Quotes About Religion

H]as it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it? [ 1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Metaphor' (Columbia University / The New York Times , December 12, 1991)]

And my grandfather... was forever knocked into that middle place, unable to worship a God in whose existence he could not wholly disbelieve. Permanent alteration: a hole.

Our group takes what I'll call a Post-Atheist stance. Our position is that god is a creation of human beings, who only exists because of the clap-hands-if-you-believe-in-fairies principle. If enough people were sensible enough not to clap hands, then this Tinker Bell god would die. However, unfortunately, billions of human beings are still prepared to defend their belief in some sort of god-fairy, and, as a result, god exists. What's worse is that he is now running amok.

Morality came before religion, and religion was our ancestors' way of responding to that built-in need. And if that was so, then it was perfectly possible to lead a good life, to have a strong sense of right and wrong, without ever letting God and his harpies into the room.

Nathuram Godse. "Thank God," Amina burst out, "it's not a Muslim name!

It is hard for a person of no faith like myself to comprehend the moment when faith dies in the human heart. The kneeling believer who suddenly understands that there is no reason to pray because nobody's listening.

What kind of God is it who's upset by a cartoon in Danish? [Interview with Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason , June 23, 2006]

He wanted, for example, to investigate why one should hold fast to a religion not because it was true but because it was the faith of one's fathers. Was faith not faith but simple family habit? Maybe there was no true religion but only this eternal handing down. And error could be handed down as easily as virtue. Was faith no more than an error of our ancestors?

Burn the books and trust the Book; shred the papers and hear the Word.

Most of the oppression of Muslims in the world right now is carried out by other Muslims.

From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. He moves in mysterious ways: men say.

From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. He moves in mysterious ways: men say. Small wonder, then, that women have turned to me.

Half-Christian, half-Jewish, a 'cathjew nut'

Dixitque Deus: fiat lux. Et facta est lux. Translated by himself into his personal Bombay "Wulgate": And God said, Cheap Italian motor car, beauty soap of the film star. And there was Lux. Please, Daddy, why did God want a small Fiat and a bar of soap, and also please, why did he get the soap only? Why couldn't he make the car? And why not a better car, Daddy? He could've asked for a Jesus Chrysler, no?

En esta ciudad, Mahound, el negociante-profeta, está fundando una de las grandes religiones del mundo;

Religion has moved out of the private space. (...) The moment it moves into the public sphere it becomes everybody's business.

Human beings who turn away from God lose love, and certainty

All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own," said Birbal, "and so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none." The first minister and the emperor were standing at

What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill for them! And when we've done it often enough, the deadening of affect that results makes it easier to do it again. So India's problem turns out to be the world's problem. What happened in India has happened in God's name. The problem's name is God.

and the incident of the Satanic verses in the early career of the Prophet, and the politics of Muhammad's harem after his return to Mecca in triumph; and the surrealism of the newspapers, in which butterflies could fly into young girls' mouths, asking to be consumed, and children were born with no faces

Don't let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word. [ 1,000 Days 'Trapped Inside a Metaphor' (Columbia University / The New York Times , December 12, 1991)]

What sort of god could be excused the actions of his followers? Didn't it, in a way, infantilise the deity to say he was powerless against the faithful?

I also hoped that my own track record, the things I'd written, the work I'd done, the person I had been, would be my best defense against the demonization of my character and motives that was taking place. But those were thoughts from before the time in which we all became too frightened of religion in general and one particular religion in particular—religion redefined as the capacity of religionists to commit earthly violence in the name of their unearthly sky god.

We can't deny the ubiquity of faith. If we write in such a way as to prejudge such belief as in some way deluded or false, then are we not guilty of elitism, of imposing our world-view on the masses?