Religious Quotes - Page 119

I would like to see the lack of demonization for those of us who stand on sincerely held religious beliefs. It's overdue. That's where you see the demonization of people who stand on their beliefs.

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places of believing practices, but for this very reason, they seem to have been haunted by the return of a very ancient (preChristian) and very “pagan” alliance between power and religion. It is as though now that religion has ceased to be an autonomous power (the “power of religion,” people used to say), politics has once again become religious.

...evolution is not a religious tenet, to which one swears allegiance or belief as a matter of faith.. It is a factual reality of the empirical world. Just as one would not say 'I believe in gravity," one should not proclaim 'I believe in evolution.

There are some religious traditions that view human beings as participants in creation. This is true of the Jewish tradition, from which I come.

It's true that to speak of an ethic of giftedness, which is very much the ethic that I deploy in raising questions about designer children and genetic engineering - an appreciation of the giftedness of the child or the giftedness of life does have religious resonance, because a great many religious traditions emphasize the sense in which the good things in life are not all our own doing; they are gifts from God.

In particular, I argue that in both evolution and creation we have rival religious responses to a crisis of faith-rival stories of origins, rival judgments about he meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologians call rival eschatologies-pictures of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind.

...I really want to believe. I find the goodies offered by Christianity extremely attractive. But I am damned (again!) if I am going to sell my evolutionary birthright for a mess of religious pottage.

Going to my shows, it's like a religious experience, because you come out, you go in one person, you come out a different person.

I don't have a religious bone in my body but I believe artists (of any medium), in our best selves, are vessels of truth.

Style is, above all, a system of forms with a quality and a meaningful expression through which the personality of the artist andthe broad outlook of a group are visible,... communicating and fixing certain values of religious, social, and moral life through the emotional suggestiveness of forms. It is, besides, a common ground against which innovations and individuality of particular works may be measured.

It is one thing to be delivered from bad thoughts, and another to be freed from the passions. Often people are delivered from thoughts, when they do not have before their eyes those things which produce passion. But the passions for them remain hidden in the soul, and when the things appear again the passions are revealed. Therefore it is necessary to guard the mind when these things appear, and to know toward which things you have a passion.

A Christian receives divine wisdom in three ways: by the commandments, teachings, and faith. The commandments free the mind from passions. Teachings lead it to true knowledge of nature. Faith leads to the contemplation of the Holy Trinity.

It would be foolish to assert that there is no power above mine. Only the attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the religious age: I shall be the enemy of every higher power, while religion teaches us to make it our friend and be humble toward it.

When we submit to God's plans, we can trust our desires. Our assignment is found at the intersection of God's plan and our pleasures.

The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.

The child takes in his world as if it were food. And his world nourishes or starves him. Nothing escapes his thirst. Secrets are impossible. He identifies with his surroundings and they live within him unconsciously; it is perhaps for this reason that the small child has been characterized as naturally religious.

I'm not myself religious but have no wish to insult or denigrate those who are.

We need not invite the Devil to our table; he is too ready to come without being asked. The air all about us is filled with demons.

More cases of loss of religious faith are to be traced to the theory of evolution. . .than to anything else.

Storytelling has driven faith and religious practice, keeping them alive for millennia. Just as every hymn, icon, and stained-glass window in a church links to a story, brands have the potential to build holistic identities.

Let the Bible be the Bible. It's not about science. It's not accurate history. It is a grab bag of religious fantasies written by many authors. Some of its myths, like the Star of Bethlehem, are very beautiful. Others are dull and ugly. Some express lofty ideals, such as the parables of Jesus. Others are morally disgusting.

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.

I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life. And yet-I am inclined to expect one.

As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith.

Multiculturalism is only in the West. We are absorbing a large number of Muslims in the west and at the same time the Christians and the Jews and other minorities are fleeing the Middle East, churches are being burnt, nobody is talking about it. Where are the religious freedom of the minorities.