#religion

Religions are confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and supra-human forces to make homes and cross boundaries.(p. 54) ↗

— Thomas A. Tweed

#home

This doctrine of total inability which declares that men are dead in sin does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that anyone is entirely destitute of virtue, nor that human nature is equal in itself, nor that man’s spirit in inactive, and much less does it mean that the body is dead. What is does mean is that since the fall, man rests under the curse of sin, that he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love God, or to do anything meriting salvation. His corruption is extensive, but not necessarily intensive. It is in this sense that man, since the fall, is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, wholly inclined to all evil. He possesses a fixed bias of the will against God, and instinctively and willingly and turns to evil. He is an alien by birth, and a sinner by choice. The inability under which he labors is not an inability to exercise volition, but an inability to be willing to exercise holy volitions. And it is this phase of it which led Luther to declare that ‘free will’ is an empty term, whose reality is lost; and a lost liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all. ↗

— Loraine Boettner

#free-will #loraine-boettner #predestination #reformed #religion

Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing Santa Claus. It will prepare them for an adulthood of believing in God. ↗

— Scott Dikkers

#atheism #childhood #humor #kids #parenting

The reason people use a crucifix against vampires is because vampires are allergic to bullshit. ↗

— Richard Pryor

#humor #religion #vampires #humor

Religion is for those who don't want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have already been there. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#spirituality #love

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible. ↗

— George Burns

#humor #religion #humor

I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#humor #religion #humor

You're arguing in a circle," I said. "In a spiral," said Lamiel, "which is the best way to argue. ↗

— Harry Blamires

#humor

With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105) ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#heaven #moon #myth #perspective #religion

Religion is a virus, and we are glad to have it. ↗

— John Art

#virus #art