#religion

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. ↗

— H. P. Lovecraft

#backgrounds #bludgeon #conformity #consequences #followers

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. ↗

— Guy de Maupassant

#egg #hatched #kind #religion #wars

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#heresy #religion #age

The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes- a time for men and women to be heroic in their faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message too low. ↗

— Dallas Willard

#church #dallas-willard #inspirational #religion #age

Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie. ↗

— Thomas Paine

#religion #science #skepticism #age

Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#music

Nature says women are human beings, men have made religions to deny it. Nature says women are human beings, men cry out no! ↗

— Taslima Nasrin

#cry #deny #human #human beings #made

Perhaps I shouldn't call it shit. That's a bit crude. I don't really despise Christianity or even the Roman Church, and certainly not the incontrovertible glory of the Middle Ages. What I do despise is the contemporary inclination to flop to the knees and crawl back into the past, to shy from what seem like impossible problems in order to bury the head, asshole aloft and twitching, in the Sands of Time. Cowardice, I calls it. Illusion-seeking. Womb-crawling. And treason. Desertion in the face of the enemy. Strong words indeed. But I've always been rather a blunt, tough, plain-spoken type . . . ↗

— Edward Abbey

#age

A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle. ↗

— Arthur Bloch

#religion

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents. ↗

— George Orwell

#advertisement #christian #christian religion #religion #socialism