#lis

I endeavored to renounce society, that I might avoid temptation. But it was a poor religion; so far as it prevailed, only tended to make me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless. ↗

— John Newton

#legalism #temptation #religion

Perhaps the Creator of this strange place knows us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps humanity was meant to eternally ponder the purpose and importance of our own existence. If we were assured of either, we’d be intolerable creatures. ↗

— Tiffany Madison

#existentialism #god #humanity #knowledge #religion

A fundamentalist is someone who wants to substitute what he believes for what you believe," Max said. "And someone who thinks he knows the will of God better than anyone else. ↗

— Robin Wasserman

#religion #religion

I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality. ↗

— H.P. Lovecraft

#immortality #materialism #naturalism #religion #supernatural

Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought. ↗

— C.J. Sansom

#armageddon #book-of-revelation #cruelty #destruction #fundamentalism

What’s wrong with being naked?” --Zeena Schreck on AMLA to Christian Minister Jerry Johnston ↗

— Zeena Schreck

#left-hand-path #nudism #religion #sexuality #tantra

London is one of the world's centres of Arab journalism and political activism. The failure of left and right, the establishment and its opposition, to mount principled arguments against clerical reaction has had global ramifications. Ideas minted in Britain – the notion that it is bigoted to oppose bigotry; 'Islamophobic' to oppose clerics whose first desire is to oppress Muslims – swirl out through the press and the net to lands where they can do real harm. ↗

— Nick Cohen

#arabs #bigotry #britain #islam #islamism

It strikes me often while I am in Iran that were Christian evangelicals to take a tour of Iran today, they might find it the model for an ideal society they seek in America. Replace Allah with God, Mohammad with Jesus, keep the same public and private notions of chastity, sin, salvation, and God's will, and a Christian Republic is born. ↗

— Hooman Majd

#irony #politics #religion #religion

When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God's son? The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed - whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions - is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross -- how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed? ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#death

You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. ↗

— Eugene H. Peterson

#empty-words #matthew #religion #religious #religion