Quotes About Religion

Her only defence for shifting religious loyalties was that she was very spiritually inclined.

Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.

Religion is the call to confront reality to master the self.

First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat.

It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper, the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations.

The faith I was born into formed me.

All -isms end up in schisms.

Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality. — Mother Jones November/December 1997.

What a strange fellowship this is, the God seekers in every land, lifting their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all life. How does it sound from above? Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in strange ethereal harmony? Does one faith carry the lead or do the parts share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full throated chorus? We cannot know. All we can do is to listen carefully and with full attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine.

Science makes major contributions to minor needs, Justice Holmes was fond of saying, adding that religion, however small its successes, is at least at work on the things that matter most.

Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he forged for Medina, which - grounded as it was in the Quranic injunction, "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) - is arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human history.

I've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about myth and religion. I've also spent time with things like The Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark ; but while I was reading them, I was thinking, "Yes, yes, yes; but don't you need to maintain a core of solid, rock-hard belief to be an atheist in this world?" [ Laughter. ] I think what I really like is the idea of belief itself.

While I respect the Judeo-Christian ethic, as well as the eastern philosophies and of course the teachings of Mohammed, I find that organized religion has corrupted those beliefs to justify countless atrocities throughout history. Were I to attend church, I'd be a hypocrite.

The concept of hell and endless torment is popular with those who believe they aren't headed there.

Islam may soon become the majority religion in countries whose churches have been turned more and more into tourist sites, apartment houses, theatres, and places of entertainment. The French scholar Olivier Roy is right: Islam is now a European religion.

Deep in the marrow of our religion is the conviction that loss and sacrifice are noble. To surrender something is the highest proof of Christian duty.

Apple actively encourages the population to lose their possessions. Music? Store it on the Cloud. Books? Store them on the Cloud. Film, magazines, newspapers, TV are all safely stored in the ether and not underfoot or stuffed in a closet. It's a modernist monastery where the religion is Apple itself.

The main thing wrong with religion is that people have gotten it wrong. The goal is to understand religion as it should be understood, as traditions, myths, symbols, and practices intended to lead one to a deeper, more profound experience of human life. The desire for this knowledge is hard wired in us. That won't disappear. Unless of course we wipe each other out in the next holy war, in which case we've successfully screwed ourselves.

From the moralizing of the Christian right to the cruelty and misogyny of Sharia Law, the result is a perverted understanding of our basic, biological nature, particularly when it comes to our urge to procreate. You could call it Religion's Unholy Trinity: Sex, Homosexuality, and Abortion. Sex

The moment you fall to your knees in front of a cross, thinking you're praying to some God, you're missing the point. The idea is to look through the symbol to the meaning behind it. Or, as Zen Buddhists put it: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." T

I'm not a religious person, and I'm not too interested in being a part of a religion, but I do like having some sort of communal gathering, and having some sense of peoples.

He's never fought with religion; what is the point of railing against such beauty, such intimate theatre, such chime of eternity? He can treasure it without believing in it.

I don't believe there's any inherent darkness at the center of religion at all. I think religion actually is a morally neutral force.

Finally, Luther, Bunyan, and Thérèse all developed mature religious philosophies that differed from those of their communities because (from a psychiatric standpoint) each needed desperately to find a cure for obsessions and compulsions and, in order to do so, needed to find an entirely new perspective from which to view obsessional fears.