Quotes About Faith

Notwithstanding the danger of mass unemployment, what we should worry about even more is the shift in authority from humans to algorithms, which might destroy any remaining faith in the liberal story and open the way to the rise of digital dictatorships.

Radical Islam is in a far worse position than socialism. It has not yet come to terms even with the Industrial Revolution

Most people who voted for Trump and Brexit didn't reject the liberal package in its entirety –they lost faith mainly in its globalising part. They still believe in democracy, free markets, human rights and social responsibility, but they think these fine ideas can stop at the border.

distortions of ancient traditions characterize all religions.

A single priest often does the work of a hundred soldiers – far more cheaply and effectively.

A Humanidade, provavelmente, dividir-se-á em duas grandes fações: a fação das pessoas a favor de se conceder à inteligência artificial uma autoridade significativa e a fação das que se opõem a isso. O mais certo é que haja muçulmanos e judeus em ambos os lados, justificando as suas posições através de interpretações criativas do Alcorão e do Talmude.

si sumamos todas las víctimas de todas estas persecuciones, resulta que en esos tres siglos los politeístas romanos mataron a no más que unos pocos miles de cristianos.1 Por el contrario, a lo largo de los siguientes 1.500 años, los cristianos masacraron a millones de correligionarios para defender interpretaciones ligeramente distintas de la religión del amor y la compasión.

Perhaps the deeper meaning of this commandment is that we should never use the name of God for political interests, economic ambitions, or our personal hatreds. People hate somebody and say "God hates him." People covet a piece of land and say "God wants it." The world would be a better place if we followed the third commandment more devotedly. You want to wage war on your neighbors and steal their land? Leave God out of it and find yourself some other excuse.

El cristiano cree en el Dios monoteísta, pero también en el Diablo dualista, en santos politeístas y en espíritus animistas.

It is often said that God helps those who help themselves. This is a roundabout way of saying that God doesn't exist, but if our belief in Him inspires us to do something ourselves – it helps.

When everybody uses the same oracle, and everybody believes the oracle, the oracle turns into a sovereign.

Just as Christians and Muslims all believe in heaven, and disagree only about how to get there, so during the Cold War both capitalists and communists believed in creating heaven on earth through economic growth, and wrangled only about the exact method.

Unfortunately, blind faith in these stories meant that human efforts frequently focused on increasing the glory of fictional entities such as gods and nations, instead of bettering the lives of real sentient beings.

Holy scriptures may have been relevant in the Middle Ages, but how can they guide us in an era of artificial intelligence, bioengineering, global warming, and cyberwarfare? Yet secular people are a minority. Billions of humans still profess greater faith in the Quran and the Bible than in the theory of evolution; religious movements shape the politics of countries as diverse as India, Turkey, and the United States; and religious animosities fuel conflicts from Nigeria to the Philippines.

Still, humans have a wonderful capacity to believe in contradictions.

Generation für Generation beteten die Menschen zu jedem Gott, jedem Engel, jedem Heiligen, und sie erfanden unzählige Instrumente, Institutionen und Gesellschaftssysteme – trotzdem starben sie weiter millionenfach an Hunger, Epidemien und Gewalt. Viele Denker und Propheten kamen zu dem Schluss, Hunger, Krankheit und Krieg seien eben fester Bestandteil von Gottes kosmischem Plan oder unserer unvollkommenen Natur, und erst am Ende aller Zeit würden wir davon befreit werden.

How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism?

There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them.

ethical perspective, monotheism was arguably one of the worst ideas in human history.

Islamic fundamentalists may repeat the mantra that 'Islam is the answer', but religions that lose touch with the technological realities of the day forfeit their ability even to understand the questions being asked.

That's how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously.

Os seguidores de todas as religiões estão convencidos de que somente a sua é a verdadeira. Talvez os seguidores de uma única religião estejam certos.

It therefore makes absolutely no sense to credit Judaism and its Christian and Muslim offspring with the creation of human morality.

secular countries such as Denmark and the Czech Republic aren't more violent than devout countries such as Iran and Pakistan.