Religion Quotes - Page 21

Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.

All Abraham's sons were taught that God would progressively reveal Himself. God's wholeness has yet to be realized. There will always be gaps in our understanding. Why should we fill those gaps with suspicion, bigotry and accusations? Men do it to women; Jews do it to Christians; Christians do it to Muslims. Yet, all these have an implied duty to Abraham.pg 54

If Heaven actually exists, I don't need anyone to be my real estate broker. After all, what is religion but an attempt to sell you a share in the ultimate gated community?

I beseech thee, O Lord, let me have understanding: For it was not my mind to be curious of the high things, but of such as pass by us daily.

The importance of awakening to our evolutionary origins is paramount because irrational ideas about “who we are” fuel our sense of separateness

What's true about you is what God says about you. Not what your mirror says. Not what your past says.

I believe that we are henceforth incapable of returning to an order of moral life which would take the form of a simple submission to commandments or to an alien or supreme will, even if this will were represented as divine. We must accept as a positive good the critique of ethics and religion that has been undertaken by the school of suspicion. From it we have learned to understand that the commandment that gives death, not life, is a product and projection of our own weakness.

You believe in God?" demanded Billy Karma."I believe in thirty-seven separate and distinct gods," answered Argyle proudly. "That puts me thirty-six ahead of you.""It makes you a pagan.""It makes you a man of limited vision," said Argyle.

One's interest or need does not annul other's right.

God is exist within us.

God didn't make Eve from Adam's rib. He took out half of Adam's brain by accident.

A life based on [religious] faith is a life based on pure speculation, and speculation is, by its very definition, unsound.

Helping othersI order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Moslem or not.

God is Santa Claus for Grown-Ups.

The fact that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something does not put existence and non-existence on an even footing.

Sometimes I get so frustrated with folk talking about how busy the devil is. Own your mess! You might be the devil. Stop inviting MESS into your life and blaming the devil!

Love the Creator with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.

You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the state.

[W]e conceive the Devil as a necessary part of a respectable view of cosmology. Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer. It is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without 'sky'. Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas.

It's sad that several political parties still count the dead, the starving, the unemployed by their religion, caste, creed and sect. The young generation needs to engage in politics of right vs wrong and not right vs left.

Infuriatingly stupid analysts - especially people who called themselves Arabists, yet who seemed to know next to nothing about the reality of the Islamic world - wrote reams of commentary [after 9/11]. Their articles were all about Islam saving Aristotle and the zero, which medieval Muslim scholars had done more than eight hundred years ago; about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violent. These were fairy tales, nothing to do with the real world I knew.

If I want religion, I know where to look for it - and if for example I don't want it, then why should it be forced on me in media and public spaces?

If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however, I shall protest their taxes at each opportunity, and if Woden or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow--what's his name?--cannot respect that, then I'll accept their wrath. At least I will have tasted the banquet that they have spread before me on this rich, round planet, rather than recoiling from it like a toothless bunny. I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods.

A church is a hospital for sinners not a museum for saints.

You belong to the saved souls.

So may the outward shows be least themselves:The world is still deceived with ornament.In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,Obscures the show of evil? In religion,What damned error, but some sober browWill bless it and approve it with a text,Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?There is no vice so simple but assumesSome mark of virtue on his outward parts.

There are many bibles of different religions; there is the Mohammedan Koran, the Buddhist Canon of Sacred Scripture, the Zoroastrian Zend-Avesta, and the Brahman Veda . . . they all begin with some flashes of true light, and end in utter darkness. Even the most casual observer soon discovers that the Bible is radically different. It is the only Book that offers redemption to us and points the way out of our dilemma.

There are none so superstitious as the educated, for often they see in their own time - as an article of faith unsubstantiated by experience - the final end of human progress.

Science is agnostic when it comes to God - not atheistic, as some people prefer to read that laden word wrongly - just agnostic.

Second Cosmic Seal:(Seal of Karl 666) One who has received this Cosmic Seal is empowered to control not less than 160,000 spirits. Many great politicians, military commanders, etc. on earth are at this occult level of operations. This will be the occult level of Antichrist.

We need to eliminate the concept of division by class, skills, race, income, religion, and nationality. Every human requires food and water to survive and every human has a heart that bleeds, loves, and grieves.

You are wrong about that, you know, Dr. Andersen replied calmly. This, right here—us talking, sitting in this overlit room, a bunch of shrinks watching us through the tinted windows—this is the dream. The peace you felt before, that is reality. It is the I. The only part of existence that does not change, that cannot change, that will not change. You may not be ready to understand this quite yet, but if you continue meditating, you will.

She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing, [writes Bokonon].

God is not interested in your art but, your heart.

In the Christian view, sex was an unclean act. Ask Christians, "Did Jesus have sex?" and watch their nonverbal response. Or ask, "Did Peter enjoy sex with his wife?" or "Did Mary and Martha, 'whom Jesus loved,' ever enjoy a good orgasm?" Such questions do not compute in the Christian mind. The Christian founders are seen as asexual.

Thus we arrive at the singular conclusion that of all the information passed by our cultural assets it is precisely the elements which might be of the greatest importance to us and which have the task of solving the riddles of the universe and of reconciling us to the sufferings of life -- it is precisely those elements that are the least well authenticated of any.

Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous.

If any religion turns against love of equal partners, there's something flawed with the religion, not the love.

One should regard one's religious or denominational affiliation as a point of departure, a point of entry, not the point of arrival because on cannot confine God to a particular religion or faith tradition, and therefore should not claim one's exclusive ownership of God. Regarding one's religious or denominational affiliation as _accidentality_; not as _inevitability_, is important in religious discourse and practice because such a sense of _accidentality_ of one's affiliation allows a space of _alterity_ of reciprocal contestation and challenge, and a space of planetary gaze that sees others as fellow human beings, _regardless_.

Spirituality is principal thing. Seek the spirituality of your soul.

Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.

To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow.

Nanak wanted to preach people that God loves both the Hindus and the Muslims the same way. Believing in his spiritual encounter, he wanted to eliminate the distance between the Hindus and the Muslims by teaching the words of equality and One God. But just like usual, he ended up forming yet another religion which became more and more hardcore with its own rituals and regulations in the hands of the subsequent nine Gurus.

My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times men would not stop to ask directions.

If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.

A woman must be a woman and cannot be a man. She, too, is God's creature and her divine station is that she should bear and care for and rear children. So I am a man created for another office and work. But should I be proud because of this and say: I am not a woman, therefore I am better in the sight of God? Should I not rather praise God for creating both the woman and me also through the woman and putting me in this station? What a un-Christian thing it is that one should despire another because he is in another station or is doing something other then he is doing?... "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled." for God will not and can not tolerate such pride and arrogance.

When I was a child, Mama had the best voice of all the members of the church. She had loved to sing. Her words had soared like an angel's over the swells of the organ. In fact, I now suspected, her entire theology had been taken from the hymnal.

An act of terrorismis not an ideology,nor religion.It is the lack of hope,of opportunityand of love.When there is no recourse,no other waythere is only insurrection.Understanding, compassionand respect for all lifeis what will save us all.

Anyway, I have long had a very definite tendency to tune out the moment I come anywhere near either a pulpit or a soapbox.

Don’t be disheartened by the forces of evil. Nothing can happen that God hasn’t allowed. Even resistance is all part of grand orchestration. The devil always has you right were God wants you.

The knowledge of the Holy Scripture is a great wisdom.

As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent.

Religion lives not in dogma, but utterly within the virtues of love and self-sacrifice. Without those, there is no future I can bear to stand, nor hope for the continuance of God's creation. It is not blasphemy to say that the work of Jesus the redeemer was and is to break the chains of the realms of darkness. And set free the creature from the power of sin.

n every culture, the sky and the religious impulse are intertwined. I lie back in an open field and the sky surrounds me. I’m overpowered by its scale. It’s so vast and so far away that my own insignificance becomes palpable. But I don’t feel rejected by the sky. I’m a part of it - tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity. And when I concentrate in the stars, the planets, and their motions, I have an irresistible sense of machinery, clockwork, elegant precision working on a scale that, however lofty out aspirations, dwarfs and humbles us.

Religion helps humanity to pass through its darkest times.

The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever.

We can love and do righteous acts only by grace.

Don’t be lookin up at no sky for help. Look down here, at us twisted dreamers.

We feel like acting like a Christian, following the steps of Christ, is much more important than following a doctrine.

Cleave to the common good. We are all responsible for bringing about the time of great suffering, for its continuing.