Quotes About Religion

Religion struck me so vague a thing at best, that I could perceive no advantage of any one system over any other.

I have never been able to soothe myself with the sugary delusions of religion; for these things stand convicted of the utmost absurdity in light of modern scientific knowledge.

Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests.

Faith is belief without proof. Faith is fine, but don't call it science.

Faith is belief without proof. Faith is fine, but don't call it science.

Our history, especially that of the great religions, Christianity in particular, has given us a "hidden prejudice" in favor of the "beyond" at the expense of the "here and now" and this must be changed. (quoted from The Age of Atheists" by Peter Watson, p 25)

I've never understood how so many barely literate people read the Bible so much. It's hard.

I'll bet the Catholic Church lost out on a lot of would-be nuns when they started dressing like ordinary meter maids.

The first mystery was that the rows of candles under each of the statues of Jesus and Mary and Joseph were all flickering and trembling as if there were gusts of wind when in fact the vast church was shut tight and none of the heavy doors were open. I believed that the spirit of God in the statues was so strong it made the candles flutter and hiss, tremulous with suffering. Each tiny burst of light lit up the caked blood on Jesus's bony white feet and it looked wet.

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

Only religion can lead to such evil.

My dad doesn't like religion much, but I grew up very close to the Baptist tradition. God isn't this distant thing. God is right here with you all the time. He's your buddy, and you can talk about everything.

Wherever this idea, that the religious predicates are only anthropomorphisms, has taken possession of man, there has doubt, has unbelief, obtained mastery of faith.

Nature is precisely what separates man from God … [R]eligion believes that one day this wall of separation will fall away. One day there will be no Nature, no matter, no body, at least none such as to separate man from God: then there will be only God[.]

He who makes God act humanly, declares human activity to be divine[.]

God does not negative himself in the Incarnation, but he shows himself as that which he is, as a human being.

The Jewish people trusted thmself to do nothing except that what was commanded by God; they were without will even in external things; the authority of religion extended itself even to their food. The Christian religion, on the other hand, in all external things made humankind dependent on itself, i.e. placed in it what Judaism placed out of it. … Thus do things change. What yesterday was still religion is no longer such to-day; and what to-day is atheism, to-morrow will be religion.

Der Religion ist nur das Heilige wahr, der Philosophie ist nur das Wahre heilig.

If thy predicates are anthropomorphisms, the subject is an anthropomorphism too.

Faith discriminates thus: This is true, that is false. And it claims truth to itself alone. Faith has for its object a definite, specific truth … One thing alone is truth, … God … ; all other gods are vain idols.

In the perception of the senses consciousness of the object is distinguishable from consciousness of self; … in religion, consciousness of the object and self-consciousness coincide. … The object of the sense is … indifferent … ; … the object of religion is a selected object; … it essentially presupposes a critical judgement, a discrimination between the divine and the non-divine, between that which is worthy of adoration and that which is not worthy.

The notion that the fulfilment of prayer has been determined from eternity, that it was originally included in the plan of creation, is the empty, absurd fiction of a mechanical mode of thought, which is in absolute contradiction with the nature of religion. Whether God decides on the fulfilment of my prayer now, on the immediate occasion of my offering it, or whether he did decide on it long ago, is the same thing.