#sm

When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#christianity #god #religion #sacrifice #religion

The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#christianity #religion #religion

But is the unicorn a falsehood? It's the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters' snares." "So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it's a fable, an invention of the pagans." "What a disappointment," I said. "I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what's the pleasure of crossing a wood? ↗

— Umberto Eco

#fables #mythology #religion #symbolism #unicorns

Every morning I wake up and thank God that I don't believe in him. ↗

— Mike Malloy

#god #religion #religion

It is interesting to note that the overwhelming majority of all human beings who have ever lived were or currently are Pagans. ↗

— Mary Faulkner

#pagans #religion #religion

Accumulating orthodoxy makes it harder year-by-year to be a Christian than it was in Jesus' day. ↗

— Brian D. McLaren

#orthodoxy #religion #tradition #religion

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#god #religion #religious #walt-whitman #religion

No doubt, God took a risk with creation by granting it consciousness and free decision. ↗

— Eliezer Berkovits

#judaism #religion #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

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