Quotes about religion
page 14

“As I describe inspiration I do not want you to think I am speaking of religion.
That which takes us by surprise - moments of happiness - that is inspiration. Inspiration which is different from daily care.
Many people as adults are so startled by inspiration which is different from daily care that they think they are unique In having had it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Inspiration is there all the time.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

Source: 1970's, The Untroubled Mind', 1972, p. 61

Happiness, People, Truth, Thinking

“By now you must have accepted the fact that your religion, in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the afterlife would be. All made guesses, and then established these as articles of faith. Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their revelations as symbolic.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Message of "The Visitor" Ch. 19
The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980)

Faith, Sense

“The Islam religion and their scriptures are out of place and out of time. It still follows the 7th century laws and is hopeless. The need of the hour is not reformation but revolution.”

Taslima Nasrin (1962) Poet, columnist, novelist

Islam is history, says Taslima Nasreen, 22 August 2006, dna http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1048723,

Law, Time

“It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”

G. K. Chesterton book All Things Considered

"Spiritualism"
All Things Considered (1908)

“If you asked him, he would say the only connection between free will and religion in his life was the fact that he hadn’t set foot in a synagogue since he turned eighteen.”

Joe Haldeman book The Accidental Time Machine

Source: The Accidental Time Machine (2007), Chapter 14 (p. 152)

Life

“I prefer Buddhism because it gives three principles in combination, which no other religion does. Buddhism teaches prajna (understanding as against superstition and supernaturalism), karuna (love), and samara (equality). This is what man wants for a good and happy life. Neither god nor soul can save society.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

In an ""Why I like Buddhism and how it is useful to the world in its present circumstances" BBC (May 1956) http://www.ambedkar.org/Babasaheb/Why.htm

Love, Life, God, Happiness

“The obliteration of the evil hath been practised by two means, some kind of redemption or expiation of that which is past, and an inception or account de novo for the time to come. But this part seemeth sacred and religious, and justly; for all good moral philosophy (as was said) is but a handmaid to religion.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book II, xxii, 14
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Evil, Time, Past, Parting

“Islam was never a religion of peace. Islam is the religion of fighting.”

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (1971–2019) leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

As quoted in "Islamic State releases 'al-Baghdadi message'", BBC (14 May 2015)
2014, 2015
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32744070

Peace, Fight

“If nothing were left of an extinct race but a single button, I would be able to infer, form the shape of that button, how these people dressed, built their houses, how they lived, what was their religion, their art, their mentality.”

Adolf Loos (1870–1933) Austrian/Czech architect

Quoted in Berel Lang, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer, 1978), pp. 715-739; see http://www.jstor.org/pss/1342952.

People, Art, Housing

“Buddhism's starting point is that all living things, we who are so full of pain and sadness, together with all these living things, want to liberate ourselves from this state of pain. … All living things have been repeating transmigration for immeasurable kalpa. … Sometimes a soul perceives itself as a human. At other times it is born in a beast, that is, what we call an animal. … As a result, the living things around us are all our parents and children, brothers and sisters, as they have been for a long time. People of different religions will think this idea too serious and terrifying. [Indeed] this is a serious world to a terrifying degree.”

Kenji Miyazawa (1896–1933) Japanese poet and author of children's literature

The Great Vegetarian Festival (1934); as quoted in Miyazawa Kenji: Selections, edited by Hiroaki Sato (University of California Press, 2007), p. 14 https://books.google.it/books?id=D7IwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA14.

Pain, Children, People, World

“The voice of racism preaching the Gospel is devilish. A fake church called the prophet Muhammad a terrorist, for "getting God" is not religion, but a spiritual bond and Jesus is the most-quoted prophet in the Qur'an.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The 4th Branch
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

God, Quotes

“And Hindu society which constitutes the nation has been driven into a corner. Hindu leaders have been made to cry that they are not communalists, that they have renounced revivalism, that they cherish Islam as a great religion, that they regard Islamic heroes as their own heroes, that they have no use for people who regard the prevalent mode of secularism as perverse, and that they are fed up with that ‘lunatic fringe’ which still continues to take pride in the national heritage. …. The nation will never be able to get out of this tight corner till it clears up the terminological confusion, stops making use of meaningless words like communalism and revivalism, and rewrites its books of history, politics, and sociology in an exact and appropriate language. This exact language will substitute Nationalism for Hindu Communalism, National Resurgence for Hindu Revivalism, Islamic Atavism for Muslim Revivalism, and Islamic Imperialism for Muslim Communalism. Then alone the various elements and forces struggling for supremacy in the country at present will fall into their proper places, and come out in their true colours.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

People, Books, History, Communication

“Science attempts to analyze how things and people and animals behave; it has no concern whether this behavior is good or bad, is purposeful or not. But religion is precisely the quest for such answers: whether an act is right or wrong, good or bad, and why.”

Warren Weaver (1894–1978) American mathematician

Source: Science and Imagination: Selected Papers, 1967, p. 106

People, Behavior, Science, Animals

“The idea has grown up that the scientific approach can alone properly be said to be intellectual, whereas the approach of religion cannot, and that therefore the tendency of religion is to impede intellectuality. This is not to be wondered at in people for whom the word "intellectuality" implies no more than conformity to the scientific approach; but if the goal of intellectuality is not a better understanding of the origin, nature and end of man and of the universe, what is it? It is just such an understanding that religion claims to offer, and in so far as that claim is justified, religion, very far from impeding intellectuality, is an essential part of it.”

Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne (1896–1982) British rower, agriculturalist and translater

Intellectual Freedom (1971)

People, Idea, Understanding, Nature

“As to the origin of life, any life, I thought, we remain ignorant. Our science theorizes about the beginning of the cosmos or the birth of life. Our religions postulate endless versions of a man-God, hardly more rational than we are, as the Creator. In the past I have sometimes thought that maybe life is meaningless after all. Then I'd think that maybe the Seth material is a kind of cosmic poppycock -- the chemical composition of my mind somehow intelligent enough to understand the irony of its own meaninglessness, then spinning desperate yarns, as many psychologists would say; futile fantasies leading nowhere. But then I'd think that a brain that could conceive or order somehow had to emerge from a greater order. Besides that, earlier I hadn't realized (I thought, feeling better) that science and religion had spun some pretty weird yarns themselves, and if poppycock was being measured on a scale of one to ten, in my book anyhow they'd each get a twelve and a gold star.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 51

Life, God, Books, Feeling

“The world should be assured that, although there may always be some who exploit any religion for their interests, Islam does not approve of terrorism in any form. Terrorism cannot be used to achieve any Islamic goal. No terrorist can be a Muslim, and no true Muslim can be a terrorist. Islam orders peace, and the Qur’an demands from each true Muslim that he or she be a symbol of peace and support the maintenance of basic human rights. If a ship is carrying nine criminals and one innocent person, Islam does not allow the ship to be sunk to punish the nine criminals, for doing so would violate the innocent person’s rights.”

Fethullah Gülen (1941) Turkish preacher, former imam, writer, and political figure

"Gülen’s Condemnation Message of Terrorism", 2001

World, Peace, Support, Personality

“Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.
The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man's fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion.
This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in the pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man.
Professor Smith envisages as a redeeming force, training in objective observation of all that is available for immediate perception and in the interpretation of facts without preconceived ideas. In his view, only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.
His historical picture closes with the end of the nineteenth century, and with good reason. By that time it seemed that the influence of these mythic, authoritatively anchored forces which can be denoted as religious, had been reduced to a tolerable level in spite of all the persisting inertia and hypocrisy.
Even then, a new branch of mythic thought had already grown strong, one not religious in nature but no less perilous to mankind — exaggerated nationalism. Half a century has shown that this new adversary is so strong that it places in question man's very survival. It is too early for the present-day historian to write about this problem, but it is to be hoped that one will survive who can undertake the task at a later date.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Foreword of "Man and his Gods" by Homer W. Smith
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

Truth, Books, Fear, Hope

“The religion of halakhic practice is the religion of life itself.”

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994) israeli intellectual

"Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State" (1995)

Life

“One united people, regardless of race, language or religion.”

Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (1915–2006) Early life

Rajaratnam penned the Singapore National Pledge in 1966.

People

“The Jewish question is no question of humanity, and it is no question of religion; it is solely a question of political hygiene.”

Paul Schmidt (1899–1970) German translator, Nazi

Quoted in "Social Theory After the Holocaust" - Page 150 - by Robert Fine, Charles Turner - History - 2000

Question

“Theologians intensely dislike the definition of faith as belief without—or in the face of—evidence, for that practice sounds irrational. But it surely is, as is any system that requires supporting a priori beliefs without good evidence. In religion, but not science, that kind of faith is seen as a virtue.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 67

Faith, Support, Science

“We need to restrain ourselves in what we say about other religions, in how we judge other faiths. We don't need new laws. We cannot restrict freedom of speech. We need to restrict ourselves. Otherwise, in the end, we will be restricted.”

Edgar Bronfman, Sr. (1929–2013) Canadian-American businessman

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/muslims-also-deserve-respect-1.180300.

Faith, Law, Freedom

“I was in Washington in the summer of 1963, [and] had the opportunity to participate in Dr. Martin Luther King's March on Washington, which culminated at the Lincoln memorial in his soaring 'I Have a Dream' speech. For me, this was America at its best. Hundreds of thousands of us, all religions, races, and nationalities, joined together peacefully but powerfully to petition our government to right the wrong of racial bigotry.”

Joe Lieberman (1942) politician from the United States

Lieberman, In Praise of Public Life, 34, 2000.

Dreams, Memory, Summer

“I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me a better killer. I’ve got what amounts to a religion, now.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

—And the Moon Be Still as Bright (1948)
The Martian Chronicles (1950)

Fight

“The second proposition admits and encourages the very practice we censure so justly, for which the saint [ Augustine of Hippo ] was so famous, and by which he contributed so much to promote contentions in his own days, and to perpetuate them to ours. The practice of deducing doctrines from the scriptures that are not evidently contained in them… Who does not see that the direct tendency of this practice is exactly the same as the event has proved it to be? It composes and propagates a religion, seemingly under the authority of God, but really under that of man. The principles of revelation are lost in theology, or disfigured by it: and whilst some men are impudent enough to pretend, others are silly enough to believe, that they adhere to the gospel, and maintain the cause of God against infidels and heretics, when they do nothing better, nor more, than espouse the conceits of men, whom enthusiasm, or the ambition of forming sects, or of making a great figure in them, has inspired. If you ask now what the practice of the christian fathers, and of other divines, should have been, in order to preserve the purity of faith, and to promote peace and charity, the answer is obvious… They should have adhered to the word of God: they should have paid no regard to heathen philosophy, jewish cabala, the sallies of enthusiasm, or the refinements of human ingenuity: they should have embraced, and held fast the articles of faith and doctrine, that were delivered in plain terms, or in unequivocal figures: they should not have been dogmatical where the sense was doubtful, nor have presumed even to guess where the Holy Ghost left the veil of mystery undrawn.”

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) English politician and Viscount

Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophical Works http://books.google.com/books?id=E6ATAAAAQAAJ (1754) Vol.III, Essay IV, Sect XVI

Men, God, Peace, Faith

“The religions are delusional constructs formed around an infallible core.”

Frederick Franck (1909–2006) Dutch painter

Source: Echoes from the Bottomless Well (1985), p. 74

“If the confusion, fear and discontent of our times seem to be reaching towards an extreme, despite a technological development bringing a wealth and a luxury unparalleled in history, why is an exactly coincident decay of religion scarcely ever suggested as a causal factor?”

Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne (1896–1982) British rower, agriculturalist and translater

Intellectual Freedom (1971)

Fear, History, Time, Wealth

“The conflation of faith as “unevidenced belief” with its vernacular use as “confidence based on experience” is simply a word trick used to buttress religion.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 208

Faith, Confidence

“It is a curious thing, after years have elapsed, to go back upon the pages of a favourite author. Nothing shows us more forcibly the change that has taken place in ourselves. The book is a mental mirror — the mind starts from its own face, so much freshness, and so much fire has passed away. The colours and the light of youth have gone together. The judgment of the man rarely confirms that of the boy. What was once sweet has become mawkish, and the once exquisite simile appears little more than an ingenious conceit. The sentiment which the heart once beat to applaud has now no answering key-note within, and the real is perpetually militating against the imagined. It is a great triumph to the poet when we return to the volume, and find that our early creed was, after all, the true religion.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Books, Youth, Imagination, Boy

“The unhappy truth is that male homosexuality will never be fully accepted by the heterosexual majority, who are obeying the dictates not of bigoted society or religion but of procreative nature.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 85

Truth, Nature

“It's not the work or the personality of the founder of a religion that's important, but what its followers do with what they learn…”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

Part One: The Hidden People, "Border Spirit" p. 335
The Little Country (1991)

Learning, Personality

“The gods of all pagan faiths have been allied with the rich rulers. The priests of most religions are the employees of the landowners. But the God of Israel has always claimed to be with the poor—whether in the legislation of Deuteronomy, the words of the prophets, or the experiences of the New Testament. Our God is on the side of the poor.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: Radical Christian Discipleship (2012), p. 41

God, Faith

““Simple old-fashioned death, the kind that predated the singularity, used to be the inevitable halting state for all life-forms. Fairy tales about afterlives notwithstanding.” A dry chuckle: “I used to try to believe a different one before breakfast every day, you know, just in case Pascal’s wager was right—exploring the phase-space of all possible resurrections, you know? But I think at this point we can agree that Dawkins was right. Human consciousness is vulnerable to certain types of transmissible memetic virus, and religions that promise life beyond death are a particularly pernicious example because they exploit our natural aversion to halting states.””

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 9 (“Survivor”), pp. 396-397

Life, Death, Fashion, Nature

“Without religion, man is an atheist, woman is a monster. As daughter, sister, wife, and mother, she holds in her hands, under God, the destinies of humanity. In the hours of gloom and sorrow we look to her for sympathy and comfort. Where shall she find strength for trial, comfort for sorrow, save in that gospel which has given a new meaning to the name of "mother", since it rested on the lips of the child Jesus?”

Henry Benjamin Whipple (1822–1901) Bishop of Minnesota

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 618.

God, Sister, Daughters

“The malice of a true Christian attempting to destroy an opponent is something unique in the world. No other religion ever considered it necessary to destroy others because they did not share the same beliefs. At worst, another man's belief might inspire amusement or contempt—the Egyptians and their animal gods, for instance. Yet those who worshipped the Bull did not try to murder those who worshipped the Snake, or to convert them by force from Snake to Bull. No evil ever entered the world quite so vividly or on such a vast scale as Christianity did.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 7, Priscus

God, World, Evil, Animals

“Dogmatic religion any form of mind control actually, has been used, and refined to fantastic effect over thousands of years since the "restart" of Modern civilisation-Sumeria/Sumer according to Official history. To incite and exploit emotions like fear, guilt, frustration, anger, and the feeling of 'Emptiness'. Which has assisted our prison warders, who've encouraged the "masses" to hand over their Responsibilty, and right to think and feel to a politician, book, media presenter, priest, experts because they feel and are encouraged to perpetuate the consensus reality, therefore subconcious belief that we/they don't have the ability or confidence for that matter to establish truth for themselves regardless of any external influences and without fear of being "crucified" for doing so. You and I have the right, to take control of our minds and therefore of lives, which is the first step on the road to infinite, now is a good time as any to start to make your own decisions.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

"… and the truth shall set you free", 1995

Truth, Books, Fear, Feeling

“There are so many people who tell me, “if I had a time machine and could prove that Jesus never rose from the dead”, with the admission that “I hope my faith and I are strong enough that I can keep on believing, even when my eyes tell me otherwise.” That’s make-believe! That’s lying to yourself. That’s the entirety of what religion is.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

People, Faith, Hope, Lying

“…we have become rich in a variety of acquirements, favoured above measure in the gifts of Providence, unrivalled in commerce, pre-eminent in arts, foremost in the pursuits of philosophy and science, and established in all the blessings of civil society; we are in the possession of peace, of happiness, and of liberty; we are under the guidance of a mild and beneficent religion; and we are protected by impartial laws, and the purest administration of justice: we are living under a system of government which our own happy experience leads us to pronounce the best and wisest which has ever yet been framed; a system which has become the admiration of the world.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 April 1792), reprinted in reprinted in W. S. Hathaway (ed.), The Speeches of William Pitt in the House of Commons. Volume I (London: 1817), p. 394.

Happiness, World, Peace, Justice

“7 per cent haz no rest, nor no religion, it works nights, and Sundays, and even wet days.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Night

“They don't observe the Sabbath, they don't observe the Torah, they don't pray, they don't put on phylacteries every day. Is it any wonder that they're killed? It's no wonder. May the Almighty have mercy on them and bring them back to religion.”

Ovadia Yosef (1920–2013) Israeli rabbi

Israel rabbi in fallen troops row, BBC News, 27 August 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6965607.stm, Jewish law

“When we erected banners some smart people appeared and started pointing at miniskirts. Our women have been wearing miniskirts since 1950s, and they never thought about wearing an explosive belt. You can wear even tarpaulin boots on your head, but do not organise bombings. This is not religion. Let them wear even miniskirts but there must not be any blasts.”

Almazbek Atambayev (1956) President of Kyrgyzstan

Women, People, Appearance

“I listened to the sermon, and I remember complete astonishment because what they were talking about were things that were just crazy. It was communion time, where you eat this wafer and are supposed to be eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. My first impression was, "This is a bunch of cannibals they've put me down among!" For some time, I puzzled over this and puzzled over why they were saying these things, because the connection between what they were saying and reality was very tenuous. How the hell did Jesus become something to be eaten?
I guess from that time it was clear to me that religion was largely nonsense--largely magical, superstitious things. In my own teen life, I just couldn't see any point in adopting something based on magic, which was obviously phony and superstitious.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

The Humanist, Mar/Apr 1991

Life, Hell, Drink, Reality

“Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity. The historical hero of the schoolroom is the man who obeys the law, and defends it against rebels.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Source: Law and Authority (1886), I

Children, Law, Science

“The lack of individual prayer and communion with God has divorced modern Christians and Christian sects from Jesus' teaching of the real perception of God, as is true also of all religious paths inaugurated by God-sent prophets whose followers drift into byways of dogma and ritual rather than actual God-communion. Those paths that have no esoteric soul-lifting training busy themselves with dogma and building walls to exclude people with different ideas. Divine persons who really perceive God include everybody within the path of their love, not in the concept of an eclectic congregation but in respectful divine friendship toward all true lovers of God and the saints of all religions.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda

Love, God, Friendship, People

“Religions, convictions, philosophies may differ – widely and bitterly; but never, in my belief, should such differences be allowed to assume the personal aspect. Disassociation from people for such reasons is inexcusable; it is representative of bigotry and intolerance.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his parents (January 9, 1939)

People, Personality

“Faith, Quinn mused, was a strange power. They had committed their lives to the sect, never questioning its gospels. Yet in all of that time, they had the reassurance of routine… The bedrock of every religion, that your God is a promise, never to be encountered in this life, this universe.”

Peter F. Hamilton (1960) English novelist

Quin Dexter of the Lightbringer Sect on faith
The Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996-1999), The Naked God (1999)

Life, God, Faith, Question

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 20 (p. 162)

“The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it — and that it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived.”

Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion

Book One : The Church of the Conquerors, "The Great Fear"
The Profits of Religion (1918)

Fear, Study

“[…] ironically, the jihadis are just as opposed to the theory of evolution as creationists. So they have that in common […] This is an area in which Islamists agree 100% with the Discovery Institute and creationists. If that makes you uncomfortable … well, it should. […] I'm making a very narrowly defined point. The proponents of "intelligent design" are on the same page with radical Islamists, on that issue. And the devaluation of science by Islam, in favor of religion, is largely responsible for the appalling state of the Islamic world today. Western civilization has advanced to its current point because we DO have a strict division between these two disciplines. Science is not religion, and religion is not science. If we lose that clarity, we're in danger of losing everything. As I've tried to say at least 20 different ways, this is not a put down of religion. Religion is a civilizing force, as long it's not allowed to rule people's lives. The intelligent design movement is trying to erase these lines and bring us back into the Dark Ages. We should learn from the failure of Islam, but this is an issue that is obviously not going to rest easy.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

June 16, 2008 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30370_Video-_Bobby_Jindal_Supports_Teaching_Intelligent_Design/comments/

People, Age, World, Way

“Our way is to honor every religion and every nation according to their paths, as it is written in the book of prophets: 'because every nation will go in the name of its lord.”

Shlomo Amar (1948) Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem

In a letter to Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi criticizing the pope Benedict XVI for his remarks on Islam. http://web.archive.org/web/20081201181916/http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/763616.html (17/09/2006)

Books, Way

“Most Mens' Anger about Religion is as if two Men should quarrel for a Lady they neither of them care for.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Religion.
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Political Thoughts and Reflections

Men, Anger

“Religion disapproves of original thought the way Dracula disapproves of sunlight.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

As quoted in Matt Hern, The Wit and Blasphemy of Atheists (2011), p. 86
2011

Way

“You see, if you say something positive like the whole of life – all living things – is descended from a single common ancestor which lived about 4,000 million years ago and that we are all cousins, well that is an exceedingly important and true thing to say and that is what I want to say. Somebody who is religious sees that as threatening and so I am represented as attacking religion, and I am forced into responding to their reaction. But you do not have to see my main purpose as attacking religion. Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading. And that is what is so exciting for me.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

[1995-04-28, Kam Patel, Going the whole hog, Times Higher Education, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=97718&sectioncode=26]

Life, World

“All religious thought and speech are through and through symbolic. And this fundamental insight is perhaps as old as religion itself.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. VI.

“Supernatural agents are critical components of all religions but not of all ideologies. They are, in part, by-products of a naturally selected cognitive mechanism for detecting agents-such as predators, protectors, and prey-and for dealing rapidly and economically with stimulus situations involving people and animals. This innate releasing mechanism is trip-wired to attribute agency to virtually any action that mimics the stimulus conditions of natural agents: faces on clouds, voices in the wind, shadow figures, the intentions of cars or computers, and so on. Among natural agents, predators such as snakes are as likely to be candidates for deification as are protectors, such as parent-figures.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 15
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

People, Cars, Nature, Parent

“The whole system of symbolism impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in its architecture! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmoniously they accord with the worship of which they are the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself in them! Everything about them strives upwards, everything transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into branches and foliage, and becomes a tree; the fruit of the vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the man becomes God; God becomes a pure spirit. For the poet, the Christian life of the Middle Ages is a precious and inexhaustibly fruitful field. Only through Christianity could the circumstances of life combine to form such striking contrasts, such motley sorrow, such weird beauty, that one almost fancies such things can never have had any real existence, and that it is all a vast fever-dream the fever-dream of a delirious deity. Even Nature, during this sublime epoch of the Christian religion, seemed to have put on a fantastic disguise; for oftentimes though man, absorbed in abstract subtilties, turned away from her with abhorrence, she would recall him to her with a voice so mysteriously sweet, so terrible in its tenderness, so powerfully enchanting, that unconsciously he would listen and smile, and become terrified, and even fall sick unto death.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 26

Life, Death, God, Age

“I seek a light that shall be new, yet old, the oldest indeed of all lights…. I seek not science, not religion, not Theosophy, but Veda—the truth about Brahman, not only about His essentiality, but about His manifestation, not a lamp on the way to the forest, but a light and a guide to joy and action in the world, the truth which is beyond opinion, the knowledge which all thought strives after—yasmin vijñate sarvam vijñatam [which being known, all is known]. I believe that Veda to be the foundation of the Sanatan Dharma; I believe it to be the concealed divinity within Hinduism,—but a veil has to be drawn aside, a curtain has to be lifted. I believe it to be knowable and discoverable. I believe the future of India and the world to depend on its discovery and on its application, not to the renunciation of life, but to life in the world and among men.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

1910-14
India's Rebirth

Life, Men, Truth, World

“Today we face many problems. Some are created essentially by ourselves based on divisions due to ideology, religion, race, economic status, or other factors. Therefore, the time has come for us to think on a deeper level, on the human level, and from that level we should appreciate and respect the sameness of others as human beings.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

"Kindness and Compassion" p. 47.
The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness (1990)

Problem, Thinking, Time

“All this was obvious enough at the time even though it was not always put forward exactly in this form and in this language. Schlegel found India "the home of universal religion, the cradle of the noblest human race." J. C. Herder asked the question: "All the peoples of Europe, where are they from?" And he answered: "From Asia." Schopenhauer thought that India was the "fatherland of mankind," and he expressed the hope that European peoples "who stemmed from Asia… would re-attain the holy religions of their home." All this however changed under a growing consciousness of Imperial power and Euro-centricity. New theories reflected new power realities and new Imperial needs. Aryan dispersion from a common centre was retained, but its direction was changed and it became the theory of the Aryan invasion of India. The theory was meant to justify and to help the British Imperialism. The theory has little intellectual respectability left, but it has not lost its political usefulness and it is quite popular with the representatives of preceding Imperialisms and their Hindu apologists.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

People, Hope, Home, Question

“Under its first two Indian editors [The Illustrated Weekly] became a vehicle of Indian culture devoting most of its pages to art, sculpture, classical dance and pretty pictures of flowers, birds, and dencing belles. It did not touch controversial subjects, was strictly apolitical and asexual (save occasional blurred reproductions of Khajuraho or Konarak). It earned a well-deserved reputation for dull respectability. I changed all that. What was a four-wheeled victoria taking well-draped ladies out to eat the Indian air I made a noisy rumbustious, jet-propelled vehicle of information, controversy and amusement. I tore up the unwritten norms of gentility, both visual and linguistic…. And slowly the circulation built up, till the Illustrated did become a weekly habit of the English-reading pseudo-elite of the country. It became the most widely read journal in Asia (barring Japan) because it reflected all the contending points of view on every conceivable subject: politics, economics, religion, and the arts.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

In Khushwant Singh's editor's page http://books.google.co.in/books?id=sNBOAAAAMAAJ, IBH Pub. Co., 1981, p. 4

Art, Flowers, Bird, Change

““Are you yourself a Christian?”
The young man made a negative sign. “The concepts of religion baffle me.”
“This inscrutability is perhaps not unintentional,” said the ex-priest. “It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 1, section 4 (p. 367)

“Men glibly turn to an infallible Bible, or an infallible church, or an infallible Pope, or an infallible conscience, or an infallible Christ, and say that that authority is sufficient for them and enables them to accept truth. I believe all that kind of talk is false. It is false psychology or a failure of insight, and it is the fruit of mental laziness; a refusal to think things through. The most important convictions in religion cannot really be reached on the word of another. We can assent to propositions out of laziness of thought, or a desire to please, or an inability to argue, but one of the reasons why, in a crisis, men often feel let down by their religion is that they glibly assented to this or that, and falsely called their assent ‘belief.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.50

Men, Truth, Feeling, Failure

“Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatic about [the go to statement]. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a simple trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1973) in personal communication to Donald Knuth, quoted in Knuth's "Structured Programming with go to Statements".
1970s

Feeling, Problem

“Religion is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 494.

Heart

“I don`t want the reduction of religion to aesthetics, but the abolition of aesthetics & incorporating of art with the Word of God.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 7

God, Art

“The moral ideal has disappeared in all that has to do with international relations. The gain-seeking impulse supported by brute force has taken its place, and so far as the surface of things is concerned human civilization has gone back a full thousand years. Inconceivable though it be, we are brought face to face in this twentieth century with governments of peoples once great and highly civilized, whose word now means absolutely nothing. A pledge is something not to be kept, but to be broken. Cruelty and national lust have displaced human feeling and friendly international co-operation. Human life has no value, and the savings of generations are wasted month by month and almost day by day in mad attempts to dominate the whole world in pursuit of gain.
How has all this been possible? What has happened to the teachings and inspiring leadership of the great prophets and apostles of the mind, who for nearly three thousand years have been holding before mankind a vision of the moral ideal supported by intellectual power? What has become of the influence and guidance of the great religions Christian, Moslem, Hebrew, Buddhist with their counsels of peace and good-will, or of those of Plato and of Aristotle, of St. Augustine and of St. Thomas Aquinas, and of the outstanding captains of the mind Spanish, Italian, French, English, German who have for hundreds of years occupied the highest place in the citadel of human fame? The answer to these questions is not easy. Indeed, it sometimes seems impossible.
Are we, then, of this twentieth century and of this still free and independent land to lose heart and to yield to the despair which is becoming so widespread in countries other than ours? Not for one moment will we yield our faith or our courage! We may well repeat once more the words of Abraham Lincoln: "Most governments have been based on the denial of the equal rights of men, ours began by affirming those rights. We made the experiment, and the fruit is before us. Look at it think of it!"
However dark the skies may seem now, however violent and apparently irresistible are the savage attacks being made with barbarous brutality upon innocent women and children and non-combatant men, upon hospitals and institutions for the care of the aged and dependent, upon cathedrals and churches, upon libraries and galleries of the world s art, upon classic monuments which record the architectural achievements of centuries we must not despair. Our spirit of faith in the ultimate rule of the moral ideal and in the permanent establishment of liberty of thought, of speech, of worship and of government will not, and must not, be permitted to weaken or to lose control of our mind and our action.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Life, Women, Men, Children

“…The modern fading of interest in religion.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“One religion is as true as another.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 4, member 2, subsection 1, Religious Melancholy in defect; parties affected, Epicures, Atheists, Hypocrites, worldly secure, Carnalists; all impious persons, impenitent sinners, etc.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

“The Marxian theory of ideology predicts that the ruling ideas in any well functioning society will be ideas that promote the interests of the ruling class in that society, i. e., the class that is economically dominant. By the “ruling ideas” we should understand Marx to mean the central moral, political and economic ideas that dominate discussion in the mass media and in the corridors of power in that society. The theory is not peculiar to Marx, since the “classical realists” of antiquity like the Sophists and Thucydides advanced essentially the same theory: the powerful clothe their pursuit of self-interest in the garb of morality and justice. When Marx says that, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (The German Ideology) and that, “Law, morality, religion are to [the proletariat] so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests” (The Communist Manifesto), he is simply translating in to Marxian terms the Sophistic view “that the more powerful will always take advantage of the weaker, and will give the name of law and justice to whatever they lay down in their own interests.” (W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists”

Brian Leiter (1963) American philosopher and legal scholar

1971), p. 60
"The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud"

Justice, Law, Idea, Understanding

“If you follow a religion but are devoid of the Love of God, then those that do not follow a religion but have the love of God are better.”

Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi (1941–2001) Pakistani Sufi spiritual leader, poet, author

An introduction to this book
The Religion of God (2000)

Love, God

“Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Great Beast (1947), p. 123; it should be noted that in this comment she is referring to the intolerant traditions of ancient Rome and ancient Isreal, and not the modern entities, one of which did not yet exist at the time of her writing.

“The distinction between Christianity and all other systems of religion consists largely in this, that in these other, men are found seeking after God, while Christianity is God seeking after man.”

Thomas Arnold (1795–1842) English headmaster of Rugby School

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 133.

Men, God

“As to religion what is my belief? What is my insanity about that? My insanity, Your Honors, Gentlemen of the Jury, is that I wish to leave Rome aside inasmuch as it is the cause of division between the Catholics and Protestants. I did not wish to force my views because, in Batoche, to the Half-breeds that followed me I used the word Carte blanche. If I have any influence in the New World it is to help in that way and even if it takes two hundred years to become practical, then after my death that will bring out practical results, and then my children will shake hands with the Protestants of the New World in a friendly manner. I do not wish those evils which exist in Europe to be continued as much as I can influence it, among the Half-breeds. I do not wish that to be repeated in America, that work is not the work of some days or some years it is the work of hundreds of years.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Address to Grand Jury (1885)

Death, Children, World, Way

“The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

First Annual Report of the Arts Council (1945-1946)

Life, Problem, Heart

“Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself omnipotent. For its part, religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

Faith, Parting

“Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Richard Rush (1813)
1810s

“[A] less conventional member of the squirearchy… a political radical, reforming county magistrate and idiosyncratic historian of religions.”

Godfrey Higgins (1772–1833) British archaeologist

Yas Parish Registers of All Saint's, Owston.
About

“I have been advised that you have decided to move forward with your story without my interview. This, despite the fact confirmed more than three weeks ago that I would make myself available on a date certain (6 July), after you spoke to other relevant Church personnel and toured Church facilities, and that I would provide information annihilating the credibility of your sources including the fundamental crimes against the Scientology religion that were the reasons for their removal from post.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

June 2009 letter by Miscavige to journalists Thomas C. Tobin and Joe Childs, regarding investigation of accounts of abuse of Scientology staff members by Miscavige for "The Truth Rundown" series in the St. Petersburg Times —[Thomas C. Tobin, Joe Childs, A letter from David Miscavige, http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012140.ece, St Petersburg Times, June 23, 2009, 2010-07-03].

“As to the word itself, it is generally allowed to be of Greek extraction. But whence the Greek word, enthousiasmos, is derived, none has yet been able to show. Some have endeavoured to derive it from en theoi, in God; because all enthusiasm has reference to him. … It is not improbable, that one reason why this uncouth word has been retained in so many languages was, because men were not better agreed concerning the meaning than concerning the derivation of it. They therefore adopted the Greek word, because they did not understand it: they did not translate it into their own tongues, because they knew not how to translate it; it having been always a word of a loose, uncertain sense, to which no determinate meaning was affixed.
It is not, therefore, at all surprising, that it is so variously taken at this day; different persons understanding it in different senses, quite inconsistent with each other. Some take it in a good sense, for a divine impulse or impression, superior to all the natural faculties, and suspending, for the time, either in whole or in part, both the reason and the outward senses. In this meaning of the word, both the Prophets of old, and the Apostles, were proper enthusiasts; being, at divers times, so filled with the Spirit, and so influenced by Him who dwelt in their hearts, that the exercise of their own reason, their senses, and all their natural faculties, being suspended, they were wholly actuated by the power of God, and “spake” only “as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
Others take the word in an indifferent sense, such as is neither morally good nor evil: thus they speak of the enthusiasm of the poets; of Homer and Virgil in particular. And this a late eminent writer extends so far as to assert, there is no man excellent in his profession, whatsoever it be, who has not in his temper a strong tincture of enthusiasm. By enthusiasm these appear to understand, all uncommon vigour of thought, a peculiar fervour of spirit, a vivacity and strength not to be found in common men; elevating the soul to greater and higher things than cool reason could have attained.
But neither of these is the sense wherein the word “enthusiasm” is most usually understood. The generality of men, if no farther agreed, at least agree thus far concerning it, that it is something evil: and this is plainly the sentiment of all those who call the religion of the heart “enthusiasm.” Accordingly, I shall take it in the following pages, as an evil; a misfortune, if not a fault. As to the nature of enthusiasm, it is, undoubtedly a disorder of the mind; and such a disorder as greatly hinders the exercise of reason. Nay, sometimes it wholly sets it aside: it not only dims but shuts the eyes of the understanding. It may, therefore, well be accounted a species of madness; of madness rather than of folly: seeing a fool is properly one who draws wrong conclusions from right premisses; whereas a madman draws right conclusions, but from wrong premisses. And so does an enthusiast suppose his premisses true, and his conclusions would necessarily follow. But here lies his mistake: his premisses are false. He imagines himself to be what he is not: and therefore, setting out wrong, the farther he goes, the more he wanders out of the way.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm"
Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)

Men, God, Fools, Way

“Emancipation from the bondage of nature can only be brought about by the religion of Mitzvoth”

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994) israeli intellectual

"Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State" (1995)

Nature

“The only non-Christians who seemed to me really to know anything were the Romantics; and a good many of them were dangerously tinged with something like religion, even at times with Christianity. The upshot of it all could nearly be expressed in a perversion of Roland's great line in the Chanson: 'Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy (1955)

Time

“There is a true, religious devotion in the mind and feelings of that man whose soul springs forth in beauty and power, whose physical form is upright and symmetrical, and who, in fulfilling the laws of health, fulfils the laws of Deity. There is a true religion in the intellectual man, who, penetrating deeply into the earth, and air, and sky, for scientific investigation, culls all the treasures of thought and beauty, and stores them up in his memory as sacred and divine.”

Cora L. V. Scott (1840–1923) American spiritualist, writer

“The Religion of Life” (1858)

Health, Law, Beauty, Feeling

“By the time Verily was sixteen, a sturdy and rather good-looking young man of some education and impeccable manners, he had become a thoroughgoing skeptic. If the dogmas about witchery could be so hopelessly wrong, how could any of the teachings of the ministers be relied upon? It left Verily Cooper at loose ends, intellectually speaking, for all his teachers spoke as if religion were the cornerstone of all other learning, and yet all of Verily’s actual studies led him to the conclusion that sciences founded upon religion were uncertain at best, utterly bogus at worst.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 9.

Education, Study, Learning, Teachers

“We begin by stating that religion is unbelief. It is a concern, indeed, we must say that it is the one great concern, of godless man…”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

1:2
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

“A country cannot be defeated politically unless it is defeated culturally. Our alien rulers knew that they could not conquer India without conquering Hinduism - cultural India's name at its deepest and highest, and the principle of its identity, continuity and reawakening. Therefore Hinduism became an object of their special attack. Physical attack was supplemented by ideological attack. They began to interpret for us our history, our religion, our culture and ourselves. We learnt to look at us through their eyes…. The long period created an atmosphere of mental slavery and imitation. It created a class of people Hindu in their names and by birth but anti-Hindu in orientation, sympathy and loyalty. They knew all the bad things and nothing good about Hinduism. Hindu dharma is now being subverted from within. Anti-Hindu Hindus are very important today; they rule the roost; they write our histories, they define our nation; they control the media, the academia, the politics, the higher administration and higher courts. They are now working as clients of those forces who are planning to revive their old Imperialism… During this period our minds became soft. We became escapists; we wanted to avoid conflict at any cost, even conflict and controversy of ideas, even when this controversy was necessary. We developed an escape-route. We called it "synthesis". We said all religions, all scriptures, all prophets preach the same things. It was intellectual surrender, and our enemies saw it that way; they concluded that we are amenable to anything, that we would clutch at any false hope or idea to avoid a struggle, and that we would do nothing to defend ourselves. Therefore, they have become even more aggressive. It also shows that we have lost spiritual discrimination (viveka), and would entertain any falsehood; this is prajñâ-dosha, drishti-dosha, and it cannot be good for our survival in the long run. People first fall into delusion before they fall into misfortune.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

People, Hope, Way, History

“Many of us have developed an attitude' one of "we cannot bear to be insulted, and we do not want to create any tension." I always say that if serving the religion in a peaceful and calm manner is all that is demanded of us, then Allah would have accepted such service from His Messenger, peace be upon him, or would have accepted such peaceful service from the Esteemed Companions. But we see that Allah made them go through stages of hardship and tension too. Did not the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, endure tense moments? He waged jihad too. His Holy blood was spilled. Even his blessed teeth were martyred. How many of us have even had a stone thrown at us?; we have adopted the attitude: "One of my routine should not be disturbed; I should keep to my routine."”

Abdul Rashid Ghazi (1964–2007) Pakistani fundamentalist

Instead, we should be prepared for everything, and we should not surrender so easily.

Peace

“There is, I believe, something, which may be named by the misleading and debased word 'religion', and is the most distinctively human or awakened activity of man. But clearly there is something else, which is also called 'religion', and is his greatest folly and shame.”

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) British novelist and philosopher

Other texts Source: Waking World, Chapter 11: Religion http://olafstapledonarchive.webs.com/wakingworld_ch11.html

“I had manufactured artificial goals as a means of motivating myself, using my longing for money, cars, and other material possessions to create a false sense of purpose. They had worked on me like spoonfuls of sugar- a jolt of energy that soon faded, leaving behind the pangs of a deeper hunger. I had cut myself off from the transcendent hope of religion, and now a vast and frightening expanse of uncertainty lay before me.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Pages 116-117
2000s, (2008)

Money, Hunger, Hope, Cars

“A living myth remains largely unconscious for the majority. It is the reality, not the symbol. … Some people in every culture, however, see through or beyond the myth. … Those whose amphibious minds move both within and beyond the myth may be though of as outlaws or metaphysicians. Myth and metaphysics are related to each other in the same way that religion is related to theology. The mythical mind is unreflective. It lives unquestioningly within a horizon of the culture’s images, stories, rituals, and symbols, just as the religious person rests content within the liturgy and creedal structure of the church or cult. The metaphysical mind reflects upon the myth and tries to make it conscious. It plays with the stories and images and lifts the basic presuppositions about life into the light of consciousness. In this sense, metaphysics is the thinking person’s religion.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 21

Life, People, Way, Thinking

“Of course politics are important — Iraq, Palestine, even social deprivation in Bradford. But as we wake up to this huge challenge to our civilised values, don't let's forget the elephant in the room — an elephant called "religion."”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Part 1, 00:00:24
The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Parting, Forgetting

“It is true that other Nations may, as they do, enforce contrary rules of conscience and conduct. It is true that policies may be pursued under flags other than our own, but those policies are beyond our jurisdiction. Yet in our inner individual lives we can never be indifferent, and we assert for ourselves complete freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the principles for which our flag has so long been the lofty symbol. As it was so well said by James Madison, over a century ago: "We hold it for a fundamental and inalienable truth that religion and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence."”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Address at San Diego Exposition (1935)

Truth, Freedom, Indifference

“Faith is, indeed, most necessary in human affairs, as well as in religion Without faith, no contracts could be concluded, nor could any business be transacted. And without faith, where would be the basis for the divine reward of human merit? As it is, that faith which embraces the truths of religion deserves reward. Such faith is, according to the Apostle, "a substantiation of things to be hoped for, a testimonial to things that appear not."”

John of Salisbury English philosopher and theologian

Faith is intermediate between opinion and science. p. 223
The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury (1159)

Truth, Faith, Hope, Business

“In our preoccupations with sex, our submission to gods and leaders, our sometimes suicidal commitment to ideas, religions, and trivial details of cultural style, we become the unconscious creators of the social organism's exploits.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

The Clint Eastwood Conundrum
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History (1997)

God, Sex, Idea, Suicide

“Prophet Mohammed was a pedophile and Islam is a religion sanctifying pedophilia, it is indeed a pedophile religion. Pedophilia is the will of Allah.”

Jussi Halla-aho (1971) Finnish Slavic linguist, blogger and a politician

Jussi Halla-aho (2008), published in the blog Scripta Muutama täky Illmanin Mikalle http://www.halla-aho.com/scripta/muutama_taky_illmanin_mikalle.html, June 6, 2008 2005-09

“The shrinking of church religion, however, is only one – and the sociologically less interesting – dimension of the problem of secularization. For the analysis of contemporary society another question is more important. What are the dominant values overarching contemporary culture? What is the socio-structural basis of these values and what is their function in the live of contemporary man?”

Thomas Luckmann (1927–2016) American-Austrian sociologist

Source: The invisible religion, 1967, p. 40

Question, Problem

“The strength of a culture depends on its capacity to open itself up to other cultures, to integrate itself into them and to integrate them into it. It doesn't matter how many differences there may be, Habermas pointed out, everyone shares some principles. No culture tolerates the exploitation of human beings. No religion permits the murder of innocent people. No civilisation accepts violence or terror.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

[...] "Peace is not a natural state of man, as the great pacifist Gandhi told us. But man can create it. If we have broken down walls that seemed unbreakable, we will not passively agree that more profound differences should their place." 5th Dec. 2005 Sources: Transcripción completa del discurso en la web de la ONU http://www.spainun.org/pages/viewfull.cfm?ElementID=2229&print=1. Many extracts taken from the press, e.g. Cadena Ser http://www.cadenaser.com/espana/articulo/alegato-terrorismo-primera-reunion-alianza/csrcsrpor/20051127csrcsrnac_1/Tes. As President, 2005

People, Dependency