#l

Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail- the gumption to try and save ourselves- isn't that what he wanted us to do? ↗

— Jeannette Walls

#god #hard-work #religion #religion

The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people’s interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#god #religion #scripture #violence #women-s-rights

Almost all religions provide opportunities for human beings to convince themselves of their own righteousness, to speak in the name of God, and even to go to war on God's behalf. This 'blasphemy of certainty' is also rife among secularists who in their case have not God but science or the proletariat on their side. ↗

— Stephen R. Prothero

#holy-war #religion #religion

But I do like Scotland. I like the miserable weather. I like the miserable people, the fatalism, the negativity, the violence that's always just below the surface. And I like the way you deal with religion. One century you're up to your lugs in it, the next you're trading the whole apparatus in for Sunday superstores. Praise the Lord and thrash the bairns. Ask and ye shall have the door shut in your face. Blessed are they that shop on the Sabbath, for they shall get the best bargains. Oh yes, this is a very fine country. ↗

— James W. Robertson

#religion

I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#chapel #church #god #preacher #preaching

To know how to put what knowledge in which place is wisdom (hikmah). Otherwise, knowledge without order and seeking it without discipline does lead to confusion and hence to injustice to one's self. ↗

— Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

#knowledge #wisdom #religion

إن الدين لا يردع الإنسان عن عمل يشتهي أن يقوم به الا بمقدار ضئيل. فتعاليم الدين يفسرها الانسان ويتأولها حسب ما تشتهي نفسه. وقد رأينا القران والحديث مرجعا لكثير من الأعمال المتناقضة التي قام بها المتنازعون في عصر صدر الاسلام.. ↗

— علي الوردي

#sociology #religion

When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so. [...] But I fear for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship. You do not know what it is to speak with one voice. And what is the result? An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers. He can curse the gods of his fathers and his ancestors, like a hunter's dog that suddenly goes mad and turns on his master. I fear for you; I fear for the clan. ↗

— Chinua Achebe

#religion

جدارة الرسالات السامية تقاس عادة بما تحققه من سعادة للبشر تتمثل أول ما تتمثل في الأخذ بيد المضطهدين ↗

— نجيب محفوظ

#humanity #oppression #religion #religion

But…but you can’t treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can’t say yes please, I’ll have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of the Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind. Its table d´hôte or nothing, otherwise…well, it would be silly. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#religion