religion

"Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—in view of the overall shortage of time—by patience."

"The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all."

"It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business."

"I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for."

"No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin—because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life."

"To err is human, to forgive, divine."

"No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over."

"Could it be, as one writer puts it, that every knock at the door of a brothel is actually a knock at the heart of God?"

"Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing Santa Claus. It will prepare them for an adulthood of believing in God."

"My father chose my name , and my last name was chosen by my ancestors . That’s enough, I myself choose my way"

"And I, Nephi, took one of the daughters of Ishmael to wife.' Well Mr. Go-And-Do just went and did!"

"The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque."

"I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things."

"And fragile is thy tenure of this worldStill haunted by the monstrous ghost of God.("To Science")"

"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

"If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it."

"You believe in God?"demanded Billy Karma."I believe in thirty-seven separate and distinct gods,"answered Argyle proudly. "That puts me thirty-six ahead of you.""It makes you a pagan.""It makes you a man of limited vision,"said Argyle."

"The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, 'All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions."

"For the wages of sin is Death, but the gift of God is everlasting Life in Christ Jesus or LORD."