Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister
http://mediamatters.org/research/200804110003
Fayyad Warns Islamic Preachers http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/06/29/ap3870235.html
Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister
http://mediamatters.org/research/200804110003
Nathaniel Ward (1578–1652) Puritan clergyman and pamphleteer in England and Massachusetts
In 1647, as quoted in "Free Speech and Its Present Crisis" https://www.city-journal.org/free-speech-crisis (2018), by Allen C. Guelzo, City Journal
Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan
The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)
Context: Witchcraft offers the model of a religion of poetry, not theology. It presents metaphors, not doctrines, and leaves open the possibility of reconciliation of science and religion, of many ways of knowing. <!-- p. 209
“No religion is responsible for terrorism — people are responsible for violence and terrorism.”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
At the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/18/obama-white-house-summit-on-countering-violent-extremism-speech/23631625/ (18 February 2015) <br class="br">2015
Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi
Source: The Bowl of Saki: Thoughts for Daily Contemplation from the Sayings and Teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan
“All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter
Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 55 : Go Gently
Context: Raised as a Roman Catholic, I internalized the social values of that faith and still hold most of them, even though its theology no longer persuades me. I have no quarrel with what anyone else subscribes to; everyone deals with these things in his own way, and I have no truths to impart. All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it. I know a priest whose eyes twinkle when he says, “You go about God’s work in your way, and I’ll go about it in His.”
Goparaju Ramachandra Rao (1902–1975) Indian activist
Rao (1996) "Significance of Secularism: Atheism is a Way of Live." The Atheist, Vol 28-29 p. 43
Context: Positive secularism is not tolerance of all religions, but it is the total denial of religious beliefs: it is the emergence of homogeneous human outlook which is based upon verifiable facts of life.
“Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion.”
Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 28
Context: Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are. You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It's an analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can't be anything else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it. The Quality is the track that directs the train. What is outside the train, to either side—that is the terra incognita of the insane. He knew that to understand Quality he would have to leave the mythos. That's why he felt that slippage. He knew something was about to happen.
“Well it is. It is a religion with me. It's a way of life. A religion is a way of life, isn't it?”
Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor
In Jack LaLanne dies at 96; spiritual father of U.S. fitness movement, LosAngeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-jack-lalanne20110124,0,5507436,full.story#axzz2szJ0dzxX