Quotes About Faith

The new religions are unlikely to emerge from the caves of Afghanistan or from the madrasas of the Middle East. Rather, they will emerge from research laboratories. Just as socialism took over the world by promising salvation through steam and electricity, so in the coming decades new techno-religions may conquer the world by promising salvation through algorithms and genes.

Legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the first time with the Cognitive Revolution.

because whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something.

Followers of every religion are convinced that theirs alone is true. Perhaps the followers of one religion are correct.

However, most people don't like to admit that they are fools. Consequently, the more they sacrifice for a particular belief, the stronger their faith becomes.

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.

During the last five centuries, humans increasingly came to believe that they could increase their capabilities by investing in scientific research. This wasn't just blind faith – it was repeatedly proven empirically.

echoing John the Baptist's cry: 'the kingdom of heaven is near' (Matthew 3:

Bereitwillig glaubten die Menschen an Engel und Elfen, aber dass ein winziger Floh oder ein einziger Tropfen Wasser eine ganze Armada tödlicher Jäger enthielt, konnten sie sich nicht vorstellen.

A natural order is a stable order. 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.

pero los humanos necesitamos creer en ellos. Así, ¿cómo hacer que el relato se perciba como real? Es evidente por qué los humanos quieren creer en él, pero ¿cómo se lo creen realmente? Ya hace miles de años que sacerdotes y chamanes dieron con la respuesta: mediante rituales. Un ritual es un acto mágico que hace que lo abstracto sea concreto y lo ficticio,

is there anything more dangerous than a god who doesn't know what he wants?

How can I find a firm ethical ground in a world that extends far beyond my horizons, that spins completely out of human control, and that holds all gods and ideologies suspect?

and there are even cases of religiously inspired human sacrifice.

Pero no queremos aceptar que nuestro Dios, nuestra nación o nuestros valores sean meras ficciones, porque estas cosas dan sentido a nuestra vida.

Así es como se desarrolla la historia. La gente teje una red de sentido, cree en ella con todo su corazón, pero más pronto o más tarde la red se desenmaraña, y cuando miramos atrás, no podemos entender cómo nadie pudo haberla tomado en serio.

And every technical problem has a technical solution. 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.

Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes 'heretics' and 'infidels'.

Dios. El sacerdote exclamaba «Hoc est corpus meum!» («¡Este es mi cuerpo!»), y, ¡abracadabra!, el pan se convertía en la carne de Cristo.

The humanist revolution caused modern Western culture to lose faith and interest in superior mental states, and to sanctify the mundane experiences of the average Joe.

The best-known religions of history, such as Islam and Buddhism, are universal and missionary. Consequently

The monotheist religions expelled the gods through the front door with a lot of fanfare, only to take them back in through the side window. Christianity, for example, developed its own pantheon of saints, whose cults differed little from those of the polytheistic gods.

nunca convenceremos a un mono para que nos dé un plátano con la promesa de que después de morir tendrá un número ilimitado de bananas a su disposición en el cielo de los monos. Pero

The most important economic resource is trust in the future, and this resource is constantly threatened by thieves and charlatans.