Quotes About Gods

We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our gods. —REVEREND MOTHER RAMALLO, Sayyadina of the Fremen

Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. She had always thought that meant other gods were false, and so not to be worshipped. Not once had she considered it could lend credence to their existence, and was meant to establish a hierarchy of belief.

It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.

Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.

Nearly everyone in ancient Egypt exhorted the gods to let the Pharaoh live 'forever. These collective prayers failed. Their failure constitutes data.

Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small.

For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations, as in ancient Greece in the time of Homer , where there were gods of the sky and the Earth, the thunderstorm, the oceans and the underworld, fire and time and love and war; where every tree and meadow had its dryad and maenad.

The ancient Ionians were the first we know of to argue systematically that laws and forces of Nature, rather than gods, are responsible for the order and even the existence of the world.

A more cynical formulation by the Roman historian Polybius:     Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.

The ancient Ionians were the first we know of to argue systematically that laws and forces of Nature, rather than gods, are responsible for the order and even the existence of the world. As Lucretius summarized their views, "Nature free at once and rid of her haughty lords is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods.

Pseudoscience speaks to powerful emotional needs that science often leaves unfulfilled. It caters to fantasies about personal powers we lack and long for (like those attributed to comic book superheroes today, and earlier, to the gods). In some of its manifestations, it offers satisfaction of spiritual hungers, cures for disease, promises that death is not the end. It reassures us of our cosmic centrality and importance.

So in an age when traditional religions have been under withering fire from science, is it not natural to wrap up the old gods and demons in scientific raiment and call them aliens?

Polybius:     Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.

Así, en una época en que las religiones tradicionales se han visto sometidas al fuego abrasador de la ciencia, ¿no es natural envolver a los antiguos dioses y demonios en un atuendo científico y llamarlos extraterrestres?

Los dioses no vienen a componer las cosas que nos salieron mal. Fíjese en la historia del hombre, y se dará cuenta de que siempre estuvimos solos

Muchas religiones han intentado hacer grandes estatuas de sus dioses, con la idea, supongo, de hacernos sentir pequeños a nosotros. Pero, si ése era su objetivo, ya pueden quedarse con sus míseros íconos. Para sentirnos pequeños basta con que levantemos la mirada

If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!

He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.

The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.

Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

Most witches don't believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don't believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.

Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.

On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.

It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.