Quotes About Religion

The one thing I suspected about Jim Jeffreys was that he must be Christian, churchy - he had the patience and optimism of someone who thought Jesus was watching.

God is everything higher which I cannot understand but only believe.

In religion, precise truth has almost no currency. True believers will kill and destroy to defend their inaccurate beliefs.

My arguments were beginning to sound a little strained to me, too. I was in the position of a priest trying to sell religion.

I am not religious. I cannot conceive of gods who would give a damn about humanity's frothy carryings-on. I mean, logically, beings of that order just wouldn't.

Not only are people created in the image of God, but all people are spiritually equal before God. More than anything else, this idea separated Judaism, which was a national or ethnic religion, from Christianity. Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free, Romans and barbarians, all were welcome in the church as equals.

The transition from being a persecuted minority religion to being the favored faith of the emperor inevitably forged ties between church and state that have been a driving force in Western political life ever since.

The pressure on her arm brought Etta back onto the uncomfortable wooden pew. But she didn't want to stay there, so she climbed back out the window, through the glass eyes of the seven-foot Good Shepherd, and started again the futile weaving of invisible ifs and slippery mights into an equally unattainable past.

No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin—because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life.

There is nothing so erroneous as the opinions expressed by some scholars and men of science that religious experience is a pathological condition of the brain or an invasion from the unconscious. This irresponsible attitude destroys the very foundation of the precious urge responsible for the progress of mankind.

Since God is truth, a contempt for truth is equally a contempt for God.

No sistema aristotélico, a ética é um fator relativamente pouco importante. O cristianismo, entretanto, com a condenação do pecado e o apelo à retidão dá forte ênfase à moral. Não obstante, a ética não é a base do sistema cristão. A teologia é mais fundamental, pois a ética depende de Deus.

The Baptists expanded from 94 congregations in 1760 to 858 in 1790 to become the single largest religious denomination in America. The Methodists had no adherents at all in 1760, but by 1790 they had created over seven hundred congregations—despite the fact that the great founder of English Methodism, John Wesley, had publicly opposed the American Revolution.

Christianity is such a silly religion.

This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase In God We Trust onto the currency, in direct violation of the First Amendment.

I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam -- good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.

Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.

There are, then, three sorts of religious experiences. The ancient rites, which are essentially propitiatory. The mysteries, which purge the soul and allow us to glimpse eternity. And philosophy, which attempts to define not only the material world but to suggest practical ways to the good life, as well as attempting to synthesize (as Iamblichos does so beautifully) all true religion in a single comprehensive system.

I'm a born-again atheist.

I think there should be a constitutional amendment making it impossible for anyone to be president who believes in an afterlife.

Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe and what, in fact, they do believe, as demonstrated by their actions. A religion of brotherhood and mildness which daily murders those who disagree with its doctrines can only be thought hypocrite, or worse.

Nothing man invents can last forever, including Christ, his most mischievous invention.

It is customary for emperors who listen to bishops to hurl insults at the very civilization that created them.

Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government. —Bertrand Russell