#nit

How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan? ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#vanity #religion

Nunca te fíes de los que dicen servir a Dios. Te hablará con serenidad y buenas palabras, tan cultas que no alcanzarás a entenderlas. Tratarán de convencerte con argumentos que sólo ellos saben hilvanar hasta adueñares de tu razón y tu conciencia. Se presentarán a ti como hombres bondadosos que dirán querer salvarnos del mal y de la tentación, pero en realidad su opinión sobre nosotros está escrita y todos ellos, como soldados de Cristo que se llaman, siguen con fidelidad aquello que está escrito en los libros. Sus palabras son excusas y sus razones, idénticas a las que tú podrías darle a un mocoso. ↗

— Ildefonso Falcones

#god #religion #religion

Biblical, Talmudic, or Koranic literalists remind me of children wrinkling their noses at Belon oysters and asking for more Chef Boy-E-Dee. They want the world to be as simple as they are. ↗

— Tim Kreider

#islam #judaism #religion #science #religion

But you've always used words so wordily in crafty defense of your Trinity, although He never needed such defense before you got Him from me as a Unity. ↗

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

#humor #judaism #religion #religion

...While grace does do away with the need for good works, it’s grace which also makes good works truly possible. If good works don’t play into your salvation, then doing them is a sheer act of love, both for those they benefit and to God. It’s a way of solving the conundrum of how can a good work be truly good if the doer of the work expects to benefit from it in any way." -David Clark ↗

— David Clark

#grace #religion #love

There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is -- in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree -- it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime -- the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt. ↗

— Mark Twain

#reality #truth #money

When the highest value in a community is loyalty to the greater cause, meaning the continuity of the status quo, all means to this end are imbued with religious significance, and are thereby justified. ↗

— Pearl Abraham

#justification #religion #status-quo #religion

The Servant who really studies his Master gradually becomes like his master; gradually learns that he himself is the one who in the end does all the work and has all the power. ↗

— Don Cupitt

#god #religion #religion

There is a circularity here I do not doubt. I am defending the Bible by the Bible. Circularity of a kind is unavoidable when one seeks to defend an ultimate standard of truth, for one's defense must itself be accountable to that standard. ↗

— John M. Frame

#christianity #logic #religion #the-bible #truth

Each simplest act, each hidden intention, had to be cut to the Rule and polished and perfected like the tiny stones of a mysterious mosaic which had no meaning when looked at one by one, except that one by one they fitted together and suggested a pattern. The pattern was the formation of the nun but she was too close to see it. ↗

— Katherine Cavarly Hulme

#nun #personal-transformation #religion-christianity #sister-luke #religion