Quotes About Faith

New technologies kill old gods and give birth to new gods.

We don't need to wait for the Second Coming in order to overcome death. A couple of geeks in a lab can do it. If traditionally death was the speciality of priests and theologians, now the engineers are taking over.

Daca vrei sa-i determini pe oameni sa creada in enitati imaginare precum zeii si natiunile, ar trebui sa-i faci sa sacrifice ceva de pret.

What's undeniable is that monotheists have a hard time dealing with the Problem of Evil.

Today in Nepal, devotees of the goddess Gadhimai celebrate her festival every five years in the village of Bariyapur. A record was set in 2009 when 250,000 animals were sacrificed to the goddess. A local driver explained to a visiting British journalist that 'If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled.'26

The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts. Scholars of religion have a name for this simultaneous avowal of different and even contradictory ideas and the combination of rituals and practices taken from different sources. It's called syncretism. Syncretism might, in fact, be the single great world religion. The

El invento del politeísmo es favorable a una tolerancia religiosa de mucho alcance. Puesto que los politeístas creen, por un lado, en un poder supremo y completamente desinteresado, y por otro, en muchos poderes parciales y sesgados, no hay dificultad para que los devotos de un dios acepten la existencia y eficacia de otros dioses. El politeísmo es intrínsecamente liberal, y raramente persigue a «herejes» o «infieles».

los humanos poseen una maravillosa capacidad para creer en contradicciones. De manera que no debería ser ninguna sorpresa que millones de piadosos cristianos, musulmanes y judíos consigan creer a la vez en un Dios omnipotente y en un Diablo independiente.

Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the stronger the story becomes, because we desperately want to give meaning to these sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.

no debería ser ninguna sorpresa que millones de piadosos cristianos, musulmanes y judíos consigan creer a la vez en un Dios omnipotente y en un Diablo independiente.

Más de un siglo después de que Nietzsche afirmara que Dios había muerto, parece que Dios ha vuelto.

O bien uno cree en un Dios único y omnipotente o bien cree en dos poderes opuestos, ninguno de ellos omnipotente. Aún así los humanos poseen una maravillosa capacidad para creer en contradicciones.

Un gran número de extraños pueden cooperar con éxito si creen en mitos comunes. Cualquier cooperación humana a gran escala (ya sea un Estado moderno, una iglesia medieval, una ciudad antigua o una tribu arcaica) está establecida sobre mitos comunes que solo existen en la imaginación colectiva de la gente.

If you told people in the Middle Ages that within a few centuries God will be dead, they would have been horrified. 'How can we live without God? Who will give life meaning and protect us from chaos?' Looking

us. Christians and Muslims who could not agree on religious beliefs could nevertheless agree on a monetary belief, because whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any

Just imagine how difficult it would've been to create churches, states or laws, if we could only speak about things that really exist, like lions or rivers

When religions advertise themselves, they tend to emphasise their beautiful values. But God often hides in the small print of factual statements.

To say that a social order is maintained by military force immediately raises the question: what maintains the military order? It is impossible to organise an army solely by coercion. At least some of the commanders and soldiers must truly believe in something, be it God, honour, motherland, manhood or money.

To say that a social order is maintained by military force immediately raises the question: what maintains the military order? It is impossible to organise an army solely by coercion. At least some of the commanders and soldiers must truly believe in something, be

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully when they believe in common myths

la religión ha sido la tercera gran unificadora de la humanidad, junto con el dinero y los imperios. Puesto

These are sets of rules that, despite existing only in our imagination, we believe to be as real and inviolable as gravity. 'If

Of all rituals, sacrifice is the most potent, because of all the things in the world, suffering is the most real. You can never ignore it or doubt it. If you want to make people really believe in some fiction, entice them to make a sacrifice on its behalf.