Quotes About Religion

At the beginning of each session, one of us will begin talking about some random idea, another person will chime in or change the subject, and miraculously, after twenty minutes, we find that we have zeroed in on a question that everyone is passionate about. What continues to astonish me is the frequency with which religion slips into the room, unbidden but persistent.

Theoretical physics is the deepest and purest branch of science. It is the outpost of science closest to philosophy, and religion. Experimental scientists occupy themselves with observing and measuring the cosmos, finding out what stuff exists, no matter how strange that stuff may be. Theoretical physicists, on the other hand, are not satisfied with observing the universe. They want to know why .

Most religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, subscribe to an interventionist view of God. ...all of these religions, at least in their orthodox expressions, are incompatible with science. This is as far as one gets with a purely logical analysis. Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other Gods conflict with the assumptions of science.

A Presbyterian minister recently said to me that science and religion share a sense of wonder. I agree.

the most probable of all my theorems, is that life is ordered by the principles of some religion so peculiar and obscure it has no followers, and none may fathom it, nor know the rituals by which to court its favour.

Oh, they said God was dead, all those beatniks and snooty-ass Frenchmen. Not me. I knew better. I said to them, Wait, boys! Don't break cover yet awhile. He might be faking. I mean, they thought Saddam was dead. And the novel. And Glenn Close in that last scene of Fatal Attraction. That's what I said. But did they listen? Ohh no. They went right ahead and organized God's funeral. Well, don't count your chickens before they come home to roost...

The third and, given due consideration, most probable of all my theorems, is that life is ordered by the principles of some religion so peculiar and obscure it has no followers, and none may fathom it, nor know the rituals by which to court its favor.

We may owe Superman and E.T. to Jewish film directors, but there's no doubting that it's the Christian story we're being told.)

We are allowed to question people about their politics or ethics and expect them to defend their beliefs, or at least hold their own in any other important matter by recourse to evidence, yet somehow on the massive subject of God and how he might have us behave, all rational discussion must stop the moment we hear 'I believe'.

A belief in the validity of the acquisition of knowledge and a scientific understanding of the world we live in, the creation and appreciation of aesthetic phenomena in all their many forms, and the broadening and deepening of our range of experiences in day-to-day living, is rapidly becoming the 'religion' of our time.

God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

I mean in the South African case, many of those who were part of death squads would have been respectable members of their white community, people who went to church on Sunday, every Sunday.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.

If Jews, Christians and Muslims pray to God for the food He provides; Hindus pray to food as God.

Every religion has a positive side that teaches love and inclusion, and a horrible side that celebrates hatred and exclusion.

One must bear in mind that the concept of God as a judge, which is part of Christian and Islamic mythology, is absent in Hindu mythology

Christian church, a Muslim mosque, a Buddhist monastery or a Sikh gurudwara are spaces designed to bring the community together and focus on a common goal—confess sins, reaffirm submission, awaken to desires and delusions and learn from the songs of the sages, as the case may be. But a Hindu temple is the house of a deity. We go to see them and be seen by them,

The whole message of the Christian scripture is based in the idea of metanoia, the change of heart that happens when we meet God face-to-face. Even a cursory knowledge of history reveals that Christianity is a religion about change. The Christian faith always changes--even when some of its adherents claim that it does not.

It is just mortifying to be a Christian, except for the Jesus part. —Anne Lamott

Although churches seem the most natural space to perform spiritual awakening, the disconcerting reality is that many people in Western society see churches more as museums of religion than sacred stages that dramatize the movement of God's spirit.

No Oxford don was forgiven for writing books outside his field of study—except for detective stories which dons, like everyone else, read when they are down with the 'flu. But it was considered unforgivable that Lewis wrote international best-sellers, and worse still that many were of a religious nature." Lewis