#secular

Reading is the last act of secular prayer. ↗

— Richard Powers

#last #prayer #reading #secular

Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. ↗

— Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

#inspirational #religion #secularism #inspirational

Well, in The Chosen, Danny Saunders, from the heart of his religious reading of the world, encounters an element in the very heart of the secular readings of the world - Freudian psychoanalytic theory. ↗

— Chaim Potok

#danny #element #encounters #freudian #heart

The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism. ↗

— Dennis Prager

#muslim #muslim world #religious #secular #threatened

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#atheism #humanism #secularism #humans

All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is—marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#intelligence

In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith. ↗

— John Taylor Gatto

#public-education #schooling #secularism #education

The Bible is a book of Science. Secular Humanism is a religion of mythology. ↗

— Michael J. Findley

#ancient-governments #culture #establishment-of-religion #history #non-fiction

Admittedly, I do have several bones, whole war fields full of bones, in fact to pick with organised religion of whatever stripe. This should be seen as a critique of purely temporal agencies who have, to my mind, erected more obstacles between whatever notion of spirituality and Godhead one subscribes to than they have opened doors. To me, the difference between Godhead and the Church is the difference between Elvis and Colonel Parker... although that conjures images of God dying on the toilet, which is not what I meant at all. ↗

— Alan Moore

#godhead #modernity-is-a-sickness #religion #secular-ethics #secularism

It will be found that every attack upon religion, or upon characteristic ideas inherited from religion, when its assumptions are laid bare, turns out to be an attack upon mind. ↗

— Richard M. Weaver

#secularism #thoughts #religion