle. I would lose it, and start laughing uncontrollably. Every single Sunday.
I did this until one awful day my best friend drowned in the summer when we were twelve.
That was it for me. I knew right then and there God did not exist and my friend's death was evidence for m e. I knew then it was all some bizarre fairy tale and preachers made a lot of money from selling their fairytales to the "believers". Then Kennedy got assassinated. More evidence.
Then the Beatles hit the scene.
It was all UP HILL from then on. I gave a shit less about the Southern Bible Thumping attitude, boycotting the Beatles concerts or going on a hate fest smashing their records. They were all ignorant morons and neanderthals to me.
And they still are.
