Religion Quotes - Page 24

By believing in an imaginary invisible supernatural entity, humans may become good citizens. But this is not religion. This is merely an illusion of religion.

I won't put my ignorance on an altar and call it God. It feels like idolatry, like the worst kind of idolatry.

Some biblical scholars believe that the story of the fall from the Garden of Eden was a cultural memory of the transition from foraging to agriculture: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” 79 So why did our foraging ancestors leave Eden? For many, it was never an explicit choice: they had multiplied themselves into a Malthusian trap in which the fat of the land could no longer support them, and they had to grow their food themselves. The states emerged only later, and the foragers who lived at their frontiers could either be absorbed into them or hold out in their old way of life. For those who had the choice, Eden may have been just too dangerous. A few cavities, the odd abscess, and a couple of inches in height were a small price to pay for a fivefold better chance of not getting speared

I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. [The World Is My Home (1991)]

... As Weber suggests, once science is employed to justify and enact ideal values, especially through the actions of an elite few (the academy), particular values, in this case the idea of what is 'natural', are cast into an objectively valid and legitimate form, and thus appear as being beyond critique. And at this point Weber rightly warns that science, contrary to Durkheim's belief, is not both cognitive and moral in nature, for it rests upon a designation of authority, and may, especially if used beyond its own limits, give rise to new means of domination.

You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines, and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe, and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one island, or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but for other planets as well as our earth. If you would only look up at the heavens, instead of at the ground beneath your own feet, you might all understand this, and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines for you, or for your country alone.

O comportamento ritual não só revela realidades práticas e mundanas, é também um teatro vivo da psicologia colectiva e uma das mais ricas expressões da ideologia e crenças - mentalidade - de uma sociedade. Afinal de contas, como os antropólogos notaram, a religião é mais do que um padrão de relações sociais: é uma expressão da capacidade humana para imaginar a estrutura da sociedade. O ritual religioso não é apenas construção cultural: é uma forma de cognição que constrói modelos de realidade e paradigmas de comportamento. E dentro deste processo pelo qual a realidade é definida, o ritual da morte joga um papel central.

Don't ask creator to guide your footsteps if you're not willing to move your feet.

They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.

Quran‬, ‪Bible‬, ‪BhagwadGita‬ are your (as an follower's) way of life and not every-ones way of life, so don't force people to change. These Holy books teach you to change yourself (for good) and not others.

While faith may be helpful to the one possessing it, making him feel good and fulfilled and peaceful inside, one thing it is not is responsible. It cannot be. No matter how much you might value your faith, it cannot be responsible. Why not? Faith, by its very nature, is invested with your personal feelings on any given matter.

If we seek God first, we shall all other goodness.

For now, I look to God, for I know He will respond to my questions. For I believe, in the deepest part of my heart, that He shall truly bring us into a frame of mind where we may hear His greatest responses . . . Perhaps not the final answers, but at the very least, the next response we need.

Witchcraft isn't about picking up a book, and asking forgiveness.. or learning about spirituality through the words of others. What you learn from those books are the opinions of other people, and not your own. If this is what you believe then you are not an individual. Witchcraft is about accepting that YOU are responsible for the choices that YOU have made, and YOU teaching YOURSELF to make the right choices. Its about learning through YOUR OWN opinions, YOUR OWN life lessons, YOUR OWN inner self, and by doing so.. BECOME an individual.

But my lazy lack of faith, my in-vogue atheism, has taken away the safety net hanging beneath our children's lives.

You know how it goes:at some point in your life, you fell in love with someone and had a glimpse of God.Then you abandoned life and loverand started celebratingyour love for God.

I touched the small sacred images. I shook my head and bit my lip, as if to say, How awful that he should have stolen these! But I also found it very funny. And further proof that God had no power over me.

With soap baptism is a good thing.

If one knew the truth how could there be freedom? If hell and paradise were in the middle of the marketplace, everyone would be a saint.

The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only.

I'm glad I'm not good compared to God, because if I was, He wouldn't be much of a god.

I believe the devil exists in those little, seemingly unnoticeable moments when we choose to value our own insecurities over the service of others.

Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you. The one no one talks of speaks the secret sound to himself, and he is the one who has made it all.

Religion is trust, and that trust arose in the beginning from the impressions made on the mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom of nature, and more particularly, by those regularly recurring events, the return of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of the seasons, the law of cause and effect, gradually discovered in all things, and traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by whatever name we choose to call it.

Jesus Christ died to save all mankind.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.

The greatest impact of the Darwinian revolution...was that it completed the liberation from superstition and fear that began in the physical sciences a few centuries before. Man, too, is a natural phenomenon. [in "The evolutionary concept of man", 1972, p. 35.]

True religion should be able to respond to the dark melodies, the faulty and hideous sounds that echo from the heart of men.

Know will of God and keep to His ways.

Education is fundamentally religious. Consequently, there is no question about whether a morality will be imposed in that education, but rather which morality will be imposed.

Down play religion, get yourself free from religion.

It is not enough to be a man.

Jesus.""I thought you were Jewish."He pressed his lips together for a second before looking at me. "Fine. I'll say Moses. Or Abraham. Happy?""I doubt Jesus is.

When spirits fall, their darkness is revealed, for they are stripped of the garment of your light. By the misery and restlessness which they then suffer you make clear to us how noble a being is your rational creation, for nothing less than yourself suffices to give it rest and happiness. This means that it cannot find them in itself. For you, O God, will shine on the darkness about us. From you proceeds our garment of light, and our dusk shall be noonday.

A satirist that criticizes religion is seen as a satanist.

Once us feel loved by God, us do the best us can to please him with what us like.

All religions are born from individual experiences of divine awakening, not from some books.

Terrorism has no nationality or religion.I stand with all countries affected by these inhumane acts.Because of this; I am not France, I am not Belgium, nor am I Syria. I am what is left of humanity.I am compassion, I am kindness, I am love. I am the strength that those in fear rely on. I am the fight against terror.

Life is holy puzzle.

I have a friend [whose] mom is very, very Christian and crazy religious…She’s like that for all the wrong reasons and isn’t actually true to her word. She doesn’t practice what she preaches. The things she does preach, she contradicts them all the time. She can be really hypocritical. It went out to her and anybody else like that…A lot of our fans are having issues with loving themselves and coming to terms with their sexuality…A lot of those kids have a really tough home life where their families are exactly like the people I’m talking about in ‘Holy.’ They’ve really latched onto that one because that’s the life they have to deal with and the people they’ve had to deal with. I think everyone knows people like that

I grew up believing Christians didn’t just believe in Jesus. To be saved, people had to look and speak a certain way. They followed a long list of nots to ensure their holiness. They fit the mold. They followed the rules.

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love.

Science does nothing for man spiritually, and organized religion demands blind faith in illogical liturgy that was never meant to be taken literally!

Religion can only do two things for mankind turn them into monster or stupid.

People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil... Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.

The fault in our stars is the inability to see that the world falls in love with fantasy, fairytales and magic in movies. Even religion asks us to believe in the most unlikely of situations. However, despite all the great movies we love, we choose to see so many real life spiritual experiences as delusion, mania, psychosis or wishful thinking. Our society gives great devotion to the arts. However, they solve so many problems with realism, rather than giving into the possibilty of God's plan for a person, that doesn't involve their theological views about how God helps write his children's stories.

All my life I have overheard, all my life I have listened to what people will let slip when they think you are part of their we. A we is so powerful. It is the most corrupt and formidable institution on earth. Its hands are full of the crispest and most persuasive currency. Its mouth is full of received, repeating language. The we closes its ranks to protect the space inside it, where the air is different. It does not protect people. It protects its own shape.

The Buddha, Christ and Mohammed had to rely on God and karma and human priests for judgement; we don’t. We have data. We have algorithms. We have Guidance. God is now available as an application, on your mobile phone or in the cloud, twenty four seven, three sixty five.

Old religious dogma attempts to convince you that you are on a journey to God, then makes you pay tolls along that roadway.

How wide, how long, how deep is the love that Saviour extends to all humanity!

I am humbled by the grace of God.I am humbled by the beauty of this universe.Humbled by others' kindness.Humbled by life.I drop down to my knees and give thanks.

Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy.

In this walk to freedom, we must, without question obtain hearts of honesty and a tongue of truthfulness.

I'll make a book on learning how to be a complete moron someday, and I'm sure no one will buy it, because everyone will have mastered that already by the time I gather enough moronism to process it into digestible upgrade instructions for your average village cyborg-idiot.

There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!

When you want to know how God wants you to reach your city, start a new church, or be involved in His work, ask Him. Then when He tells you, don't be surprised if you can't find any church that is doing it the same way.

One should not think of embracing another religion before one had fully understand his own.

Satan has slaughtered, plundered, and bludgeoned his way through the centuries, manifesting himself in every false ideology, sect, and cult.

Religion can only be a means to a set of values cherished by its living adherents. If those values relate only to a past or a presumed afterlife, it is a sign that religion has become a goal serving the ends of a priest or a demagogue and rest of the living are merely tools to serve that end. If it is not to become a fossil, it has to be a living faith serving the cherished values of the living.

I remembered the malangs of Shah Jamal, the dirty, shirtless renouncers with ratty beards and dreads and bare chests covered in necklaces of prayer beads, throwing around their arms in Charlie Manson dances and whipping out their old ID cards to say look, I used to be someone and now I'm no one, I'm so lost in Allah that I've thrown away the whole world. Would that qualify them as Sufis? I didin't know how to measure it. Whether the malangs were Sufi saints or just drugged-out bums didn't really matter. The lesson I took from them was that you're never disqualified from loving Allah, never. And I could see again that what I went through was nothing new, not even anything special in the history of Islam, not a clashing of East and West; it was always there. And that made me feel more Muslim than ever, because fuck it all, CNN, this is Islam too.