Quotes About Religion

the old world, death had led to endless philosophical ruminations and spawned religions, but in Bitworld it led to one-star ratings from furious bereaved and threats of class-action lawsuits.

The Sadducees were materialists." "Meaning what? They drove BMWs?

Pascal's Wager?" asked Dr. Trinh. "Pascal once said that you should believe in God because, if you turned out to be wrong, you weren't losing anything, and if you turned out to be right, the reward was infinite," Corvallis said.

That's how the Popes have gotten away with peddling bad religion for so long—they simply say it in Latin. But if we were to unfold their convoluted phrases and translate them into a philosophical language, all of their contradictions and vagueness would become manifest.

Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?

How can you be a Christian without believing in that?" "I would say," Juanita says, "how can you be a Christian with it? Anyone who takes the trouble to study the gospels can see that the bodily resurrection is a myth that was tacked onto the real story several years after the real histories were written. It's so National Enquirer-esque, don't you think?

Paganism? Then we are all pagans! It is a symbol of Mercury—patron of commerce—who has been worshipped in this cellar—and in this city—for a thousand years, by Bishops as well as business-men. It is a cult that adapts itself to any religion, just as easily as quicksilver adopts the shape of any container—

Had these people been living in, for example, the agricultural paradise of the Nile Delta, they might have been able to get away with some mazy religious dogma as the basis for that system.

Because in the name of Our Lord's mammy, if I could be someplace where money's got no religion and religion's got no money, I'd be a happier woman.

Pascal once said that you should believe in God because, if you turned out to be wrong, you weren't losing anything, and if you turned out to be right, the reward was infinite

In the old world, death had led to endless philosophical ruminations and spawned religions, but in Bitworld it led to one-star ratings from furious bereaved and threats of class-action lawsuits.

I have come to the conclusion that the true benefit of religion is not to make people virtuous, which is impossible, but to put a sort of bridle on the worst excesses of their viciousness.

All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us. Now, religion used to be essentially viral—a piece of information that replicated inside the human mind, jumping from one person to the next.

Religion asks you to learn from the experience of others. Spirituality urges you to seek your own.

Religion cannot stand Spirituality. It cannot abide it. For Spirituality may bring you to a different conclusion than a particular religion—and this no known religion can tolerate. Religion encourages you to explore the thoughts of others and accept them as your own. Spirituality invites you to toss away the thoughts of others and come up with your own.

Understand that in order for organized religion to succeed, it has to make people believe they need it. In order for people to put faith in something else, they must first lose faith in themselves. So the first task of organized religion is to make you lose faith in yourself. The second task is to make you see that it has the answers you do not. And the third and most important task is to make you accept its answers without question.

It is true that religions could not exist if the whole human race understood that God doesn't have preferences, because a religion purports to be a statement of God's preferences.

If you choose to believe in a God who somehow needs something—and has such hurt feelings if He doesn't get it that He punishes those from whom He expected to receive it—then you choose to believe in a God much smaller than I. You truly are Children of a Lesser God. No, my children, please let Me assure you again, through this writing, that I am without needs. I require nothing.

Opportunity, not obligation, is the cornerstone of religion, the basis of all spirituality. So long as you see it the other way around, you will have missed the point.

You've even created religions that tell you that you are born in sin—that you are sinners at birth—in order to convince yourselves of your own evil.

All your life you have spent convincing yourself that you are bad. Not only that you are bad, but that the things you want are bad. Sex is bad, money is bad, joy is bad, power is bad, having a lot is bad—a lot of anything. Some of your religions have even got you believing that dancing is bad, music is bad, celebrating life is bad. Soon you'll agree that smiling is bad, laughing is bad, loving is bad.

Nothing makes God unhappy. You cannot believe this because it would require you to believe in a God without need or judgment, and you cannot imagine such a God.

Why" is a nasty little Protestant word, you follow? Catholics, now, say, "Credo, I Believe," to whatever the Pope says. If you want to ask "Why?" go ask the Anglican vicar to instruct you in unbelief and he will let you "Why-why-why?" to your heart's content.

I don't have an issue with what you do in the church, but I'm gonna be up in your face if you're gonna knock on my science classroom and tell me they've got to teach what you're teaching in your Sunday school. Because that's when we're gonna fight!