#ali

The miracles of healing, important as they were, were not an end in themselves. They did not constitute the highest good of the messianic salvation. This fact is illustrated by the arrangement of the phrases in Matthew 11:4-5. Greater than deliverance of the blind and the lame, the lepers and the deaf, even than raising of the dead, was the preaching of the good news to the poor. This “gospel” was the very presence of Jesus himself, and the joy and fellowship that he brought to the poor. ↗

— George Eldon Ladd

#christian #healing #jesus #kingdom-of-god #messianic-task

One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#organized-religion #religion #religion

You'll see some bad things, but if you didn't see them, they'd still be happening. ↗

— Paula Fox

#realism #slavery #truth #truth-telling #slavery

Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman so they'll behave. You want people to believe in God so they'll obey the law. That's the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#religion #religion

If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#religion #spirituality #love

What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives. ↗

— Sam Harris

#atheism #belief #ethics #humanism #religion

In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise. ↗

— Sam Harris

#morality #religion #religion

The Holy Land is everywhere ↗

— Black Elk

#ecology #environmentalism #native-american #religion #spirituality

What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked? ↗

— Rowan Atkinson

#cults #human-rights #liberty #logic #morality

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#extremism #opinion #opinions #passion #rationalism