Quotes About Religion

Richard Dawkins

With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.' Blaise Pascal (he of the wager) said something similar: 'Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

EÄŸer bilim tarihi bize tek bir ÅŸey gösteriyorsa, o da cehaletimize 'Tanr?' etiketini yap??t?rarak bir yere ulaÅŸamad???m?zd?r.

Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Christopher Hitchens

When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn't happen with holy books.

Desmond Morris informs me that John Lennon's magnificent song is sometimes performed in America with the phrase 'and no religion too' expurgated. One version even has the effrontery to change it to 'and one religion too'.

Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows—but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe . . . no, that's holy? . . . We

Karl Marx, who famously stated in the 1840s: Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

To many Native American tribes the Grand Canyon is a sacred place: site of numerous origin myths from the Havasupai to the Zuni; hushed repose of the Hopi dead. If I were forced to choose a religion, that's the kind of religion I could go for. The Grand Canyon confers stature on a religion, outclassing the petty smallness of the Abrahamics, the three squabbling cults which, through historical accident, still afflict the world.

There are so many different faiths. How do you know the holy book you have been brought up with is the true one? And if all the others are wrong, what makes you think your holy book isn't wrong too?

45 per cent of the population of the United States firmly believes, to the contrary, an elementary falsehood: that all species separately owe their existence to 'intelligent design' less than ten thousand years ago.

Social habits that are universal among all peoples, such as laughing, smiling, weeping, religion, and a statistical tendency to avoid incest, are likely to have been present in our common ancestors too.

Il?ml? dinin öÄŸretileri, kendileri a??r?c? olmamalar?na raÄŸmen, a??r?c?l??a aç?k bir davetiyedirler.

There's a kind of science defense lobby or evolution defense lobby in particular . They are mostly atheist, but they are desperately wanting to be friendly to mainstream, sensible, religious people. And the way you do that is to tell them that there's no incompatibility between science and religion. [Expelled, No Intelligence allowed, 2008, 47m38]

Eu me divirto com a estratégia, quando me perguntam se sou ateu, de lembrar que o autor da pergunta também é ateu no que diz respeito a Zeus, Apolo, Amon Rá, Mithra, Baal, Thor, Wotan, o Bezerro de Outro e o Monstro de Espaguete Voador. Eu só fui um deus além.

Um dos efeitos verdadeiramente ruins da religião é que ela nos ensina que é uma virtude estar satisfeito em não compreender.

Atheists don't have to fear a great spy camera in the sky. They only – so the argument goes – have to fear real cameras and real policemen. Maybe you've heard the cynical witticism 'Conscience is knowing that someone is watching'.

I simply would not accede to being forced into this, and would frequently be kept out of classes because of irreverent comments and mocking this religious stuff. Frankly, it stayed with me to this day. In fact, don't get me going. I'm almost as bad as Richard Dawkins on this issue.

The Crusades, waged intermittently from 1095 to 1291, but which continued in waves for centuries after that, were military campaigns sanctioned principally by the Roman Catholic Church to reclaim the Holy Land. American students barely learn about the Crusades, but they are essential to understanding the wars of the last decade.

My name's not José, goddamn it." I cast a wintry eye at Lynette's spurious beigey Jesus nailed to the siding. He makes life a perfect misery for as many as he can, then never takes the heat. He should try resurrection in today's complex world. He'd fall right off His cross on His ass. He couldn't sell newspapers.

Confucianism and Taoism were native to China, but its third religion, Buddhism, was an import from India.

The proportion of CEOs who came from wealthy families had dropped from almost half in 1900 and a third in 1950 to 5.5 percent by 1976.23 The CEO of 1976 was still disproportionately likely to be Episcopalian but much less so than in 1900—and by 1976 he was also disproportionately likely to be Jewish, unheard of in 1920 or earlier. In short, social and economic background was no longer nearly as important in 1976 as in the first half of the century. Educational

You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.

Religious war at its simplest is killing each other over who has the best imaginary friend.