Religious Quotes - Page 85

God appeared to His people in the Old Testament and dwelt with His people in the New - and now abides in us by His Spirit.

There's only one thing to do with God's offer of the gift of salvation: Say "thank you" and embrace it.

Every time we deny ourselves in order to serve someone else, we grow in Christ.

... superstitions, which, being unable to defend themselves on fair ground, raise these intangling brambles to cover and protect their weakness. Chased from the open country, these robbers fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices. ... The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.

I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter. Far more important is that they be a good human being.

The religions of the world are luminous in their individuality, and they have valuable social and soulmaking functions. Surely someday we will quit killing each other over their different strategies.

We need to replace the lies of the enemy with the truth of God; to do so we need to know the truth of God.

A religious college in Cairo is considering issues of nanotechnology: If replicators are used to prepare a copy of a strip of bacon, right down to the molecular level, but without it ever being part of a pig, how is it to be treated?

Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching - where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus.

If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism.

All my life I have made it a rule never to permit a religious man or woman take for granted that his or her religious beliefs deserved more consideration than non-religious beliefs or anti-religious ones. I never agree with that foolish statement that I ought to respect the views of others when I believe them to be wrong.

... many Hindus are willing to consider Jesus as a legitimate manifestation of the divine... many Buddhists see Jesus as one of humanity's most enlightened people.... A shared reappraisal of Jesus' message could provide a unique space or common ground for urgently needed religious dialogue - and it doesn't seem an exaggeration to say that the future of our planet may depend on such dialogue. This reappraisal of Jesus' message may be the only project capable of saving a number of religions.

... why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of the species but so few concerned about the extinction of the species?

Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn't just "trusting in God" to give me the moves.

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else.

Fervent religious believers sacrifice pleasures of the body, but instead enjoy pleasures of the mind, including the joy of knowing that those men who didn't follow their religion would be tortured for eternity.

Christianity is the only true and perfect religion.

I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced these wars; it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.

The followers of Jesus did not die for what they believed - they died for what they claim to have seen.

I am not religious, but I am a pious man... A religious man has a definite religion. He says "God is there" or "God is there," "God is there." "Your god is not my god, and that's all." But the pious man, he just looks out with awe, and says, "where is God?" And "well, I don't understand it and I would like to know what this creation really means." That is a pious man, who is really touched by the greatness of nature and of the creation.

Science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.

There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair.

In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it.

Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.