#religion

The first virtue of a young man today - that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we live in fear, and religion has regained its powers - is to be incapable of enthusiasm and not to have much in the way of brains. ↗

— Stendhal

#religion

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#christianity #compassion #guilt #immorality #justice

But, above all, it will confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion, by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector. ↗

— Immanuel Kant

#religion

but it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation to the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist. ↗

— Charles Williams

#religion

The worship of power is an old religion. ↗

— George Santayana

#religion #wisdom #religion

That was the trouble with formulating a system: what could you do but repeat it? ↗

— Peter Washington

#belief-system #madame-blavatsky-s-baboon #mystic #mysticism #religion

Qu'importe, mon Dieu, que je brûle toute l'éternité en enfer, si c'est ta volonté. ↗

— St. Thérèse de Lisieux

#hell #l-enfer #religion #ste-thérèse #will-of-god

All at once he feels weary of ganefs and prophets, guns and sacrifices and the infinite gangster weight of God. He's tired of hearing about the promised land and the inevitable bloodshed required for its redemption. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#violence #war #religion

The hands that help are better far than lips that pray. ↗

— Robert Green Ingersoll

#atheism #pragmatism #proactive #responsibility #true-religion

Robe Moj, ti zelis jedno, Ja drugo, a uvijek se desava onako kako Ja hocu. Pa ako se prepustis onome sto Ja hocu, pruzicu ti i ono sto ti hoces. A ako se ne pokoris... Mojoj odredbi, namucit ces se sa onim sto hoces, a ipak ce biti onako kako Ja hocu! ↗

— Hadis

#muhammed #religion #religion