Quotes About Religion

Whoever sacrifices to any god but the Lord alone shall be utterly annihilated" (Exodus 22:20).

The cognitive science of religion begins with a simple premise: Religion is first and foremost a neurological phenomenon.

But no religion is inherently violent or peaceful; people are violent or peaceful.

Jesus called himself "the Son of Man.

Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith. It is an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors (read rituals and myths) that provides a common language with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence.

Yet if one wants to uncover what Jesus himself truly believed, one must never lose sight of this fundamental fact: Jesus was not a Christian. Jesus was a Jew preaching Judaism to other Jews. His

In the words of the Iranian political philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, "We no longer claim that a genuinely religious government can be democratic, but that it cannot be otherwise.

The choice for the early church was clear: either Jesus was just another failed messiah, or what the Jews of Jesus's time expected of the messiah was wrong and had to be adjusted

Muhammad may have been, there is one detail that should not be lost in the tumult and confusion

The origin of the religious impulse, in other words, is not rooted in our quest for meaning or our fear of the unknown. It is not born of our involuntary reactions to the natural world. It is not an accidental consequence of the complex workings of our brains. It is the result of something far more primal and difficult to explain: our ingrained, intuitive, and wholly experiential belief that we are, whatever else we are, embodied souls.

Herod was convert,after all. His mother was Arab. His people, the Idumeans, had come to Judaism only a generation or two earlier.

The fact is that for fourteen centuries, the science of Quranic commentary has been the exclusive domain of Muslim men. And

Unshackled by the state, the Ulama were now free to ascend to a position of unquestioned religious authority in the Ummah, which they used not only to institutionalize their legal and theological opinions into distinct schools of thought but also to formulate a binding, comprehensive code of conduct called the Shariah, forever transforming Islam from a religion into an all-embracing way of life: one that the Ulama claimed sole authority to define.

As the ninth-century legal scholar Malik ibn Anas, founder of the Maliki school of law, once quipped, "This religion is a science, so pay close attention to those from whom you learn it.

Literal religion is full of pitfalls.

How on earth did it come about that all the things denounced in the Gospels are violently defended by the Christian sects? But we must grow out of religion. It is either bugaboo, formalism, or hysteria. Besides, what proof is there that the churches know more about God than the Cockney sentry on duty outside the camp? We have only their say-so. (Sacrifice Post, Lt. Davison)

Deep emotions had been excavated from his dry, middle-echelon executive's soul like the relics of a dark religion from an archaeological dig. He knew what it was to be alive.

If you listen repeatedly to religious speech, after enough repetitions you will actually begin to notice God and His works where there was just chaotic life going on before. What was formerly chance becomes a miracle. What was pain is now karma. What was human nature is now sin. And regardless of whether these religious memes are presented as Truth or as allegorical mythology, you're conditioned just the same.

If you're an atheist, you know, you believe, this is the only life you're going to get. It's a precious life. It's a beautiful life. Its something we should live to the full, to the end of our days. Where if you're religious and you believe in another life somehow, that means you don't live this life to the full because you think you're going to get another one. That's an awfully negative way to live a life. Being a atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily and fully

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many people are unable to understand that 'X is comforting' does not imply 'X is true'.

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, distinctly heard the voice of Jesus telling him to kill women, and he was locked up for life. George W. Bush says that God told him to invade Iraq (a pity God didn't vouchsafe him a revelation that there were no weapons of mass destruction).

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.

If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God.