Quotes About Religion

If you are determined on the religious life, you have to toughen up your mind. You have to let it be a thouroughfare for all thoughts, and among them you must make choices.

People who have failed at Christianity aren't likely to make great Buddhists.

banking is like religion: you have to accept certain rather dicey things simply on faith, and then everything else follows in marvellous logic.

Aztec religion practiced human sacrifice, understanding it to be both a form of oblation to the gods and a means of deification for the victims. The crucifixion therefore made a certain kind of sense by analogy and the cross was thus incorporated into this sacrificial narrative. Nahua (Aztec) converts could comprehend a crucified god, self-offered to a yet-higher deity.

Marc Chagall's White Crucifixion (1938) was painted shortly after Kristallnacht—the horrifying, widespread Nazi raid on German Jews. The painting shows a world swallowed up by violence, including the figure of Christ on the cross with a Jewish prayer shawl draped around his loins.

And you know what? If there is a God, and it's that same God who's so eager to have temples built in honor of his greatness, and wars fought over him, and people dropping to their knees telling him what a wonderful, magnificent being he is? If this all-powerful, all-knowing creature for some reason just can't get by without my worship? Then let him give me some proof. Or at least get over himself if I decide to go out and get some.

Sort of pregnant. Sort of dead. Sort of Jewish. These are impossibles.

According to the Buddhist tradition," he began, "there is no sort of conversion or missionary work. It is not good to ask someone to follow a different faith. Yet, because there are so many different mental dispositions, one religion simply cannot serve, cannot satisfy all people.

Although many sociologists still echo Max Weber's (1864–1920) claim that capitalism originated in the Protestant Reformation, capitalism actually originated in the "depths" of the "Dark Ages.

IN WHAT CAME TO BE KNOWN as his farewell address, Muhammad is said to have told his followers: "I was ordered to fight all men until they say 'There is no god but Allah.'"1 This is entirely consistent with the Qur'an (9:5) : "[S]lay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them [captive], and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush." In this spirit, Muhammad's heirs set out to conquer the world.

That the Catholic Church finally thrives in Latin America could be considered as partly a gift from Martin Luther.

The truth is that not only did Christianity not impede the rise of science; it was essential to it, which is why science arose only in the Christian West!

In addition, local authorities were ordered to seize each Christian man, to pluck out his beard and to tattoo a black mark on his shoulder. When few Christians defected in response to these measures, the Kh?n then ordered that all Christian men be castrated and have one eye put out—which caused many deaths in this era before antibiotics, but did lead to many conversions.37

Christianity became a European faith because Europe was the only "continent where it was not destroyed."44

The image of medieval piety, of churches filled with devout peasants, has no historical basis.

Even if they hated going to church and knew very little of Christianity, Europeans in the era of the Reformations were not irreligious. But, as Gerald Strauss put it, they 'practiced their own brand of religion, which was a rich compound of ancient rituals, time-bound customs, a sort of unreconstructable folk Catholicism, and a large portion of magic to help them in their daily lives for survival'.

Today, little has changed in European religious life. State churches still dominate all of Europe's 'Protestant' nations, with the negative consequences that will be seen in the next chapter. Church attendance remains low everywhere. And magic is still widely embraced!

As one of China's leading economists put it, "in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don't have any doubt about this."42 Neither do I.

Given the American example, it should always have been obvious that the sacred canopy claims are silly. In the United States, in the most fully pluralistic nation that probably has ever existed, religion is thriving. And it is absolutely clear that it is competition among religious groups, each needing to effectively recruit members or fade away, that has produced these results.

half of Americans belonged, and today about 70 per cent are affiliated with a local church.

The implications of these fertility differences have been fully explored by Eric Kaufmann of the University of London in his book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? (2010). Kaufmann noted that because only the irreligious sector of Europe's population is declining, while the religious sector is growing, only the irreligious European population is headed towards extinction, with the result that differential fertility may produce a huge religious revival in Europe.

The frequent claims that empty churches and low levels of religious activity in Europe today reflect a steep decline in piety are wrong—it was always thus.

Nevertheless, this too is a myth. The Catholic Church actually thrives on Protestant competition and is far more successful and effective when forced to confront it.

Women were especially drawn to Christianity because it offered them a life that was so greatly superior to the life they otherwise would have led.