#secular

If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief. ↗

— Pier Paolo Pasolini

#religion #secularity #spirituality #religion

Misstraue jedem Politiker, jedem Regierungs- oder Staatschef, der seine Religion zum Instrument macht. Halte Abstand von solchen Politikern, die ihre auf das Jenseits orientierte Religion und ihre diesseitige Politik miteinander vermischen. ↗

— Helmut Schmidt

#fundamentalism #politics #religion #secularism #religion

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis argues that human beings cannot be truly good or moral without faith in God and without submis- sion to the will of Christ. Unfortunately, Lewis does not provide any actual data for his assertions. They are nothing more than the mild musings of a wealthy British man, pondering the state of humanity’s soul between his sips of tea. Had Lewis actually famil- iarized himself with real human beings of the secular sort, per- haps sat and talked with them, he would have had to reconsider this notion. As so many apostates explained to me, morality is most certainly possible beyond the confines of faith. Can people be good without God? Can a moral orientation be sustained and developed outside of a religious context? The answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes. ↗

— Phil Zuckerman

#atheism #ethics #morality #morals #religion

The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game. ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#politics #secularism #islam

Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life. ↗

— Henry Van Dyke

#comes #critic #dismal #every #every man

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world. ↗

— E. O. Wilson

#alabama #biologically #evolution #freshman #freshman year

Some of those drawn into the holy war had been secular nationalists only a few years before. If one looks at the biographies of these people, remarkable continuities are revealed. ↗

— Jurgen Habermas

#before #biographies #drawn #few #had

It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat. ↗

— Mary Douglas

#feel #growth #made #organized #science

Back in the days when the market was a kind of secular god and all the world thrilled to behold the amazing powers of private capital, the idea of privatizing highways and airports and other bits of our transportation infrastructure made a certain kind of sense. ↗

— Thomas Frank

#back #behold #bits #capital #certain

If a person is homosexual by nature - that is, if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow. ↗

— Jon Meacham

#because #color #crow #deny #gay