#s

For if you look over the State of Religion as it standeth in Christendom, there is no Church whatsoever which will accept you as a Member of its Communion, but upon some particular terms of Belief, or Practice, which Christ never appointed, and it may be such as an honest and a wise Christian cannot consent to. I am not more able to give up my Reason to the Church of England, than to give up my Senses to the Church of Rome; it looks like a Trick in all Churches to take away the use of Mens Reason, that they may render us Vassals and Slaves to all their Dictates and Commands. ↗

— William Stephens

#priestcraft #men

I've still got the bible, I stole that night from my revival. From some hotel on 35. ↗

— Kevin Dalton

#religion #salvation #music

Or maybe that’s what it’s all about: this religion’s substance is its lack of substance. In McLuhanesque terms, the medium is the message. Some people might find that cool.” “McLuhanesque?” “Hey, look, even I read a book now and then,” Ayumi protested. “McLuhan was ahead of his time. He was so popular for a while that people tend not to take him seriously, but what he had to say was right.” “In other words, the package itself is the contents. Is that it?” “Exactly. The characteristics of the package determine the nature of the contents, not the other way around. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#medium #message #murakami #religion #substance

Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within... underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions, and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point of the transpersonal god. As the sun lights the world even when cloud-covered, “the Immutable is never seen but is the Witness; it is never heard but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is never known but is the Knower. There is no other witness but This, no other knower but This." from the Upanishad ↗

— Huston Smith

#spirituality #upanishads #religion

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. ↗

— Karl Marx

#philosophy #politics #religion #religion

There are wrongs for which religion makes no provision, and of which it has no comprehension. --"Wanda ↗

— Ouida

#sin #understanding #wrongs #religion

Religion ist nichts anderes als die Lehre davon, wie man frei von Erkenntnis gehorcht [...]. ↗

— Juli Zeh

#religion #responsibility #religion

When in Reading Gaol he told me that the warders in the dock had been gentle and kind, but the visit of the chaplain in his first prison began with these words: 'Mr. Wilde, did you have morning prayers in your house?' 'I am sorry... I fear not.' 'You see where you are now! ↗

— Charles Ricketts

#empathy #oscar-wilde #religion #self-righteousness #religion

We hold the future still timidly, but perceive it for the first time as a function of our own action. ↗

— J.D. Bernal

#religion #space-exploration #religion

You can understand a philosophy thoroughly without having to follow it; but you understand religion only partially, that is, as a mere philosophy, unless you follow it. ↗

— Raheel Farooq

#reality #religion #religion