Religion Quotes - Page 40

Where did God come from? If we decide this is an unanswerable question why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question.

I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

From a biological viewpoint, patriarchal religion denied women the natural rights of every other mammalian female: the right to choose her stud, to control the circumstances of her mating, to occupy and govern her own nest, or to refuse all males when preoccupied with the important business of raising her young.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

The man who has been taught by the Holy Spirit will be a seer rather than a scholar. The difference is that the scholar sees and the seer sees through; and that is a mighty difference indeed.

The search for religion is the starting point of thought.

In proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism.

In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/ And the Catholics hate the Protestants/ And the Hindus hate the Muslims/ And everybody hates the Jews.

The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

I believe BECAUSE it's impossible.

There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.

Religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty . . . exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the . . . false to achieve primacy over the facts.

With soap, baptism is a good thing.

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong... As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from.

All my life I have prayed to God that I should remain religiously orthodox, culturally conservative, politically liberal and economically pragmatic.

A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right.

Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith.

If any spirit created the universe, it is malevolent, not benevolent.

Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.