Quotes About Interpretation

If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.

If cows and horses had hands and could draw, cows would draw gods that look like cows and horses would draw gods that look like horses.

Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.

The free exercise clause of the constitution does not apply to any religion but Christianity. [because none of the other religions are legitimate religions.].

God comes to each of us in the form we can best perceive Him. To you, just now, He was a heron. To someone else, He might come as a flower or even a breeze.

All bibles are man-made.

Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it.

Thermodynamics, correctly interpreted, does not just allow Darwinian evolution; it favors it.

Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.

If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be — a Christian.

Religion is, by definition, interpretation; and by definition, all interpretations are valid. However, some interpretations are more reasonable than others.

I should like to repeat what I stated recently in the Jeddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia: It won't be the religion, but rather the world-view of some of its followers that shall be made current.

Seventy-two virgins - does that make sense to anyone? And it's an ancient religion, maybe it was misinterpreted? Maybe it's not 72 virgins, maybe it's a 7-foot-2 Persian.

How do I know the Bible isn't the word of God? Well if it was the word of God it would be clear and easy to understand...considering God was the creator of LANGUAGE!

What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.

Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life.

There is a twofold meaning in every creature, a literal and a mystical, and the one is but the ground of the other.

Let us read the Bible without the ill-fitting colored spectacles of theology, just as we read other books, using our judgment and reason. . . .

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.

If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.

You grow up trying to interpret, worshipping, visual symbols. It's a body-soaked imagery that you're looking at.

But even in the Christian religion, much of its real meaning is hidden by words that are misleading and symbols that but few understand.