Quotes About Religion

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

The virtue she valued most was faith. It had no place on Franklin's list. She placed her trust in Providence. He placed his faith in man.

The only difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England, Franklin joked, is that the former is infallible while the latter is never in the wrong.

Before the revival began, a scant one in ten Americans were church members; by the time it ended, that ratio had risen to eight in ten.

One debate merged religion and politics. What were the political consequences of the idea of the equality of souls? Could the soul of America be redeemed from the nation's original sin, the Constitution's sanctioning of slavery?

After Benjamin Franklin read Jefferson's draft, he picked up his quill, scratched out the words "sacred & undeniable," and suggested that "these truths" were, instead, "self-evident." This was more than a quibble. Truths that are sacred and undeniable are God-given and divine, the stuff of religion. Truths that are self-evident are laws of nature, empirical and observable, the stuff of science. This divide has nearly rent the Republic apart.

After Benjamin Franklin read Jefferson's draft, he picked up his quill, scratched out the words "sacred and undeniable," and suggested that "these truths" were, instead, "self-evident." This was mroe than a quibble. Truths that are sacred and undeniable are God-given and divine, the stuff of religion. Truths that are self-evident are laws of nature, empirical and observable, the stuff of science.

Instead, the legislature passed new laws banning the teaching of slaves to read and write, and prohibiting, too, teaching slaves about the Bible.43 In a nation founded on a written Declaration, made sacred by evangelicals during a religious revival, reading about equality became a crime.

Many wars had to do with religion, and because many slaves were prisoners of war, slaves and their owners tended to be people of different faiths: Christians enslaved Jews; Muslims enslaved

The person of faith cannot accept reason as the arbiter of truth without giving up on faith...

Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error.

The United States was founded during the most secular era in American history, either before or since. In the late eighteenth century, church membership was low, and anticlerical feeling was high. It is no accident that the Constitution does not mention God.

When it comes to religion, no one knows anything, especially those who claim to know best.

Father-in-law comes to stay, goes to local church and returns saying he will spend the rest of his life translating New English Bible back into English.

The difference between my beliefs and having a religious faith is that I am prepared to change my views in light of new evidence, but someone of a religious faith will just stick their fingers in the ears and say: 'I'm not listening, there's nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.

Arabic science throughout its golden age was inextricably linked to religion; indeed, it was driven by the need of early scholars to interpret the Qur'an.

One cannot, therefore, understand Arabic science without considering the extent to which Islam influenced scientific and philosophical thought. Arabic science was, throughout its golden age, inextricably linked to religion. Clearly, the scientific revolution of the Abbasids would not have taken place if it were not for Islam, incontrast to the spread of Christianity over the preceding centuries, which had nothink like the same effect in stimulation and encouraging original scientific thinking.

As the son of a Protestant Christian mother and a Shia Muslim father, I have nevertheless ended up without a religious bone in my body.

The unbelieving world increasingly rejects the truth about God, while the believing world increasingly ignores the truth about God.

1. Bullying is not okay. Period. 2. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to physically or verbally assault people. 3. If your sincerely-held religious beliefs require you to bully children, then your beliefs are fucked up.

Your religious beliefs are your business. They are not and should not be the basis for law. If you use them as justification to discriminate against others, don't be upset when others decide you're an asshole." [ Blog post of July 26, 2011 ]

True religion has, at its core: Love, Peace, Mercy, Justice and Freedom. If any of these elements is not fully present in a religion, the religion has been compromised.

My faith doesn't go over real well in Hollywood.

In India, where there are no passports or identity discs, and where religion counts for so much - except among those few who have crossed the 'black water' - i believe that a man wearing a saffron robe, or carrying a beggar's bowl, or with silver crosses on his headgear and chest, could walk from Khyber Pass to Cape Comorin without once being questioned about his destination, or the object of his journey.