#religion

Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you—even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#business

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone. ↗

— Karl Barth

#confidence #every #except #god #ground

It is the business of man to become acquainted with the material universe in all of its manifestations, so far as may be possible, in order to provide a foundation of knowledge on which the reasoning mind of man may increasingly build. ↗

— John Andreas Widtsoe

#wisdom #business

He's not a bad guy, John. It's human nature. He wanted it to be some mistake I made that he wouldn't have made, some flaw in me that he didn't share, so he could believe it wouldn't have happened to him. But it wasn't my fault. It was either blind, dumb, stupid luck from start to finish, in which case, we are all in the wrong business gentleman, or it was a God I cannot worship. ↗

— Mary Doria Russell

#religion #business

Go beyond science, into the region of metaphysics. Real religion is beyond argument. It can only be lived both inwardly and outwardly. ↗

— Swami Sivananda

#beyond #both #go #into #inwardly

I'm not out to disturb anybody's faith. I happen to be happy and comfortable with a belief system that has a dual deity and operates on a lunar schedule. It suits my needs. If you happen to be happy and comfortable with a belief system that features a single masculine deity and operates on a solar schedule, fine. I don't give a fat damn. What matters is what you do, not who's name you do it in. ↗

— Mercedes Lackey

#religion #tolerance #faith

The teachings of Buddha are eternal, but even then Buddha did not proclaim them to be infallible. The religion of Buddha has the capacity to change according to times, a quality which no other religion can claim to have... Now what is the basis of Buddhism? If you study carefully, you will see that Buddhism is based on reason. There is an element of flexibility inherent in it, which is not found in any other religion. ↗

— B.R. Ambedkar

#buddhism #rationalism #religion #change

Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The Omnipotence to Change His future mind? ↗

— Karen Owens

#humor #omnipotence #omniscience #paradox #religion

If I imagine my soul, as I do when I pray, it's shaped like Stapafel. No change of place or religion can alter that. I lived beneath Stapafel from the hour I was born until I was sixteen. I've never seen it since, but that doesn't matter. My soul is in the likeness of a jagged peak with a rock like a man standing on its summit, and snags of rock shaped like trolls along its spine. Screes defend it, although it's not quite inaccessible if you know the way up. ↗

— Margaret Elphinstone

#life #perception #religion #soul #spirit

Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself - that is my doctrine. ↗

— Thomas Paine

#freedom #liberty #religion #separation-of-church-and-state #skepticism